In my growing list of short, random trips, I need to add Santa Monica, California to the list. A couple of weeks ago, I was there for a mere three days. The purpose of the trip is top secret for the moment (more later, I promise). While I did not have a ton of time to really explore and get to see LA, I did have the time to wander around Santa Monica and Venice. While here, I stayed at a friend’s condo that was located right on the beach in Santa Monica. The view was pretty dreamy.

Santa Monica is beautiful. Surrounded by mountains and a big sandy beach, I loved it. The paved walkway on the beach was always being used by sporty people. I immediately regretted not bringing my running clothes. Basically, everyone that I saw at the beach was doing something active and I loved it.

I wandered the beach all the way down until I hit Venice. There I watched the surfers do their thing. I probably could have sat there all day. The skaters were also very entertaining. I am not sure that I remember the last time that I saw full-out grown men skating so hard. Loved it.

The strip along Venice Beach – called Ocean Front Walk – is full of little shops and restaurants. You can buy basically anything here (including getting a license for medicinal marijuana!). There is a big Mexican population in LA so naturally a lot of the street food available here was totally Mexican-styles, including this awesome cup of fruit that I ate complete with chili.

I had lunch outside on a patio here at Candle Cafe & Grill. What caught my eye was the fish tacos with a pint of beer special. The food was great (and messy!) and the service was as well.

I was told by a few people that I had to check out Abbot Kinney Blvd in Venice. Abbot Kinney is a street full of cool shops, cafes and restaurants. I really enjoyed wandering around this area and checking everything out. I could have shopped my socks off if my pocketbook would have allowed it because I loved a lot of the things that I saw.

On Abbot Kinney I had lunch at Lemonade. At first I wasn’t sure about this place as it was more cafeteria-style and I was looking to really sit down and enjoy a meal but then I saw the salad selection and I was sold. For my meal, I opted for two salads. There is the option to split one salad into two so I ended up with four different ones. Everything was so delicious and I had to have a lemonade with it, obviously.

In case you are wondering, on the above plate contains:

• Red quinoa, brussels sprouts, sundried tomato dressing
• Kale, mushrooms, tangerine vinaigrette
• Fall succotash, butternut squash, white corn, grapes, oregano
• Well roasted heirloom carrots, mixed herbs, basil

One night we had Mexican take-out from Lula and it was delicious. I have serious (and obviously) love for Mexican food and Lula did not disappoint. It is located right on Main Street in Santa Monica.

The day that I wandered over to the Santa Monica pier was a pretty cloudy almost rainy day. The wind was blowing and it was spitting a little but the weather made for some pretty sweet moody photos. There is a Cirque du Soleil show happening right now here and you can see the tents for it on the right-side of the above image.

On the morning that I left Santa Monica, Ben took me to Urth Caffe for an awesome breakfast. I’m pretty sure he promised me that Ryan Gosling would be there but, alas, he wasn’t. Everything on the menu at Urth is organic and looked incredible. I chose the Eggs Salmone which included Urth brioche, natural smoked salmon and baby arugula with two soft poached organic eggs, lemon créme fraiche and basil oil. Hello, dream meal! The latte that I had here wasn’t too bad either.

1) Crochet Blanket. Back in November I decided that I wanted a winter project and that I wanted to make something that I have never made before. My Moms taught me how to crochet these granny squares so I set forth on make a little throw blanket. I finished if this week and must say that I am quite pleased with it. It is pretty sweet to have a little nap under a blanket that you made yourself.

2) Dinner at Sarah’s. My friend (and chiropractor extraordinarie!) Sarah is an amazing host and cook. When she invited me over for dinner last weekend, I was pretty pumped. She treated me to this pumpkin seed crusted rainbow trout with rapini and potatoes. Yum!

3) My cousin Sean’s art. Sean does these incredible paper cuttings that I love so much. This weekend there was an opening for a group show at the Bezpala Brown Gallery called LastIn. His work looked great hanging in a proper gallery. I also really loved the space of Bezpala.

4) WeddingBells Weddings. Hot on the new stands this week is a special feature that WeddingBells has put out simply called Weddings. It is a gorgeous glossy filled with inspiring wedding ideas and real weddings. Bonus: there are no ads. One of my images is on the page showing gorgeous green ideas for your wedding. The magazine should be available at most magazine stores, including Shoppers.

