My awesome friend Danielle, Communications Director,  has done a three part series on what twitter is. Check them out if you’re one of those people going “well…what is twitter anyway – and is it valuable to me?”

Check it:

What IS Twitter, Anyway?, Part 1

Twitter: An Insider’s Guide, Part 2

Twitter: An Outsider’s Guide, Part 3

In other news – YAAAAY FRIDAY!!! It’s been an intense week I think for many. Let’s pray for God’s grace for the weekend and the week following!

Oh – and you can follow me on twitter at my username – puremotif.

The last few weeks have literally flown by in the blink of an eye. Some highlights:

• I for real ran out of hard drive space.
• My dvd burner is broken so I asked Brian to get me a new external harddrive. He got me this Passport portable 400gb in a deep red, almost suede texture, and I love it, SO cute and fast.
• The snow has been unbelievable already and it’s not even December. It feels like the dead of late January. I totally missed the window to pick up leaves. At this point they’re staying till the spring.
• Some of my main favorite people in my life all have the same name. Kristin H., Kristin L., and Kristin U., Christy B., and Christa P. It’s… A LITTLE BIT TOO MUCH people.
• Day-job work has been busy
• I am behind on my freelance and photos. I have a few in need of editing. I Hope to get some work done over break!
• I have 3 weddings scheduled within 2 weeks of each other for May of 2009. I am psyched.
• I am officially taking off all the time in between Christmas and New Years from said Day-job. This is the FIRST time I’ve ever done this. I am so excited. The hubs is also off, so this makes things wonderful.
• When you’re least expecting it, things go wrong in your home/car/etc. so, it’s essential to have an emergency fund set aside for when your car just needs an oil change but it ends up costing $200 for other problems you’ve been putting off, and/or you accidentally clog the drain/disposal with angel hair pasta for $369.
• I’ve seen Twilight/movie/twice. I’ll restrain from any opinions on it. All I know is I want the boxed set for Christmas and I’m now listening to podcasts about it on TwilightSource - the mugglecast peeps!! Also the soundtrack for the movie is haunting and addictive.
• I’m not sure why I feel the need to clean and vaccuum my house from top to bottom before I go out of town. It’s some weird OCD thing. 
• I have no idea what I’m going to get people for Christmas. I almost want to tell everyone they are all getting gift cards. LOL!
• Google picassa updated it’s desktop software, which I’m glad bout because I use it to organize all my originals and backup copies of photos, and it was getting really really clunky.
• I’m wide awake even though it’s 12:31 am and we are leaving at 7:00am tomorrow to drive to Maryland to be with Brian’s family for Thanksgiving! I’m so excited to see them all and have some good away-from-Erie time. 
• The cool thing about this trip is that we are combining the drive with some great friends which hopefully will make the trip go fast and more fun, and save resources and wear and tear and money. They will be continuing on to Myrtle Beach after leaving us in MD.

Happy thanksgiving people!! ]]> http://puremotif.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-away/feed/ 1 http://puremotif.com/2008/11/new-website/ http://puremotif.com/2008/11/new-website/#comments Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:49:15 +0000 Rachel http://puremotif.wordpress.com/?p=661 I’m excited to announce & present my new website! With the growth of my business and the shift into more photography, I knew it was important to get my website up-to-scratch and more reflective of what I do, and less of a student portfolio site. I’ve gone through about 4 revisions of it, but I think this one works.

I knew I wanted it to be flickr based since I rely so heavily on flickr and it is by far the easiest, affordable way to keep your photography and any other visual digital files organized and current. I tried downloading a few different flash type of players that would filter my flickr sets, but none of them worked as good as the tried and true rock — I am using the pictobrowser, and its simple and easy. 

I hope you all like it!

Visit my new site

Wacom Intous3 6×8 Pen Tablet

In other news this weekend was fast and crazy but great. I shot a wedding on Saturday that I thought went really really well. It was simple but beautiful. I have about 900 pics to go through so hopefully I can get those ready soon. I also have like 4 web projects coming up that I need to quote and decide if I can handle, and I (also) (sarah palin style) (did you ever notice how much she says also?) started working on Daniel’s senior portraits, so here’s a sneak peak. Senior girls, don’t faint.

Also, next Sunday, November 2nd, Brian and I and our worship team are leading a special night of worship at Grace that is going to be amazing! Our team has been practicing so hard. Five of the songs will go onto Brian (and I’s) full-length worship album we hope to have out in 2009. Please come out and enjoy some amazing time with God and the chance to be part of the excitement! Also check out this awesome little flyer Danielle designed in like one hour for it. She is so awesome! Spread the word.

Now off to get ready and go to a meeting!

Adobe CS4.

How can anyone keep up and still be able to eat and put clothes on their back? This is one of those times when I remember just how much I ALREADY have and how incredibly blessed I am. I am grateful and content with what I have. Well, except for my camera. hahah!

We’d love to see you there. Just come and hang out, bring your laptop, meet some friends, eat some snacks – even pizza and other savory items! I know I’m going to show up hungry

Or you can get competitive in the gym with volleyball, or at a table top game — or Halo 3 and Rock Band tournaments!

Check out full details here!!

TGIF.

I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds cool.

Free Flash Gallery

It. was. so. much. fun.

Both the wedding and taking pictures with the new lens. I spoke with a few trusted sources, trying to decide between this lens and the one that is triple the price but has a little bit more of an open aperture (1.4), and they all agreed that this was the much smarter choice, not only financially but because even a little bit more aperture can give to much bokeh (that’s a very simple summation thanks to Lisa). Apparently a lot of students bought some last week so it must be popular. It only took me 4+ years with the same camera to really accessorize it

The hardest thing about it is that it has no zoom so to compose your shot you have to move back forth, back up, etc. So that was tricky to get used to. The lens definitely doesn’t work for all situations, but I needed to have an idea of what I even wanted to use it for. I think it will be great for portraits and other close up, family type or baby pictures, and of course cat pictures. It even did awesome on action shots while people were dancing! I’ll post some of those later in the week, but for now here’s some fun I had the first night I got it.

• 12.3-megapixel DX-format CMOS imaging sensor
• 5.8x AF-S DX Nikkor 18-105mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens included
• D-Movie Mode  Cinematic 24fps HD with sound (WHAT??!!!)
• 3-inch super-density 920,000-dot color LCD monitor
• Capture images to SD/SDHC memory cards (not included)

Edit – or maybe one of these? A nice, half the price alternative. If you need a really big bag. I think I found something pretty small I can use in the meantime.