Pure absolute love!

I absolutely love this shot… Mekhi’s expression says it all

Well, we always need silliness, that is a part of every child’s personality, and in my opinion, no shoot is complete without it

I had a lot of beautiful images of them walking away, but I had to use this one instead for the preview. So much fun !

Since we were in LoHi, I suggested going to Little Man’s Ice Cream Shop. I knew Mekhi would be excited about it and I love the style of this place, it is wonderful for pictures.

I think Danielle and Jeremy are a beautiful couple. I did their wedding about 4 years ago and they have not changed a bit.

I LOVE this picture! Jeremy was trying to make Mekhi laugh by dancing in front of a lot of people… and he did, everyone was cracking up!… love it!

I created this composition with a series of images I took while Mekhi was buying his ice cream. So cute!

Priceless !

And lastly, I love everything about this collage! Very colorful and artsy, and I love how it conveys, not just how much fun Mekhi was having with his ice cream, but also the cool style of the place.

I created this cute card with a picture I took of one of my books and a quote from the movie “The Tree of Life”. If you have not seen it please do it. It is one of the most “beautiful” films I have ever seen. The cinematography is outstanding and it really forces you to think and interpret the scenes which I think is very interesting and inspiring. It is a very artistic and ethereal film and definitely not suited for logical, sequential, rational thinking people, so if you tend to be left-brained then you probably won’t enjoy it (If you are interested in reading a tutorial on how I created this card please let me know and I will work on it).

And here is a poem by my favorite poet Jelaluddin Rumi that I wanted to share with all of you:

The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They are in each other all along.

We are the mirror as well as the face in it. We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity. We are pain and what causes pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours .

I want to hold you close like a lute, so we can cry out with loving.

You would rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones.  ~ Rumi 

As Rumi declares so wisely above, until we deeply and spiritually understand that “we are love” we will be deprived from experiencing the rapture of fully and truly loving others.  So today, instead of saying: “Be mine” or “I am in love with you” I am choosing to say:

I AM LOVE {♥} and that is why I love the way I do…

Unless you love (including yourself)… your life will flash by. 

Image copyright by Karina Heneghan

This is my Photo-quote # 8!… yay I created it with an image I took of a NYC subway sign and quote from Ezra Benson. 

Below I posted an essay I wrote about a year ago that I thought was perfect to accompany the photo-quote, but I decided to edit it a bit and re-write couple of things.

How do you describe the path of your life? Are you leading? Are you following? Are you moving at all? Through time a part of you lives by making choices, the timeless in you whispers which way you should go… but are you listening?

The past is a memory, the future just an idea, and the choices that we make now define our existence. Where you stand in moments of pleasure and convenience is not as significant as where you stand in times of affliction, for to choose to do what is challenging as if it were easy denotes not only inner strength but also the fact that you are really listening.

There is so much wisdom in silence if you choose to be suspended in the gap of your thoughts , and so much beauty in differences if you choose to connect with your heart. There is truth in a stranger’s glimpse if you choose to raze your walls, and lessons in mistakes if you choose to be beautifully wrong.

If you fear your life you will never truly live, for NOT choosing is also a choice. But if you love your life and choose with vision and courage, you will not only live beyond the ordinary,  you will also experience a progressive inner growth that will expand your personal power and it will make your heart free. 

You can take the 6, E or V trains, it is up to you… just make sure you choose wisely and fearlessly Thanks again for stopping by!

This first photograph is actually a collage I created with several images. The background is a picture I took in one of LACMA’s courtyards, and the wording was composed of many individual images I took of a fabulous quote I saw on the wall of the Architecture and Design Museum of LA. The quote refers to Charles and Ray Eames designs. They were American designers who made major contributions to Modern Architechture and Furniture.

This exhibit uses Eames words to focus on the lesser-known aspects of their lives, revealing their appreciation for the value of humble objects and useful tools. From tumbleweeds to strawberries, a bolt of cloth to a keg of nails, from elephants in India to the bread of Scandinavia, the whole world was their canvas.

LACMA bookstore had a wonderful sale, of course I wanted to buy all the books! What a feast for my soul.Very few things I love more than books, perhaps because I love reading and writing so much. I am currently working on my own book. I can’t wait to see how that will unfold…

I love the perspective here. This image was taken at the Rodin gardens of the museum. I absolutely love sculptures, especially from Rodin, and I think the fact that they exhibited them outdoors is something remarkable. I love how this bust contrasts against the straight lines of the modernistic architecture of the museum. This is definitely a fabulous place to read, paint, sketch, have lunch and relax.

