The Gentlemen with Mustaches

A quarter and a vending machine buys you a world of disguises...









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Road Trip!

Each year I take my boys on a weeklong roadtrip/camping trip in the summer.

Many years ago, I read somewhere an account written by an historian who remembered going out with his family to interesting sites from American history and camping in a VW van for extended periods of time. They were there to absorb everything to do with the important events found there - from research to hiking to just living amidst these places sharpened his senses and awareness of what it is to be an American.

I resolved a few years ago to do likewise (or at least within the confines of my hectic schedule). We generally head out without anything more than a rough plan, download some audiobooks on the subject and pack the VW van. Last year we hit southern Colorado (Mesa Verde, Great Sand Dunes NM and a variety of places in between - blogged here...) and had an absolute ball. The boys still talk about it and I fully expect them to in 40 years. That of course, is my goal.

This year it was the Black Hills - literally an island of trees in a sea of grass.

I’d read several books on the settling of the west in the past two years, so we headed for this area rich in history and conflict. The Black Hills were a sacred place for the Native Americans who lived on the plains - and for obvious reasons. We found a place rich in natural beauty. The rugged rolling hills, the pine trees and above all the rock formations made for an amazing experience. It was here in the 1860s that General George Custer (yeah, that guy) lead an expedition formally identifying the place as a gold mecca, and opening it to increased mining, settlement and conflict with the Sioux.

The Black Hills also house several peculiar American sites: Mt. Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument. We visited both. I was a bit curious as to how i’d respond. The conservationist in me considered the carving up of a perfectly beautiful mountain as a bit much. However, it is a very Amercian thing, what with our ideas of subjugating the land for our own purposes. I recognize the issues with that, but still, it was pretty darn impressive and both monuments house some pretty high ideals in their competing natures. The kids loved both, but I think Rushmore was a bit more impressive due to the spectacular grounds at the monument and the fact that it was more complete. Crazy Horse’s grounds were a bit less impressive, but the scope of this in 50 years may dwarf the former. All three boys resolved to return when they have kids to see how its going.

Then we headed north to Deadwood, SD. Yes, I’d watched the HBO series (or at least part of it until the raciness got to me) and I love me a good western historical town with museums, old buildings and the like.

Complete disappointment. Apparently its just a crappy gambling town now with casinos littering the historic mainstreet and completely spoiling it. I was hoping for more of a Tombstone thing, but got Vegas with plastic spurs. Now I realize that in some sense one could argue this was historically accurate for the Deadwood of frontier times, but meh. It sucked. We couldn’t even find a good restaurant to eat in. The only one we even considered had a snotty hostess so we left. I’m not going to overpay for crappy foodservice burgers an do so obviously as an annoyance to some teenager.

So we left after less than 30 minutes.

Destination: The Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. More tomorrow...

Here are a few pictures...



























PS. Book for this segment of the roadtrip: Terrible Glory. A wonderful book on Custer and his shenanigans in the region.

PSS. If you see my boys wearing the same clothes on multiple days, I’m trying Winking Apologies to my dear wife.

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Little Scouter!

Here is a picture of my youngest as he was getting ready to go out with his brothers to do some fundraising for scout summer camp. He’s not really in scouts yet, being a bit too young, but his grandfather is a scout nut and so he managed to get a pseudo uniform out of him in one trip to the scout store. He wears it each week as his older brother goes to cubs.



Have a great weekend!

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Baylands

I needed to get outside.

When I lived in the Bay Area, I’d do a daily bike ride out to Baylands park and around the Guadalupe slough for exercise. It was a 13 mile loop and I was always the only guy out there - rare for the Bay Area.

So today I got up early and headed over to walk the same route. I didn’t do the full loop, obviously, but I did clock off 7 miles before 9 am. It was a gorgeous day and I took my new 70-200 f2.8 IS lens out for a stroll.

Here are a few picts...














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Good Morning!

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Tea Party

My youngest son had a “tea party” at his preschool yesterday.

No, no gadsden flags or anti-government rhetoric, just a party for all the mothers to celebrate Mothers Day.

Here he is, all dressed up ready to go:

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Scouts

A couple of shots of my two younger boys before the headed off to cub scouts tonight...





Liam (the youngest) isn’t really scout age yet, but he conned his grandpa into buying him a neckerchief, hat and scout t-shirt so he could tag along (my wife is one of the den leaders).

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What You Got?

My wife returned from a long, long weekend away yesterday. She generally remembers to bring home small gifts for the boys (I tend to forget I travel so much).

So anywho, she found them these “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” T-shirts that have a speech bubble you can write stuff in. Yep, no more canned T-shirt sayings for this family.

Case in point, from my 5 year old:



Translation: You have the Cheese Touch

Yes, you do.

And I feel sorry for you.

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Canon G11 with Studio Strobes

Ok, so the main reason I went with the G11 was that it had a flash hotshoe.

That meant but one thing to me: PocketWizards

I love my pocketwizards and I love getting that flash off camera. So my goal was to do a studio session with the G11 and a strobist setup (will work equally well with my studio strobes, but they’re in the garage and the speedlight was easier) and see what it got me. The ability to have a backup/backup that can fire my portrait setup in a pinch was enticing, and what made me choose the G11 over the smaller point/shoots like the S90.

So here is a shot of a wood carving I recently bought in Mexico. I played around for awhile and came up with something I’m immensely happy with, considering this is a point and shoot camera.



Here are the details: Canon G11 f8/120 ISO 80 Canon 430 EX thru Umbrella w/ little slave flash behind the skull

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New Camera

This week I finally bit the bullet and replaced by beat up, worn out, hardly cutting it point and shoot.

Its *really* hard to buy a point and shoot when you’re used to top notch quality DSLRs like the 5DMKII. Every time I pick it up, I lament the lack of quality in the output. Now I realize to expect the same is silly, but why carry a camera if it isn’t as good as the other one you have. My old Lumix LX2 was an awesome camera, but its showing its 3 or 4 year old limitations now, and I can’t really bring myself to use it anymore. Its fallen off my car going 40 mph, its suffered a few other scrapes, and still technically works, but I never use it.

I really need a small point/shoot camera because I do alot of backpacking and seriously hate carrying the 5D MKII for days on end. And for mountain biking where I crash every once in a while, which is not something you want to do on your top dollar DSLR. Of course, you can pelican case it (and I have) but its still a pain in the rear and slows the ride down.

So I splurged and got a Canon G11.

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It came yesterday and I’ve already dissapointed myself with 400 ISO and above. That was to be expected, but still.

On today’s road bike ride, I threw it in my pocket and shot a few lovely pictures along the ride in the valley to the north west of my home. Its a lovely place and shows why I love living here.

Here are a few pictures from the ride, shot with the aforementioned camera.









These were all shot today, outdoors at 100 ISO and on a pretty overcast day. I’m moderately happy - as in its-not-my-5D-but-its-smaller kinda way...

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Tats, Yo!

My youngest is going for the inked look.



Apparently they were using a stencil, hence the (twitter?) bird.

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Touch Your Nose

Crazy kid.



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Irish Curls

My daughter had a Feis yesterday, which mean innumerable curlers and work the night before (the wigs make things easier, but they’re so goofy looking).

Happily, she brought home 2 first place medals and a second place medal (for good measure).



If you listen closely you can still hear the concertina playing those crazy jigs.

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Deception Pass State Park

Was camping on Whidbey Island this weekend. On my drive home I went thru Deception Pass State Park and was awed at the beautiful views.

This for example...


Click to Embiggen...

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Flashback Monday

Yours truly in all his 1991 awesomes.


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Bagpipe Lessons PT II

As my wife is out of town, I got to do extra kid duty this week and attend all the things she normally handles while I slave away in front of a computer. Frankly, its a blast to see what parts of the family experience I miss out on.

Yesterday it was to bagpipe lessons with Steen. He’s still working with his practice chanter, which will be replaced within 6 months with a set of expensive (I’m sure) bag pipes. They’re going to dwarf him.

Anywho, here is some picts from yesterday’s lesson:













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Leila

A portrait for today...

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Portraits

Here are a few portraits shot with my Orbis RingFlash this past weekend...

















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A Few Pictures...

A few photos from my weekend...





















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Happy 16th Syd!

Here are a few selects from last nights shindig in Portland...

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Mountain Bike Racing!

While in St. George this past week, I took some time to shoot the first big Utah-based mountain bike race of 2010. Or at least the first important one, I’m told.

My brother-in-law was racing, and I’ve always wanted to shoot a few pictures of him at his game, so I came out of the wilds a day early. It was a lot of fun, and after shooting in the dark of theaters, I was amazed to have all that light to work with. Wish I’d had my 70-200 lens with me though...

Here are a few for your perusal...

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And this determined young racer...

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The Tooth Fairy - Plan B

So we have been going thru the tooth-fairy dance regularly for years.

And by dance I mean this:

Child X looses a tooth and excitedly places it under their pillow in the expectation of the tooth fairies visit and the rich profits from such.

