Posts tagged with “travel”

News from the Rob & Lauren world

November 26, 2008 // Posted by lauren in

Hey all!

Just a bit of news to throw at you today.

We were interviewed by a cool local TV station called Omni in a segment about South Asian weddings. It will be airing tonight between 8:00 - 9:00 PM on Channel 11 on cable. Since we don’t have  cable here we will likely be checking it out at my parents. Anyone have any ideas of how to get a digital copy of a TV broadcast so we can have it stored?

Once again we were highly honored to see that one of our images is a finalist in the Mostly Lisa photography competition. Head on over and vote for this stunning image we took while in India.

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I’ll give you a little back story on the image.

In February Rob and I were in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, India. Varanasi is a very fascinating city in terms of it’s history. It’s located on the banks of the Holy Ganga River (or Ganges). Because of this, it is considered one of the most sacred pilgrimage sites for all Hindus. They believe that to wash onesself in the Ganga will remove all of ones sins. Furthermore, it’s highly desirable to die in Varanasi, as it will release one from the cycle of continual life and death. We heard some fascinating stories of people waiting for 20 years to die in Varanasi. It’s really a very powerful city.

Along the river there are a series of ghats, which are steps leading down to the water. These different ghats have different purposes. Some are bathing ghats, some are cremation ghats. One cannot go to Varanasi without spending time exploring the ghats. As we were walking along them one day, narrowly avoiding water buffaloes and pick-pocketers alike, I saw this guru-ji. It wasn’t the enormous turban covering his incredibly long dreadlocks that stopped me, but his eyes. I stopped Rob and we stood a little ways away from him trying to figure out how to get a shot.

To be quite honest with you we both find it incredibly difficult to ask people for a photo. Since the beginning of our photography career we’ve always been expressly asked to take photos of people. We have no background in news photography so we’re not used to taking shots without being asked to do so. It took me a while to work up the nerve, but eventually I did.

I approached him and held up my camera to signal that I wished to take a photo of him. This clearly happened quite a bit to him, and he responded with a price of 20 rupees (50 cents).

If you’ve ever been to India you’ll very clearly understand what I did next.

I haggled.

I offered 10 rupees. It’s not that I was cheap. I mean, we’re talking about a quarter here. It’s simply the mindset you get into while in India. EVERYTHING is bargained. Your food, your lodging, your transportation. Everything. You never just accept the first price offered to you.

He refused the 10 rupees and stood firm at 20. I hesitated for a moment, simply because of the pride invovled in “getting a deal”. I didn’t want to just pay whatever he asked.

Then I stopped myself and said, this is going to be an amazing shot, and I’m looking at paying 50 cents. So Rob handed over two grimy 10 rupee notes to him.

I stepped forward to take my shots and he looked straight into my lens in way that so few people have the courage to do. So many get scared of the camera, and he just seemed to look straight through it.

I took a rapid series of shots to ensure I had the one I wanted, and we walked away.

Looking back at it, I really wished we had taken the time to take so many more shots with him. But even just stopping and asking someone for a shot was a big step for us, so we were happy at the time.

We always learn so much about ourselves and our art when we shoot, even if we wished it had all gone differently after the fact.

 

Hope you enjoyed the little back story! I guess it turned out to be longer than I expected :) Rob is actually going through photos from India today (the first time we’ve really looked at them since we returned) so perhaps I’ll share a few more on here.

If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out The Wedding Travelers , the blog we kept as we traveled Vietnam, Thailand and India for three months. The writing may not be that interesting, but trust me, there are some fascinating photos on there!

Love you guys, and don’t forget to go vote for us!

Lauren :)

 

We’re back!!

December 30, 2008 // Posted by lauren in

Did you even know we were gone? Probably not, eh?

Anyway, we just got home this evening from 3 wonderful days in Banff with my family. Tons of fun had, hundreds of photos, and many stories to share.

That will be coming soon enough! But now I’m heading to bed. Here’s one photo to tease you!

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Hope you are all having a wonderful holiday! We had such a relaxing few days, but believe it or not I’m excited to get back to work tomorrow!

Lauren :)

Rob & Lauren in Vancouver

February 20, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

Got a cool little announcement here for you all!

From March 6 - 10 we will be in Vancouver meeting up with some of the cities’ coolest people! Hooray! It promises to be an incredibly fun visit.

While we’re there we should have time for one or two portrait sessions! So if you are in Vancouver and have been jonesing for a little Rob & Lauren photography of yourself now is a great chance! Head on over to our contact form and drop us a line so we can set something up!

I couldn’t find our photos from our last trip to Vancouver (archived on an old drive. Boo!) so instead I’m hooking you up with one from Banff.

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 Take a look at that landscape, and then think of the exact opposite, and that’s where our plane is taking us tonight! I won’t tell you where we’re off to, but hopefully we can blog a few photos while we’re away!

Lauren :)

The Wedding Travelers

March 27, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

As many of you likely know, last year we embarked on a journey that we called The Wedding Travelers. It was a 3 month trip around South East Asia and India that we chronicled on a blog. It’s almost exactly a year since we returned, but we are always thinking about it. With amazing timing, a contest popped up called The Photoblog Awards. I thought The Wedding Travelers was the perfect thing to submit. We’d love if you’d take a few minutes this weekend to vote for us! Just go to this link:

http://vote.photoblogawards.com/photoblog.php?name=the-wedding-travelers

I believe you might need to set up an account. It will take a few minutes, but we’d really, truly appreciate it. This project is very close to our hearts, and we are hoping to continue to work on it in the very near future.

