I will find any excuse to wear rain boots and walk in puddles. From my perspective San Diego only gets about 5 rainy days a year (not nearly enough if you ask me). Yet I own 2 pairs of rain boots and about 10 different umbrellas. Mostly because we have found ourselves somewhere other than San Diego when it’s raining and havent thought to bring an umbrella. Each of our umbrellas is different and reminds me of whatever trip we were on where we had to purchase it. My yellow umbrella reminds me of our october Nebraska road trip. My favorite striped umbrella always makes me think of Paris. I purchased it at a little corner market when it began to pour one afternoon.
I was thoroughly excited on Tuesday when the weather man forecasted rain all day. The sky got dark and stormy but no rain really came until late afternoon. At 4:30 it started coming down and I ran into our closet for my rain boots all the while yelling for Brett to put his shoes on so we could venture out. By the time we made it the 5 minute drive into Down Town La Jolla the rain was more of a light mist. But the air had that wonderful smell after fresh rain and we still strolled arm in arm down the wet sidewalks. This time of year the white flowers on the Oriental Pear Trees around town are in full bloom. We had to stop to enjoy their beauty and watch the wind steal petals and blow them playfully.
Yes we shoot with our vintage Polaroid. But it also makes a good prop. I’m trying to carry it with me and shoot with it often. A current side project of ours is testing with Polaroid emulsion transfers and lifts. I’ll let you know how that goes. On our way back home it seemed a must to drive by our local Windansea Beach to take a peak at what the storm was doing to the ocean. It was certainly worth the slight detour. The clouds were ominous and amazing. A small strip of sky on the horizon was clear and the sun managed to blaze through.
So here they are! Our 2012 christmas cards. Many of you were wondering what we were going to do this year and how we were going to top last year’s epic 80′s christmas cards. Now there weren’t any sparkly purple pants involved in this year’s cards but we think they turned out pretty fun. Only some of the photos made it onto the Holiday cards but there were so many ridiculous shots that we just had to share more.
So what your going to see next was not one of our brightest ideas ever. But every now and again Brett has to mix his love for rigging cameras to motorized vehicles and stick it in the category of “worst idea ever”. Theses didn’t make the official Christmas card cut but they sure were a riot to shoot. Enjoy!
First off our scooters are not meant for two people.
Secondly the rigging arm, camera, Q-flash and battery pack hanging off the right side made keeping the scooter upright an impressive challenge.
As many of you know we got engaged a couple months ago but its been a busy couple of months so it took me a while to get theses thoughts down.
I always wondered how Brett was going to finally do it…. from a hot air balloon. Sneak it into a glass of champaign over a fancy dinner. Next to a beautiful fountain in front of hundreds of people we don’t know. Maybe just over coffee one morning.
The proposal came on one of our road trips when I was least expecting it. He really wanted the element of surprise and he knew that any of the above would be to obvious or not exciting enough. (I would have been ok with the over coffee idea).
Brett had planned out a couple of nights on our trip to stay at the most unconventional Air BnB places he could find. Our second night put is in Glenwood Springs Colorado at a Teepee nestled on the bank of the Colorado river. While I was rummaging around in the truck gathering up our gear for the evening he was apparently getting the full tour of the grounds and picking out “the spot”. For about a month prior to our trip Brett talked non stop about how he wanted to make a bunch of time lapses on our trip. So I thought nothing of it when he wanted to do a time lapse of us relaxing by the river drinking his bottle of birthday champaign. I mean seriously how did I not see this coming?
We get to this cute little bench next to the river and he sets down one of the antique cameras he sometimes likes to run film through. Brett starts setting up the time laps and I sit down on the bench. He then casually asked me to throw a roll of film in his vintage Argus for him.
I kid you not my first thought was ” I just did my nails in the car so they will look half way decent for the trip and I’m going to totally ruin them trying to pry this camera open.”
Several minutes pass and I’m poking and pulling on the Argus in my hands. Finally Brett tells me to push the little button on the side and pull. ( yeah and I consider myself a photographer… give me a Hasselblad and I would have had it apart and filmed up in no time). I do as Brett recommends with the Argus and to my frustration the back swings open and there is already film in the camera ready to use.
” Oh that’s old film take it out and toss a new roll in for me” Brett says so matter of fact.
I’m thinking ‘ok but that’s odd, you like shooting with old film’.
I pull the film out and sitting in the shutter staring up at me is the most beautiful ring I have ever seen. But it’s GIGANTIC!
So my first thought is ‘This ring can’t be real….Wait is this a joke? cause if that’s the case this isn’t funny…’
I look over at Brett who is still standing next to the time lapse camera, and he just stares at me. What I didn’t know at the time was that he was over there clicking away getting my reaction. If felt like forever passed when in reality I’m sure it was only seconds and then he slowly makes his way over to me and gets down on one knee jumbling up the speech he had so carefully prepared. Of course I said YES! We then drank our champaign listening to the river flow by and he starts explaining all the work that went into designing the ring and the amazing heirloom pieces he used to put it together. His mom’s engagement ring was combined with his grandmother’s 50th anniversary ring and to top it all off Brett chose to use a yellow sapphire (his birthstone). What a romantic! It turns out that Brett had been working on this ring for months with our friend Alber and amazing jewelry designer. All the meetings they had that I thought were about upcoming photo shoots were actually ring planning meetings.
We have a bunch of ideas about when and where we want to get married but right now we are just enjoying the feeling of being engaged.
Yep that’s my vintage camera now. It sits next to my desk and looks pretty. I told Brett that day that he’s not getting this one back.
Our first adventure to Joshua Tree National Park was earlier this year in the spring time for a photo shoot. The desert flowers were blooming but in all honesty it was a bit hot for us San Diego locals. All year we have been itching to make our way back to this magical desert landscape with it’s towering rock formations. We got together with some of the original photo shoot crew and ventured out to the park for well needed camping and relaxation.
With temperatures in the 30′s at night and wind that cut right through us, our first evening was not what we had hoped for. North Face jackets and hand warmers came to our rescue and we warmly survived. Come sunrise we were rewarded with beautiful puffy clouds and a warm sun. An epic breakfast of eggs, beacon, and cinnamon rolls, (yes I said cinnamon rolls) had us energized for adventuring into the park in search of rock climbing and photo opportunities.
Joshua Tree National Park is an amazing place for rock climbing and bouldering. Climbing anchors have been placed into the rocks all over the park. Some of our crew brought their climbing gear and a guide book pointing us in the direction of the best rock faces.Brett in his pumas made it much higher than we expected. Sorry Easy Riders you just weren’t make for rock climbing.That’s right it’s game face time!Um that’s a lot of climbing gear. Joshua Tree was the perfect place to test out my Vibram toes shoes. Having each toe compartmentalized was a weird sensation to get used to to but they were great for bouldering. Hey we are standing were water should be! Barker Dam is a little dry this time of year.We found lots of cool looking dead trees at Joshua Tree. One thing I do love about camping are the stars. With all the foggy nights and light pollution we just don’t see them like this in San Diego.
We are the professional photography duo of Siegel Thurston Photography. Our company grew out of our love of working together and the attachment we have with our wonderful clients. We are coffe loving, scooter riding, college sweethearts, with a passion for love stories...
When we are not capturing the lives of our clients, we are scootering around our little town of La Jolla, snuggling up with our 3 little dogs, or cracking open a good bottle of wine.
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