5) Emoji. When you have an iPhone, texting can be quite fun and, at times, ridiculous. I love using Emoji to add hilarious emoticons to my messages. The “knuckles” emoticon is definitely my favourite. Bonus: instead of  downloading the Emoji app, you can add Emoji directly to your keyboard in the Setttings. Go to General -> Keyboard -> Internation Keyboards -> Add New Keyboard and choose Emoji. Thanks to Laura for that tip.

6) Pancakes. This morning I made these chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. I do not eat pancakes very often and I do not remember the last time that I made them. My Dad used to make them a lot for us when we were kids. I think that we liked the maple syrup the best.

7) Peter Elkas at the Dakota. Elkas is back at the Dakota every Tuesday this month. This week my friends and I went and it was a great night. Also, we totally ate all of the mac & cheese in the house that night. Apologies to everyone else who was there that night.

1) Cards. I am a big fan of snail mail. If you are a friend of mine, you have probably received a card from me a couple of times or more. I think that the small gesture of sending a handwritten note goes a long way. I love sending them unexpectedly just to let someone know that I am thinking about them. This past year I have had a subscription from Parchment Post. Every few months I would receive a package from them containing some awesome cards created by cool independent designers and companies. My favourite are always the letterpress ones.

2) Winterlicious. Thursday was the last evening of this year’s Winterlicious and Mel, Lori and I took full advantage, with a little nudge from Lisa of Hip Urban Girl. If you have never been to Winterlicious or it’s summer equivalent, Summerlicous, you really must do it. It is an inexpensive way to have a fantastic meal at a restaurant that you would, perhaps, not normally visit. This year we went to Wine Bar on Church Street and it was fabulous. For only $25 I had an appetizer (calamari), a main (spicy shrimp risotto) and dessert (bread pudding). We also split a bottle of red wine and it was a perfect night out.

3) Santa Monica/Venice, California. I was in Santa Monica for a couple of days this week. I will be doing a separate blog post on the trip but in the meantime: I love it there.

4) Anna Winifred necklace. I picked up this beaut in a cute store on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice. I am totally into hearts these days. I also love that the rose actually has a skull in it. I love skulls.

5) Fruit with chili. Whenever you buy fruit on the street in Mexico, they always ask if you want chili (or lemon/salt) on it. If you have never tried it before, you ought to. The spicy with the sweet is so refreshing. I had these mangos and strawberries when I was in Venice. Deliciosos.

1) Shellac. I had heard that once you Shellac, you never go back and after trying it out, I think that I may have to agree. Shellac is a type of polish that does not chip and your manicure will last up to two weeks. Since I am apparently pretty rough with my nails (hello photo equipement!), the fact that it does not chip is a huge selling point.

2) Vannya (yes, again). I just spent the past week at my Mom’s as my sister and niece were on their final leg of their epic Canadian visit. Spending that much time with Vannya was super fun. She is a really funny kid at only twenty months old. My favourite things that she currently does is her impression of a pig (she basically only blinks her eyes) and when she cheers (her mouth make a perfect ‘o’ for the ‘woooo’ sound and her fists go up in the air). Right now they are on their way back to Mexico City and I miss them already.

3) Chilling at Mom’s in Campbellford. So where my Mom lives is pretty quiet as it is a little town. Because of this, it is super relaxing. For the past week, I slept every night in front of the fireplace. I would run every morning on the treadmill before joining the forces for breakfast and coffee, lots of coffee. There was a ton of snow in Campbellford (well compared to Toronto) so a walk in the woods was also a necessity. As was a trip  (or two) to the World’s Finest Chocolate Factory.

4) OPI’s Baguette Me Not. A nice subtle pink, perfect for toes.

5) Tim Horton’s. No visit to small town Ontario is complete without a visit to Tim Horton’s, aka T. Ho’s. My Mom and I went here for lunch one day this week. The place was full of seniors but it was great. They also had these cute Valentine’s donuts filled with raspberry. My sisters think that I love donuts and that I eat them all of the time, but the truth is, I rarely do…. I swear.

