October 8th, 2011

Tags

apple picking, Art, Carrigan Arts Photography, Photography

Who’s a Dirty Freakin Slacker and has two thumbs?

Tags

apple picking, being a jackass, Photography, Travel

THIS GUY!

Well, girl, but who’s counting really?

Anyway, to self flagellate in response to my hiatus I bring forth a shit ton of pictures. Or maybe not a shit ton, but a dab’ll do ya, right?

DUCK!

Did I getcha? No? Aah, well.

These are the breathtakingly beautiful fowl that frequent the Old Mill out in Westminster, MASS – a place my Virgo friend, Gina, had never been. Now I know this place to be a serious gem, having gnoshed on their corn fritters and pecan rolls in my lifetime, but Gina had never even heard of the place. So, in a fit of adventure seeking, I decided we would lunch in east bum for the afternoon.

We never looked back.

I’ll be honest, I’d literally FORGOTTEN about those pecan rolls. The corn fritter no, they’re ingrained in my psyche like childhood trauma, but the pecan rolls? What an overly pleasant and tasty surprise those were.

I say overly pleasant because, given that I am an Aspiring Skinny Bitch, they were mocking my waistline with every glazed, scrumptuous bite. Still, I worked out later, so it almost makes their kamikaze assault ok.

Moving on, here’s some apples.

No, they don’t have apples at the Old Mill, but they do have them at Lull Farm in Hollis, New Hampshire where we ended up that afternoon for some apple picking. I ended up in a tree, ladies and gentlemen.

Who’s surprised?

It was amazing. The weather was perfect for driving around aimlessly, shooting and apple picking and pecan roll eating and corn fritter dipping and loud harmonizing in the car. I’d say it was quite possibly one of the better Mondays I’ve spent in a good long while.

Doesn’t hurt that my favorite season has officially started.

So, to close out this juggernaut, I leave you with a sprinkling of randomness.

Enjoy.

Appropriate tree climbing, mischief face...

New Lens = Cat Exploitation

Tags

cats, Photography

This is Griffin. Griffin could kill you with a thought.

 

I sense that you don’t believe me.

Perhaps seeing him in full, terrifying regalia will help.

WITH A THOUGHT!

Seriously, my cat is THE NOTHING. I’ve always thought so. He combines the timeless Cat God Like grace of a servant of Bast, with the sheer awesome power of the Neverending Story Antagonist. All in the eyes.

I dare you to disagree.

No, Griffa dares you to disagree.

 

 

August 26th, 2011

Tags

Caitlin Carrigan, Carrigan Arts Photography, Self Portrait

Swimming in Dresses

Tags

Caitlin Carrigan, Carrigan Arts Photography, Crane's Beach, Kelly Purpura

This shoot has been years in the making. And as per usual, the outcome is nothing like what I was originally going for. Every shoot becomes its own entity and I simply roll with the photographic punches, if you will.

This is Kelly Purpura. If you frequent this blog, you’ve most likely seen her before. She gets shot by me often. I’ve had the plan of taking pictures of her on a beach with some wispy, gauzy manner of dress in the nice breeze, but today, we had this bright floral number.

Bright floral number inspired very different pictures.

To get these shots, we sat around on the beach jabber jawing for hours. The beach was pretty high traffic that afternoon, given that we went on a Sunday and those pesky bastards at some Travel Publisher had recently named Crane’s Beach as one of the Top Family Beaches in the country. Still, we walked out onto the sand bar and sat for a few hours. I hoped the time might clear out some of the rabble rousers and perhaps a thinner crowd would make photography easier. I mean, I totally want the back hair of some shirtless family man in the background of my shots, but most back hair clad gentlemen prefer to keep their Grizzly Adams ruggedness for the wife at home.

I was correct. Though, by the time we finally packed up to head back to the car, parks rangers were driving the beach with a message of forewarning, “We’re about to lock your car in the lot.”

Good times.

Sunset was worth it. I don’t care what bright blue eyed ranger says! Though he said it with only the kindest of tones, so no hard feelings there.

Though I DO have hard feelings for the bastards who were getting married that afternoon up at the Crane Estate. How dare they get married where I want to get married one day? Well, not how dare they in general, but how dare they on a day when I showed up to take pictures!? Bastards.

Despite the aim of shooting in the sunset, we did get some shots before the sun was completely heading for the horizon. I was quite pleased with the whole shoot, actually. And though the flowing gauzy ideas are still yet to be realized, that results in further shooting! No complaints here!

All the more reason to go back. All the more excuses for me to go in the water – fully dressed.

Yeah, I was wearing pants.

