Although your sons never have a perfect hair day, they are precious in every way :D

Love forever,

Lola, Omar and Ozzy.

I hate to admit it, but this was my first time travelling to that part of Colorado – I have been living here for over 13 years! Everybody kept telling me to visit the “Switzerland of America”, but various circumstances and other travel plans have been putting off my trip year after year. This year has been super busy for Lola and I, for which we are certainly grateful, but at the same time, it left very little time for personal and family travel. But there is a big difference between a photography trip and a family trip. We knew that our kids would not enjoy it, so with promises to take them to Micky later this year, we took off.

I decided to start off with this picture, because it kind of characterizes our trip – a little extreme, colorful and plenty of sun with no clouds most of the time…and yes, that’s me in my truck on the top left side of the image. Lola certainly did not like the idea, but I decided to check it out, since there were already some Jeep tracks that went all the way to the top. As I got out of the car and looked down, my head spun a little, since it was an almost straight down fall for at least 150-200 feet.

Mid-day photography is never fun, so we drove for a while, looking for good spots. On our way to Telluride, we found plenty of aspens, with some in their fall plumage. Armed with the D700 and the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G VR, I took the following shot:

One thing you have to be careful about when shooting nature with close objects is depth of field. Depending on focal length of the lens, if your aperture is large, the object you focus on will be sharp, while objects that are not on the same plane will be out of focus. Why depending on focal length? Because the shorter the focal length, the larger the depth of field is. That’s why when you shoot with an ultra-wide angle lens everything seems to be perfectly in focus, while getting everything in focus with a telephoto lens on a close subject can often be difficult. I will be explaining all of this in detail, along with “hyperfocal distance” in my upcoming “Landscape photography howto” article.

Anyway, I had to use f/10 @ 1/125th of a second for the above image to get everything in focus and acceptably sharp. It is great that the 28-300mm has VR on it, since I shot handheld 90% of the time at slow shutter speeds, often due to small apertures and my polarizing filter which ate up 1-2 stops of light.

On the Last Dollar Road (yes, that’s the name of the unpaved road that leads to Telluride from Ridgway), we encountered a herd of sheep with some Mexican cowboys:

I kindly asked this guy to pose for me and he agreed, along with his dog:

The afternoon sun was blazing hot, with ugly direct sunlight, so after taking another picture of the sheep, we continued our scouting drive.

As we approached Telluride, I stopped at a spot with a bunch of aspens and took a few images with one of my favorite landscape lenses – the Nikon 24-70mm:

I took the same shot with the 28-300mm, which is posted on the Nikon 28-300 Review. I also used f/10 for this shot @ 1/400th of a second.

After dining at a local restaurant in Telluride, we took off to Ouray. The drive to Ouray was one of the most beautiful and scenic drives I have ever done in my life. Aspens were everywhere, with beautiful, golden fall colors:

As you can see, I did rely on my B+W 77mm polarizing filter a lot to get the sky bluer, reduce reflections and get rid of haze:

We were still about one week early to get the red aspen colors, but the gold was everywhere:

As I was moving around to find spots, I found this large device in the middle of the field:

Not sure what it is for, but it served me well for my composition! :)

There were plenty of mines along the way and this one was abandoned a while ago (captured with Nikon D3s and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G):

The red mountain pass certainly has a lot of red:

Along the way, we were not too far away from the Mesa Verde National Park, so we decided to stay there for the night. After finding our camping spot at night, I took my tripod with the D3s + 24-70 out and decided to take a couple of pictures before we went to bed. The sky was clear and the moon light was very bright, so here is what my camera was able to capture:

I have never seen moonlight illuminate an area in such a way, that the colors all showed up in the image. I did not do anything special, just set the camera to manual mode, set shutter speed to 1/20th of a second and dialed f/5.0 on my lens. Why f/5.0? Because anything more would have required a lot more light and even slower shutter speeds, which would result in star trails. Yes, star trails are fun, but only when you shoot for a very long time – that’s when you see the longer lines. Anything longer than 20-25 seconds results in short and ugly star trails when shooting wide and I surely did not want to stay up all night either.