6) Nacho. Nacho, or Nachita. is my cat who lives at my Mom’s. She may not be the friendliest beast but she is quite pretty to look at.

2) Recording studio lighting set-ups. I have a lot of shoots where the same client will hire me a few times to shoot basically the same thing (with different people). The key for shoots like this is to obviously keep consistent. Consistency can be an issue when these shoots take place months apart. Whenever I do a studio lighting set-up, I try to remember to take images of my set-up. I record how the lights are set-up, what grid I used, what settings the power pack was at, etc. When my client then calls me later to book another session, I feel confident that I will give them matching results. (And now you can call me a true photo nerd!)

3) Dwayne Gretzky. The band of the summer was back at the Dakota this week for a one-off show. It was fun. Dan Kanter played so naturally all of the Bieber fans were out in full force.

4) Anything Apple. I was working at the studio yeseterday and had all of my Apple products out in full force as I scrambled to get things done. It was pretty ridiculous. (Yes, the above photo was taken with my iPhone.)

5) Homemade granola. I basically stopped eating regular cereals and granola that you can buy in the grocery store when I realised how much sugar is added to them. As my sister Abby always says, “Sugar is the devil.” At Christmas I decided to make granola to give as gifts. I had never made it before so was excited when I did and realised that 1) it is super easy and 2) it is super yummy. The above lovely includes oats, dried cranberries, golden raisins, flaxseeds, amaranth, coconut and blackstrap molasses. It is currently my favourite snack when I am needing a little substance. Best eaten with Greek yogurt.

6) Making lists of goals. I love January because of the idea of it being a beginning. A time that is a little quiet. A time to stay in and be cozy under a blanket. A time to do a lot of thinking. I love using this time of the year to sit down and make lists of goals – both short term and long term. This year I am dividing these goals into ones for my heart (meaning things that I am really wanting to do for my own self) and goals for the pocketbook (meaning more goals in terms of work, etc.). 2012 – bring it!

1) Snowy Days. Remember that one day this past week when it actually snowed and for the first time in a while felt like real winter? I loved that day. I was excited  when I woke up to the promise of lots of the white stuff. Naturally, though it didn’t last more than a day. I liked that I could look out my studio window that day and see that the entire city has disappeared.

2) Sorels. To go along with the above, I am so glad that I bought myself a new pair of Sorels this season. These bad boys are warm plus they are cute.

3) Album Design. I love January for business-related things. I like that it is a little quiet in terms of the amount that I am shooting because it allows me to do a bunch of things that I have not made found the time to do. One of these tasks being: designing some new sample albums. This week I sat down and finally finished one that I had began months ago. I cannot wait to get the actual final album in my hands in the next couple of weeks.

4) Top Shop Sweater. Excuse the I’m-so-emo-and-know-my-best-angles-for-self-portraits shot but let’s focus on the sweater. I saw this baby in the fall at Top Shop and had to have it. I wear a lot of black plus I like stripes so that had it going on. The killer point in the I must have was the heart with the birds.

5) Milagro on Queen. It was Margarita Tuesday at Milagro so Lisa, Sandy and I decided to take full advantage. I had been to the Milagro on Mercer Street a number of times but had never visited this smaller location on Queen West. I must say, I much preferred it because of it’s atmosphere (plus that there was less hustle). Milagro is a great place to go if you want to eat Mexican food that is pretty darn-well close to the real thing. They actually import authentic Mexican ingredients including panela cheese and nopales (cactus, yum!). Whenever I go for dinner here, I always get the mole enchiladas. If you have never had mole, you must try it. Mole is a sauce made with a ton of different ingredients including chocolate and chilis. It is delicious. In Mexico it is traditionally served on a plate with a big piece of chicken in the middle. Since I do not eat meat, I do not always get to try it when I travel there. When I did visit the state Puebla, where mole is claimed to have originated, we did go to a restaurant that made a vegetarian version for me that was to die for. There is nothing else in the world that tastes like it. The margaritas at Milagro on Tuesday were also quite lovely. One tequila, two tequila, three tequila….