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 Many thanks!

Lauren :)

New images from The Wedding Travelers

April 3, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

Hey everyone!

Something a bit different for you all today! I have been going through all of our photos from our trip last year to finally choose some for a portfolio. It was quite the experience, revisiting that trip, and has made me get all itchy to go travel again! Don’t worry though, we won’t be running off to Tibet any time soon. We’ve got a full year of weddings ahead of us!

But I thought I’d share a couple I edited this morning. If you’d like to see a few more check out The Wedding Travelers.

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Both of these were taken in Varanasi, on the holy Ganges river.

Lauren

It’s Time

October 15, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

Prince William Forest Park, Virginia

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pathway

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Washington, D.C.

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If you’ve heard our “how we became photographers story”, you’ll know that at our core is a deep deep love of travel photography. Now that our weddings have finished for the year, we’re ready to go. Somewhere. Anywhere. And we are looking for suggestions.

We want to spend a month in a part of the world that one could call “visually fascinating”. We have a few places we’ve been thinking about, but figured all our blog readers might have some really amazing ideas.

So if you know of a place that we would love to visit, drop us a comment. If we end up using your suggestion, we’ll hook you up with an awesome prize. Not sure what it is yet, but it will be cool. The rules: it can’t be where you live (nice try!), and it needs to be relatively inexpensive to travel while there (sorry Western Europe!).

Thanks friends! We’re really looking forward to hearing some fascinating places to take our cameras and our open minds.

Lauren & Rob

 

 

Engagement Session in Greece

October 29, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

Before taking on a task like shooting your own wedding photos, it’s always a good idea to practice. We shot two engagement sessions of ourselves while on Santorini. Here’s an image from the second one :)

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 Lauren :)

The next adventure….

November 11, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

Well, my friends, it took us a little while to decide but we’ve just booked our tickets. I read through all your suggestions a few times, but one destination kept grabbing my attention. It fit all our requirements, and just happened to be an area of the world that we’ve never been.

In January we are going to be heading to…

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 PERU!! And no, the above photo is not of Peru, but rather sand dunes in India. Relevance? Peru also has sand dunes! And also I don’t have any photos of Peru…yet….

A big thanks to Sharon, Ashley, Andrea, and Allison for the selling us on Peru! If y’all wanna email me (lauren [at] robandlauren [dot] ca) I’ll be hooking you up with a little thank you present! If anyone has an advice re: Peru feel free to drop us a line or leave us a comment!

 

And once again, thanks everyone for all the great suggestions. We really hope we’ll be traveling a lot in the next few years, and I know I’m going to keep coming back to all those comments!

Lauren :)

 

Polaroids from Greece

November 13, 2009 // Posted by lauren in

Hey guys!

Well, our new film scanner finally arrived. For all those curious, it’s a Microtek M1 Pro. Rob has been going through all our 4x5 and polaroid film and scanning it in, exciting! Today I have some really sweet polaroids to share with you that we took in Greece!

(Apologies for the slightly crooked scans, we’re still learning :)

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 Now, these next shots on are on a type of film called TZ Artistic. If you start mucking around with a pointy object on it, the emulsion will start to move, and you’ll be able to manipulate the way it looks. Very time consuming (each one takes almost an hour to do fully) but very cool results. 

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 This is a super close up of the detail. Very very painterly!

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 Hope you enjoyed those! We had a ton of fun taking them. They were all taken with an SX-70 Polaroid camera, 600 film with an ND filter, and TZ Artistic film. 

Lauren :)

P.S. Rob has been “secretly” blogging for a couple weeks now! He’s never really blogged on here, but has so much knowledge, and amazing photos to share! Today he posted a couple scans from our 4x5 camera. So now you’re going to have to go over to his blog (www.roblim.com) and check it out! Make sure to leave him some nice comments! 

One Website To Rule Them All

June 14, 2010 // Posted by lauren in

Today I am announcing a new website. (Click here if you just wanna see it, and skip my ramblings :)

Yes. It’s ridiculous.

If you’ve followed us for a while you’ll know that I seem to make that announcement every couple of months. Rob and I just have a lot of things we love to do! We love to create portraits, travel, teach, shoot personal work, we adore being involved in FotoJournal, and we just don’t want to give any of those things up! The result is that there are a LOT of websites that our work is now spread across.

We’re cool with things being that way, to separate what we do both in the web and in our minds, but I think it’s been hard for anyone just finding us to know what we’re about.

So Rob gave me a task. Create a portal. (You can call it a splash page, I’m going to call it a portal because it sounds mystical). I have a small amount of HTML and CSS knowledge, and have been learning a little bit here and there over the past year, but have never made a full website with them.

Well, I gave myself the job to do it over the weekend. I spent some time brainstorming, made a design in Photoshop, then yesterday I sat down, learned myself some VERY basic HTML and CSS, and made a website. I’m super duper proud of that, even though I know it’s honestly the most simple website in the history of the world. What’s neat is that I actually made it, completely by hand, and it turned out exactly as I had planned. Yay! (P.S. I’m not trying to brag, just showing that you can seriously do anything you put your mind to!)

Anyway, that’s way too big of a buildup for the actual site, and now you’re going to go there and be like “What’s the big deal?” but I’ll still share it with you :)

From henceforth, we will keep our projects neatly arranged at: http://www.robnlauren.com

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So go check it out, and explore our little world!

Hope everyone had a super lovely weekend! Looking forward to sharing some portraits with you this week!!

Lauren :)