I won’t be judged for my “run-in-the-water-fully-clothed” tendencies anymore than for my “”run-into-the-water-naked” tendencies. Sadly, the latter said tendencies are very rarely realized. One day, I will own a beach house and these tendencies will see their day. Until then, pants will have to do.

And let’s be real, it results in the rare opportunity of driving pants-less.

Good times.

Dude, the sky is gorgeous in this shot.

I freakin love me some sunset. Thank god Kelly and I had stuff to talk about for four hours. Or was it three? I’m not sure, but holy holy was that sunset worth it.

I kinda feel a hankering to go back in the water. It’s a beautiful day out today. The temptation is brutal. The last time I ventured into the ocean was over a year ago, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where I was brutalized by enormous waves, all whilst holding my daughter’s hand as she giggled hysterically with every enormous crest.

Yes, I was wearing pants then as well.

There are no pictures of me in such a state, but there are many of all else I happened upon here.

Now back to Kelly.

This water was freakin perfect. Perfect temperature, perfect temperament – it would have been almost impossible for me to go waterside with my camera were the waves in a tizzy of any kind. I might be daring, but I’m not stupid!

Oh, I should mention the fact that I recently discovered the magnificent process known as Photoshop Actions! Yes, that’s right, gone are the days when you do a bunch of stuff to a picture, make it look hoity toity, feel all accomplished, then close the thing only to realize you have to start all over again! Well, no more! (I can tell many of you are thinking, “wait, Caitlin didn’t know this?”

Even more of you are probably thinking, “Photoshop hurts my brain.”

No worries, ladies and gentlemen. It hurts mine too. And I am always learning.

As you can see, I made both of these pictures greenish. It just adds a little something, in my opinion! Yet, unlike the days of yore, now when I wanted my picture to look green, I pressed two keys, watched it become awesome, then saved the thing and myself three minutes!

Photoshop Actions, ladies and gentlemen. Promoting laziness one picture at a time.

Still, Kelly looks fabulous green.

(And if you are interested in learning more about Photoshop Actions, but are the kind of person who enjoys instant gratification and can’t bring yourself to wait for the blogs to follow, try Deviantart.com, and search Actions. Many other artists have recorded and shared their own processes for you to steal and use to your hearts content!)

(Believe me, I did.)

Now I thank you for dilly dallying long enough to get this far and as reward, share one more picture.

We hereby revisit the ever illusive jump shot.

Live Long and Prosper.

Seahorses Rule

Tags

Carrigan Arts Photography, seahorses

When this picture was pushed down my blog by later posts…I changed the date to bring it back up to the top of the blog.

I love this picture.

Fuckin Seahorses, forever

Welcome to My Mansion – Newport, Rhode Island

Tags

Breakers, Newport Rhode Island, Photography, The Elms, Travel

I swear to you, as God is my witness, I WILL live in a palatial estate the likes of these one day. I’ll probably live there with an MC Hammer style entourage, but whatever, it’ll still be palatial.

Welcome to my mahogany smoking chamber, friends. Please, remove your shoes, hand them to any number of the staff and they will be sure to shine them for you while we eat, sitting on their bent, tired backs. Aah, I love the good life.

Seriously, I want this house. There are some bigger homes in Newport, but I think I could survive with The Elms. It feels like walking into a French Palace, without the French. Score? I don’t know. Depends on the Frenchman.

This home actually inspired a novel I will one day write. I might actually call it the Elms, though probably not. I find that too declarative. And besides, I don’t want them to feel obliged to sell my epic romantic tale in their gift shop. That would be weird for me.

Why?

It just would.

The interior of the home is gorgeous as I said, but after touring through the upper apartments, a step through a side doorway and suddenly you’re accosted with the working man’s quarters. Literally, there was a sewing room, followed by a corridor of white tile. It was the floor, ceiling, walls – white tiles, hundreds of thousands of tiny white squares along every inch. I found it strange.

Still I enjoyed the small china cabinet that was larger than my bedroom with a walk in safe.

That was pretty stellar.

Then the tour recording informed me (yes, my tour was given by a set of headphones. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s me meander at my own breakneck speed) that the tile hallways were made that way in order for the ‘help’ to have the ability to ‘hose them down.’ It was considered more sanitary.

Oh the things that will happen in that hallway in my novel. You needn’t know now, but someday not long from now, perhaps you will read a book that includes said hallway, and said things I allude to will happen. Suddenly you’ll think, “I feel like I knew this, though not really quite this, was coming.”

Perhaps you’ll feel joy. Or perhaps just confusion as to why the hell and where the hell you heard anything about the damn hallway in the first place and “I don’t bloody well care! Why can’t I just read the damn book?”