We, in our busy world, forget all about it and when morning comes, the child immediately forms us that they were stiffed.

Kristin and I look at each other and mentally draw straws. The loser (always me for some reason - my mental straws apparently suck) sneaks up stairs and hides a dollar or two under the mattress. Yes, under the mattress. I realize convention is the pillow, but we’ve overshot that.

We then I come back downstairs and as child X is talking about the oversight to my wife, I mention that sometimes the tooth fairy likes to “hide the loot really well as a game”. They excitedly head back up stairs to look.

And to our surprise, it always works. I guess they’re just so excited about having the buck or two that they don’t realize that a) the tooth is still there and b) hiding money under a mattress seems a bit odd.

But it works, and we smile and move on.

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PS. We don’t always do this. There is the random time where we remember the tooth and execute to convention. But not often.

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Family Shoot

A few shots from a family shoot last week...

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Lighting Workshop

Mark Wallace hosted a little lighting workshop here in Seattle today, so a friend and I headed down to see if we could pick up any tips and shoot a few of their models.

This was a workshop only in the broadest sense - it was more of a get together - Mark spend a bit of time covering some lighting basics and then opened the stations for live shooting and discussion.

The workshop was sponsored by PocketWizard, and I got to talk with one of the main PocketWizard guys about my iffy experiences with the TTL features of their latest Mini/Flex products. I picked up a few tricks that will hopefully change my tactics for using off camera TTL flash - which can be a real timesaver if you can get it to work.

I was quite happy to see the images pop up looking quite good in Lightroom, and here is one of the first that struck me...

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I’m sure I’ll have some more to say (and pictures to share) over the next few days.

P.S Yes that is a TTL off camera flash picture. Sweet.

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The Tranny

While at Uranium Cycles in Moab, they were building up a particularly beautiful bike - a carbon fiber Ibis Tranny.

The bike is quite interesting. It can be both a single speed and a geared hard tail bike, due to its adjustable-length chain stay. Kinda cool. Here are a few pictures...


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Great Big Sea!

My wife and I went to see Great Big Sea play last night in Olympia. A rollicking good time was had to be sure.

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Great Big Sea is a folk band hailing from St John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. They play a combination of folk tunes (mainly focused on the island’s heritage), sea shanties and some original rock and roll. Funny enough, I heard of them from a Southerner - they formed in 1993 when I was already living in the US. Their live shows are quite fun, and the combination of ballads, sea songs and rock & roll really works.

For a guy used to seeing punk and industrial shows, the audience is always a bit of a change - people sitting politely in their seats or awkwardly dancing in a way that only those unaccustomed to such moves are apt to do. These are not the crowds seeing Fugazi, Skinny Puppy or the Dead Kennedys.

Still, I’ve always loved fun music and GBS is all about fun. Here is an iTunes playlist of some samples for you to consider adding to your iPhone/iPod.

Here are a few pictures before I got shut down by security...

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They’re highly recommended, especially if you like songs about drinking, horses falling thru the ice, the sea and/or abusive wives Winking. Trust me, they’re a handsful these guys. And who does not like songs about horses falling thru ice?

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Window LIght Rocks

Took the kids to Yakima for the weekend. Yakima you ask?

My oldest had a soccer game out there (don’t ask - it wasn’t pretty) and so we took advantage of the fact that Yakima is often sunny while its pouring on our side of the mountains. We headed out early and stayed the night in a local hotel. We’ve done this before and it always turns out well - slide into our room, hit the pool, watch a movie and eat the “free” continental breakfast downstairs.

It was indeed beautiful, and I noticed as we got ready to head out that the window light was gorgeous, so I made each of the kids sit down and pose for an informal portraiture session.

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Yup. I gots me some cute kids.

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Good Morning

The view from my front door yesterday morning.

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I love the Pacific Northwest...

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Halloween: Kids Edition

Halloween. Lots of fun.

After my day of zombification, Chloe wanted to get in on the undead action and went likewise. No princesses. No cutesy costumes for my girl. Just plain, old fashioned scary stuff. You know, like Halloween used to be all about before the cute-police invaded.

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The two boys just wanted to bring some ninja stealth. They brung’ed it.


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Aidan just wanted some easy to don/remove gore.

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Ok, we had one cutie. Leyla, my niece came down to show us her “minimininimouse” costume.


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Kristin? She just wanted me to be done with my costume...

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Hey Beautiful!

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When the work is done...

PhotoPlus East, 2009 is history.

We had a great 3 days in the Smugbooth. I swear I talked non-stop for the entire time in the booth; I'm certainly capable of it, even if I grow increasingly less apt to do it. We met a billion people and had alot of fun chatting them up, talking about the biz and the things we can help them do. Overall, it was a great show and a wonderful event for SmugMug.

And, then it came to an end, so Chloe and I headed for the Metropolitain museum to have some fun.

Here are a few photos from our adventures...

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Animoto Vs. Lightroom Slideshow

So I was all excited to play with the LR3 beta, but had to run off to the Javits Center to do a day in the SmugMug booth.

The booth was mobbed. We gave out a heap of SmugMug bags, flyers and fielded a host of questions. The buzz on SmugMug is much higher this year, with most people having heard of us (having a silly name helps) even if they were unsure as to what we could do for them. So we gave them the 2 minute schpiel and sent them off happy.

We've partnered with Animoto, an online fusion/slideshow service that takes your photos/videos and makes them into a video presentation. Think slideshows plus some. Much like David Jay's Showit Web (anthother great SmugMug partner).

So when I got back to the hotel after a walk thru Times Square, I threw 9 images from today at both the LR3's slideshow and Animoto's tools. Exporting from LR and building an Animoto slideshow online take awhile to render, although I think Animoto was faster - and since it was already online - it skipped the "gotta upload it now" step I had to do with the LR sample. Oh, and LR had a Tango Uniform moment during the export. Doh! Repeat after me: Beta. Beta. Beta.

Here are the two, side by side:


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Verdict?

I think the LR3 beta has promise, but its really just a simple slideshow, which was fine, but somehow it really mangled the images. They are all unacceptably blurry, and I can assure you, they didn't start out that way. Hmmm. Odd. And playing on my machine, the Gradient BG wash was really blocky as well - it does not look as bad on the web - go figure. But it is free, and maybe it looks better at bigger sizes?

Animoto' s slideshow was more pizzazy, with lots of interesting transitions and the like. Its pretty cool for the minimal work that goes into it. Note: their default settings pace things ridiculously fast and you never get a real look at the pictures - a Ken Burns effect at warp speed isn't that useful. I ended up having to pay to get an extended credit (time to hit up the guys for a promo code). I didn't see a way to control which animations the use either. The second one I created did some that I'd probably opt out of. Seems a bit spendy for the commercial license too at $250 for a year. Ouch.

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Cello, For the Win!

My daughter has been pining for a cello for at least a year. Yes, a cello.

Not sure how this became important, but once she gets a bug in her ear, it usually happens. That she gets from me.

Well, the waiting is over, and after going thru a roller-coaster trying to find a local store to rent one, we succeeded. Now it means we get to drive her and her massive cello to school at 6:30 several times a week.

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Go Chloe!

Thank goodness it comes with rental insurance.

On another note, I’m getting on a plane for New York this AM. If you’re going to PhotoPlus East, drop by the SmugMug booth and say hello.



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Denver is High

Denver is high up there.

I spent a few days there and it was like fast forwarding my seasonal clock by a month or so.

When I left Washington, it was warm and sunny. The leaves had not even changed yet.

I get to Denver and it snows on us. Lots of cold and snow. I like a crisp morning as much as the next guy, but I have a hard time letting go of summer. Something about the warm sun on your face and all that...

So as I was leaving Denver last Sunday, I stopped to snap a few pictures of the fields near my friends place. It captured beautifully how it was feeling...

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Here is a panorama of the same thing...


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Love those wonky power lines...

Have a great day.


PS. Speaking of elevation, I was in Moab last weekend and did the trail enthusiastically called “The Whole Enchilada”. We started at 11,200 feet and rode 30 some miles back to the Colorado river at about 4200 feet. Hows that for elevation loss.

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Leyla

My niece came to visit us yesterday morning. Her mom had put a bit of effort into her hair, and she was pretty proud of it.

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Mutton Bustin' and Other Fair Tales

So my wife announced to me Tuesday that she was taking the kids to the Puyallup Fair.

This is *the* fair in the Seattle area. Or so I’ve heard, because we’ve never been. It is hardly our kinda thing.

Its big, its popular and crowded. Reason enough to stay away.

However, last year my sis-in-law took her kids to the fair and they came back with tales of “mutton bustin” which I soon learned was analogous to bull riding, only for kids. And on sheep. They even had a video of his triumphal ride. It was hilarious in a slightly disturbing way...

So this year, as they rolled in, my two younger boys wanted to give it a go. And since we’re all about providing opportunities, K hustled them off to the attraction, got em suited up and ready to roll.

Steen did fine, although he hit the ground pretty quick. No records there...

Liam was getting settled, when his sheep reared up and got half way out of the cage. That freaked him out. So we spent the next few minutes letting him think about it.