I woke up this morning reading headlines that Kodak had filed for bankruptcy protection. There was talk about this recently but today was the day that it happened. I immediately thought of this classic Kodak commercial (see above) - keep me, protect me, share me. For the rest of the day I have been thinking a lot about photography, about the creation of images, about the how and that why. It was a theme for my day.

This morning I dropped off one of my Holga prints to be framed. This particular image was printed about a year and a half ago and since then it has sat in it’s cardboard enclosure in my office (read: collecting dust). I had yet to do anything with it even though I love the image and even though I know that when I look at it, my heart sings a little. I had created, I had scanned it, I had dustbusted it and I had printed it, yet my process had ended there. Today was the day that I took it to the framer to actually make it something. To give it substance and to actually show it off. It only took me 1 1/2 years to do so. This got me thinking about why it takes us so long to complete the process when we are creating something that is purely for ourselves. We put priority on everything else (read: clients’ images) and we often forget that our own personal work is just as equally important.

This afternoon I had coffee with my friend Rebecca. When we have coffee we talk all things photography. Today she had a Hasselblad in her studio and I held it and it felt good. I remember holding my first medium format camera. I remember the sound of the shutter. The way that it felt to manually crank it to the next frame. There was magic in it all. The magic of the image making, the thrill of waiting to see your processed film and the amazement as you printed your image in the darkroom. How many hours did I use to spend in the darkroom? Countless. I think of my Bronica SQ-B sitting in a bag in my closet. My light meter sitting on a shelf. When was the last time that I took these tools out into the light? And what has stopped me from doing so? I have a fridge stuffed with (mostly Kodak) film just waiting to be exposed.

I always say that I am one of the lucky ones because of the timing in which I got into photography. I learned in film while being just on the cusp of the new digital age. When I studied at Ryerson University, we all shot film. This meant we shoot 4×5- , medium-, 35mm- and even 8mm- formats of film. We shot it all, we processed it all and then we printed it all. Being involved in the entire process really was magical. You were the creator of it all. You were in complete control. Yes, you would make mistakes and things would go wrong, but you would learn from these errors and definitely not do them again.

Throughout those four years of making photographs, we also talked a lot about images. We talked about the history, the progress and the theory. We questioned just what we were creating and what message would be spread when the photographs were later viewed by others. We handled historic prints made by those that we studied in our history books. I am talking about W. Eugen Smith, Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson. I held their photographs in my hand.

During this time, the production of the first “professional” and somewhat inexpensive cameras was taking place. When I graduated in 2003, Canon released the 20D. I was satisfied with the quality of the image from it but was still unsure of this medium. For a full year or more, I shot all of my weddings on both film and digital. I photographed and I photographed until I was satisfied that my digital images matched the quality that my trusty film cameras could produce. I took this time because it was important to me.

Almost nine years later, professional digital cameras are cheap and suddenly everyone and their mother is a photographer (mostly because their mother told them that they take pretty pictures. Moms know best, right?). The majority of these “photographers” do not know the settings of their camera. They do not know how to shoot in manual mode. They have probably never even touched a roll of film. I am all for learning new skills but I worry about just where our medium is heading.

I wonder how much effort these image makers are putting into their photography. How much thought is involved before they click the shutter? I wonder where the creativity is. If I see another newborn baby posed in an unnatural position wearing an oversized wooly toque, I may scream. Film photography allowed us to slow down, to compose our image a little more carefully, to properly choose our exposure and in the end, to create a better image. With digital photography, we hurry. Images are more easily cropped and bad exposures are adjusted later on in Photoshop. We shoot a hundred images and end up with one truly great photo simply because we do not initially take the time to get it right.

I want to put the challenge out there to all photographers to slow down and to really think about what we are creating. What message are we putting out there with our images? Why is it that we feel compelled to make photographs? What are we doing to make ourselves better photographers everyday?

Tonight I am going to ponder all of these things. I will probably write some ideas in my inspiration journal. I will also block off an afternoon in the next week to go out and shoot just for me. I am going to curl up and begin re-reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography. It is an important read that any serious photographer should read. Let’s get the conversation going and let’s all work together to create better bodies of work.

P.S. Jonathan Canlas will tell you that film ain’t dead and I tend to agree.

