Wherever you may I hope you’re enjoying some lovely Spring weather. I have always adored Spring. Perhaps it’s because I’m a Spring baby or that our days grow longer, or the landscape is so very fresh, dewey, and brilliantly green. Growing up on the East Coast Spring was quite dramatic for us. I have lovely memories of Spring as a kid; the smell of wild onion grass, earthworms bubbling up through wet earth, wobbly lambs and sheep, newly born, rain that feels more cleansing than other times of the year. California is so very different for me. The clues of Spring are much more subtle but I’ve grown to love them, too.
Last weekend I spent some time with two of my dearest friends in the Santa Ynez Valley just north of Santa Barbara. We have known each other for over 25 years (that always amazes me) and we all grew up within about ten miles of each other in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, at least in my opinion. One of my favorite things about California is that both of these amazing woman live here as well.
We had a lovely weekend. We drank lots of delicious wine, welcomed the first of the Spring lambs to the vineyard, took naps, ate way too may cupcakes from Enjoy Cupcakes in Los Olivos, stole some breakfast from the vineyard chickens, and took long walks at night.
Enjoy a few images from our weekend. For the photographers out there, I shot with a Contax 645, 80mm lens, Fuji 400h and the black and white images are Trix 320 (much grainer than I remember). These are straight scans right out of the camera and can I just say it was so nice to drop them off at the lab and pick them up a few days later. Have we forgotten how great that is?
Lauren’s profile as we drive South.
The vineyard house. It’s a really amazing place but sadly I didn’t shoot much inside (needed faster film).
I tried really hard to bring one of these lambs home with me. These little guys are three days old and ridiculously adorable.
Tara is gorgeous.
Reuben (the vineyard manager) and a three day old lamb.
Tara and Lauren, all smiles.
Lauren and I stopped in Paso Robles and found some fun vintage items for upcoming kids shoots. (vintage, western scarf and costume jewelry).
How sweet are they?
We woke up bright and early to steal some eggs. Doing our best to avoid the rooster.
Lauren riding a horse named Sundance (wish I had a wider lens while we were on the horses).
Our first flight of cupcakes from Enjoy Cupcakes. If you haven’t seen Jose Villa’s amazing shoot of this place, you can see that here. I introduced myself to Amber and she was so very friendly and sweet. My shot here is a bit too ‘cupcake noir’ for my tastes but it’s all I could muster before the girls devoured them…and yes we went back the next day and ordered many more. 
Here’s one of our sunset strolls through the vineyard. We got caught in the darkness shortly after this but the stars were magical.
How very sweet are these two? They’ve had many fun adventures together and even though I’m not in the photo with them, I feel like I’m there too and they are looking back at me. So sweet.
p.s. If you haven’t shot film in a while, I’d encourage it. Remember the days when you could shoot, drop off film, and pick it up. Most importantly, no long hours editing after your shoot? I miss those days and wish I could shoot film all the time. It’s not quite practical for me in my business (yet) but I’ll be shooting more film this year. If not for the ease of film, just to simply slow down a bit.
I hope you enjoyed my sappy post! Stayed tuned with an exciting update about an East Coast shooting trip with a few sessions available.
by Sarah
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