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He decided not to, which was fine by us. What a weird ritual...

Here are a few other shots from the fair...

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More Goofin' Before School

Liam was quite pleased with his photo from last week. So he came in again, this time in a more traditional mode of attire.

I have a roll of 5’ paper mounted in my office for quick shots like this, so down it came...

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Cute kid, if I do say so myself...

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This is my fault...

So my youngest son comes in this AM and wants me to take his portrait.

I agreed without quite paying attention to the reality of what was being asked - I have this email to finish you see and my attention hadn’t quite focused his direction yet.

And when I turn around, this is what I see.

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My wife wants you all to know that this is my fault...

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Back to School

Can you hear that?





That, my friends, is the sound of silence. Not in the Simon/Garfunkel way. In a good way.


School started today, and my kids are all out the door at 8:45 AM. This summer was a blur, with lots of travel, excitement and adventure. But I was ready to have some quite time. My youngest is now in 4 days a week pre-school and will hit Kindergarten next year. That gives my wife at least 12 hours a week with no kids around. Whoop! Its taken us 12 years to get to this point, and it was hard won.

So I’m going to relax, play some calm piano music and veg a bit while my wife reads a book.

Noon will come too quickly.


PS. Took a couple of portraits of my kids for back-to-school. Here is Chloe. She then went and got 11 inches of hair trimmed off after school.

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Goat Rocks

I just got back from 5 days in the Goat Rocks Wilderness here in Washington.

Two words: Fan Tastic

There really are few words for how I feel after spending 5 days tromping around in the crown of these mountains. On most mornings we had at least one volcano staring us in the face. Yesterday, we had three: Mt. Adams, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainer. The wildflowers were blooming, the sky was clear for hundreds of miles and the views caused repeated gasping by all in my little troop.

I mean, what more can you ask.

A quick peek, almost at random from the photos importing into Lightroom as I type this.

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Much more to come...

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Fireworks!

I was just going back thru some pictures from before we left on our trip. Included in that were shots from the 4th of July.

Growing up in Canada, we never got overly excited about fireworks, because you couldn’t buy them and it wasn’t a big part of the whole Canada Day celebrations either. I think I remember bigger cities putting on a big show, but personal use was very limited to stuff smuggled over the border. And a few of us did that on occasion, focusing on firecrackers and bottlerockets. The good stuff, as it were.

So now that I’m an ex-pat living in the great state of Washington, I just don’t think of it as the 1st/4th rolls near.

But my 12 year old son is certainly enticed by the possibilities, so this year he requested (repeatedly) if we could get some fireworks. So this year I relented and we stopped buy, uh I mean by (woah, talk about freudian slip) and bought a variety of things from the local Kiwanis booth.

The kids had a hoot. Here are a few pictures of the neighborhood shoot-off...


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PS. Some of these are very Lord of the Fliesesque.

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The Traveling Men Hit the Rodeo

The past two days have been a blast. We left Mesa Verde Tuesday morning and headed for the Great Sand Dunes National Park in south central Colorado. En-route we went over the great divide and saw the intersection with the GDT (the Great Divide Trail), one of the three big long distance hiking trails in the US.

The Sand Dunes were awesome. Hundreds of acres of towering sand dunes (highest in North America) and a crazy ecosystem that feeds and maintains them (yes we watched the 1/2 hour movie in the visitors center). We spent quite a bit of time running around the dunes, the boys loving the soft landing when jumping the lip of a big dune, and Wednesday morning we climbed to the top of the largest dune in the system - no small feat as it turns out. It took us 1 hour 20 to climb, but only 15 min to run back down. Somehow, running with a gait of 6 feet per step makes for good time.

Awesome.

After the climb, we rode bikes around the park for an hour or so, and then headed for a shower and to Alamosa for a movie. The kids had seen that the new Harry Potter movie was opening, so we spent several hours waiting in line to get tickets for the 7:30 show. Fun, and we returned to camp in the dark with exhausted boys.

We packed up Thursday and headed towards Fort Garland, an old adobe fort once commanded by Kit Carson. It was pretty cool, and we ran into an archeological dig being run by a prof at the local college. He was very interesting to talk to and he ended up giving us a 20 min personal tutorial on how to fire one of the mountain howitzers they had in the fort. Turns out this was one of the canon that the confederates brought from Texas to invade Colorado in the civil war. They lost and buried the canon, but they were recovered and still are fired at the fort on occasion. I have the entire thing on HD video (thank you 5D MKII) so I’ll post it when I get the horsepower to actually edit it.


We then headed north, with the intention of going all the way to Black Canyon. However, on hitting Gunnison, Coloroado, we saw that it was the town’s Cattlemen’s Days summer festival and that meant a fair (rides) and a rodeo (rides, of a sort). So we stopped and checked into the local KOA to take it the sights. Being spontaneous rules.

The fair/rodeo turns out to be an expensive proposition - the tickets for the rides/games were expensive and easily spent. After some rides and some not-good for you food, we headed in to watch the steer wrasstlin, ropin and “the ladies” racing barrels. It was quite fun, even though we were not exactly in our element. Crowd watching was also a hoot.

Yeahaw to you, as it were.

Here are a few assorted picts from the past few days.

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Today we head back to Moab. Unless something cool gets in our way.

Cheers!

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Mesa Verde - Now with Picts

We spent today exploring all the wonderful things in Mesa Verde National Park.

We woke up early and headed into see some of the self guided walks before our scheduled ranger-led tour at the Long House complex. Yesterday we went and saw the Cliff Palace complex, and it was cool, but today was much better.

The Long House tour was a small group, and we got to go down and walk thru more of the ruins (in a sensible way of course). We got to handle some artifacts (pottery, corn cobs) and got some great insight into this massive series of buildings. We saw pit-houses, pit-rooms, tall ladders, kivas, ancient masonry (urine, ash and sand), corn cob impressions (decoration), water seeps (with hand-carved catch basins), the result of some big lightning strikes, majestic canyon vistas, hand painted wall art and about 100 french tourists doing the same. Bienvenue mes amis!

Here are a few photos:

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That is all for today. Cheers!


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Mesa Verde!

Sorry for the lack of posting this past week.

I’m on vacation with my two older boys - we’re running around like madmen, exploring the desert southwest (Utah, Colorado so far) and having a ball. I’ll be back Tuesday with the Lightroom stuff and hopefully a few photos as well.

Tomorrow we’ll be exploring some of the wonderful sights in Mesa Verde, so that should give my 5DMKII a workout.

Cheers all.
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Wow, what a week

This has been a crazy week. Have lots to do, and probably the least blogged week in my year plus doing this.

What is more, I’m coming up on a 3 week road trip to Utah, Wyoming and parts beyond and I’m furiously packing for that.

However, a few new props have shown up at the ranch recently, so I pulled them out and had my son Steen model them.

Go Steen.

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Have a great 4th of July weekend everyone in the US. Those of you outside, just marvel at how few black powder injuries there are with all the fireworks play.

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Oh Ballroom!

It was the 5th anniversary of Oly’s Dance in Everett, WA and they had several days of competitions and exhibitions to celebrate.

I was on hand to record it for posterity, which came out to over 100 GB of images. I’m still hard at work on editing the results, but here are a few that I really liked...

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To be completely honest, you should listen to this while looking at the pictures. And yes, I’ll be doing a slideshow with music as soon as these pictures are all ready.


Its been a busy week. Lots going on and I’ve got to prep for a road trip next week.

Have a great Thursday.

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Dress Rehearsal

My daughter had a dress rehearsal for her lyrical dance class today.

Here she is, waiting to perform...

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Various Photos

Various and sundry pictures from the past few weeks. Hair care, fishing, park visits and sunny Seattle. W00t to that last part!

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liam

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5D MK II Holga

What might just be the height of ridiculousness, I ordered a Holga lens for my Canon 5D MKII.

Yes. A cheap plastic lens from China, complete with outrageous aberrations to stick on my 3K camera body. What was I thinking?

Well, I’ve owned several holgas, and they’ve always given me the wildest results. That is the point, but still, it can be alot of fun to see what comes out of the soup when developing that roll of 120 film. Well, all I’ve done is removed the middleman (i.e. the soup) and went straight to digital. No photoshop necessary.

Of course, its slightly pretentious (just as any toy camera pictures are) but its kinda fun in the same way that a Holga can be.

So feast your eyes on the best a random piece of plastic can give you...

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Kinda fun. Certainly a change from the “oh look how sharp my 1K lens is dance...

PS. the lens I bought comes from Holgamods.com is just a holga lens mounted to an EOS body cap (as far as I can tell). The construction is a bit crude - dremel marks and glue residue - something you wouldn’t expect in the L lens, but right on par with the goods being delivered. The only issue I have is my example won’t lock on the body - so focusing it sometimes removes the lens (I’ve emailed them).

I expect in general that this lens really sucks for my poor sensor. Good thing the MKII has dust removal built in to temper this somewhat...

