Living in a Cloud of Smoke

The wildfires are just getting worse with each passing day. Now we are right smack in the middle of two very large and very dangerous wild fires. About 20 miles to the west of my home the Station fire is still burning out of control.

The wind shifted a bit yesterday and the plumes of smoke hang right over our heads showering us with ash. Now about 20 miles to the east of us, the Oak Glen fire is raging and has now targeted the town of Yucaipa where my best friend lives.

We were briefly in a small pocket of clear air for the past few days but that is no longer. I was in Fontana today and took a photo in the direction of my home.

Those clouds you see in the photo are not clouds but smoke from the wild fire that is hanging over the western part of the Inland Empire. Mt. Baldy is hidden behind that smoke and my house is right underneath all that crap.

I tried to get a decent photo of the plumes from the Oak Glen fire to the East but the sun was already so low and the sky so dark with smoke and ash nothing came out. I'm going to have my friend take some photos from Yucaipa and send them to me to share with all of you. Anyone else have photos or stories to share about the fires?

Another Year of Fire Storms

I live in Upland California. About 5 years ago, our area was ravaged by wild fires that turned into a massive fire storm. The mountains and foothills above my home burned to a crisp from several miles to the west and spanned several miles to the east as well.

One fire had started out west of us and another started east of us and eventually they met in the middle and started an even bigger fire. Hundreds of homes were destroyed and several people died.

We can still see the burned out homes that were never rebuilt and now the fires are back again. There is currently the Station Fire that is burning out of control about 20 miles west of us. Our sky is filled with dirty brown smoke and once again ash is falling like snow all around us. I feel like I'm drowning when I go outside and breathe in the particulate matter in the air.

I suffer from asthma and so does my grandmother. These are trying times for us and we are struggling greatly with the ever increasing heat and the fire spewing it's toxins into the atmosphere. Our breathing has suffered ever since the last fires and now it threatens to get even worse.

As we were driving home from the car dealership last night, we saw the plume of smoke billowing over our neck of the woods. The winds seemed to have shifted and now all the smoke is blowing our way. I took some quick images while we were in the car. They are not that great but you can get the picture of what we were driving into.

 The smoke does make for some beautiful sunsets. Too bad it feels like I'm breathing through a straw every day. I think I'll be going through a lot of inhalers.

Are you near the fires too? Let me know how this is effecting you where you are.

Helping Granny buy a New Kia Spectra!

Today I spent most of my day at the Kia dealership. My grandmother really got herself into a bad car deal and wanted to get out of it and get herself into a new Kia Spectra while she was at it. She really did get screwed with the last car she got. Can you believe she got a 25% interest rate?! It was just crazy so she finally saw how much prices came down and how she could probably do a lot better and get out from under the piece of crap she currently had.

The Kia dealership we went to was in Pomona on Rio Rancho Road. They were really nice. The salesman didn't presure us at all. My grandmother doesn't have the most perfect credit and was hoping for the best while expecting the worst but they were able to get her out from under her crappy loan and into a much better one and a brand new car.

We were there for nearly six hours though. The dealership was actually pretty busy so we had to wait awhile to finalize everything but it wasn't too bad. They really took care of us there. The finance guy that finalized our paperwork was really cute and a big nerd just like me, but like every good man he was taken. At least I got to flirt for an hour! Who knows...one day I might actually meet someone.

So anyways before I go off in a tangent, before we went to the dealership, I was working on another photo that I took of my friend Wendy. This time she is dressed up like Snow White. I did some post production and put her in a new background and softened the image a bit. I really like it. Let me know what you think!

I'm I Crazy for getting Multiple Degrees?

Someone told me today that I was crazy to pursue additional degrees since I already have a Bachelors degree. Well my degree is in business and it's not something I particularly love. My heart is in art. I love to create and be creative. So I'm getting another degree in Photographry. I might even go further and get a third degree in graphic design or 3D Animation.

I guess I love to learn new things. And hey, if that means I get to defer all the massive student loans I have from the first degree while I do this then that's okay with me! I also look at this in the long term. I am learning more skills that will help me to become a better photographer and artist.

There is always something new to learn, and technology always changes. I'm already challenged in my classes since the school runs on Mac computers and programs while I'm stuck with my PC at home. If I could afford a Mac I'd get one. PC's are just made more affordable. Working on these amazing machines at school makes me want a Mac so bad though!

Today my graphic design instructor gave us our first assignments. We have to come up with a unique system of pictographs and we have 4 weeks to do it. I have a few ideas about what I'm going to do for this project. I was thinking of something very complicated at first but then I came up with an idea that is fun and will be easier to excecute. I'm going to do a series of hair style pictographs.

We have to come up with a minimum of 12 in our system so I'm thinking of doing 6 women hair styles and 6 men hair styles. Lets just hope no one else has thought of this idea in my class. I need to sketch all these out first before I create them in Illustrator. I think I'm going to be doing a whole lot of lab time this semester! Wish me luck!

Pin Up Photo Shoot with Wendy

I am a woman with many talents. I am a Photographer, Graphic Designer, Website Designer, Makeup Artist, and Hair Stylist. I'm mostly self taught but I did go to school for Makeup and I'm currently working on my degree in Photography soon to be followed by a Design degree. I'm always striving to better myself and gain additional skills and talents that will help push my business forward. Hopefully this will help me make more money :0).

Well the other day my friend Wendy came over and I made her over 1950's style and we took some pinup style photos of her. I did her hair and makeup and styled her outfits. I think the images came out great and I'm happy that I got to do what I loved and we had a lot of fun making art.

Here are some of the photos from the photo shoot with Wendy.

I'd love to hear what you think of my work. If you are in the greater Los Angeles area and would like to book a photoshoot withe me, just contact me through here or email me directly at LyndaRay@LyndaRayDesigns.com!

Cleaning is hard to do!

I've been cleaning my house all day and I'm still not done. I had to take a little break thought because I'm pooped! The sad thing is I'm not even done yet. I need to finish cleaning my garage so I can set up all of my lighting equipment and turn my garage into my studio for a photo shoot I'm doing tomorrow.

I really want to shoot two birds with one stone so I'm also finally going to catalog and photograph all of my laser disks so I can sell them on ebay. The last time we sold almost several hundred laser disks on ebay and made nearly $1,000 bucks. I was really amazed that there were so many collectors out there for laser disks, but there are.

Hopefully I can make some money on the collection I have left. Times are hard for everyone and no one is knocking down my door right now for paying photo shoots, websites, or graphic design. If it wasn't for the adult websites that I webmaster I wouldn't have very much of an income to speak of. That still makes me sad especially since I've worked so hard to get my bachelors degree and I'm still broke.

I can't even pay my student loan payments right now and had to take 8 units at the local community college just so I can defer them. I really do want to get to the point one day when I can pay all of my bills and still be able to live and take care of my kids.

I can still hope. Maybe it's just the Californian economy that is sucking the life out of me. My family and I are even in danger of losing the only health insurance we can get because the state is so broke. They already cut our coverage down to barely anything.

So right now I'm just going through my garage, attic, and storage unit and try to find things I can sell on ebay and maybe I wont feel so bad that I'm not able to buy my kids new clothes for school right now. I'll be posting links soon to my ebay auctions. Maybe you'll find something good that you just can't live without.

Just Getting Started Again

I just started doing this whole blogging thing again.I'll be writing about my life and different things I experience.