But I did point my camera up to capture a part of the Milky Way:

For which I had to go even faster at f/4.0 and 15 seconds.

We woke up very early next morning and started scouting the park for potential spots to photograph. The morning was surely a waste, since most of the good spots were closed till 9 AM. But we did take a few images of wild horses:

As soon as the Cliff Palace was opened, we headed down to take some pictures before tourists poured in:

I have a very nice picture of a famous kiva that I will post later this week, which is located at the Cliff Palace. In terms of light, the best time to be at the Cliff Palace is at around noon, when the sun rays reach the kiva and illuminate the walls of the palace.

Lola found this bench with leaves on our way back:

We were very impressed by the kiva at the Cliff Palance, so we decided to check out the big one, the Great Kiva in Aztec, Arizona:

Apparently, the town was named “Aztec”, because people who found the kiva thought that it was made by Aztecs! The kiva was restored to look similar to what it would have looked like before the top collapsed. It is certainly a cool place to visit!

I really wanted to take some pictures of the Cliff Palace in the evening, so we took a few more pictures and then drove back to Mesa Verde. We did not quite make it on time for the nice evening light, but I still captured a few pictures of the Cliff Palace after sunset, including this panorama:

We stayed at Mesa Verde for one more night. Next morning, we took off back to Ouray to capture some more pictures of the fall colors.

On our route back, despite all warning signs (which I did not even care to read), I was stupid enough to try one of the 4×4-only roads on the 4Runner. I can’t remember its name, but it is the most dangerous 4×4 route that leads to Telluride. Well, after about half a mile or so of going uphill at 30-45% angles, I realized that maybe it was not such a good idea. All this time, Lola was just silent. I don’t know what was running through her head, but I’m glad that she was sitting on the passenger side, which was the mountain side. Every once in a while, I would look down and realize that if something went wrong, we would be going straight downhill more than 500 feet. The road was so narrow, that I could barely fit.

As we drove further up, I found one spot where the road was a little wider. I asked Lola to get out and guide me, while I tried to turn around:

I wish I captured this shot from higher up to show you the perspective, but looking down was pretty scary! I was just not ready for this kind of off-road experience. Slowly and carefully, I managed to turn back and we drove back, very slowly. On our way back to highway, we met one crazy guy on a 4×4 Jeep that wanted to do it twice on that day. He was a photographer…

After this experience, we found another 4×4 drive, but it was much shorter, wider and easier to drive on. The reward at the end of the road was this waterfall:

I captured the waterfall using techniques that I share in my “how to photograph waterfalls” article. Basically, I used a 6 stop Neutral Density filter to decrease the amount of light that comes through the lens. By doing that, I was able to get the running water look silky and smooth.

After photographing the waterfalls, we continued our drive back to Ridgway, stopping on the way and taking more pictures of aspens:

Captured this shot in Ridgway:

We then headed back to Telluride through Dallas Divide. After a good late lunch meal at the same Chinese restaurant called “Shanghai Palace” we ate at before (great food by the way), we decided to snap a few pictures of this beautiful town:

The colors were amazing!

I could not get enough of Dallas Divide, so when I saw some cloud formations, I filled up my gas tank and took the Last Dollar Road from Telluride back again:

The sunset was absolutely beautiful!

Too bad we only got the clouds on the day when we were supposed to leave, but I knew that it was a sign – we needed to come back :)

Stay tuned for the part 2 of our trip log!

Here is the picture that started my journey into photography:

I remember the day when I received it. Lola said that Omar started to smile and it was her attempt to capture the moment. It drove me nuts that such a beautiful picture turned out to be so blurry and we both agreed that we desperately needed a professional camera to capture those kinds of moments. Little did we know back then that it was the light and our technique, not the camera, that caused the above image to be blurry :)

Long story short, I came home and after a couple of hours of research, bought our first DSLR – Nikon D80 kit with an 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens.

So, what is your story and what got you started in photography?

