The adventures of Little Bit

It's been a while since Little Bit has been in front of my camera now that she's living back home with my family in Alaska. I realized that I have a bunch of photos of her looking oh so intrepid and adventurous, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite pictures of her!

Napping at Red Velvet in Springfield, MO

In AK: Aboard the boat in Prince William Sound and in the backyard with booties!

More Prince William Sound

Oklahoma

Grand Canyon

Backyard at home in AK

Running on a beach in Oregon.

Exploring a beach in Washington

Dog is my CoPilot

AK-CAN International Border

Arizona

Cannon Beach, OR

Prince William Sound

Spokane, WA

Warm days are coming...

dress // straw purse // shoes // hat

Soon! Well, hopefully. Whenever the sun peeks its head out I start thinking about fun summer outfits. I think summer is such a great time for vintage styles. A simple vintage dress, cute shoes, and a wide brimmed hat is definitely in my summer-outfit-repertoire this year! A Wild Tonic, the shop where I found all the lovely items above, is offering my readers a 25% discount using the code TACKY25! You can also check out her blog.

On the Street // Biking on 6th

Another street style shot from last friday. Maddie rolled up on her cute blue bike in her little hat looking too gorgeous not to photograph. I didn't get a close up shot, but she was wearing some amazing vintage Etienne Aigner shoes that she thrifted. I love how happy everyone looks on sunny days! It's supposed to get sunny and warm again this weekend, so maybe I'll trek out for another go at taking street style photos!

My cameras!

It's no secret that I love taking photos. I feel like one would have to like taking pictures in order to have a daily style blog, taking photos becomes part of life. One of the questions I get most is what camera I use for my outfit photos, and so I thought I'd give you guys a little peek at my fleet of cameras!

First off, here's my main squeeze: my Canon DSLR, a Rebel EOS T2i. It's a wonderful camera, I'm totally in love with it. It shoots full HD 1080p video in addition to still shots, which is one of my favorite features and my reasoning behind wanting it in the first place. I really enjoy shooting little videos with it. It's really fun to be able to switch lenses and the quality is quite wonderful.

I have a few lenses that I use with it. The one that I use most of the time is my Canon 50mm f/1.4. I recently just got a wide angle Sigma 24mm f/1.8 lens which is quite fun to use. I like having a lens that I can use in more close situations. With the 50mm I have to be a bit further away from my subject in order to fit them in frame. With the 24mm I can be very close. The self portrait above was taken at an arm's length away! Plus, it still has the shallow depth of field that I love. I also have a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens and a Canon 28-80mm lens, both of which I rarely use. The macro lens is fun for getting close up shots, and it's really incredible how close you can get! It's almost like a microscope!

One of my favorite cameras to shoot with is my polaroid but since film is both incredibly difficult to come by and rather expensive, I haven't been able to use it in quite some time. I've been really wanting to get an instax mini so I can take instant photos again. I also have an SX 70, and it's one of my absolute favorite cameras.

My mom gave me this Olympus OM-1 that she got when she was a teenager. She used it for her darkroom photography class in college. 30 years later I used the same camera for my darkroom photography class, which was at the same college in the same darkroom where she took her class! I adore this camera, not only for the nostalgic feelings attached to it, but also for the beautiful images it captures. The photo below of Daniel was taken in 2006 when I was taking my darkroom class, so it was developed and printed all by hand! I loved developing and printing my own film. After I took that class I wanted to someday have a darkroom of my own! Perhaps someday I will...

Last but not least, my Holga! In college I knew a friend who had a Holga and became smitten with the square photos it took and the vignetting that the plastic lens produced. I've always loved the raw nature of toy, disposable and polaroid cameras, and I think the Holga might be my favorite. I also like being able to take double exposures. You can also shoot 35mm film in a Holga, which turns out pretty cool. I've done it before but haven't been able to get prints of the film yet.

As far as editing photos goes, I use both Photoshop CS4 and Picnik. I need to invest in some photoshop actions like some Totally Rad Actions or Mandi's Actions. I think those would be fun to play around with. There's more information on how to edit photos in the Indie E-course and I'm in the process of working on a mini e-course focused on photography, specifically outfit photos for bloggers. I get a lot of emails and questions about it, so I figured it'd be a great topic for a mini e-course! Would you guys be interested in that?

On The Street // Working

I took quite a few street style photos last friday (the first of which you saw on Monday), and since it was such an absolutely gorgeous day, I wanted to spread out those pretty sunny pictures throughout this week because it's supposed to rain and rain and rain this week. Gotta have a reminder that lovely days will come again!

