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!

The Kids – Fall Edition

The kids have been up to some pretty interesting things lately. They are growing up so fast. Here is a set of photos that we put together that show their fun personalities.

After looking through the photos we realized that Nate seems to have a shortage of clothes. Rest assured that Nate has all the clothes he needs; he just doesn’t want to wear them! Nate usually strips down to his skivvies within 30 seconds of coming in the door. He is just comfortable in his own skin I guess. Madeleine isn't very dressed either because it inhibits her crawling and she gets frustrated.

Some other details about them these days:

Nathan:

• He completely body slams his sister, pulls her down, drags her around, wrestles, etc. Most of the time she just takes it and laughs.


• His favorite saying is "Whatchu do, daddy/mommy?" He asks us this constantly.


• He loves, loves, loves to read books. We probably read six of them at a time six times a day.


• Repeating prayers is getting much better. For months he would just say ad ad ad ad adda. ad ad ad ad adda. aaaahhh (amen). Now he actually says real words.


• He has to sleep with no less than five blankets. Every time one gets dirty, I'd put it in the wash and if i didn't get it through in time, I'd pull a new one out of the closet. Then he never lets me put any of them away. Each week I try to sneak one, wash it, and put it away but he always finds it before I get it back to the closet.


• When he knows it's bedtime, he tells me "No sleep" and then puts his hands next to his head and snores, and says "No sleep" again just so I don't misunderstand him.


• He has such a spunky personality. He makes his dad and I laugh all the time. We see his imagination starting to kick in and we love it.

Madeleine:

• She is so determined. Especially when it comes to crawling over, under, and through anything to get to something she wants.


• She sucks up mandarin oranges like a vacuum.


• She's adopted a bedtime bear. This thing isn't very old but already looks like a maimed mess. She sucks on its limbs, cuddles her arms around him, and lays her head on his chest. She won't sleep without him.


• Her absolute favorite thing to do is to hold onto my fingers and walk around. She's getting really fast and she steers me to different rooms with ease.


• She observes how people do things and tries to do them herself. She tries to put the lids back on her snacks, fit her shapes into her bucket, color, put money in the piggy bank, etc. This girl is smart.


• She is a very happy little girl. If she isn't tired or hungry, she doesn't have a care in the world. So playful and satisfied.

These kids are great. We love them so much!!

Foto Friday - Variations on a Drip

I took these shots in Zion National Park on the Lower Emerald Pool Trail. I pushed the stroller (when Nate didn't want to walk) up the mountain and Rob had Madeleine in the backpack. He and everyone else on the trail were snapping tons of photos but I wasn't really in the mood to take my own...I wasn't feeling inspired to do so for some reason.

As I was sitting there waiting for Rob to be done and keeping an eye on Nate, I noticed a specific drip coming from high above me and hitting a very small puddle. I was amazed at the perfect little bubble the splash created! How cool! All of a sudden I was inspired.

I positioned myself and put the camera on action mode so the camera would automatically take four consecutive shots. This way I was sure to catch some good shots. It was still harder than I thought it would be because the splash occurred and dissipated so fast. I ended up taking about 40 shots to get these six.

They're not the highest quality, but still really cool. I encourage you to look at the large version in order to see the detail in the bubbles and ripples.

Cute Robby!

How adorable was he?!?!

Foto Friday - Corners

 Taken with Nikon D40 at Snow Canyon State Park outside St. George, Utah on October 11, 2008. Manual Exposure Mode, Nikon Raw Format. Edited in Lightroom 2.

We visited Snow Canyon the weekend of the big snowstorm in Salt Lake City (glad I wasn’t there).  It was fairly chilly but still had a good time.  I wanted to stay for hours more but the kids and girls with getting cold.  The overcast skies provided very interesting backgrounds for our photographs.  Stay tuned for a whole bunch of family pictures from our stay in St. George. 

I took this shot near the top of a very large petrified sand dune.  I just loved seeing where the plant life has developed on the petrified dunes.  The folds and curves in the rocks are a surprising contrast with other rock fragments that are just strewn about.

In Lightroom I did the black and white conversion, added a sepia treatment in the split-toning panel (give a color to the highlights and darks), adjusted the contrast, made the light spot in the corner show up more and adjusted the darkness of the shadows a little using curves.

Now a question for you.  I’ve been debating on whether or not the bush on the rock line is distracting.  I’m considering removing the bush and the other small areas of grass that creep into the scene at the rock line.  I think they take away from the rock/sky transition.  Let me know what you think.  Hope you enjoy this image and remember to enjoy yourself behind the lens!