So, my husband is away for couple of more days. I am stuck home with my little dudes with no wallet or my phone! All my husband’s fault! Which means all I get to do is cook, watch TV, attend to my boy’s needs and get nostalgic of how my husband would play with the boys every night to give me a time off. Right about when I finished the last sentence, my younger son Osman, who is still not sleeping at 11:34PM is calling for his dad! Awwwwwwww, we miss you daddy-o, come back!

Regardless of my fierce and independent looks (really?), I belong to my husband and I can’t do without him for a second! My sister can corroborate on this even more, if you wish. I sit there and cry for quite some time when Nasim is away!!! Especially when he accidentally grabs my wallet and my phone with him. Well, I am not sure if it was an accidental move. But I would like to think so for now…

Before I jump to mad from nostalgic, let’s go back to my initial thought about having images nicely portrayed. I say it is  great to have memories reflected on anything like film, memory card, your computer’s hard drive, paper or even metal. With time passing by quickly, we tend to forget a lot of things. Our brain cells wear off, refresh, etc. Images help us recall those lost memories.

So I picked out some of my favorite images to comfort myself. I am very pregnant in all the images I am in. That’s because I was pregnant almost 60% of the time since we got married!

None of the images are edited. There was nothing to edit. Though I wish I could make me look like couple of pounds (15 lbs to be exact) lighter!

The first four images were taken during our trip to Utah. We went there with our dear friends, The Kaikovs family. Here I am posing with Natalia.

My handsome lad at a canyon-like place, called Goose Neck. Forgive me, I am geographically challenged.

I was sooo tired, I look like I am drugged. I still like this picture. It shows how tolerant I was towards our long driving hours.

My Omar the Pooh in Disneyland. Poor guy didn’t understand much of it back then. We need to go back there. I was about 8 months pregnant when this picture was taken and enjoyed every bit of the Grilled Turkey legs I ate in Disneyland! So, while we might go back to show the place to the kids, I get to fulfill my hidden agendas, too.

Following three images were taken in Huntington Beach, CA. There is an ecological reserve called Bolsa Chica. A lot of birders will now this area.

Omar loves the beach and he loves the sand. Aside from his habit of tasting the sand, everything was pretty great.

We love Belmar Park. It is one of our favorite parks in the area. Although it is a little far from our house, we still go there quite often.

Nasim took this picture of Omar while I was in the hospital with our newborn Osman. Our entire family (4 of us) were in the hospital the whole time. So, father and son decided to take a stroll in the park to get away from the hospital for a minute or two.

I think this picture was taken when Ozzy was one month old. Right before sunset. Gorgeous time of the day!

Osman still sleeps like that :)

Oh, my creative Omar is showing off his creative moves and picture poses :D I love this dude!

My little baby Ozzy during our RV trip to Black Canyon National Park. This was the first time he started smiling. I was over the top happy!!!!

Oh well, I got my daily dose of memory-recall! I am making a lot of yummy stuff for my hubby’s return. I better get on finishing those :P Oh and by the way, English is my forth language. If there are people who want to pick on my mistakes, by all means do. But keep in mind that I am not writing for an English Composition class or for a super duper scholarship.

Each set of curtains came with clear instructions. Well, I have the curtains but I lost the instructions. A girl does not need any instructions, I said to myself. At least that’s what I initially thought. As you see, I am still on a big mission and God only knows when it is going to end!

Here is the current look of my little nook I created for myself. I admit that it looks a little different right about now! It might look even more different a week from now.

Aside from not feeling very well for the last week and not being able to go out as much, we are trying to keep our sons busy and entertained. We added one more lesson to our routine daily exercises. In addition to book reading, phonics, drawing, watching cartoons and playing games – Omar is learning to write. He is doing pretty good, I shall admit. Well, he is no genius (at least not yet) but he is mommy’s little smartie pants!.. and he needs a haircut.

Ozzy is our mischief boss. He breaks stuff quietly and leaves the accident sight quietly. If it was not for his uber-honest brother, I would have never found out that Osman throws his cereal behind daddy’s speakers, breaks the buttons of the receiver, changes the background on daddy’s computer, misplaces Omar’s cars, draws all over the furniture, wants his brother’s iPod Touch, turns off TV, etc. Does Omar rat his brother out? Not at all. I mostly find out about Ozzy’s mischiefs when Omar tries to clean up after his little brother, creating a bigger mess one cannot apprehend…

Oh, you can tell that Ozzy needs a haircut, too!

