Grocery shopping any time around the 4th of July means that there’s a pile of ‘safe’ fireworks set up as impulse buys at the start of check out. I regret nothing! Mom said she could fit all of “Happy Birthday” and Alexis and I didn’t believe it - but she’s basically magic and really great at sparkler writing!

And when you’ve got sparklers around a fire - you might as well make s’mores right? But gelatin in things completely freaks me out, so usual marshmallows are off the table. And vegan marshmallows just don’t behave the same way. But have you ever tried fire-roasted strawberries? And maybe instead of graham crackers - nutter butters? Alexis says we shouldn’t give our secret recipe away but I say the more we get to the strawberry side, the better!

I brought a whole pile of dresses with me, but this little cape got the most use. The day might have been a kind of a fail for the smoke bomb plans we had but I never thought we’d get such fun images with this set of wings. Thanks to my mom Chris Carter for the gift of them!

Mom kept telling us that we needed to go out to the field while it was all cut down. “The colors!” she said, “the colors!” The thing is, though, to me it just looks like our back yard. And it’s flat and boring and never quite as beautiful as I want it to be. How wrong I was! If i have one take away from this whole weekend it’s to just listen to Mom more. I’ve learned so much through all this photography and a huge part is how differently our brains work and how smart it is to listen to someone else with a different eye and just see if you can break out of your own ruts a little bit.

Our rental was in the middle of the Neversink area. When Alexis looked up the the rental she said there was a waterfall nearby. The only one I found when searching for photos nearby was about ankle high. Luckily I was COMPLETELY wrong! Mullet Falls was the perfect waterfall for photography adventures, and the paths around it were delightful.

While slathering sunblock and bug spray on ourselves at the trail head, we chatted with Winston, a friendly fellow with a whole huge herd of dogs. We caught up to him later at the waterfall and the skill he had in wrangling the pack was just amazing!

Taking photos at the waterfall was a blast. Alexis was great at standing still while I got some slower shutter shots and the folks who hiked up were great sports about the whole thing. It might feel awkward to change into a dress and hop around in the water, but the thing I’ve learned so far is that if you’re brave enough to do it, most people get a kick out of it.

A fancy dome and a cross-country visit seemed like a great excuse to finally visit Riverdel and buy waaaay too much vegan cheese. Most of it was quite tasty! The texture was pretty similar across the board, and the ‘cheddar’ tasted kind of like box mac and cheese, but I guess that’s not a bad thing, right? I was a little nervous about keeping it fresh with our cooler situation, but we managed to make it work, and most of it even held up for making a spread a week later at Mom’s in NJ. (The cheese with figs in did NOT last, but I blame that on the hot-cold-hot-cold transitions from shop to subway to fridge to car to cooler to car etc. etc. etc.)

So I guess we’re hipsters - might as well embrace it and do some product shots, right? :-P The hard seltzer shots here were kind of a joke, we felt uber-hipster in our plaid shirts, trucker hats and dome camp site. The legging shots were actually a purposeful product shoot though. I bought them from my good friend Xtina and wanted to get her some feedback and photos that she could use on her site. They are SO comfortable. Seriously, go and buy some from her!

Hipsters on a hike!

Flannel, hard seltzer, trucker hats… all set!

I don’t even really remember why we decided it would be a good idea to rent a glamping dome while Alexis was visiting. When we hit a heat wave before her trip, I was worried we’d end up miserable in a terrible wanna-be yurt. Luckily the weather was beautiful, the hosts super thoughtful and the dome was pretty awesome. True “glamping” leaning more toward camp than glam - the site was an exciting golf cart ride away from the road and very private. The property is surrounded by the ‘multi-use’ area that we had wandered around for photographs earlier and few minutes away from the trailhead of the Neversink trail system. Not a bad location! If we had one complaint is was the composting toilet which was just a little… odd to use. We both decided we prefer the sawdust type of composting toilet over whatever weird electronics this one used.

My main outlet to share images has been through Instagram. I don’t like facebook, I’m terrible at updating my portfolio site and for some reason Flickr just doesn’t strike me the same way it used to. So, a new venture. I figure I’ll share images and some behind-the-scenes context on this site. Finally free of Instagram’s weird cropping! Who knows if I’ll get any views over here, but I’ll experiment with it for a bit and see where it takes me.

As Alexis was a part of what got my whole photography journey re-started, it seems appropriate that my first write-up here is inspired by her recent visit to the East Coast. We’ve both been experimenting with photography more and more lately, and it was wonderful to have a partner in crime to play around with. I picked her up at the airport, after one of the most beautiful sunrises I’ve had the mis-fortune to be behind the wheel for (and thus unable to capture). Sister successfully scooped up, we headed off to the lower Catskills. Our Airb’n’b hosts said we could check in as early as we liked, but when we arrived in the area at around 8AM, that felt a little too early so we wandered around for a bit. We found a lake that we intended to return to for some canoe rentals and a road in a ‘multi use area’ full of green fields and high power lines. With yet more time to kill before we could reasonably check in, I threw on a red dress and tried not to twist my ankle running around the rocky road. This seemed like a great place to test out my new 100-400mm lens. As jet-lagged as she was, Alexis was still a good sport in trying to make an unfamiliar set up work for her.

Finally it was time to check in, so off to our home for the next few nights!