Sorry about that.

Thank you for reading my book though.

Anyway, moving on.

Waking up to a ceiling like this?

It’s my fate. I know it is.

This was either a bedroom or an office or a parlor, or even a breakfast nook, I have no idea, the gold filigree was too distracting for me to pay attention to the damn headphones.

Oddly enough, despite a tendency I’ve had since the dawn of my time, I did not, in fact, ask any of the guides whether the ‘palace’ was haunted. That’s normally the first thing I do. I guess I’ll have to find that out the next time I visit, eh?

Be that weirdo.

The Elms wasn’t the only one of the mansions we visited that day. Though the Newport Mansion Conglomerate offers a three house ticket for cheaper than the price of three separate entries, we only had time to visit two of the homes. As I was told before heading down by avid Newport fans, I had to visit “Breakers.”

So, I did.

But on my way, I found this bad larry.

It looked as abandoned as any French Chateau in Rhode Island can look. I wondered what was going on within its walls, given the two stray cars that were parked near the building. As a part of the initial greeting we received whilst buying our tickets, we were informed that the mansions were ‘acquired’ by the conglomerate for a fucking song.

No I’m serious. These are worth nigh on one hundred million or more I would think. The Mansion Tourist Group bought them from the families for one million. Maybe even less. I can’t quite remember.

This notion exasperates me.

Honey, if this Chateau is going to sell to anyone for that low a price, I’ll fucking come up with that money. I swear on all that is holy that I would find a way!

Though, let’s be clear. There are sneaky loopholes in place for the families that sold them. For example, in “The Breakers” there is a skylight on the second floor looking up at the sky. Or so one would think, but in fact it is a glass floor installed so the rich could feel the joy and airy feel of a skylight. The skylight was actually located in the floor of the cramped and miserable servants’ quarters hallways. Often times, they said, one could look up and see the servants walking across the skylight (there was one at “The Elms” as well). I found that amazing, and as before in “The Elms” I wanted to explore the servants area – be inspired by the rooms in which my characters might have slept.

Yet this part of the house was not on the menu.

Why, you ask?

Now we come back to that loophole I was telling you about.

Apparently the families still, technically, own the houses – in some manner of speaking. The third floor servants’ quarters have been turned into family apartments for the still hoity toity.

Bastards!

And just on a side note, when I belched a second ago, it tasted like sushi. I love me some sushi, but I think I can do without the after taste.

Moving on.

The reason they named Breakers – well, the Breakers – is because it is perched on a cliff over looking the water. You can hear the waves crashing from anywhere on the property. It is stunningly beautiful.

I’ve visited a similarly gorgeous expanse of the Gilded Age in Essex, Massachusetts. The Crane Estate is very grand in its expanse as well, yet it sits alone on a gorgeous rolling hillside, not amongst equally astounding monoliths such as these.

I’ve never been inside that house. Perhaps I should remedy that.

Maybe they’ll have servants quarters I can bloody well visit! The fire needs fodder, damn it!

Anyway, to close out the post, I will add a few shots to appease the eye and bid you adieu.

It’s a vase, people. Get with the program.

Hidden driveway so that guests wouldn’t see something so appalling as deliveries being made. How thoughtful…

Insert child-riding-a-goat joke, here.

The World of Disney through Autofocus

Tags

Animal Kingdom, Animal Kingdom Lodge, Disney, Epcot, Walt Disney World

Dear Lord, thank you for the bounty of what I have come to know as Amusement Park crack. Yes, I speak of the Walt Disney World Parks in Orlando, Florida. If you have come to read my blogs in the past (here and Sleep Before Waking) you’ve most likely passed or scrolled by yet another preaching of praise through pictures by yours truly. I honestly, can’t get enough of Disney World. Having a six year old daughter only compounded that. Still, I hereby express some – not all, but some – of the reason why the place calls to me on a yearly basis.

This picture was taken in the Boardwalk area of the park. This area of the parks is where the Epcot Resorts are located and the parking is free and walking around is free. It’s modeled after a 1920′s Jersey Boardwalk style of place and it is complete with dance halls, jazz music, street performers, and if you’re lucky enough to stay in any of these resorts, it sports some of the nicest pools ever. You can snag frozen drinks, get photo booth shots done, gawk at the mime with seething hate and blind fixation. But more importantly – if you missed it the first time – you can do it all for Free! Where else in Disney can you say that (other than Downtown Disney, which though I want to say doesn’t count, it does. It’s fun to walk around there, too.)