My children imitate my husband and me pretty vigorously. They wear our hats, touch type, read books the minute we sit down to read. Mostly, their books are wrong side-up, but it doesn’t matter much, as long as they have them and they look like mom or dad. At least I have my make-up spared!

Ozzy is hooked on “finger painting”. Except he does not appreciate the fact that he has to use his fingers. I started giving him a small brush to play around. It looks like things are going well, if we don’t count that he likes tasting yummy-looking paint every once in a while.

My little world, my big boys. I am so proud of them. They are the light of my eyes and the heartbeat of my existence.

All of the above pictures were taken with the Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens.

On top of that, I decided to get rid of the “www” in front of our domain. I have always been using “www” in front of all of my domains and this year I changed my mind and decided to make the domain shorter. It was a painful decision, because it will affect search engine links and rankings, whether I like it or not.

I also decided to get rid of the old gallery and start over with a brand new one. Instead of putting junk into the gallery like I was doing before, I will only be uploading the best pictures that are worth staying in the gallery. Initially, I was going to reuse the same gallery software, but I decided to try a new one this time, which should be more integrated to our blog. So far, I like the results and I will be posting the first gallery in a couple of days, if everything works out as planned.

I’m sure you have already noticed the top of the main page where it says “Last Two Recipes from Lola”. It took me a while to figure it all out and I had to write custom code for that, but the top part will now automatically pull the latest two recipe images from Lola’s Recipes page. She has been busy with other projects lately, but promised to put up more recipes very soon!

Oh, and the new Nikon 70-200mm VR II is soo good!

Lola took this shot wide open at f/2.8, 1/5000th of a second. Simply incredible, one of the Nikon’s sharpest lenses ever!

Nikon 70-200mm VR II 100% Crop

As I was getting ready to drop an emotional “look-I-am-so-happy” entry in our blog, I searched the computer for the “before” images of our apartment. I ended up looking through the pictures of 2006, which by the way, are all point and shoot camera images. As I was looking at them, memories gushed through my brain with simple, but very pleasant moments. I did pick one picture of our living room, but decided to choose some more images to portray the beginning of my journey that started back in 2006.

When I look back and think about what has come out of my actions, steps and desires, I get amazed about how dramatically I impacted my own life. Here I am, staring at a piece of paper, not even imagining that shortly thereafter I will get married and have a wonderful family! Life does go by fast, but the quality of time we spare for things that are most important, should always outweigh the speed of time.

Sometime later, we find out that I am pregnant and I am religiously looking for a dress to a birthday party to accommodate both Omar and I :)

Though I knew how to cook, I was never kitchen-savvy or a gourmet cook by any means! But I did manage to make a couple of things to cheer up my husband. Hey, a woman has got to be able to feed her family! :) Our favorite kebabs were prepared right before Nasim was supposed to get his routine blood work done. Later, we found out that the results were disastrous! His cholesterol sky-rocketed and he was doomed to use the treadmill for life! Little did we know then that he was supposed to fast for at least 12 hours before going to the doctor. In the battle of fasting vs. fatty kebabs, cholesterol won! The doctor had to redo the blood work to make sure that everything was in a good shape. The results came back good, but to be on the safe side, Nasim swapped fatty kebabs to fish oil capsules :)

This picture of my first Apple Pie is blurry as heck. I did warn you that all the images were from our point and shoot camera. But that’s not the problem here – I was such a photo-lamer back then, that I didn’t even know how to utilize a simple point and shoot camera! This is where it all began with my starting to dare myself in the kitchen and trying to make desserts, which I could never make before. Most likely, because my mother never made desserts for us at home, which is probably why I was not a big fan of desserts growing up. So, it never was my plan to be a pastry chef, not until I met my husband :) After getting married, I had to do something to impress my husband, who is a big fan of desserts! Ultimately, this was the beginning of my food photography journey.