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Farzin Plays Guitar

Farzin played a little classical guitar piece for our Flamenco section in last weekend’s performance.

The girls performed a little number with castanets and a significant amount of skirt machinations. It came together beautifully...

Thanks Farzin!


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I Bought This (or On Getting Paid)

My second youngest came home today from “Market Day” at school. Apparently kids make all manner of goods and all get together in the gym to buy/sell/trade for each other’s wares.

Ok. As the reluctant capitalist, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Seems a bit crass. But it does encourage the artsy kids to break out the sketch pads, toothpicks and glue and get paid for it.

Or in this case pom-poms...

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Interestingly, they deal in school credits, not the coin of the realm per se. No crossing of palms with actual silver.

Makes me wonder if they have vendors with tables that buy and sell debt and create these things called derivatives...

Oh, I kid. I kid.

Speaking of the exchange of goods, I got another unsolicited email from magazine editor in the Netherlands who was gunning for free photos of mountain biking in Moab for a commercial magazine.

I mean, really? Really? Work for free? Really? My next question when he gets back to me astounded that I asked for payment predictably will be: so, do you get a salary to edit and write for this magazine?

Which then leads to this rant I saw some time ago (Warning: there are some expletives in this short blurb).

Told you I was a reluctant capitalist.

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Ring of Fire

So all 3500 images from EBT’s Mermaid Dress Rehearsal are importing into Lightroom (after a bit of an adventure - see my next blog post).

I brought the Orbis Ringlight for some informal portraits. The dancers loved it...

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Lots more to come...

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Mohawk Boy

My youngest (the firecracker) ready to cheer for his older brother in the Challenge Cup Soccer final a few weeks ago.

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He was proud to wear the team colors.

No Fauxhawk here. That is the real deal. Just like his dad used to have back, ahem, in the day...

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Color V. B&W

I started taking pictures seriously about a decade ago. I immediately gravitated to film because I found a) the digital cameras largely sucked, b) the papers for printing (especially black/white) sucked and c) the low light performance wasn’t there. Things sure have changed.

But I loved the black & white process.

Shooting Tri-X and pushing it a few stops then using a custom development ritual (and it was a ritual) to get what I wanted was a known thing. Printing in the darkroom was a bit of a pain (especially with 35mm negs) but there was something to be said for that darkroom ambiance; put some good music on the ipod, turn on the safelight and lock the door. Nice. Kinda miss it sometimes until I think how much more productive I am these days.

Back then I shot 99.999% black & white film. Want color too? Carry another body. Yes, kids, you had to choose. Don’t get me started with ISO adjustments.

I still see primarily in the tonalities of black & white. It just gets burned into your vision, and that was kinda the point.

But now I have the option of either color or black & white, and sometimes I hesitate. I have grown to love color for its own idiosyncrasies - as someone famously said (and I paraphrase because the speaker/words escape me at the moment) color is for the crass. And sometimes crass is good.

So today I was editing a series of pictures shot last week and came across this image. In all honesty, I’m completely blown away. Its beautiful, even if I do say so myself.

I mucked with it in black & white and then in color. I liked both, each for slightly different reasons. Here they are...

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So which do you like more?

PS. I’ll have to admit that the color version is largely a black & white presentation with some subtle color. Its all about tonalities - told you its burned into my head.

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iPhone Friday - Da Boyz

Here is a picture from a few weeks back taken with Pano on my iPhone.

This is a picture of the boyz hanging in our Kamping Kabin at the KOA (note the consistency of the K in their naming conventions - very clever) in Moab during our spring mountain biking fiesta.

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Glad to be home after a lot of road travel. Its sunny and warm, and I have work to do.

Oh, and for you folks from the US/Canada, have a great Memorial Day weekend!

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Fun with a Speedlight

Playing with a speedlight (and my PocketWizard FlexTTs) yesterday.

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Gotta love night vision gear.

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Traveling

Greetings from North Dakota.

Saturday we got a call that we’d need to jump in the car and drive 22 straight hours. Family emergency type stuff. It wasn’t planned, and was quite a surprise, but we’re here. This has necessitated staying in a series of hotels with my two youngest boys. They love it. They love the pools, the weird “flat” TV and the newness that is all around. Even after 22 hours straight in a car, this has been “the awesomest trip ever” they say.

I’d beg to differ, although we’ve been successful in what we came to do. Never underestimate family support in times of challenge.

So here are a few pictures from our little world over the past few days.

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At the Barre...

A few pictures from a shoot last week.

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Have a great weekend. After a long rainy week, the sun showed up today in force. Thank goodness.

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The Bennetts

I had the pleasure of taking some time this week to shoot pictures of a wonderful young family living in the Bay Area.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from our session...

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What a bunch of cuties.

Have a great day.

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Dascha!

A few pictures from tonight’s photo shoot with a talented young dancer. She ballrooms. She ballets. She’s just 6. You go Dascha!


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Hoping on plane in the next few hours to SmugHQ in Mountain View, CA. Looking forward to getting out of the rain.

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Slickrock by Night

Last week we ventured out onto the Slickrock bicycle trail in Moab just as the sun was setting in order to try some new lighting equipment.

Here is my favorite pict from the shoot...

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We had a ball, got some interesting pictures, and even learned a few things. Then on the ride back I lost my Wescott collapsible umbrella out there. Somewhere. Just fell off the back of my pack. Go figure.

Can’t wait to get back and try some new things...

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That's What I'm Talkin Bout

One word: Fruita.

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Ok, three words: Fruita, super excellente!

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More Photos from Uranium Bicycles Shoot

A few more photos from yesterday’s Uranium Bicycles shoot on Moab’s scenic and challenging LPS trail.

A special thanks to the gang at Uranium - Dave, Linus, Angela, Marshall and Christie - for tolerating the repeated stopping, posing and re-dos when all we really wanted to to was barrel down that mountain at breakneck speed.

Biking and photography are hard to mix for that very reason, but the results can be spectacular.

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I’m really pushing my poor Macbook Air with these. I can’t wait to get home on the big monitor and my beefy Mac Pro to finalize these images.

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Uranium Shoot

Had a great ride/shoot on LPS yesterday in Moab with the Cru from Uranium Bicycles.

Still working thru them in Lightroom, but here are a few early selects...

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Lots more to come, but its time to go ride again...

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A Night Out With a Young Dancer

Last night was a special night. My daughter turns 10 on Monday, so to celebrate I bought her tickets to see PNB’s performance of Swan Lake.

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And the best part was: it was a complete surprise.

She had Flamenco class Friday afternoon, so I hid our finery in the trunk and drove her to class, smiling the whole way. After class, I handed her a package with her dress and told her to get ready to go to the Ballet.

She was ecstatic. Big grins. Ear to ear. Love it.

It was sunny an warm. We at a lovely meal before hand and walked to McCaw Hall. We were in our seats with plenty of time and over the next three hours we were mesmerized. PNB really shines, and no better ballet than Swan Lake to prove it. Chloe’s favorite part was the Little Swans. It was easy to see why. Intricate, powerful, and demanding.

Here are a few pictures. She gets inspired by dance, as you’ll see.

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And best off, today I got an email from her:

daddy,
Thanks for taking me to swan lake, I had a great time. I love the poster! your the best dad ever.
the e-card from american girl is from me!
Chloe your 10 year old daughter!

Happy Birthday Chloe. Keep Dancing.

PS. Wore the kilt. Thats what I’m talking ‘bout.

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Random Goodness

Just some random goodness from the CF cards this week.


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Its raining today. After 2 days of sunshine, the clouds open up on us again. Ugh. Yearning for Moab once again.

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The Painted Desert

Being an unapologetic desert rat, I spent most of last week in the bottom of a series of canyons near Lake Powell in Southern Utah.

I’m a happy denizen of the Pacific Northwest, but there is a side of me that craves the baking sun, the parched landscape and the beautiful red rock of the Colorado plateau. Especially in May when its still raining in Seattle.

Here are a few pictures from last week’s trip...

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A Visual Menagerie: Utah

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Back Home!

Home, finally.

Last week my son and I spent 5 days exploring some little-known canyons near Ticaboo, Utah. The canyons, abutting Lake Powell at several parts, were quite remote and I was amazed to see nobody else in the 5 days we were there.

Not one person. I kid you not. Awesome.

I don’t think I’ve ever gone backpacking without seeing at least one other person. I came close one time - but on the second to last day we saw some geologists helicopter in to check out some thing or other nearby.

Here is a topo map of the area we were in.

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Click to see a detailed look at the area, with GPS data and everything. You can even look at it in Google Earth if you want. Its cool, but its not the same - trust me.

We camped, played cards, read books, explored, swam in Lake Powell and just goofed off. As usual, it was a blast. Then we headed to Moab for a few days for bikes, food and fun.

A great trip.

Here are a few photos...


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I love the ghosts of the canyon photo...

More to come. Lightroom is still having its way with the previews...

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Windowshopping (or the Collapse of Luxury)

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Birthday Climb

Each year on my birthday I climb a mountain.