1) Airport Arrivals. I love going to the airport to pick up visitors. I love watching everyone there. I love seeing the emotion and the excitement. It totally reminds me  of the opening of the film Love Actually. On Tuesday I went to the airport to pick up my sister and niece who are here visiting from Mexico. Emily has not been home in about two and a half years and Vannya had never before stepped foot in Canada, her second motherland. I was so excited to pick them up.

2) My niece Vannya. This little one stayed at mine for most of this week and it was a lot of fun to have her and her Mama around. She is such a funny little joker already at only twenty months. She does yoga and laughs a ton (complete with knee slapping). I love her so much.

3) First Snow. If you grew up in any sort of Northern climate, you probably have great memories of wintertime as a kid. I know that I have many. I remember there always being a snow day the first week back to school after the Christmas holidays. I remember my Dad shovelling our two-car wide driveway and dumping all the snow into a huge pile on the front lawn. My sisters and I would then dig tunnels through it and make little homes. I remember tobogganing and snowball fights. Growing up with this awesome climate is so lovely. True to history, we got snow this week. This was Vannya’s first real snow experience and she was definitely amazed by that white stuff.

4) Camera iPhone case. My sister Abby is always getting me cool photo things. This week she gave me this cute pink iPhone camera case. I love it.

5) Self-portraits and then some. On Saturday, my five year old niece Li’l K got her hands on my iPhone. Tonight I discovered on the Camera Roll a bunch of self-portraits that she had done, as well as some portraits that she took of my cousin’s daughter, Ava. Do you think I am training her well or what?!

6) Perfect Winter Days. Today was a chilly one but it was clear. The sky was the perfect blue, not a cloud in sight and there was snow on the ground. To top off the perfection, there was a brew market at Wychwood barns this afternoon. We bundled up and headed down to sample some beers from Great Lakes Brewery. All of the beers on tap were super high in alcohol which probably helped us forget about the cold. I love afternoons spent outside.

I am all about things that make lives easier. I am not talking about taking shortcuts to get tasks accomplished. I am talking about ways to make that task a shorter one. It is probably pretty obvious that I am a big fan of blogging. I regularly blog both here and on my professional photography blog. I love blogging but a cumbersome part of blogging photography is the time that it takes to resize and watermark the images. I used to literally spend hours a week preparing images for future blog posts. That is, until I discovered Blogstomp.

Blogstomp is a cool application that you can purchase and costs $49 USD (that is good to use on two computers). BlogStomp allows you to load up images and then batch resize them. You can also add your logo, a border in any colour and a tab. You can even lay out multiple images (up to four) on one canvas.

I love that you can set up a number of presets so it makes your life even easier. I currently have six custom set-ups: four for my photo blog that allows me to put my logo in any four corner of the canvas and two for this blog (for vertical and horizontal images). My life got a whole lot simpler when I started using BlogStomp and I cannot recommend it enough. I may even say that it was one of my top three purchases for 2011.

2) Teacups. A proper cup of tea comes in the perfect teacup. This beauty used to belong to my Grandma and my Aunt gave it to me at Christmas time. The tea definitely tastes better in it.

3) Pink Martini dress. I got this Tiffany Ruffle dress by Pink Martini for Christmas. It is a dark teal with cute ruffled capped sleeves. Bonus: it also has pockets. I love a dress with pockets.

5) Good pepper sauce. Most meals taste better with a little heat. I picked up this habanero pepper sauce when I was in Belize last month. It’s perfect on homemade mac & cheese, tacos, eggs … and basically everything else.

6) Brunch at Sneaky Dees. I have spent a lot of time at Sneaky Dees. It is a classic spot in Toronto for nachos, drinks and brunch. Today Mike and I brunched there and I had what I normally always get – the Traditional.

7) The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, American film version. I just finished reading the third book in this triology. I really enjoyed all of them. Once you get into them, you basically cannot put the book down. Normally when I read a book, I never see the film based on it. I just find that the film is never accurate and I am always disappointed. But after hearing a number of people say that this film was good, I was curious. So this afternoon we went to check it out. I really enjoyed it and was surprised by how close to the book this film was. I also think that a big part of why it was so great was because the soundtrack was amazing, thanks to Mr. Trent Reznor.