Justine Ungaro

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Location: Los Angeles, California, United States

Thanks for stopping by, please come visit my new wedding blog, The Unbride or my photography blog. And while you're there, leave a comment, I love comments!

Saturday, January 27, 2007

IN THE STUDIO

Yesterday Gary and I went over to Dan & Michelle's house again to shoot Lisa working on her Camp Songs album. Somehow we also had a conversation about naming the new Petty baby that is coming in a few months. One of the top picks seemed to be Jet with a pretty good possibility of Daniel Jet or D.J. for short. We also discussed how a lot of our grandparents' names have become popular once again but that names like Adolf or Osama could take quite a long time to recover from the naughtyness of their forebearers.

While shooting in the studio, I decided to grab a few shots of Lisa. Since it was a recording studio and not a photo studio, I managed to rig up a little lamp and dangle it over her head for some nice flattering light. I tell you, I am so obsessed with lighting these days. I can't even watch movies anymore...all I look at is the lighting...good, bad, interesting, flattering, contrasty...it doesn't matter, I barely even notice what the movie is about. So anyway, there was this little light with a paper shade on a table off to one side in the studio. So, we adjusted the overhead track lighting to bounce off a wall and then held this little lantern in front of Lisa's face and voila....beautiful, candle-lightish, sunsetty lighting. Beautiful!
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I also grabbed a few shots of "Bea", Dan and Michelle's first baby.
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FIVE CHICKS

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This week was my first meeting of "Five Chicks and a Fag"...a.k.a. "Five Chicks" for short...even though the number really isn't accurate anymore. A bunch of us met up at Liquid Kitty which is this little martini bar...the perfect venue to gather in a quiet AND DARK corner to have some good old-fashioned girl talk. I had such a great time, it's really such a wonderful group. Makes me miss my girls from back in D.C. even more. Anyway, as I said the place was practically dark so I really couldn't actually SEE anything that I was trying to take pictures of...but here are a few.
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Shannon is the President of 5 Chicks
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I actually knew Jim in college but I couldn't seem to get myself in the picture
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I think this is how some of the ladies were feeling by the end of the night. :) I knocked over two drinks trying to take this picture. I wish I could blame it on the alcohol but after just one drink, I think that still falls under the blanket of plain old clumsyness.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

SHUT UP STELLA

I was just going through my old blog posts and just realized that I never posted any images from our shoot with Shut Up Stella and that was back in November, yikes! Anyway, here are just a couple of them.
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RANDOM MINOR CELEBRITY SIGHTINGS

In the past week I've had two random celebrity sightings. In fact, I didn't even know either of their names, just recognized them.
One was last Thursday at the 101 Diner. Patrick Renna a.k.a. the redhead kid from The Sandlot was waiting for us to leave so that he could have our table.
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The 2nd sighting of the week was Judy Greer who I saw at The Echo when Gary and I went to see the Submarines. She was in Jawbreaker, The Wedding Planner & 13 Going on 30 among other girly movies...all of which I've seen. :) She usually plays the best friend, assistant or other tag-along to the female lead.
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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

THE SUBMARINES

After being cooped up all day yesterday working on album designs, GK and I decided to go out to The Echo to see our friends John and Blake perform. The two of them plus a laptop with programmed music comprise a band called The Submarines. They are so incredibly good, I recommend that everyone go right out and buy their cd straightaway. www.thesubmarines.com

Unfortunately, I managed to have some mild food poisoning from some meat pizza I ate earlier for dinner so we didn't end up staying long. I did grab a few pictures though.
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MARY POPPINS

Saturday night Jessie came over to eat some of my special quesadillas and homemade guac with us. I also made margarita mix from scratch, meaning fresh squeezed lemon and lime juice and a bunch of splenda. Plus some Cuervo and cointreau....yum yum yum!

We were planning to head out to see a movie afterwards until Gary found that a sing-a-long version of Mary Poppins was playing at the El Capitan movie theatre. So, we scooped up Conroy and headed over. En route Jessie and I discovered that we both have the same weird breathing issues and back problems. We are just kindred spirits, I think. :)

El Capitan is this big old theatre in Hollywood where the seat springs cut into your back and behind but overhead is this huge amazing dome ceiling that makes you feel like a part of cinema history. It really is pretty incredible. The screen is even covered by a big curtain just like in the old days.

The most fascinating part of this show was the fact that a real live Mary Poppins came out at the beginning to scold the audience a bit and to introduce the movie. Spit spot.
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Then throughout the movie, every time the characters break into song, lyrics appear at the bottom of the screen so that the audience can sing along. This made me realize how many incorrect lyrics I have been singing all these years. Like "toppins" is actually "tuppence". I'm sure this is something I could have figured out if I had thought about it but how often do you really re-analyze movies from your youth. I still remember watching Dirty Dancing and thinking "oh, Penny is sick and needs a doctor". I don't remember ever questioning what "knocked up" actually meant. Anyway, I also found Mary Poppins to be surprisingly dirty for a Disney movie from the 60's. Like when Mary sings to Burt about how he "never presses the issue". Hmm. Gary also pointed out to me a rather obvious sign in the foreground during that scene that lays it right out there, it says very blatantly, "Teas". Add an "e" to the end of that and that's Mary Poppins for you for sure. She also struck me as being terribly self-important and arrogant. I don't think I would enjoy her in real life...although I did have fun belting out the songs in the theatre. There's always something weird to do on a Saturday night in L.A....or any night of the week for that matter.

