A little slice of my life.

Many of my updates lately have been all about photography. Which is swell and all (since this is, after all, a photo blog) but I have a tendency to neglect the portion that tells my story. The entire name of this blog/business is Laura Kaster Photography, and it's about time I focus more on sharing the "Laura" portion of the equation. I actually meant to post this last week, but got a wicked bad stomach virus (I turned into what I like to refer to as "Exorcist Laura" - not fun).

So, in no particular order, here's some fun non-photography stuff I've been up to lately:

A month or so ago, I went to Goodwill to drop some stuff off that had been taking up space in our apartment. After dropping them off, I made the mistake of entering the store and impulse-bought a papasan chair and a cute lamp and lampshade. Well, the lamp wasn't exactly cute at that point (it was painted what I like to call "Grandma Pink") but it definitely had potential. 

A couple of weekends ago I decided to awaken that potential and spray-painted it a nifty blueish-turquoise. It was way easier to spray-paint it than I thought it would be! If this whole photography thing doesn't work out, maybe I could rescue ugly things and spray-paint them back to life. Watch out Etsy artisans, you might have some competition!

In case you're wondering why I took photos of the lamp in our kitchen, it's because we live in a garden apartment (aka an apartment on the ground level, quite a common occurrence in Chicago), so we don't get a ton of natural light. In our kitchen we have these fantastic glass squares that let in a ton of light, hence making it the ideal place to take well-lit photos.

Which is why this photo also features my *clean* dishes and my knife collection.

In case you haven't noticed, Pumpkin is a Persian and is quite fluffy. During the bouts of 100+ degree weather we had over the summer, the poor girl resorted to sitting right in front of the air conditioner to get some relief from the brutal heat - I figured that was a pretty big hint that it was time to get her shaved.

Since all of the groomers I found in Chicago were hoity-toity and super pricey (or could only groom her on a weekday), Brian and I decided to invest in some electric clippers to shave Pumpkin. We figured it couldn't be that difficult - after all, if the people in the YouTube tutorials we saw could do it, then by golly we would have no problems doing it!

...yeah. We were wrong. So wrong. Even lots of treats and promises of catnip couldn't get her to sit still.

Don't get me wrong - we did shave her. Just....not all the way. Her hair has grown out a little so it doesn't look as silly any more, but still. You can tell that it's cut like when a five-year-old decides to cut their own hair with children's scissors.

Of course Pumpkin decided to be Little-Miss-Sassy-Pants and was very uncooperative for the camera for once in her furry life when I tried to capture the last remnants of her haircut. Brian theorizes that it's because she's getting older and more resistant to my demands requests...which of course makes me sad, because I don't like to think of my cute little fluff balls as "old".

Word to the wise: even though it's super-cute, if a cat presents you with her belly, do not give her a belly rub. In the immortal words of Admiral Ackbar: "It's a trap!"

I *almost* got this in focus! If only she weren't so darn sassy!!

The recent more temperate weather in Chicago is getting me really excited for my favorite season: Fall! Crunching leaves, crisp air, pumpkin-flavored and themed everything, Halloween (Brian and I are planning on dressing up as Han and Leia from Star Wars - yes, we're nerds and we're proud of it!) apple picking, spooky stories....I could go on and on. 

And let's not forget about my favorite sport to watch! Football season is starting (yay!) but a majority of the first few Packers games are either on ESPN or NFL Network (boooooo - we don't have cable because we're cheap). Brian and I really want to go to a game at Lambeau this year, especially since the last one we went to was in 2010. Which is way too long ago for my liking.

...so we're going to the season opener against the 49er's. YAY!!

This photo is courtesy of Sherah G* Photography. Pretty much sums up our relationship: Brian's somewhat normal, and I'm kind of crazy. ;)

That's about it for now. Until next time peeps!

Chris & Nina

Brian met Chris at his school's graduate student orientation last August and quickly bonded over their shared love of computer and video games. A couple of  months later I met Chris and his wife, Nina, and we all hit it off. So, when I learned they didn’t have any recent cute photos of themselves, I knew that needed to change that pronto.

Last weekend we braved the sunny, hot outdoors to capture their enduring love. And let me tell ya: these two were troopers. For reals.

The shoot was definitely challenging, but forced me to deal rather quickly with rapidly changing (and tricky!) light situations, mostly due to that bright, shining ball in the sky. All in all, despite the horrible lighting, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of photos we came away with – looks like my practice has been paying off!

Gah! Nina, you're so gorgeous! 

One of the best parts of being friends with these two is that their house is filled with love - both from the human and pet variety! While I was waiting for those two lovebirds to get ready, I snapped a couple of photos of their furry friends.

Mastering the Art of Pet Photography.

I absolutely love capturing my cats doing cute and silly things, as I'm sure you've seen as you've been reading this blog. However, for most pet photos, I prefer to not use the flash when photographing them - cat eyes especially don't photograph well in artificial light.

So, in order to get a decently exposed photo of the kittehs, I typically use the natural light that comes streaming in through our windows. This is all fine and dandy, except that animals, unless professionally trained (which mine and most others' most definitely are not) will probably not strike a pose or remain in place for very long. This is particularly true for Sokka, who we're convinced has feline ADD.

Although I've been able to capture some wonderful photos of pets (mine included), I would become frustrated when a vast majority of the photos turned out blurry because I couldn't crank the shutter as high as I would have liked. That, and because the fluffballs just wouldn't.sit.still!

I put on my blinged-out thinking cap, convinced there was a solution within the confines of my camera body that would fix this near-constant dilemma.

Hmmmm...what about increasing the ISO?

First, a bit of background: In the past I've made the mistake of cranking up my ISO, which resulted in graininess in the photos - not so easy to fix in Photoshop. Not wanting to repeat past mistakes, my ISO hasn't budged past the 200 mark since.

When I attempted to get some "money" shots of the cats the other day, and once again came away with blurry/out-of-focus photos, I finally had it. I increased the ISO to 800, increased the shutter, and prayed to God a miracle would occur.

The result? It worked like a charm - I literally skipped around the living room in excitement, simultaneously thwumping myself on the head that I didn't think of this obvious solution sooner.

And now, the results of the fruits of my labor, starring Pumpkin!

P.S. - I wasn't able to test it on Sokka, since he was off napping (slacker!). We'll save that challenge for another time. :)

Cat cat attack!

Usually when Brian or I are cooking, Pumpkin and Sokka stroll on over and watch us from the dining room - we have them trained to not enter the kitchen (although they attempt to "sneak in" anyway). While most cats would be off on a red velvet tasseled cushion gazing imperiously over their kingdom, our cats follow us around like a couple of begging puppies.

Last Saturday, while I was waiting for some muffins to bake, I decided to document it. Because it's just so darn adorable that our cats love us so much.

And trust me - the feeling's mutual.

:)

Of course Pumpkin had to come and instigate - she gets quite jealous if I pay more attention to Sokka than to her. Unfortunately all I could capture with the camera was her fluffball of a tail, since she was running too fast and I was using the 50mm/1.4f lens.

Happy Saturday!

Soft kitty, warm kitty...