Color Palette Monday

So, we probably should have waited till we got back from our most recent vacation to relaunch the blog... Right after I wrote that post about restarting this blog we went on vacation for nearly 2 weeks (well, sort of a working vacation for me, but still) and we hadn't quite worked out the kinks in the blog before we left so ya. But no we've got this thing (mostly) worked out, so with that said, lets get this started with this week's Color Palette Monday (on Tuesday morning)...

I took this photo shortly after take-off on my flight from Chicago back to LAX.  There were some crazy storms rolling into the Chicago area just as we took off (lightening and possible tornadoes), so we flew a little further South than normal.  As we were taking off, we saw some lightening, and then we flew above the first layer of clouds.  Thinking we were above it all - one of my favorite places to be - I looked outside, and saw that we were actually inside the clouds - there were clouds below us, and above us!   It was really beautiful, and I'm not sure I captured just how beautiful it was in this photo, but it's a pretty cool shot anyway.

Hope you had a good weekend, sorry I'm a little late with this post!

Color Palette Mondays: Ocean View

In honor of our kayaking trip yesterday, I thought I would pull out one of my pictures of the Pacific Ocean from the past year.  My husband decided some time ago that he was going to do something called he dubbed the "California Pier Project" - which he eventually would like to turn into a little book.  This entails photographing all (or nearly all) of the piers that stick out into the Pacific Ocean - mostly starting at (or as close as possible to) sunrise.  That's REALLY early, but I'm a good wife and I usually go with him without complaining too much.  The funny thing is, I'll complain when we get up that early (like 4:30 in the summer time) but once we get there, I always have fun.  I usually bring along my little point and shoot camera, just for fun, and I take random pictures of whatever I think is beautiful - I usually end up with a lot of photos of pelicans, any other wildlife we see and my husband in various random poses taking pictures on the pier (my favorites are when he lays down on the ground).  And sometimes, it's waves.  This day, we were at Manhattan Beach, and I sat for some time on the beach just taking pictures into the ocean of the different waves.  I think this is one of my favorites :) Hope you all had a good weekend!

Color Palette Mondays: Whale Watching

Today the hubby and I went on a whale watching cruise out of Newport Beach Harbor.  I was not overly impressed with the overall operation who took us out, but we got a pretty good discount so I can't complain too much.  Plus we got to see a bunch of dolphins and even a fin whale!  The down side was that we've had some wacky weather this weekend - storms around here and tropical storms starting to push their way up from the South - so the waves were crazy high.  I didn't get a ton of pictures at all, because we were being tossed around so much some times it was hard enough to find a spot where I could see, much less be able to hold the camera steady enough to snap a shot.  I did get a couple of cool videos of the dolphins jumping near our boat, because I realized that while I couldn't get a still shot my camera takes pretty good video :) I'm always the problem solver! When I figure out how to edit them, I will try posting one or two here.  Now I know you're thinking, this is a really long story since she didn't get any pictures on the whale watching cruise, why is she telling us all this when she's going to use some other picture today.  Well, I got some good pictures while we were more in the harbor where the water was calmer.  On the way in, our captain took us right up to the bouy that marked the end of the harbor area, and there were half a dozen sealions hanging out on the bottom of it.  They were super cool, and posing for our cameras.  They make an interesting color palette, don't you think?

I had to pull the green in form the alge on the bouy as well as that bright red of the bouy.

The other really great photo op I got was as everyone was getting off the boat.  A small fishing boat had stopped near where we were docked, and a pelican was hanging out.  The boat had two grown ups and a kid about 10, and best I can tell the kid decided to throw the leftover bait (maybe, or something else, I didn't see) into the water for the pelican.  Well, that attracted about a dozen more pelicans, and as the boat drove away trying to escape, one of the pelicans saw our boat and decided we might have food.  He started swimming right up to where I was standing, until he was about 5 feet away!  I love me some pelicans, so quickly snapped a few shots before we had to run off the boat!  I love this shot, and I really had fun pulling a color palette out of this guy.  It's actually kind of beautiful, don't you think?

Hope y'all had a great weekend too!  Did you do something exciting this weekend?  

Color Palette Mondays

This weekend we went to Las Vegas to celebrate my in-laws's birthdays.  In case you don't know, it's HOT in Las Vegas this time of year.  I think it was somewhere around 110 degrees both days - that's way too hot for me!  On our drive home, we saw this beautiful sunset, and we stopped to take a few pictures.  This is one of my favorites...

That's my husband taking his own pictures, I just can't resist snapping pictures of him taking pictures when we're out :)  I had every intention of posting this Sunday night, when we got home, but we hit a big traffic jam, and the normally 4-ish hour trip ended up taking us 9+ hours.  It was exhausting, and since we left later than we probably should have, we didn't make it home until nearly 1am!  So, I'm a day late, but I hope you enjoy this one anyway, I sure did!  

Did you do anything exciting over the weekend?  

Color Palette Mondays

One of my favorite design-y bloggers is Brandi over at Brandi Girl Bog.  She's big on color inspiration, and if you know me, you know how much I love colors!  One of the things she does is make color palettes from pictures that she has taken (or found, depending on the week).  I thought this sounded like a fun way to find new color combinations.  So, here's my first one.  The photo was taken at one of our favorite places, and our favorite ride - the Mad Hatter's Tea Party @ Disneyland in California.  Erik and I often ride this ride - you know the kind, where you sit in a teacup and turn the crank in the center to make it spin around like crazy - and it's become "our ride".  One of our favorite things to do is use my camera ('cause it's small and easy to control when you're spinning around that fast) on a long exposure setting aimed upwards towards the brightly colored lights to get pictures like this:

We could seriously do this for hours on end, the images created are always beautiful and always unique.  One of these days we were standing near the Tea Party ride, and decided to try to capture the spinning cups as well as the lights.  I think this is one of my favorites from that shoot, as well as it's one of my favorite color palettes!  I use these colors together often.  Enjoy!