THAITALIAN

Recently I have a new obsession....paper. As in fine types of stationary, envelopes, letter-press, you name it. I just love the stuff. I've had so much fun picking out the papers and supplies for my business cards, gift certificates etc. So Friday night GK and I headed to Pasadena to hit the Paper Source store. Afterwards we shopped around a bit and what an adorable area it is! After working up a good appetite it was time to find some dinner. We came across this place called "Thaitalian".
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It is literally what it sounds like, Thai and Italian fusion. Only in California can you find things this weird. The menu was comprised of things like pad thai linguini and pad thai pizza among other odd combinations. We opted for a tuna tartare appetizer which seemed more Japanese than thai OR italian but it was good. For the main course we had thai bbq chicken pizza covered with cilantro, avocado and other things that really shouldn't go on pizza. It wasn't great but it was certainly an experience.

BABYSITTING

Ok, I know I have a lot to catch up on so I'll start with last week. On Thursday night Gary and I went over to babysit Zoe and Henry so that Michael and Kay could go out for their anniversary. It's hard to believe that it's been 9 years since I was at their wedding, I was still in college and that seems like a whole other lifetime. Yikes! Anyway, GK and I thought that it might be fun to do some sort of activity with the kids so we brought over all of the fixings to make and decorate cupcakes, including my brand new pink silicone cupcake pan that was among the big box of xmas presents from Gary's family.
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Zoe quite enjoyed decorating the cupcakes.
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Henry just dumped a lot of icing on top of one of them and then ate it. Just the icing though. Afterwards he smashed the cake part onto a plate.
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When you don't have kids, you forget about all of the little things that you should or should not do with kids. For one thing, large amounts of sugar right before bed is not really a great idea. Not thinking about this, Gary and I basically might as well have mainlined coffee right into their little veins for the same effect. So, after pumping Z & H full of sugar, we put them straight to bed. Meaning that we all went into the bedroom for a story. Henry demanded that we all climb into the same bed which was cozy to say the least. At one point I remember seeing icing still caked on Henry's face and thought, aren't these kids supposed to brush their teeth? Another thing that just doesn't really occur to you if you don't have kids. So we eventually coaxed them over to the sink, Zoe went no problem as usual. Henry battled over it and finally squeezed some pink toothpaste onto his toothbrush. Instead of brushing his teeth though, he decided it was a better idea to polish the sink with it. That finally ended with threats to go to bed without a story.

Of course it only took about 5 minutes for Henry to get up to request some milk. Next he got up to say he was hungry...several times. Finally I asked him if he was really hungry or just not tired. "I'm just not tired" he said. At least he was honest. So, Gary spent the next half hour telling Henry made up stories off the top of his head. One of them was about Darth Vader flying in on a pink spaceship but Henry was quick to correct him that Darth Vader is a BOY and that he would never have a pink spaceship. Pink is for girls!

A few hours later, Michael and Kay returned from their much needed night out. We told them about our evening and Henry's strong ideals about what is for boys and what is for girls. Michael said "this coming from a kid who 6 months ago wore a blue Cinderella dress around for a solid week!" Apparently Henry went through a little obsession with this particular dress and wore the thing around every day with a pull-up on his head as a crown. These are the things I was sorry to miss, would have loved to have my camera for that one. :)

Sunday, January 21, 2007

I COPIED THIS ARTICLE FROM GARY FONG'S BLOG http://www.xanga.com/garyfong1

This is a must read, so hilarious!
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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

BACK IN L.A.

After 3 weeks in D.C. over the holidays, Oliver and I hopped on a plane on Monday to come back to L.A. This time he rode in a bigger bag but it didn't seem to make much of a difference to him. It did however make me feel better about dragging him on a plane for the 3rd time in 6 weeks. Ollie was very happy to see Gary again and to return to all of his Christmas presents, one of which he immediately re-killed by breaking it's neck...over and over and over again.

All day today Oliver has been scratching at this mat that we have on the kitchen floor. At first I thought there might be some food under there or something but no. Eventually we opened the cabinet door so that Oliver could investigate and find whatever it was he was looking for. Then Gary had the brilliant idea to open the drawer right above the mat and cabinet. Lo and behold there it was. One of the many balls that was confiscated weeks ago because Ollie kept on throwing it under the couch. We of course had to give in and let him play with it...until it ends up under the couch again. Then it goes in the trash.

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Monday, January 01, 2007

KRISTYNA & JIMMY'S WEDDING

On Saturday I shot the most beautiful wedding at Congressional Country Club for a gorgeous couple named Kristyna and Jimmy. I actually met Kristyna and her mom last year while they were gown shopping at Hitched (www.hitchedsalon.com) and I was just visiting the shop. Anyway, we ended up chatting and they came into the studio and booked me to shoot the wedding. Kristyna looked so amazing, I haven't had chance to edit the whole wedding yet but here are a few. I'll post more later in the week.

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Jimmy gave her a gorgeous diamond ring (yes another one) as her wedding gift
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Giselle (www.hairbygiselle.com) did a fabulous job with the bride's hair
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Dad helped Kristyna with her jewelry
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Kristyna's grandfather gives a toast...in Chinese, I have no idea what he said but it sounded funny
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the ring bearer ran around like a mini Chippendale dancer
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They pretended to leave in a golf cart but just drove away and then came back since they were staying at the club.
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Bubbles are always a good send off.

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