Anyway, this girl sat outside the BBC for a few hours working on her laptop and I just loved her casual, summery outfit. I'm totally jonesin' for that hat (I think this summer is going to be all about hats), and I love the simple, comfy looking striped top and cute sandals.

Inspired by

I wore this dress in my last outfit post, but I saw how Julie styled it and I wanted to give it another go by styling it similar to how she did. I got this gorgeous top from Olive Green Anna a couple weeks ago and this outfit was perfectly suited for it! I've been wanting to invest in some belts lately because I use them really frequently and I've had the same four belts for years. I really want some wider ones because all of mine are really thin. I think I would've liked this outfit better if I'd worn a wider belt like Julie's. I'm pretty frugal so I don't like spending money on stuff like accessories, but I'm trying to invest in them because they really do add that bit of interest to an outfit. I've also been wanting a new messenger bag because I use the same one all the time for my camera and laptop, but it's not really suitable for either. I wrote a post a while ago about Kelly Moore Bags and I'm really still thinking about getting that Libby bag because it's just perfect for what I need. Just gotta save up some money!

top/courtesy of Olive Green Anna :: skirt (dress)/spotted moth via Delightful Dozen

hat/thrifted :: shoes/kensiegirl :: necklace/courtesy of A Lost Feather

This lovely little fox necklace was sent to me by Sarah from A Lost Feather. She's coming out with her own little jewelry line inspired by this piece. She sent me a little info on the line:

"The Framed Fox Pendant was one of my first jewelry designs and was the inspiration for my new line, Of the Earth // Of the Sky (available early May) I wanted to create pieces that spoke to my love of the great outdoors- animals found in the forest, designs created in nature, stars that light the sky. I'm so excited to share all that I've been creating!"

Ruche Giveaway!

Hi guys! I hope your Tuesday is shaping up to be lovely! I'm pretty excited to bring you all this giveaway from Ruche, such cute little accessories! They're giving away the Always On Time Bike Watch necklace and the Worth A Thousand Words Camera Card Stand to one lucky winner. To enter, head over to Ruche and then come back here and let me know what your favorite item is in a comment on this post! Entries will be accepted until Sunday May 1 at 9pm PST. One entry per person.

The winner of the Pulp Vintage giveaway is...

Emma Basilone!

Congrats!

Easter Weekend

This past weekend I went on an amazing Easter Retreat with a bunch of friends! It was so lovely to get out of town and spend a fun, relaxing weekend with great people. We left Tacoma in the late morning and stopped at Fat Smitty's for lunch. I've driven past Fat Smitty's more times than I can count but I've never stopped there, so when everyone asked where we should stop for lunch, I knew it would be the perfect place. Apparently they are famous for their Fat Smitty burger (which was huge!). They have dollar bills hanging on every surface of the place and in the back room where we were seated there was a huge collection of M&M paraphernalia! Haha. It was certainly quite the destination. I'm glad I finally got to go!

(Group photo via Lindsy)

I thought Dan looked particularly fetching in his Geoducking get-up. Well, it's pretty much what he wears every day, but look how seafaring and manly he looks with his pants rolled up and his shovel! Haha. He and Ben work for a company that buys Geoducks (pronounced Gooey-Duck) from harvesters and then sells them overseas to China, where apparently they are a delicacy. Neither of them had ever dug up a Geoduck before, though, so they set out on a quest to get one. Unfortunately they didn't get one. Maybe next time!

It was really fun to play on the beach and look at sea creatures in the warm sun. I adore living near the ocean. I'm not sure I could live somewhere that wasn't near a body of water. The native word that this bay is named after means "Quiet Water" because there are sand bars that keep the big waves out of the bay, making it incredibly peaceful and calm. Sitting out on the dock at high tide is so peaceful. The lack of noise is almost unsettling. I think we get so used to the constant noise of living in populated areas that the calmness of nature gets to be such a foreign thing. I love it.

Ruthy took this photo of us emulating the old American Gothic pose, haha!

We ate AMAZING food all weekend. Andy (Ruthy's husband) made us an incredible seafood boil on Saturday night and we all just ate off the table with our hands. It was messy and delicious and so much fun. There was crab legs, crawdads, shrimp, sausage, corn on the cob, potatoes... oh man. So delicious. Then on Easter morning we had pancakes with fresh fruit on them and condensed milk and honey (which I'd never had on pancakes before!). Yum!