Stuff For Sale

We have been trying to sell a few things on KSL Classifieds and Craigslist for a while now, but due to the holidays and tons of scammers, we haven't been able to yet. We are VERY willing to negotiate prices. So if you or anyone you know want any of this, let us know!

Couch--$175.00:



Neutral colored couch with 2 pillows. Good condition.

Pet free, smoke free home.





TV--$45.00:

20" Toshiba Quatro Bomba. 8 years old but has great picture and sound. The screen is flat, not curved, so there isn't any distortion in the picture.











TV Stand--$20.00:

Dark brown with 3 shelves on side and two inside. Very good condition.

Golf Clubs and Nice Bag--$65.00:



Grand Regal Plus Oversize Irons. 9,8,7,6,5,4,P,M,S. Acushnet Putter. Fairway 420 7 Wood Driver (Graphite). Very nice Knight golf bag (thick and padded shoulder strap and auto extending legs. A great deal.



Ilford Multigrade Black and White Contrast Camera Filters--$10.00:



Your student (high school or college) will need these for their photography class.

The twelve MULTIGRADE filters are numbered 00-5 in 1/2 steps, with the lowest filter number corresponding to the softest contrast. They can be used above or below the lens and can be cut to fit the enlarger filter drawer.

MULTIGRADE filters are very easy to use: no complicated calculations are needed when changing from one filter to another. The exposure time for filters 00-3 1/2 is the same; that for filters 4-5 is double.

The Sledding Event of the Season!

We had a really great time at Nate’s 3rd birthday party! We planned a sledding party with a bunch of Nate's cousins.  We had a lot of snow the day before so there was plenty to go around.  Nate really enjoyed spending time, laughing, and goofing around with his cousins.  Nate loved all the attention and loves all his toys.  Thanks for coming and making Nate’s birthday an awesome one!  See the rest of the pictures here.  Nate is growing up so fast.  We are very proud of him and love him so much!

Foto Friday - Star of Bethlehem

It's been a couple of months (sad!) since I've taken any "artsy" photos. Obviously, since it's Christmas, I wanted to photograph something that pertains to this beautiful season, but something a little more abstract than the usual holiday pictures.

Last week Rob showed me a picture from a photography blog that he follows. I thought it was cool and decided I should try something like that. I knew just the place. Layton Park has a huge setup of Christmas lights, which is perfect! It satisfies my theme plus works perfectly with the technique I was curious to try.

I bundled up and after showing me how to adjust the shutter speed, Rob wished me luck (secretly, I don't think he thought I'd have any!). I walked around the park, pinkie fingers frozen, excitedly getting what I thought would turn out to be fun shots.

For the technical junkies out there, the shutter speed that worked the best for me was 1 second and then I oh-so-slightly moved the camera in different patterns. These shots are actually very cropped in order to get such detail. I'm amazed that they are so crisp. I guess that wasn't so technical after all.

So, without further adieu, I present "Lightwebs" (Slideshow and Gallery).

Sweet Christmas Moment

This morning Nate crawled into bed with us before we all headed downstairs to open gifts.
Rob and I told him "Merry Christmas!" He leaned over me, kissed Rob on the cheek, and said, "Dwerry Drissdwass, Da-yee."

SO CUTE!

Southern Utah Ghost Towns

While visiting the St. George area we visited the Silver Reef and Grafton ghost towns (Gallery and Slideshow).  The photo above was taken at the Grafton ghost town (the Zion National Park area is in the distance).  They were both kind of cool but maybe not worth the drive to Grafton.  We only spent about an hour at each place (our visit to Silver Reef was cut short due to injury, and their just wasn’t much to see at Grafton).  I had a fun time hiking around in the ruins of Silver Reef and we were very fortunate to arrive at Grafton during “magic hour“ so we had awesome light!  Hope you enjoy the photos.

Thanksgiving Reunion

The day after Thanksgiving my mom’s side of the family got together for a reunion.  The family lives and works in a lot of distant places around the country/world so we took advantage of a lot of people being in town!  My parents put an insane amount of work into this reunion and we are all very grateful for their efforts.  It turned out really well!  My dad asked me to take some pictures and a large family portrait.  Not having enough power with my little SB-600 speedlight, I rented some really nice studio lights from Pictureline (if you ever need a camera go here, they are awesome).  These are the pictures we took and our first attempt with studio lights.  I hope you enjoy them.

Foto Friday – Discovery

Taken with the Nikon D40 near the Sand Dunes in Snow Canyon State Park, Utah on October 11, 2008. Manual Exposure Mode, 18mm, 1/25 sec f/7.1, ISO 800, Nikon Raw Format converted to Adobe DNG format. Edited in Lightroom 2.2.