Let me qualify that sightly - I’m no mountaineer wearing crampons and plastic boots, struggling under 75 lbs of gear. I’m a fast/light kinda guy to begin with, and don’t much like travel that requires ropes, ice axes and self-arresting near a cliff. In fact, as funny as this sounds to people who know me well, I’m a pretty conservative guy when it comes to life/death situations. I’ve never been to the top of Mt. Rainier or Mt. Hood. Or Shasta. I’ve walked around some of them (often that equals climbing them a couple of times), but never gotten frosty beard at 14,000 ft.

But for the past few years, on my birthday I climb a mountain. Its kind of a tradition. Luckily we have several right next to my little town that do nicely - they involve 4-8 miles and 3000-4000 feet of climbing. At this time of year, it also means some snow and the probability you won’t see anything at the top, but I’m usually done by noon.

Today I decided to do Mt. Si, a popular local route that goes up to about 4000 ft in 4 miles. I didn’t get an early start, but I got out and back by just after lunchtime - just in time to go eat out with my wife. Life is grand.

Here is a photo from the icy top of the ridge overlooking North Bend, WA.

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It was a great climb. The top was knee deep in snow, and the route took a bit of work to find/get up.

Fun stuff.

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Self Portrait

A Selfy from today...

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...or a Flashlight

Not 10 minutes after extolling the wonderful value of window light I’m back to argue for the value of a flashlight. heh heh. I crack myself up. Rules in photography are for the sycophants.

Here are some portraits shot last night with just a small LED flashlight for illumination beyond the very limited ambient light.

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Very nice methinks. Going to do some more of these today...

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Window Light

Sometimes I get carried away with creating my own light.

I’ve spent the last few years learning how to use all this lighting gear, and sometimes you need to step back and just let the morning light flow thru the window.

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‘nuff said.

Of course, here I am packing my lights up for a photoshoot today...

PS. Forca Brasil!

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Ouch!

My young niece toppled over and hit a bookshelf last night, resulting in a nice little ding requiring 3 stitches.

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Ouch. Poor Girl.

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More Examples from the Sigma

Here are a few more examples from the Sigma 50 1.4, mostly shot wide open.

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Overall quite happy with the lens so far...

PS. Yes, my son got into the stamp kit yesterday. When we went out for ice cream as a family, my oldest goodaturedly remarked that he hoped nobody from his school would see his nutter of a brother with stamps all over his face. So it begins...

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Mt. Rainier

We took some boys up to Mt. Rainier this weekend to build igloos.

Living in a perpetually rainy world, one tends to forget how close that snow really is. Just add a little altitude and that rain turns to snow. Lots of it. And this is an admirable quality of the Pacific Northwest. Want snow? Drive to 2000 ft. Don’t. Stay put.

Well, mostly.

Here are a few pictures of the environs as we built our icy accommodations.

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Did I ever mention that building an igloo is hard work?

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Dark Garden

I’ve been kicking around a series of photographs based on the natural world, which I find myself in a fair amount in my many adventures. I’m much inspired by the tangle and seemly random bits that mother nature throws at us. Such a variance from the day to day order we live in. Sprouted. Dead. Gangly. Growing. Tangled. All very organic and ripe. I love taking a slightly pictorialistic take on them. Its very retro of me. These print beautifully big of course, and look especially good on canvas.

Here are a few early photographs coming from this series...

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I’m going on a week-long hike in April in Southern Utah, so I’m sure I’ll be adding to these.

See more here...


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Happy St. Paddy's Day

Its March 17th, and time to celebrate all that is green, Irish and, uhm, Irishy?

My daughter took up Irish Dance this past year, so we’ve had a chance to get to know a bit about our fine friends from the Emerald Isle. This year she was invited to perform with her school (Baile Glas Irish Dance) in Seattle’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade and then at the Irish Festival at Seattle Center.

So it was with a bit of trepidation as we headed out of the house, headed for the city, in a downpour. The thought of how wet we were going to get crossed our minds. Happily, it cleared up 10 minutes before the parade and we saw nary a drop all day.



So in celebration of St. Patrick and his Day O’ fun, here are a few photos...

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There were lots of pipes and kilts in the parade. I’d not worn my kilt for fear of cultural insensitivity, but apparently the pipes and drums make everything all better. Next year...

PS. Yes, the wigs are a bit much.

P.S.S My son reaffirmed his desire to learn the bagpipes. Steen, the bagpipe man!

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Irish Curls

Just a quick picture of my daughter as she prepares to head out the door for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade held in downtown Seattle.

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Have a great weekend.

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Henry Coe State Park

Every Spring I try to spend a weekend by myself in Henry Coe State Park in Northern California.

One of the benefits of working for a company located in the Bay Area is that I spend time there for work, and at least once a year I find time to tack on an extra few days to spend in the hills just beyond the sprawling valley.

Henry Coe is a spectacular park, with over 87 thousand acres of space to explore. Be warned, it extremely brutal hiking terrain - the trails are often straight up or straight down the rolling Diablo mountains in which they are situated. This helps limit visitors and gives you a bit more solitude. Good thing.

I’ve been hiking here since the late 90s - going back to when we lived in the Bay Area. I’ve managed to explore 80% of the trails myself over that time, no small feat, and I’v even found myself in the largely ignored wilderness areas beyond the park entrances. This year I stuck to the well known western area, just for a change.

One of the striking things about Henry Coe, beyond the rolling mountains is the presence of some majestic trees, including various types of Oak, Ponderosa Pine, Laurel, Madrone, Bay, and the ever lovely Manzanita. Pair these with some lovely rolling hills with steep ravines and bare ridge-tops and you do little but smile as you walk.

Here are a few pictures fro last weekend’s trip...

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I head home tomorrow AM, so I’m pretty excited to see my family.

Have a great Thursday.

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A few pictures...

Just a few photos of my youngest two from yesterday. The first is natural light with the M8, and the second from the Alzo Mini-Softbox and the 5D.

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I’m preparing for a week-long trip to the Bay Area today. I’ll be down for work, plus getting in a few days of backpacking in Henry Coe State Park as well. Should be fun.

My planned base backpack weight is about 7 lbs before food/water/camera. The camera should add 4 lbs. How crazy is that.

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Just Da Boyz

While the women are off in San Francisco competing in the Young America Grand Prix competition (she did great yesterday, I’m told), the heninger boys have been having a ball.

I grabbed the boys from school and we all went to see Coraline. Aidan had read the book and I’m a sucker for Selick/Burton-like movies. Lots of fun, a bit creepy, and some lovely visuals.

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Image © Selick et al

Today we’re going to soccer games, basketball games, for a bike ride and maybe a hike. Then we’ll come home and do a Jurassic Park marathon...

Here are two pictures of my two youngest from this week...

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My goofy kids rock.

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Secret Agent Man

A few pictures from today...

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Crazy Hair Day

The kids woke us up at 7:30 (school starts at 8:30) and told us that it was Crazy Hair Day at school and we’d need to deliver. Thanks for the early warning, goofballs.

Luckily, coming from a punk rock background, my wife and I are accustomed to outrageous hair stuff.

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Yup. We’re good.

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Orbis-O-Rama!

Received my Off Camera Hot Shoe cord today, allowing me to use the Orbis Ringflash with ETTL instead of manually metering everything. Makes for an easier time shooting on the go with a ringflash.

Here are a few pictures from my my inagural use of the Orbis with ETTL.

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Nice. I’m quite happy with the subtle effect here. Very ringflashy. The tones are quite nice too. I’m still going to get around to making a diffusion panel for the Orbis at some point.

Cheers!

PS. Gotta love goofy boys.

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Bling

Another quick example of the Alzo Mini Softbox in action...

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Alzo Mini Softbox: A Review

I finally got around to ordering a small softbox a few weeks ago.

I’ve been meaning to get a small softbox like this for headshots and I figured it would be good to see what was offered for small strobes as a way to add to my Strobist street cred. There are several on the market: the Lastolite EZbox, the Photoflex LiteDome an the Alzo Mini Softbox.

I went with the Alzo because my wife gave me a sideways look for all the packages that showed up that week. Total was just under $58 bucks with softbox, mount and carry case. Not to bad, and alot cheaper than the Lastolite. The Photoflex is new to me, so I didn’t consider it, but it looks like it fits right in between the two price-wise.

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Anyhow, the Alzo is an interesting little unit. It sets up quickly, by just unfolding it much as you do a reflector, which is really nice. You attach the single white diffusion material to the front with velcro. I’ll have to admit the supplied front diffusion panel was a bit smaller than it should be - it takes a bit of work to get that material even, but it works.

The flash attachment actually threw me for a loop when I actually went to attach it to the softbox - it just fits in the back and is held on by friction. I had to think about it for a minute before I decided that was indeed the design. And then I went to the website to double check that I wasn’t missing anything. Honestly, I’m not sure I like that. On doing some research, it seems the Lastolite uses the same mechanism. Oh well.