These large pillars belong to 202 Old Cast Iron Street Lamps. It is an exhibit by Chris Burden called Urban Light and it is located right at the corner of Ogden and Wilshire Blvd. I though it was soo cool! I Love the perspective the lamps create as they stand perfectly aligned from each other, and when they are lit up at night it is quite a scene I absolutely love the light here. It was around sunset time of course, and the yellow-golden light of the sun was bathing the buildings against a cloudless sky. A plane had just left a smoke (condensation) trail in the sky too, so I thought that enhanced the image. I love these lines… what a cool frame!

And here are the Street Lamps lit up at dusk. I thought they looked so beautiful.

ART & STREET FINDINGS 

Instead of writing an additional post I wanted to add up couple more images of some of the amazing and interesting art I saw at the museum, and couple other interesting things I found on the streets of LA.

The first images belong to an exhibit called “California Design 1930-1965″ which it depicted the modern way Americans lived in California during that period. Throughout the 20th century this state symbolized the good life in America. After 1945 a newly prosperous population, intoxicated by the power of purchase after the deprivation years of the Great Depression, turned the state into America’s most important center for progressive architecture and furnishings. The exhibition explored how the California of our collective imagination – a democratic utopia where a benign climate permitted life to be led informally and largely outdoors was translated into a material culture that defined an era.

Of course the Jazz from this period was the BEST of this exhibition for me. I sat in front of this old stereo playing all the albums above and I did not leave for an hour! At the end, I purchased a cool tee with one the designs from the old LPs. I loooove it !

MODERN ART 

As we were driving back to the hotel I saw this and I had to capture it. No words needed. Just in Hollywood.

And what a better way to end my posts about CA than with the word “LOVE”. I saw this written on one of the streets and I thought to myself: When you are fully present and connected to that inexhaustible source of creative energy from your being, you are definitely in the vibration of love and you’ll probably see it everywhere. I loved every minute of my trip, I felt free to capture the wonderful things I saw on my own way and to express it to the world through my own eyes. Thanks for stopping by. Until next time…. <3 (LOVE).

Among the hundreds of comments I read I also found many questions. I will try to answer some of them here, but for some more specific ones I will do it later in a more individual way.

First, I use a Nikon D300 camera. I know some of you wanted to know the specific settings I used for certain images and I will try to answer that later. The vibrant colors (sky, walls, etc) are achieved using a relatively small aperture when the image is taken, and then working with curves in photoshop.

Here are the some images I took at the AMAZING Paul Getty Museum which I believe is one the biggest museums in the western United States. I have seen many other museums in the U.S and in Europe, but this one just became one of my favorites! Its modern, 21 century architecture, size and the quality of its exhibits set it aside from the rest of the other museums in the country. Admission is FREE by the way!! Can you believe that? They only charge $ 15.00 for parking and that is it. So put this one on your list as well !

As a quick addition, I just want to explain that my style on photographing cityscapes and architecture is very personal. I purposely do not use a wide angle lens for this. For me certain perspectives and sections of a building are more visually interesting than the building itself. I tend to capture what is not obvious to the naked eye and I perceive in an intuitive way, harmonious compositions of angles, light and backgrounds. I really hope you enjoy the new images. Stay tuned for Part III. Much more to come !

I love the composition here. The lines from the buildings flow perfectly together with the shadows. Your eye goes straight to the center of the image…

I love this tree!! Isolating its branches against the cloudless sky created such a unique image.

The very minimalistic composition below is also very interesting to me

Solar reflections are another one of my favorite things to photograph. I particularly like the colorful glare they create on my lens that later is seen on the image.

Another thing I like to include in my compositions when it works is the presence of “one person”…. usually located in the middle of the frame. In this image above the person walking by gave the image a lot more life… and it also worked great with the perspective.

The Museum gardens were AMAZING, even in January. I thought they complemented the museum’s architecture so well. I heard they have 30+ gardeners that work really hard to maintain it so beautiful.

Back lit situations are very tricky to capture. They require a great deal of metering and bracketing in order to find the right exposure. I love everything about this image above. The lines of the building are amazing, the bright light in the background shows you what a clear day it was and immediately gives you a very happy emotional response, and the people peeking through the glass gives the image an element of fun! This was a mini model of the museum showing all the wings. It is so interesting to me how differently we are affected when looking at an image of something big and vast versus something so close and small…I really LOVE this image! The light is gorgeous, the colors are amazing and photographing the reflection of the building instead of the building itself made this image more visually exciting.

The Foucault Pendulum is one of the most interesting experiments used to prove the rotation of the earth but I’d never seen it in person. This one was really descriptive and very informative. I loved it! And this below is the cool Tesla Coil. Sooo cool !

