Santa Cruz #2

This time I went to the beach. I got some pretty typical boardwalk shots. But it was a fun day and a beautiful sunset.

Santa Cruz

I went for a walk in Santa Cruz today. It's nice to have time alone, especially with my camera. Luckily the sunset was amazing during the walk back. 

 Sean's house looked awesome when I got back there and his neighborhood has some really cute houses too. I guess I've been shooting a lot of exteriors, maybe one day I'll work up the confidence to knock on the door and get some interiors.

Wherever I am the neighborhoods have a similar feel, some of these places could have been in Portland or Santa Barbara. The sky is my best clue to where I am. All I have to do is look up.

Thank you,

Rachel Deehan

Portland Neighborhoods

I have been itching to do some more "Houses at night" inspired by Todd Hido's series.
I took a few last year in Ventura California which can be found here. I haven't worked up the confidence yet to face the cold Portland night but I do have some street shots from a sunset.

I played around with the black and white filter for contrast and came up with some almost HDR looking shots, they are not HDRs which you can tell from the lack of "crunchy" artifacts.

Hope you enjoy,

Rachel Deehan

Van Dykes and the end of Brooks

Last month I finished my last session at the Brooks Institute of Photography. I now have Bachelors in Professional Photography! For my final portfolio at Brooks I made a series of Van Dykes, a form of contact printing which you can read more about here: http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Vandyke/vandyke.html.

The Process was really fun and it allowed me to print some of my Digital photographs in my darkroom class. I am in love with this collection of images, so I decided to get them up on my blog as soon as possible.

Darkroom update

I haven't posted much this session because I have been working almost exclusively in the darkroom. I decided to composite one of my shots in photoshop and I am really excited with how it turned out.

This is a scanned negative that I shot in Sunol about a year ago, I brought it in to photoshop and added some contrast and sharpening as well as a little dodging and burning (which was much easier after physically doing it in the darkroom) I then made a copy of the image, mirrored it and flipped it upside down. Thanks to Sammy Miller for the suggestion <3

Ira's House

My friend Ira has a magical house. 

Ira isn't the only one who lives there though, he and his family share their space with an assortment of adorable and friendly animals. I'd like to introduce to you Betty the hen, Chauncey the Peacock, a lovely wall, and the kittens.