We visited Snow Canyon on the weekend that tons of snow fell in Salt Lake (very strange) so it was still pretty cold in the St. George area.  We were playing on the sand dunes and not having much fun because of some strong and frigid wind (the girls and babies stayed in the car)!  Nate, Jake, and I decided to explore some rocks where the wind wouldn’t be so strong.  We came across this wonderful place and got some great photos. 

Some have expressed that this photo gives a feeling of entrapment; however, I feel much more excitement and sense of discovery from the light emerging from above to wrap around the rock and define the boundaries of the dark shadows below.  Perhaps some trove of knowledge, treasure, or even you are hiding in the shadow waiting to be discovered.  The pathway to discovery is often made with lots of texture, nooks, bumps, intriguing surfaces, angles that are perplexing yet fascinating at the same time, and filled with the great contrast that life has to offer.  Enjoy the ride and I hope you enjoy this image.

I took this photo back in October and I didn’t get a chance to work on it until this week.  What a treat it was to edit the Snow Canyon photos.  I really enjoy that place and feel that I have many more pictures to make of that park.  I hope that the Lightroom users out there will benefit from my processing description this week.  I have a cool tip for you.

My edits to this image in Lightroom 2 were not really extensive, although they were very deliberate.  I spent a long time working to get the boundaries of shadow and light just how I wanted them.  Too bad that none of you have calibrated screens to really see it right, sigh.  I worked mostly in the Treatment panel by converting the color image (by the way, it is always better to shoot in color and do the conversion to black and white in post – I’ll explain this sometime soon) and working with the exposure, blacks, contrast, and clarity sliders.  I increased the exposure by 3/4 of a stop to get the a really bright light from above.  Toggling on and off the alt key (command on mac) while increasing the black point (using the blacks slider) gives a very cool view of the how much of the photo is going completely black (this means all detail or texture in that area is no longer visible).  I used that approach to find the sweet-spot for the shadows.  I adjusted the contrast slider to give a little more separation to the lights and darks, then adjusted to the clarity slider (mid-tone sharpening) to bring out a little more texture in the gray areas of the image.  I almost forgot to mention that I used the adjustment brush (this allows me to make changes to specific parts of the image as part of the raw workflow – very cool) to darken the rock mass on the upper left part of the frame.  If you have a specific question about the editing please leave me a question in the comments.

A couple people have asked us for a few tips on how to improve their pictures of people.  Julie and I plan to put together a few tips that really helped us and guide a lot of the pictures we take.  Hopefully that will be beneficial for you all.  That’s all for this week.  Hope you enjoyed this image.  Have a great week and have fun behind the lens.

Snow Canyon

Here are our landscape pictures from Snow Canyon. It was really cold and windy that day, which was a bummer for Rob because he had two freezing girls with him. Otherwise, he would have been there for hours taking pictures!

Snow Canyon is such a treat! It's so fun to play in the sand, climb the petrified dunes, and view the amazing landscape. I don't think the place gets enough credit. Such a fun place for families to hike and explore! Here is a post we did about a different visit there. We'll probably return every time we find ourselves in the St. George area.

Oh, and you're in for a real treat tomorrow. Rob has an excellent Foto Friday that he took while there.

Yubanian Intermission

Continuing Julie’s theme of some of our activities while staying in St. George I present to you the story of a quick stop at Yuba Reservoir.   When traveling by automobile it is customary to take breaks every couple of hours to keep the kids happy and save our sanity.  Julie is really good at finding great ‘break spots’ wherever we happen to be.  She has mad skills; you should see her with a bow-staff!  Rain fell for most of the day; however, we were granted a brief window of fabulous conditions (most of the pics show threatening clouds in the distance) for our little stop-over at Yuba.   I feel pretty good about calling that a ‘tender mercy.’

Nate excels at ‘getting right at the fun’ in any situation.  No sooner had we arrived and got his sand tools out of the car, Nate was instantly having fun and we were right there enjoying the show.  Those of you that have a decent relationship with Nate know that he comes with his own traveling show (quite a perk I must say).  Watching him roll this log around in the water was so enjoyable; the trudging, the rolling, the concentration, awesome!

It appears that Madeleine enjoys the sand and water as much (maybe even more) as Nate did at her age.  She was really cute playing and watching her brother (the show factor here again).  After about 45 minutes, the rain clouds threatened more seriously and we continued our trek to Southern Utah.  More to come from our Southern Utah adventure.

Foto Friday - Boyhood

I love this picture. It's just so...Nate.