Here is how it attaches:

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Overall, I was surprised by the build quality of the softbox itself. It seems every bit as sturdy and well put together as my Alien Bees softbox. The stiching and fabric seem sturdy and should stand up to the use intended. The bracket is serviceable, although, as mentioned, I’m not sure the friction mounting system will be a durable.

Anyhow, setting up from there is straightforward. The nice thing about this is that its pretty much speedlight-nostic. It will let you use most flash units, including my Vivitar and Canon 580 EX lights.
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I found the light quite nice - I was a bit concerned that there wasn’t an internal baffle like there are on larger softboxes (the EZYBox has two diffusion panels) but the light was exactly as I expected from a softbox. Very nice.

Here is a shot from today with my son modeling his new watches (Happy Meal toy. Hey, it wasn’t me).

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Very nice. This is tentatively titled “I gots me some watches.”

The light feels just right. The softbox in this picture was about a foot away from the model’s right, and set on 1/8th power, giving me plenty of light for a 1/200 f9 exposure. If I compare this with the ring light I got a few weeks back, its *much* softer and pleasing. In fact, I’ve been toying with the idea of sewing an external diffusion baffle for my Orbis because of its harshness.

Speaking of diffusion, I’ll probably add a second diffusion panel to the Alzo myself as well. Shouldn’t be too hard.

In short, this is a recommended unit. Buy it here or on Ebay.

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Battle Droids: Fight!

It snowed last night. Just a few inches. and by the looks of things, it will be gone in an hour or two.

But when it snows in the hills around Issaquah, the school bus runs on a later schedule.

So the kids had some extra time this AM before meeting the bus - time happily spent drawing on the living room floor.

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Those are Battle Droids lining up for an epic match of Jedi vs. Robots.

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Joshua Tree National Park

I was in Joshua Tree National Park in early December for a friends wedding, and one morning I talked myself into getting up early and heading out to the cholla cactus garden for an early landscapey shoot.

To be honest, I’m not really much of a landscape photographer, but I spend a fair amount of time in beautiful places, so I do end up with a few pictures because, well, they deserve to be taken seriously.

So, anyhow, I headed out at 5 am for the cholla garden along one of the major routes thru the park and found a few interesting things.

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Orbis Ringflash

Happy Sunday!

This morning I had some down time and wanted to play with some of the new gear that arrived at my doorstep in the week I was gone. This included a small strobe-based softbox and an Orbis Ringflash adapter.

As I’m pretty down with the Strobist mindset (and yes I have big lights too), I wanted to get some additional light modification gear for my Canon 580 EX II speedlight. I built a few items in the last month (Snoot, Grid, Beauty dish) but I decided to “outsource” on the ringflash and softbox for obvious reasons.

The ringflash is something that has always intrigued me, and its pretty hip right now in the light modifier market. Buts you gotta pay to play, and I’d not gotten around to getting one of the new units that uses your speedlight for power. I chose the Orbis because it lets you use ETTL mode when you are in a non-studio environment (via a off-camera hotshoe cord). For run and gun, this makes sense. Here is the unit (from their website):

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So I setup the seamless, grabbed my goofy kids and had a short studio session.

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Then my youngest came running in with the goofy teeth. The goofy teeth were a gift from their cousin in Utah, and we’ve had many hilarious sessions with said redneck accoutrements.

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And finally, a slightly more serious portrait of my son.

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Using the Orbis was prety straightforward. I set it up on a lightstand using my flash mount, pulled down my white seamless and setup the meter for 1/4 power at 2 feet from the ring. I’ve got the off-camera hotshoe on order, so I used my radio control triggers and went manual. I’ll try the ETTL mode when it arrives. The light was exactly as I expected - a nice soft halo that is characteristic of the ringflash setup. And the best part is I don’t have to sink all that extra cash in a dedicated ring light. For most work I do, this should work perfectly. Recommended.


That is it for today. I’ll try to break out the softbox this week and give it a whirl as well.

Have a great Sunday.

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Random Picts from the Road

Here are a few random pictures from the road...

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Had a soccer-filled day and now off to read a book for a few hours before bed.

Hells horses its nice to be home.

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Julia

Here is smugster Julia hamming it up for the camera in front of our big window overlooking Lake Tahoe.

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Tahoe Sledding

As mentioned last week, I’m in Tahoe with the SmugCrew this week, uh, working. Yeah, working. We worked at watching movies, eating food and sledding yesterday.

Here are a few pictures from yesterday...

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Young Dancers

Yesterday I spent a few minutes photographing the Pre-Ballet II class (5-7 yr olds) at Emerald Ballet Theatre. I don’t often make it down for these classes as they’re early in the day and I’m often busy elsewhere, but I was on an errand close by and dropped in.

I was glad I did.

Two images really stood out for me, mostly because they capture the “dance” experience for a new student. The world is big, they are small, and it is these new things that often make them a bit more reserved than they may be elsewhere.

And sometimes the camera catches them in this uneasy state...

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Of course, they grow out of it. Or at least most do. And a few truly learn to dominate the stage with their smile, their movement and their personality.

But for these young dancers, this transformation is still to come.

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Shooting Backstage

I do a fair amount of work for a local ballet studio (Emerald Ballet Theatre) in Bellevue, Washington. This puts me in some really crappy lighting situations- either in a dim, florescent-lit studio or backstage in the semi-darkness. Over the years, I’ve learned to dodge dancers, props, curtains and stage-managers in my quest to get “the shot”. Or two. Or three. And of course, bringing my own light isn’t usually possible...

Anyhow, I’m quite adept at it, and its always exciting to be back amongst the performers and the accoutrement of the stage. Here is a photo I ran across today that kinda sums up the experience for me.

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Motion, light, darkness, hustle, busy, hectic, grace and beauty. That about sums it up.

Besides the stage work, I love shooting pictures of the dancers in the wings. Her are a few portraits in this no-light nightmare over the course of a few day’s this past Nutcracker...

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This is the land of f 1.2 and sometimes a bit of softness because I’m shooting at 1/15 or worse. Which sometimes is not a problem when the image is spectacular.

More of EBT’s 2008 Nutcracker images here...

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Would You Like a Nose With That?

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Beauty Dish

So I took the DIY Speedlight Beauty Dish for a spin today. My daughter was playing the piano and my son doing his homework. And apparently doing some impromptu modeling as well...

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Here are a few pictures of the light itself. Its mounted on my Canon 580 EX II speedlight on a lightstand with an AB Cybersync wireless trigger. Simple to setup, nice light and cost me about $15 bucks. Love that.

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Busy day. Gotta run.

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A Few Pictures

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Seamless at the Ready

I finally got around to mounting two rolls of 5x7 seamless (white & gray) in my office so I could quickly draw down a background and shoot something.

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Any-who, I wanted a quick way to get a background down without having to setup my backgrounds stands all the time. This way they are mounted right there in my office, above the closet at a moments notice. I didn’t polish it much - just 20 min in the garage and then quickly screwgun’ed to the wall. Works for me. Total cost: $25 or so for the brackets and dowels. I had a few pieces of scrap plywood lying around for the rest. Badda Bing.

To test them out, I grabbed my nephew/neice and some accoutrements laying about the house...

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Perfect. I end up using it like a family “Crazy Booth” that I sometimes do with clients and my kids love it.

Cheers!

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Portraits, etc...

Here are a few portraits I shot on the set of the Nutcracker last weekend.

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And a few that stood out while editing the Sunday performance...

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Have a great weekend...

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Nutcracker Gallery - Dress Rehearsal

I’ve posted the first gallery from this past weekend’s Nutcracker performances by Emerald Ballet Theatre.

This first gallery contains approximately 100 images from Friday evening’s dress rehearsal.

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Here are a few of my favorites so far...

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More to come...

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More Ballet Than You Can Shake a Stick At!

So this weekend I spent beaucoup time shooting at Emerald Ballet Theatre photographing their Nutcracker rehearsals. I’ve tapered off my dance stuff lately - just too much going on and I’ve been doing it extensively over the past few years - but it was fun to be back at it.

I found several images I’m quite happy with, and I have a pretty large gallery uploading right now.

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Have a great Sunday!

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Christmas comes!

This time is always a busy one for a photographer. I’ve got prints, calendars, books, wraps and the like all coming in - and they in turn need to go out. I have people to bill. I have images to correct. I have a few new projects to get done in the next day or two. There is never enough time for a photographer in December.

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Tomorrow I head back to California for a day long meet-up with a bunch of wedding photographers at SmugHQ. David Jay and a posse of like-minded shooters will all be there and it otta be fun. There are few things, besides shooting, that I like more than talking shop with photogs.

We’ll talk Pro SmugMug accounts, Showit slideshows, Lightroom and all kinds of goodness. Looking forward to it.

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Things of interest:


Have a great Thursday!

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Flamenco

Tonight I spent some time at the studio taking pictures of the Flamenco dancers. They were working on their part in the upcoming EBT Nutcracker and it was one of the first times I’d visited this class.

Here are a few pictures of the lovely young ladies stomping and flicking those long skirts about.

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Lightroom Tuesday approaches...

