Carneyland

On my way in to work today, I realized that I have very specific (subconcious, or at least they used to be) rules on what volumes I will use.  This only applies to radios that have a display for volume that shows a number.  So far I have figured out I will use volumes with any number 10 or lower, and above 10, I generally avoid primes unless they have some poetry to them, such as 11.  13 is ok, hey, it’s 13, thats a cool number.  17 is iffy, and 19 is straight out, it’s so close to 20 might as well use that one instead.  I rarely use any number immediately above or below a multiple of 5 - I’ll just use 25 instead of 24 or 26. I’ll use 23, because that’s my and Nancy’s birthday (1-23 & 2-23.)  Anyway, weird, huh?

The sun visor in my car broke recently.  “My” car is actually my mother-in-law’s ‘96 Toyota Camry, and while it is a great, reliable, highly efficient car, it is slowly starting to show it’s age.  The visor was very stiff, and one day, while flipping it out to cover my side window, it just broke off.  I have tried 3 different glues to try and replace the piece of plastic that broke, that holds it up, to no avail.  Let me tell you how much I miss having a sun visor - I drive to work usually right around sunrise, and if I am a few minutes behind my schedule, the sun is RIGHT in my face on the way in to work, as I drive east the entire way.  On the way home, I obviously drive WEST the entire way…just as the sun is nearing THAT horizon.  I reckon I am going to have to order a new visor, which I am sure will be way more expensive than it should be…

We are at Big Bear Lake, California.  We were invited to spend the Veteran’s Day holiday here by some very close family friends, who have a son that is one of Matthew’s best friends, and a little girl not much older than Rachel.    I am so happy to be here, I love spending time in the woods, and it is simply beautiful up here.

Big Bear Lake

We are going to take the kids to do some snow activities today and tomorrow, and tomorrow afternoon we head back to Las Vegas.

Sorry for the horrible gap since the last post…no excuses.

Well this weekend I go back to Maryland, Bart and I are shooting our first wedding. It should be a lot of fun, the bride is a friend of Bart’s and she seems very nice. I can not begin to say how EXCITED I am about shooting the wedding, it’s the first steps on a journey of a thousand miles.

I have also been doing some other things on the photography front, I am going to be doing some friend’s holiday card photo for them, and another friend who just had a baby, I will be doing some family portraits for them. Also, I am going to do some portrait shoots with a few of our other friends as well - all for free, for me to practice and build my portfolio, and hopefully the friends and families will get some great photos from it.

Even on top of all of that, I have been doing MORE stuff, but I am not yet ready to publicize that - soon though!

I have posted a few more photos from Calico Basin on our Flickr account. This upcoming weekend we are going to Disneyland, so I will have a lot of photos of the kids to post, which I have not done in a few weeks, so it is time to update them. There are also a couple of portraits I took of Nancy from last weekend.

Portrait of Nancy

And to see the Calico Basin shots…

A hummingbird drinks from a web-covered thistle.

This little bird was keeping us company on the walk back down.

I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. We certainly did. Saturday was good, we ran a few errands, and such, but that night, we got to go down to dinner with some very good friends of ours that we haven’t seen as a couple in a couple of years. The husband is the guy I go shooting with on the weekends, and it’s been a blast getting to hang out with him, but Sunday was the first time we got together as 2 families, so that was nice. They have a boy just a bit younger than Matthew, who is just as laid back and nice and sweet as Matthew is - it is so hard to find boys like that. And, of course, they got along famously, playing like they had been best friends for years. They also have a little girl who just turned one, not much younger than Rachel. The boys (and dads) went swimming while the women talked and let the girls play inside. It was a lot of fun, hopefully we will be able to do it again with them soon.

Then, on Sunday morning, we went shooting again, this time out at a part of Red Rock called Calico Basin. We were originally going to go to another section, but it was gated off, and it turned out to be a good thing, as the spot we ended up was awesome. I have lots of photos to post from that, once I finish post-processing them, but I did upload one already…

View of the valley from Calico Basin

I wanted to post one of the pics from last Sunday, when Randy and I went out to Oak Creek Canyon, part of the Red Rock National Conservation Area, and did some shooting.

Silhouette of a tree in Oak Creek Canyon

There is a group on Flickr, called 365, that started with one person taking on the project of taking a single self portrait, each day, for a full year. It is now one of, of not THE, biggest and most active groups on all of Flickr. I started it (several times) but never finished, but I do know several people who have not only finished one entire year, but multiple years. I have been considering re-re-restarting it myself, but now I am considering another project: 365 portraits of OTHER people, not myself. I followed one such project, 365portraits, by a photographer named Bill Wadman, and it was very interesting. I would most likely have a much more difficult time finding subjects, but it may be something I try. I ordered a decent lighting kit this afternoon, so I will be playing with that a lot. Oh yeah, and I will make Nancy blog about Matthew’s first days of school tonight, too!

There is a large group called the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, or NAPP for short.  The president of this group, Scott Kelby, is also a VERY active blogger, photographer, and writer of learning books on Photoshop, Lightroom (another Adobe photography program) and photography.  The books he writes are VERY good, and I have read and own several of them.  He has written a new book due out early next month, and in celebration of that, he organized a Worldwide Photowalk.  A Photowalk is simply a group of people who get together somewhere to socialize, take photos, meet and learn from each other.  This Worldwide Photowalk had well over a hundred cities, and in each city, each photowalk group had up to 50 people, so there were THOUSANDS of people around the world doing the photowalk thing this last Saturday.  Our group met at Fremont Street, which is where I work, and I met several really great people.  Here is one of my favorite shots from the walk.

Golden Gate signage lights up Fremont Street

Now that I am off the Adderall, my love for, and involvement with, photography has returned with a vengeance. I am rededicated to making the effort to transition to a place where photography is a much more integral part of my life, preferably as a full time career. In that vein, I have been doing much more research than I had before, looking not only at the photography side of it, learning as much as I can about light, color, texture, et cetera, but also the business side of it, trying to establish what I do like, don’t like, creating a signature style, looking at learning about copyright laws, contracts, agent representation, image buyers, all of these things that I never considered before. There is so much to it, that it is almost overwhelming, but I find it so fascinating and interesting. Taking good photos is actually such a (relatively) small part of the whole business of photography, obviously you have to produce good content or the rest is moot, but beyond that, you can’t just take good pics and let the rest take care of itself. So I am learning learning learning, and having fun doing it. Look forward to some interesting new stuff, photographically speaking, as I try to figure out what I like, and establish a style.

And since I know why you REALLY come to the blog, here is a photo of the kids…

Rachel enjoys swinging outside of Matthew's school.

And, in honor of Matthew starting kindergarten on Monday…

Matthew stands before his soon-to-be school, showing how excited he is about starting.