Adrian Ziemkowski's LiveJournal

It's been a long time since I've updated, so I thought I'd post a few photos of our new office (also on my Flickr and my Facebook... add me to yours!).

The office still isn't completely set up, but we're getting there.

Heading down the hallway:


Turn around and look back toward the reception area:


Looking into the office, we see Karen hard at work:


Here's my half of the office with my tiny little Mac Mini computer:


Karen hard at work on her 4 processor Mac Pro workstation with 9GB of RAM, about 1TB of drive space, a 30" Dell monitor, and drawing tablet:


Sometimes we turn off the lights and work. Here Karen processes a photo from our last wedding in Adobe Lightroom, which we switched to from Apple's Aperture:


No photos of the conference room yet, as we haven't finished setting it up.

If you haven't checked it out recently, you should visit TheWeddingCouple.com and definitely visit the photo journal... Karen updates it frequently.
 

We got married on the 4th of July so that we can always have fireworks on our anniversary.

It was raining too much to go to the city show this year, but lots of people were launching their own. Having grown up in Arizona, a state that made fireworks illegal, it is strange to witness. Fireworks are constantly going off in every direction, creating a thick smoke haze.

As you can see, some of them are quite impressive for DIY fireworks.



( A few more photos )



This was what it looked like a few hours earlier after the heavy rain. Unfortunately all this rain has been missing the lake that all of South Florida lives off of, so we're still in a bad drought.

Ivory and Keshia were recently visiting from Maryland and wanted to have an "authentic" Florida engagement session done. Where better to do it than on the beach? We had a great time with them taking photos at West Palm Beach, and then moved on for some more fun pictures at City Place. Here are the results!

You can get a bit of an idea of what it looked like before. It used to be an opening to the room next to it, but a previous owner made a wall, but only had it flush to the small room, leaving a recess in the master bedroom... perfect for a bookshelf!



Rounded edges of course. The 45-degree corners are a nod to Battlestar: Galactica's cut corners theme.


I'm also replacing all the baseboards in the house. It makes the house look a bit messy, as you can tell on the right where the wall has no baseboards. I'm getting close to done, you can see all the corner pieces to the right of the chair. Once done, I'll caulk the tops and edges and grout the bottoms on the tile. Finally I'll seal all the grout in the house to give it that nice glossy look and to prevent discoloring or cracking. If only I had more time to do all this!


Working with power tools is quite satisfying, which in itself is rather relieving considering the amount of classical music and opera I listen to in the car! The garage is my work area:

The miter saw was essential because of the BSG corners, which required the round edges to match perfectly. Before this project, I used to cut baseboards with a handheld jig saw, which was not only laborious but subject to many more errors.

After all the pieces were in place, it was time to prime it. I thought that 6 shelves would be ideal and evenly spaced them. The stud finder I have for the baseboards was a great help because it also has a laser level, which was quite useful when aligning the mounts on the sides (which each have two heavy screws going into the studs of the frame), which you can see in the photos above.


After another coat of primer and two coats of high gloss (that I then let dry for two weeks to keep the books from sticking to it), it was ready to use:

(see it on Flickr with descriptive notes)

I was only allocated the top shelf (because Karen can't reach it!), but ended up also using the left half below the top and the left part above her shoes for text books. I'll probably thin down mine to at least one and a half rows. Karen has a lot more books at her parents' house still, so soon it will be completely full!

Yesterday, on my birthday, I bought a new car!

I spent all day researching cars, creating a spreadsheet in Google Docs, after finding out how much it would cost to fix my old Honda Civic. Ironically, when I came across the car I ended up buying, I almost instantly dismissed it and only wrote down the name on my spreadsheet.

The three top contenders on my list, the Honda Fit, Toyota Prius, and Honda Civic Hybrid, were all a bit disappointing when we saw them... they all felt very plastic-y and cheap yet cost a decent amount. When leaving the local Honda dealer I asked if they had anything else in my price range (around 20k or less) and would be good for a commuter car. The salesman suggested the Nissan Versa. Considering my primary interests were a bust, we thought we'd at least take a look.