I used an imported preset called "New York Vintage" which faded the colors and added a slight vignette for me. Then I pulled some green and blue back in, and played with the lights and darks a little.

I took this picture on our second day at Zion's National Park on the Riverside Walk trail. Nathan and his dad had just finished throwing rocks and playing in the river. He is damp and covered in sand. You can just tell he's fascinated by the dirt he's walking through. He's not in a hurry to be anywhere or do anything. He's content. What I wouldn't give to be like that at times!

It was so great being outside in such beautiful surroundings and letting Nathan run around and play and explore. Isn't that what boyhood is all about?

St. George - Family

We took SO many pictures in St. George back in October that it's been hard to get through them all. We had tons of fun while there. For one of the weekends, my sister and her family came to stay with us. Which was totally cool.

During the two and a half weeks we were there we ventured to Snow Canyon State Park, Zion National Park twice, and two ghost towns (neither town totally worthy of the drive).

It was so fun to be somewhere different for more than a quick trip. We enjoyed the area very much and especially loved the weather and gorgeous scenery!

These pictures are just of the family in different locals while there. We'll do a separate "Landscape" post later.

Yoga

Wow!  Amazing!  About a year after Nate was born, Julie started some yoga classes at our gym.  Julie became very excited about it and is now a strong advocate for yoga and its benefits.  Well, Julie would come home and show me some of the cool positions she learned that night.  So I convinced Julie to let me photograph her doing some yoga during one of our photoshoots.  These photos are so much fun and so cool (photos and slideshow)!  The stuff that Julie does is amazing to me so I just had to share it!  Julie wanted me to mention that if she knew I was going to do a post on this, she would’ve done some other really cool moves (and that she’s kind of embarrassed by this).  We’ll photograph those next time we rent some studio lights.

So when I do yoga… well… you better just see the picture here.

An Illness

I have an illness. It's some mysterious disease that has plagued me as long as I can remember. The symptoms include the following (in this order):

Excitedness
Intense thinking
Driven searching
Becoming overwhelmed
Aimless wandering
Fatigue
Freezing up
Desperation
Hopelessness
Utter despair
Angst
Regret

This whole process takes place in under two hours. Sounds pretty bad, huh? Well, it is. I don't know what the scientific term for this is but the lay person may call it something as simple as "BUYING A GIFT."

I have had a major case of this my entire life. A few examples:

I was six and for her birthday, everyone gave my best friend Barbies. I gave her Barbie lipstick...that is, lipstick for Barbie. Not only a weak gift, but it didn't even work when we tried it in front of everyone.

I was nine and was invited to a birthday party for the daughter of one of my dad's friends. I didn't even know her but had $5.00 to spend on her gift. I searched the three toy aisles at Fred Meyer for an hour trying to find something great. I ended up buying plastic glow-in-the-dark bracelets. The party was a huge social event with dinner and clowns and all her other gifts included fancy clothes and a doll house.

While Rob and I were dating, I went to Sea World with my family. I wanted to bring him home a souvenir, but nothing significant because, at the time, we weren't on the best of terms. In fact, I thought that me going away for a week would either make or break us. Anyway, I walked around the gift shop for 45 minutes trying to find something and ended up getting some play goo stuff with an orca whale embedded in it. I just thought boys like weird, gross stuff. When i gave it to him he said, "Slime? You got me slime? Is this supposed to tell me something? Do I deserve slime? Do you think I'M slime?"

I always have the best intentions. I really care about the people I buy gifts for and want the present to be personal and something they'd enjoy. After going through all of this, as I'm leaving the store after purchasing the gift, I regret what I chose 95% of the time.

I know gift cards seem like a cure to my illness, but those just aren't fun to buy. I know, I know, what I go through isn't fun, either. In fact, it's miserable. But I always go into it thinking it will be.

AAARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!

Foto Friday - Wave

Taken with Nikon D40 in Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, Illinois on October 29, 2007. Aperture Priority Mode,1/100 sec, f/20, 26mm, ISO 200, Nikon Raw Format Converted to DNG. Edited in Lightroom 2.1. 

This is the structure above the stage in Millennium Park in Chicago.  I was completely amazed by this building.  The curves, the texture, the light.  It all blew me away! 

I started editing in Lightroom with my fake HDR process then really went in and tweaked the sharpening and contrast until it popped just right.  My goal with this treatment was to really help you see that aspects of the structure that really captured my attention!  Let me know if it works!  Sorry this is so short; I spent all my time tonight editing photos instead or writing!  Please enjoy this work and keep finding ways to enjoy yourself behind the lens!  Even in the cold!