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Goggle-Mainia!

So the kids were pretty excited by the goggle portrait this morning, and promptly lined up again for another go...

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That’s what I’m talking ‘bout. GoogLOLs.

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Back Home

I’m back at home and glad to be here. I had a great time in CA last week - got lots done and took some outstanding pictures.

One thing waiting for me when I walked in the door was a package from a military surplus place - I’d ordered some props for portraits and they had arrived in my absence.

Here is one being modeled by my son this AM (what we did instead of get ready for school like we should have, my wife adds).

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These little treasures should be alot of fun. Cheers...

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More Marianne

I got thru the rest of my shots from the other night and found this one. I love it.

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I’m off to Southern California in a few hours to attend a good friend’s wedding. He’s a bit of an eccentric fella, so I suspect his friends will make for quite a sweeping panorama of interesting.

Camera? Check.

Have a great weekend.

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Marianne

A few photos from tonight’s photoshoot avec Marianne.

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Have a great Thursday.

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Visiting 'Da Doc

My brother is an optometrist, and when family visits, we all go down and get our eyes checked.

More exciting for me, it means I get to take pictures of all the cool contraptions hanging about is office like so much steam-punk candy.

Here are a few photos from Saturday afternoon’s shoot for your perusal.

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I’m flying down to the Bay Area tomorrow for work, so I’m trying to tie up a few loose ends here at home before leaving. Might those loose ends involve setting up a Christmas tree you ask? Indeed they would.

As I’ve probably mentioned before, my wife is something of a holiday junkie. So much so that she has trouble keeping them all straight - if she had her way, the Christmas tree would be up mid-November. In my book that would be a serious confusion - holiday inflation if you will. One at a time, I say.

But now that Thanksgiving is over, its time to light the lights and setup the tree. And yes, I had to listen to Christmas music on the way home from our little Thanksgiving trip.

PS. It looks like I’ve been doing the blog thing regularly for about a year now. Wow. 258 odd posts. Not too shabby.

Cheers!

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Buzzbomb!

On our way back from Montana, we stopped at this crazy gas station in the middle of nowhere Eastern Washington. Never stopped here before, but one of 50 “nature calls” we endured put us in this special little twilight zone.

It was a surreal place, and this is what I saw sitting in front...

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Nice.


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Got the Cover!

I’m back from Montana and ready to dive back into the normal routine.

Ha! I wish. I’m getting on a plane Tuesday to go down to the Bay Area for the week and a friends wedding on the weekend in Joshua Tree. Its going to be another hectic week, so blogging will be as sporadic as it was this past week...

While in Montana, I shot a series of portraits of my brother and his kids - I expect to have those edited and ready to review soon.

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I’m pretty excited on my latest magazine cover for City Arts Magazine here in Seattle.

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I shot the cover and the images for the 4 page article inside. I was pretty excited as this is a great way to highlight Viktoria and her work with the young ballerinas of Emerald Ballet Theatre.

More EBT photography here...

If you have not gotten tickets for the EBT Nutcracker this year, you’re running out of time. They always sell out.

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Steen in Squares

Steen got a haircut this weekend.

He looks really good in very short hair, although he tends to want to grow it longer like his older brother. The funny thing is that we were goofing thru the entire shoot, but I asked him to be serious at times and those were the ones that came out best. Its amazing to see his complex personality come out - this is certainly the serious and sensitive side of my little guy.

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Family Book Time

Its that time of year. Time to build the family photo book.

Every year I comb thru my massive archive of images from the past year and build a book that contains images of our family and its varied activities. Its kinda like mailing grandma that double set of prints from the drugstore back in 1996, only it is a bit more curated, organized and its built to be thrown on a coffee table and shared with others for years to come.

Excitingly, each year the book gets bigger. What began in 2006 as a 30 page book with ~100 pictures and has grown to triple that. This year may be even larger.

I make a bunch and send them to grandparents and keep one for our family. They are a hoot to have lying around and they are a great way to involve others in your family from afar. Traditionally I’ve used Blurb and have been reasonably happy with the cost/quality/format of their offerings.

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SmugMug this year has a new partnership with MyCanvas.com that has an online flash-based book creator that I’m going to play around with.

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Books: go make one.


Here are a selection of images bound for our Family book this year. The tip of the iceberg, as it were...

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I'm Babysitting

My wife had to run to volunteer in my daughters class for an hour this morning. That means I was left with the beast.

Of course, the beast to which I refer is our 3 year old son. It’s his informal nickname, and we mean it in the best possible way. He’s a firecracker, and I have no-one to blame but myself. I like to say that he is me, without the temperance of age.

Any-who, I was left to babysit this young upstart and having work to do, I set him up with some legos with Bob the Builder on reserve in case he balks. Five minutes past and I’m working intently on a problem. Ten pass and I notice an unsettling silence. My ears perk up at this because I’ve got 3 other children. I’m an expert.

Silence to a parent is like a canon shot across the bow of HMS Holy-Hell. Something is not right. Especially with this kid, as he jabbers like a madman while playing legos. I wander out, expect one of several things:

  • He’s into something he shouldn’t and thinks silence will act as cover. Like aural camouflage. Parents know better.
  • He’s packed his bags and moved out to somewhere more tolerant of his outrages. He has threatened.
  • He’s fallen asleep. If its before noon, this is acceptable. If its after, it means he’ll be with us until 10 pm. Not good.

Turns out it was #3. And it was before noon.

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I’m really good at Babysitting.

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Another Selfy

Because I can’t leave well enough alone...

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My right eye is not as creepy in the full size print - the small web-size accentuates it a bit.

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Self Portraits

I don’t have many pictures of me.

I find that most pictures turn out best when I’m on the non-sensitive side of the digital sensor*.

But I was asked to submit a self-portrait for a magazine that I contributed work to recently. After digging for awhile and coming up empty - I pulled out the lights/backdrop and tripod and shot something new.

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* This is a digital update to the joke I told for years that referenced the film plate. It remains true, I’m afraid.

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A New Tutu

My sister-in-law and her two children moved in two doors down from us. Its great to have her close by as she gets along like aces with my wife. We exchange kids on a regular basis and it works out great for all involved. Or at least I like to think that, she may get the short end of the stick from time to time with my youngest, firecracker that he is.

Yesterday, my little niece showed up dressed to dance in a new tutu, and it was too cute to not break out the backdrop and try to con a 1 year old into staying still/standing/lookiing at the camera for a few minutes.

This one turned out quite nice.

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As did this one.

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Have a great day...

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Soccer Tournament

We had our final soccer tournament of the year this past weekend.

Soccer tournaments are one of the things we enjoy most about having our son play club soccer. We get to go somewhere fun, stay for a couple of days and just live/breathe soccer. Well, and eat some good food in between. Usually they are summer affairs, but this one was late in the season, and given it is already almost mid-November, the weather was pretty nice for the Pacific Northwest.

We won our first two games handily and lost our third by 1 point to a team we really should beat. They played well for the first two games, but the final found them faltering in the second half. Aidan really applied himself and showed quite well in all three games. His aggressiveness was perfect and he was always on top of the ball when it came near him. Right on Aidan!

A few pictures...

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A Visit to Polson Family Eyecare

This summer on our way back home from Canada (HighSchoolReunion!) we stopped in at my kid brother’s place for a visit. I say kid brother only to diminish slightly the high-school era growth spurt that gave him a good 4-5 inches of height over me. Of course, he was dropped on his head as a child and we think this abnormality might be something related to glandular disruption due to the fall. I kid, I kid.

Well, he recently graduated from optometry school back in Ohio and moved back west to start his own eye-umachacallit-dealio. He wanted somewhere that was close to the families in Canada (his wife is also Canadian- from a town that makes ours look huge) and Polson, MT seemed to fit the bill nicely. Happily, he found an older doctor that was retiring and bought the practice. Its nice to have him back in the west so we can see him on our twice-yearly bike trips to Moab.

This is him trying to ride as expertly as I do. The form is flawed, as is the technique, but you can’t fault him for trying. I kid, I kid.

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Polson is on the south end of Flathead Lake in northwestern Montana. This is a very familiar place, as we spent a lot of time as kids tromping thru this area. Some friends had a cabin on a lake near by and we’d always go down once or twice a year to ski, swim and muck around. Its only about 3 hours from Cardston and is just a lovely place to visit. Its very Montana, with the Rockies staring down at you and pine trees galore. The Kalispell environs bring back lots of good memories.

So anywhooo, we stopped by his business for some quick check-ups - my daughter was in need of some new glasses and we ran the others thru as well. Being who I am, I yanked out the Canon and snapped some fun pictures of the kids trying on goofy frames and doing the check up thing.

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A few more here...


Hey, its the weekend almost! Huzzah! Have a good one...

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Hip Young Man

My second youngest is quite a character.

He’s quite a bit different from the other children - much more introverted, shy and sensitive. But he is also a trend setter - often leading the family in jokes told per hour and interesting inventions. One of his recent ideas is a new family holiday - entitled “Quensos Day” - that is focused mainly around the adoration of sugar cereal. According to him, it is celebrated November 13th and is marked by many bowls of Captn Crunch (3x a day) and a 1 hour break in getting to school. We celebrate our first in a few weeks - and something destined to be a family tradition.