Turns out we loved it, at least the sedan version. It's taller than the other compact cars which meant the sitting position was a lot more comfortable on my previously-broken right ankle. Today I noticed I was about a foot higher than most compact car drivers on the road.

Since it's a cheap car, around $15k base like the Fit and Yaris, I was able to add basically every package, which makes for quite a nice car. Bluetooth, great satellite radio, ABS, CVT, sun roof, etc. It has better gas mileage than my last car, but still no hybrid. Maybe next time!

It's silver with a charcoal interior:

Wednesday we met up with my friend and co-worker Jason Pirkey and his wife, Luciana, for a photo shoot at the Hillsboro Pier in Deerfield Beach.

   

Gotta love magic hour!

Check it out:



I think it does a much better job representing what you get with us. I'm excited!

So if you sit and watch or go through the introduction flash you'll see most of the photos, but you can also see them (and some more) on any other page on the site as we have a sidebar with random photos. Click on any photo on the sidebar to reload it, or just wait and it'll refresh every minute... for example, see the Packages & Rates page.

Still processing images for it, especially for the front page.

I'll make the blog match the site later tonight, and hopefully create an "About Us" page with a photo from our own wedding.

Karen and I went on a quick shoot with Jessica (jesspark) in downtown Celebration before our trip out west last month. Here are my two favorite shots from the extremely rapid shoot...





The second shot was captured from the road. Literally, I was on my back in the middle of the road with my head on the asphalt trying to get the words along side her.

The trip up Highway 89 to Page was beautiful, though difficult to photograph. I saw this vista out the window and pulled over for some shots. I set the camera on a guard rail with the lens on a rock and took this timed photo.



I tried to frame the famous shot you see of Horseshoe Bend, but the evening sun was right in the lens and the 17mm focal length made it hard to avoid a bad lens flare. We're going back tomorrow after Antelope Slot Canyon as we head back down Highway 89 towards the scenic Highway 89A and the Vermillion Cliffs, as the lighting will be ideal and won't require HDR magic (at least not as much).


I forgot to post this yesterday, so here it is...

Karen Standin' on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona.
We were only a half hour away from Winslow while visiting Meteor Crater, so Karen insisted that we head there and visit the famous landmark from the Eagles' song "Take it Easy", even though it was pitch black outside.


Don't miss my previous post or my Flickr photo set of our Western Vacation so far!

Here I am sitting on a ledge on the south rim of the grand canyon.



I got to introduce Karen to snow, which was a lot of fun. Karen absolutely loves the snow and still gets excited whenever she sees snow on the side of the road.

Our "western vacation" was then paused for 5 days for my sister's wedding, which I'll post about when I get home.


Here you can see Karen chimping on the side of the road and our rental car (the horrible horrible horrible PT Cruiser, which was clearly designed by monkeys).



We climbed the "mountain" (yes, we're from Florida) a couple hundred feet and it qualified as Karen's first real rugged hike. These shots are wonderful and I look forward to posting them when I get back to Florida (and back to using Aperture on my Mac Pro and not a laptop!).

After a night in Prescott with my mom, we drove over Mingus Mountain to Jerome and then Dinner at John's parents' place. We were delayed though because after helping Karen up from sitting in the snow, I helped pat the snow off and my wedding ring went flying! Unfortunately it wasn't virgin snow, so there was no way to tell where it went. I kicked around the snow for a while and then as I was giving up, I kicked one last bit and Karen saw something... sure enough it was my ring! Lucky lucky!

Last night John came up and stayed with us at a hotel in Flagstaff and we went and played pool downtown until midnight, when the giant pinecone was lowered and everybody went wild.

Today we tried to go to Snow Bowl but apparently they close the road when the ski resort is closed, which is rather annoying and disapointing (my tax dollars not at work). I wanted to show Karen more snow.

Afterwards we went to Meteor Crater. On the way we saw a sign for Walnut Canyon National Monument. Since we had time and we are going around looking at parks and what not, we checked it out and were quite amazed.