I really liked the shadow one of the binoculars made on the wall

I love everything about this image… the colors of the beautiful sky, the delicate silhouettes that people, trees and even the helicopter created, and the beautiful crescent moon. I think everything worked in harmony to create a beautiful image…

As everyone was photographing the sunset I saw the shadows on this wall and I thought it was much more visually interesting than the hazy sunset or the Hollywood sign :)

The many faces of NOAH !! How incredibly cute is this baby !?!?

I LOVE this collage of Noah and Dana! I was tapping the window with my fingers and making funny noises to get Noah’s attention. I guess he loved it!

After doing the majority of the photos at the house we adventured to a park near by. Because of the high winds I could not shoot in open areas but I found this AMAZING copper wall in one of the buildings. I knew it would be a perfect backdrop for these shots, especially because of the colors they were wearing. It worked out great !

This is how the winners were determined:

The WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards ™ recognizes the top local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness and professionalism. Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the organization, the WeddingWire Bride’s Choice Awards™ are awarded solely based on the reviews from over 1.2 million newlyweds. Awards are determined by a combination of four factors: Overall rating (quality), total number of reviews (quantity), review performance from 2011 (recency), and consistency of reviews from year to year (consistency). This year’s recipients represent the top 5% of WeddingWire’s vendor community, across all service categories and all regions throughout the US and Canada.

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Without delving too much into the complex concept of happiness and over-stating the almighty cliché that “happiness is a state of mind” I would like to take this essay in a different direction, a direction perhaps very personal to me but one that I am sure you can all relate to.

I believe that up until now humanity has been working backwards…. from individuals to entire nations, they were desperately trying to re-arrange the external world to their convenience without doing any transformational work on their own selves. The famous writer Neville states very wisely: “Man’s chief delusion is his conviction that there are causes to his problems other than his own state of consciousness”.But for the last 5 years the whole world has been slowly awakening to a new way of thinking, we are taking an evolutionary leap and realizing that the purpose of our existence is mastering ourselves so we can not just transcend suffering, but also help others to ascend to a higher realm.

Most people relate the concept of mastering oneself to living in isolation in a remote land meditating every day, fasting, and perhaps practicing teachings from some enlightened being. Even though that is not a bad idea for some of us … in this era of awakening and evolving that is not necessarily what is required in order to accomplish such an essential goal. I personally believe that independently of your spiritual beliefs or religious background the secret on mastering the self is uniquely implicit in only one thing: Taking responsibility for your life.

As you take complete responsibility for your life: physically, emotionally and spiritually, you enter a new realm of personal power that allows you to trust and love yourself more. The more you know and love yourself the better your chances to transcend suffering in all areas of your life and therefore achieving balance and happiness.

Taking responsibility for your physical condition means not just doing all the necessary things to keep a healthy body, but understanding that if your body is unbalanced in some manner that there is an underlined cause for that lack of health and it is up to you to restore it. We already know that our thoughts create our reality, so taking full responsibility for the thoughts we think in our minds means learning how to change negative patterns that don’t serve us anymore, and replacing them with new positive habits.

Most people are so terrified of confronting negative emotions that they choose to either deny them or to drown them in alcohol, drugs,
medications, or on all kinds of empty distractions. But the side effect of this denial or avoidance is a sort of psycological quicksand, the more you move to try to push these emotions away, the more you sink into darkness. Taking responsibility for our emotional health, acknowledging and integrating our negative feelings will provide us with a sense of emotional freedom that is exceedingly more satisfying than any shot, pill or hit you have taken in your life.

And lastly, taking responsibility for your spiritual state means learning to get in touch with the most important part of your being and understanding the impact of this essential relationship in your life. Pain and suffering are two different things. Suffering is self-imposed and it happens when we disconnect from our wisdom and remain ignorantly drifting around in the realm of the mundane, as things in the mundane are rarely what they seem and they will always provide us with the wrong answers.

The girl with the ring is not necessarily happier than the spinster, the CEO of the company may be more unfulfilled than the cashier, and the guy living in the penthouse may be more tormented and ignorant than the superintendent. It all lies in the level of responsibly we take for our own happiness.

As 2011 fades, I reflect on the year and know that I am not a victim of my circumstances and that I am responsible for my successes, failures and accomplishments. I embrace where I have been and love where I am going because I know I have the power to change. And next year when I reflect back about the quality of my life, either if I have advanced one inch or one mile, I will know that all depended on the kind of responsibility I have taken.

Thanks again for visiting my blog, I hope you found my words inspiring and helpful. Wishing you all a year full of positive change and personal growth

With love always,

Karina