Another spectacular reason to visit the Boardwalk is that one can park here early, walk through the Boardwalk area and enter Epcot Center through their World Showcase entrance. That’s right, don’t tell anyone, but if you don’t mind the walk, you can save the $11 – $14 parking fee that it takes to freaking get close to the parks.

Score!

As you can see above, (and in the Boardwalk link) the World Showcase is yet another reason why Disney effing rules. You don’t actually have to be cultured to eat Falafel! The “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” has everything you could need to feel world traveled, as well as fireworks and light up clapping hats. On top of those selling points, they also have the most soothing and hypnotic ambient music playing through the park. I swear to God, it’s Aural hypnosis. If I could get the soundtrack to Epcot and just play it every night while I sleep, I’d probably solve the world energy crisis in the wake of the music’s brain growth side effects.

Meanwhile, if you’re looking for more awesome free shit to do, we have the Animal Kingdom Lodge. No I’m not saying go stay there (though if you have RCI you can trade a timeshare to stay there, I recently learned. Wicked.), but I am saying go park there for free and walk around the resort.

Why you ask?

I see you still doubt me.

Because it’s a freakin zoo!

No, literally. They have Giraffes and Zebra and Gazelle on the property and the animals can be seen at all hours of the day and night if they are feeling so inclined. Yes, sometimes they meander to areas that make them less visible to the passerby, but still – free zoo equals free damn zoo, if you ask me.

Beyond the awesome of potentially seeing animals and most certainly being accosted by puffy throated lizards, the architecture is stellar.

This tends to be the case with most of the main resorts. Their atriums, lobbies and main thorough fairs make for a good dose of ogling to anyone who has an eye for “Holy crap, that’s cool!” type shit. I personally have to have such an eye as a requirement for the photography so I like to think myself pretty keen in that department.

Maybe I’m easily impressed. We’ll never know.

Another pinnacle of Animal Kingdomy goodness is Animal Kingdom itself.

Now, I’m going to be honest here – Animal Kingdom is the closest to a Vietnamese prison as most of us are ever going to get. The place is hot as hell, the walkways are cramped and often completely overcrowded, and people are extremely intelligent. So much so that the act of ramming a child’s stroller into your shins as a means of gentle greeting is not only acceptable, it’s suggested!

Still, if you can get past the crowds and the resulting crowd attitude – and if you promise me you won’t go in the summer – it’s one of the more visually stunning places in all of Disney World.

Though there are furry creatures galore in this park (and I’m not just talking about the dude with his chest hair bared at eye level standing less than a centimeter away from you in line for Everest), I personally find the space itself to be the one of the best. If you have the patience to wait for the crowds to filter out (or NOT go in the summer, as I said), you can find yourself standing in places like this, alone.

It’s beyond calming to the spirit.

Worth it.

June 19th, 2011 – Happy Birthday Miles!

Tags

Cake, Photography

Here’s your cake! It’s layered. The middle one is my favorite, Raspberry Cream filled. Hellified.

Making Art of Art

Tags

Blown Glass, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Chihuly, Travel

The title of this blog makes me think of P Diddy, in a tongue-in-cheek-I-hate-that-effing-guy kind of way. Still, here I am dubbing Sting in order to pay homage to Biggy Smalls.

Sue me, Sting. Sue me.

It’s pretty rare that I take an unfocused photograph and don’t delete it. For some reason, I love this one.

These shots (I should probably clarify) were taken at the Boston MFA (Museum of Fine Arts) and are of glass works by Chihuly. I want desperately to shatter the shit out of a few of these works on some train tracks or some shit, then take pictures of their corpses. That isn’t an option, sadly – though maybe if I pow wowed with the artist, he might have some outcasts of the artistic variety that he wouldn’t mind seeing destroyed in the name of art.

We decided to go on a Sunday afternoon, unaware of how severely such a decision would affect our day. The place was packed. Sheeple were strolling through the lunch tables on their way to the Chihuly exhibit. We managed to sneak into the crowd on our way to the bathroom. Thank you Brian, for your week bladder.

This was one of my favorite installations. I would LOVE to do something similar in the guest bathroom of my future mansion. Now that I have said that out loud, it will be done. Though technically I didn’t say it out loud, I typed it, but whatever.

Once upon a time, I visited the Waterford Crystal plant and fell madly in love with the notion of paying out the nose for blown glass made by serious glass fascists. In Waterford, an artisan isn’t allowed to touch a piece of crystal until he has trained for somewhere around eight years. That notion made the glass all the more appealing to me. They had chandeliers that were reminiscent of this. This was nigh on fifteen years ago. They were bulbous and gawdy to me. Now, they are cosmic.

Does anyone else feel almost uncomfortable at the mention of the world ‘bulbous?’

I do.