Still in love with snow after a week, Karen was tossing snowballs around and covering herself with snow.



I'll post photos from the monument after I get back to Arizona. It's an absolutely beautiful place that we just randomly decided to visit when we saw the sign on the way to Meteor Crater.

We loved it. I don't know the last time I've been outside and really didn't hear anything at all.

Tomorrow we're going to Page, Arizona, and around the local monuments and parks. The next day we're taking 89A up to Zion National Park, with a stop at the Vermillion Cliffs National Park. I've taken Route 89 there before and that was amazing, so I can't wait to experience 89A past Page... the stretch of 89A near where I grew up through Sedona / Oak Creek is amazing and not to be missed, so I'm hoping for the same. The next day we're going to Hoover Dam to drive on it before they close the road for security reasons, and then reaching our final destination at Paris, Las Vegas.

I love that I get to do all this with Karen and be her guide to the west.

I've updated the front pages of the Weddings and Portraits sections with flash teasers. Both sequences have ten slides and feature many of our recent weddings and sessions. Check them out!

Several photos are included that I haven't posted photos from, so keep an eye out for portrait sessions with Nicole and Diana as well as the Brandt-Volk Wedding, all of which I'll post more photos from soon!

Our Wedding Photo Equipment (2006/11) by Adrian Ziemkowski.

Laid it all out on the table last night before our wedding today, as we got a new bag for it all, rather than both of us having to lug around our own bags. Now I can carry/roll all of our equipment around. It's a LowePro Pro Roller 3 and it's HUGE! We have the Pro Roller 1 for flying with the lenses and camera backs, but doesn't hold it all for weddings.

I've been wanting to do a photo like this for a while, inspired by the wedding & portrait photographer who always inspires, Charlotte Geary (charlottegeary), who did this last year.

This is pretty much everything I could want for weddings. My next notable acquisition next spring will be the Epson P4000 photo viewer and card backup system (another lead from Charlotte). Next summer I'm hoping Canon releases the Canon 1Ds Mark III, which I'll then upgrade to (or the Mark II if the Mark III's introduction creates a radical price drop), so we'll have three pro cameras at weddings.

Update: We've now acquired another Canon 5D, an Epson P-4000, and a few more lenses! But why keep spamming the blog?

Yesterday we had a portrait shoot with three adorable brothers, two of them twins.




( Click for 7 more photos, plus one with me )

It took way too long to process these photos, but we took a lot more than I expected. I'm still processing Karen's photos but I've included three of hers that stand out (the photos with the copyright on the left are by Karen—center and right are by me).

( See more photos )

Here are a few shots of the Miessler-Brine wedding from last night, in reverse order. We haven't really gone through all the photos yet, we'll go through them this weekend.



( Three more photos )

Karen's friend Deana (caitygrl96) works on one of her paintings at a park on an island near Key Largo... which just a couple days later may be the target of a Hurricane Ernesto (lets hope it stays a tropical storm)!


Used two flashes for this photo; one on my camera and another on Karen's camera above to the left... my first time using a wireless slave flash. I have to say that the Canon 580ex flash is as much of an improvement over the 550ex as the 5D is over the 10D.

( One more of Deana painting and one with Karen and Deana enjoying their BPAL )

So when I'm not taking photos or writing software, I'm working at S&H Solutions. I thought I'd take some photos of S&H for my friends and family...


The building is right next to I-95 just south of Linton in Delray Beach and the logo can be seen as you drive by.
I'm on the second floor.

( 5 More photos - Greenstamp stuff & my cube )

Ready for my sister's wedding by Adrian Ziemkowski.

Here I am wearing the outfit for my sister's Sikh wedding in December (which will be two days after the Catholic wedding). Missing from this is the turban, as I don't have the material and don't recall how to wrap it. The colors are all different; Karen's dress will be a teal color, others will be green, etc.

Karen and I will be taking photos for everything except the ceremonies themselves, at which time a third-party photographer has been hired.

Photo by Karen.