This trend setting extends to fashion too - his go-to-school ensembles often show a hint of originality and style usually lost on 6 year olds. Here he is in his Fox apparel getting ready for school the other morning.

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Rock on Steen. You’re my guy.

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Remember last week when I mentioned I had a hard drive fail. And how important it was to backup stuff? Well, I had another one go down yesterday. This one was, I’m happy to say, in my Drobo. I sat down to do some editing on Sunday afternoon and instead found an alert that one of the drives had died. Dead. I quickly ran down to a local shop and purchased another drive to replace it. Worse, the drive was less than a month old and I paid a pretty penny for it.

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The thing that really irks me is that Seagate won’t provide acceptable support for their defective drive. The last internal drive I had go bad was several years ago (it was a Western Digital I believe) and they shipped me a replacement gratis, with a box to put the defective drive in for return shipping (which was also prepaid). I was out zero dollars and had a drive within a day or two. Seagate? They pretty much told me I had to either wait two weeks (and pay to ship the defective drive back myself) or I could pay $20 to get the service the other guys gave for free.

Are you kidding me? was my reply. That is our policy sir.

And so I have a new policy: no Seagate drives. Sorry. You lose. Bzzzt. And don’t forget that Maxtor is owned by Seagate as well.

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A Few Kid Picts

Autumn in the Pacific Northwest is beautiful. Especially when we get a lazy, sunny day in late October that lets you go outside with a T-shirt and kick some leaves. Here are a few pictures from last Saturday...



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Have a great day.

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Zions & St. George

Here are a few quick pictures from our trip to Zions National Park in September. Both of these were taken in the Zion Narrows trail.

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And two from our return to Las Vegas thru St. George.


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Have a great day...

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Family Portraits

At my wife’s family reunion this past August I brought my small Strobist kit and threw up a white sheet to take some quick portraits of the rabble - er um - peoples. I wasn’t disappointed and the best part was that half way through the shoot, the kids started doing funny faces and we just added those to the mix.

Sadly, part of our extended entourage had left earlier that morning so we didn’t get everyone. Regardless, here are the results...

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Have a great day...

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Moab Galleries

For those of you interested in purchasing images that have been featured on this website over the past few weeks, I would happily direct you to these two galleries...

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All images are available for immediate purchase in a variety of print sizes on paper and mounted canvas.

Have a great day.

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PS. I had a hard drive fail today. Most everything is safe, except I found that the Chron script I had running to backup my lightroom catalogs last ran on Sept 19th. The photographs are all where they should be, but it looks like I’ll loose a bit of time reworking some of my organizational structure.

What a pain. Backup now. Backup often. Honestly.

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Uranium Bicycles

Our trips to Moab are generally punctuated by two things: riding and visiting bike shops. The latter is generally to fix the things we broke on the former. Moab is a tough place on bikes and we generally need to make a few pit stops here and there to get back to snuff.

I’ve gone to many of the bike shops in the area, but my favorite is the new kid on the block: Uranium Bicycles.

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Uranium just opened this spring, and they were the easiest to work with when I was looking for a quick rent when Aidan and I were in town this past March. From there we’ve just kinda tried to default to there because the people were spectacularly nice.

This past trip I got talking with Christie and she mentioned they were wanting to start a Flickr page for photos of the area - that wouldn’t stand considering I work for SmugMug - so I hooked them up with an account. One thing led to another and I ended up swinging back by the shop on my way out of town to snap a few pictures for them. Mainly for the website, but also just for fun. One of their mechanics was an interesting guy, and I figured a portrait or two of him would be really cool. We had a ball, with pictures galore of their two younger shop-girls as well as some stuff for their website. And next spring I’ll be back and we’ll do some riding and take some more pictures.

So here is to the guys/gals at Uranium (they guys are outnumbered, btw)...

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Sovereign Trail

We rode the Sovereign Trail again Tuesday before leaving Moab. Again because its so much fun, although we did have a section of the trail to explore that we’d missed on previous rides.

The Sovereign Trail is a newer Moab trail - it was built in the last 5 years - and it is mercifully for two-wheeled riders only. For some reason I’d heard that it wasn’t very long and wasn’t that fun, and so I’d avoided it until this spring when we were looking for something new. I’m sure glad we did as its is really in the top 2 or 3 rides in the Moab area. Its just an awesome number that has a little of everything Moab can offer (dirt, slickrock, sand, more dirt).

Here are a few pictures from our morning on the trail...

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Now that’s what I’m talking ‘bout.

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Arches National Park

At the Dgrin shootout last week we spent quite a bit of time hiking in the dark. That is routine to a landscape photographer, but I’m not one of those. Not really. I tend to shoot people. On occasion, I’ll take pictures of urban landscapes, but I rarely am the type to get up massively early, hike a few miles in the dark just to be somewhere for the sun to rise on my intended target. Not that I don’t like doing such, its just not my modus operandi, as it were.

Here is a picture I shot at Natural Arch in Arches National Park last week after doing just such a hike...


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I’m pretty pleased with it.

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Rock Hopping n' Dropping

This young guy was willing to show off a bit on some big rocks. Coolio with me.

Let me get my camera out of the pelican case...

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Here he is trying to coax a friend into doing the same drop.

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He did it too.

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Riding Sovereign trail today before heading north. Hopefully not into snow.

Snow? Summer just barely ended...

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Hazard County to Kokopelli to Porcupine Rim

Here is a quick visual of our epic ride today...

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We started from Uranium Bikes in Moab to shuttle up to the Hazard County trailhead at almost 9500 feet above sea level. We huffed to almost 10,000 feet before beginning our descent.

We rode all kinds of wonderful. Technical, fast, challenging. We dropped and dropped until we hit town at 3700 feet almost 5 hours after departing.

Sweet. I’m beat...

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More from Moab

Here are a few images from the past week in Moab. Can you tell I’m out and about shooting and not doing much editing/posting?

The Moab Maxim: ride/hike and take pictures...leave the editing till later when you’re out of that splendid desert.

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And a panorama from Arches near Balanced Rock...

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I’m on my way home tomorrow afternoon after riding the Sovereign trail system.

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Moab!

I’m in Moab this week for a work-sponsored photographic workshop.

A few times a year we get to travel to interesting places and photograph them with a group of our customers. It is co-sponsored by Dgrin, a SmugMug affiliated photographic forum. Fun!

This fall we’re in Moab, Utah. I’m here several times a year for mountain biking or backpacking, so it was a natural to head back for this event.

I had a marathon driving session Monday to Tuesday to get here, and today I setup, scouted some locations and shot a few night pictures from the top of Sand Flat Road looking over the Moab valley.

Here is one of my favorites...

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There is plenty more to come. Stay tuned.

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More from Ivy

I’ve finished going thru a large set of images from a photo shoot from a week ago. Here are some of my favorites of Ivy...

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Weekend Fun

A very busy weekend.

I rode my mountain bike for 25 or so miles, we went to a soccer game in Yakima and then down to Seattle for a cancer benefit called “Light the Night” in Greenlake Park. Everyone walked the 2.5 miles around the lake with red/white balloons to raise money for cancer research. Team Hans raised over $3000 I hear. Right on.

Here is a short visual chronicle of that day.

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Micro Soccer Begins

Micro soccer began last Friday for my middlesque son. Micro soccer, as you might guess, is small-format soccer for the young’uns. Three players and a postage stamp-sized field. No goalies, just one meet a week with practice and games rolled in to one. It works for teaching the basics, and the boys love it. Last year I coached this team, but with all my work travel, I decided to let someone else handle it this year.

Here are a few pictures from Friday’s meet-up...

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Not to be outdone, my youngest was in fine form as well...

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Such a proud moment. I have no idea what he was up to...

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Photo Shoot: Pirate Party

Had several photo shoots this past weekend, keeping me quite busy. The first was a birthday “Pirate” party for a large group of pre-schoolers.

Here are a few pictures...

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More to come shortly from this shoot.

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Zion National Park

Well, it has been a busy week.

I was on vacation over the weekend with my wife in Zion National Park. We had a ball. Hiked the Narrows, hiked Angel’s Landing, and rode a tandem from Springdale to the Temple of Sinawava and back. We ate well, slept in and just enjoyed ourselves. Its been along time since we spent an extended amount of time sans children, and it was nice.

Here are a couple of images from our hike up to Angel’s Landing.

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I’m still going thru the rest. I promised not to do more than download images at night and stuck to my word, so now I have to sort thru the rest.

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Skoolz In! Skoolz in!

Well, the kids headed back to school today. Summers go by so fast, and before you know it, our front room is piled high with looseleaf paper, binders and lots of pink erasers.

The kids were in fine form this morning, new clothes on and ready to roll, so I threw my gray backdrop up and shot a few pictures.

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Have fun kids! Its quiet around the home office today...

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