When Nasim snapped this picture, we had about 2 ft of snow in Denver. It was so thick, that even with my 8 month pregnancy belly, I didn’t sink in the snow! I do not know what I was thinking about while laying there and making a snow angel, but it was surely one of the most amazing moments I had in a long time. Did I mention that I was wearing Nasim’s ski pants? Yes, I couldn’t fit in anything else!

Even if it is blurry, grainy, out of focus and lacks composition, this is still one of my favorite pictures. Omar born and attached to his father. He still is. I remember the days I used to cry, because Omar wouldn’t come to me. Some days, he would slap me in the face and look for his father!

This is the picture of the party dedicated to Omar’s birth. Dearest friends, family and lots of food prepared by my adorable mother, my sister and of course moi :P See those windows with shutters and no curtains? That’s where I am slowly getting :)

This is our Red Rocks Amphitheater and me twice as heavier before I got pregnant with Omar :) I have a weird thing going on with my hair. I can never find one haircut that suits me best. That’s not even half of the problem. The problem is that one hairdo will not look the same if I make it again tomorrow! What’s up with that?

Again… grainy, blurry, out of focus :( This is THE picture that finally pushed us to switch to a DSLR a.k.a. Professional Camera. I snapped this picture of Omar in his favorite swing. I sent it to Nasim via Google Talk, but he was so upset that a picture worth millions for us, came out so bad… The next thing I know, we got the Nikon D80 with a kit lens. What can you do? When a picture comes out bad, you always blame the camera! :)

We are still standing strong and I pray every day that we stay like this until the day we die… I love my husband, my perfect better half, my perfect match! PLUS, he is going to help me hang my new curtains today :D

My curtains will go on these windows and the bedroom windows. This is how it was when it all started… For me it is Zen like. I would like to write more, but I decided to break down this post in two. Right after we hang the curtains, I will take another set of “After” pictures and add Ozzy, who was born after we got into the photography world.

Captured with Nikon D300 and Nikon 50mm f/1.4D lens.

Off to work on my recipes!!!!

Just like that...

We decided to go for a walk and photograph fall colors in our neighborhood. We also promised Omar that we would take him to “Chuck e Cheese” afterward. Nasim called and said that he was leaving work. I got children ready and almost got myself ready (which happens rarely) waiting for my husband to come from work. Kids and I waited for good 30 minutes. It usually takes Nasim around 10 minutes to drive home from work. 30 minutes got me worried and I called him a couple of times. The last time I called, he said that he was sorta stuck in traffic.

We love meeting him by the door when he comes home. As soon as I mention to children that dad is almost home, they stand by the door, ready to meet their “Dada”. This time was no exception. I opened the door and caught my husband totally red-handed. At that moment I was sure that my beloved was not stuck in traffic… There he was walking up to me blushing like a teenager who just went out on his first date! He kept on saying that it was supposed to be a surprise. I was no less of a teenager myself, laughing, blushing, shy and very happy. I was holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers dedicated to me. I was proud to be a wife of such a considerate person and I could tell that my children were in it with me.

This entry is not about flowers, it is not about buying gifts for someone. The birth of this article should definitely fall under category of expressing inner feelings by all means. Whatever your imagination is capable of. I have been thinking of composing my thoughts on this for a while now. This was just a perfect kick I needed.

In a world of actions and reactions, every person is an owner of his/her destiny. Ultimately, every step we take, every word we say shapes our destiny in unimaginable pace, stocking everything in a shelf life called routine. For many of us it might be a good thing, but something inside me wishes that people would not look at routine in a positive way. Routine is mainly a sign of stagnancy. People should live and try to excuse themselves from being stagnant. Make a difference, act and see what it brings you. Leave the negativity right where it started. Come home to your loved ones with splash of energy, witness how that energy bursts in bigger bubbles and floats you in the air for as much as you need it. Wouldn’t you feel much better?

It is not his/her birthday, it is not a special occasion. Just pick up the phone and make your loved ones feel important. Let them know that you haven’t forgotten about them. If you fail to do so, embrace yourself. You just robbed yourself of one happy moment of your life.

Love is...