Nate and some new photo gear

Our children are extremely photogenic and here are a couple of good examples of that.  I recently got everything I need to use my SB-600 flash as an off-camera flash and I am completely thrilled with the results!  I used my SB-600 at about 1/8th power with a 45” shoot-through umbrella camera left with a 42” reflector camera right.  Nate made this awesome pouty face because his sister knocked over his trains (out of the frame near his feet). 

This shot was taken the same way except that Nate had pushed over the reflector (this is how I got such a cute expression on his face).  We repeated this exercise about 4 times and the photo above is my favorite from the set. What a stud!  I went with a split-toned black and white treatment for this one and I think it works well.

Nate has been so much fun lately and is learning so much.  Nate had is adenoids (it really bugs me that we say adenoids when there is only one adenoid) out and tubes put in his ears a couple of weeks ago and his audiologist recently confirmed that he is now hearing normally!  Go Nate!  Hearing better has made a huge difference for him.  His speech is getting much better and we are just so happy for him.  Here are a couple of cute things he has done lately.

He had a cold the other day so we told him we were going to put the humidifier in his room.  He got an intense look on his face and said, “no fire in my room!”  I told him that it wasn’t a fire and that it would put water in the air to help him breath, to which he responded, “but it will get in my eyes!”  After we put his fears to rest he was pretty excited about the whole thing. 

On Sunday, I ran in the door from a home teaching visit, grabbed a snack, told everyone that I was late, and that I was going to visit with the Bishop.  Nate said that he wanted to come and was really enthusiastic about it!  I told him that he could go with me to visit his friend Kohen later and that I would be right back.  He was excited to go visit his friend but was really bummed that he couldn’t go with me to visit the bishop.  Weird I thought.  Later that evening, Julie told me that further conversation with Nate showed that Nate thought I was going to visit the spaceship rather than the bishop.  :)

My family rocks!

A Saturday With The Cromey’s

A few weeks ago some friends (Brad, Tiffiany, and Lincoln Cromey) had decided to drive all the way up to Roy from Eagle Mountain to take their son to the Hill Aerospace Museum (pictures). Since we live just a couple of minutes away from the museum, they called us up and invited us to join them. Luckily, we hadn’t made other plans and were able to go.

It was windy and chilly, but the boys had SO much fun! They ran from airplane to airplane pointing up at them and smiling. They even got to go inside a helicopter! But when all that good stuff got old, they had a blast chasing each other in circles and in between the rows of chairs. But I’d say out of everything, their favorite part was putting coins in the donation funnel and watching them go around, and around, and around. Simple pleasures, eh?

After all that excitement, we decided to go to lunch at The Pizza Factory. It was a little crazy with the boys fighting over Lincoln’s motorcycle toys and Madeleine spilling a huge glass of ice water, but the company and food was fantastic.

Thanks, Cromey’s, for the fun Saturday! Next time we’ll meet down your way.

RJ Snow Photography Workshop Aftermath

We would like to thank all that came and participated in our workshop on Saturday.  We had such a great time learning about photography.  Special thanks to Shannon (see her stuff here) for joining us and sharing her skill and knowledge of photographic subjects.  If you would like to review the materials or if you didn’t attend and would like to learn more about exposure, please review the slideshow and handout (pending) from the event.  Hopefully, we’ll see you next time. 

We have started a group on Flickr for sharing photos that were taken during our photowalks and workshops.  If you’re not a member of Flickr then sign up (it’s free). Please join the group and submit your photos.  I was busy helping people and didn’t get a chance to take any pictures; however, Julie took some really cool pictures that you can see in the group. 

If any of you would like to offer some feedback on the workshop, please do so in the comments or send us an email. 

Foto Friday – a vote of confidence

Taken with the Nikon D40 in Salt Lake City, Utah on January 10, 2009. Manual Exposure Mode, 70mm, 1/640 sec at f/2.8, ISO 200, Nikon Raw Format converted to Adobe DNG format. Edited in Lightroom 2.2.

I took this shot using the same lens and during the same photowalk as urban non-chalance.  What a fun morning!  It was very cold; however, a morning sun illuminated the face of Emma Smith from the east.  The lighting was still somewhat soft but with enough strength to fall nicely on Emma’s face.  I really like to see shadow next to highlight to give a lot of shape to the face.  I was using the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 so I hit this one with f/2.8 to blur the background as much as possible.  To my knowledge, this statue depicts Emma receiving pennies from Joseph to fund the beginning of the relief society.  A tremendous amount of confidence was placed in Emma and this statue captures her resolute, calm, and confident spirit that she’ll be able to accomplish her assignment with the Lord’s help. 

I converted this image to grayscale and did a few curve adjustments to separate her from the background slightly more (the b&w tones were a little too similar for my tastes without the curve adjustments).  Using the brush adjustment tool I added a very slight amount of negative clarity to soften her face and some positive clarity to her shirt to emphasize the amazing detail on her shirt. 

If you want even more details on this image you can see it on the more properties page for this image on flickr.  I hope you enjoy this photo and hope you enjoy yourself behind the lens!  We’ll see many of you tomorrow at the workshop!

Reminder for RJ Snow Photography Exposure Workshop

We got such a good response for our upcoming Exposure Workshop!  Here is a list of who we have coming. Please let us know if you are unable to attend or want to join us.

Rob & Julie S.
Shannon W.
Josh & Jenni N.
Mat B.
Tyson & Diane G.
Andrea R.
Emily N.
Kelly W.
Deb J. & Jason
Susan F.
Robby W.
Aubry B.
Alex D.

Again, here are the details:

When: Saturday, Feb. 28th at 11am. 

Where: The Counter restaurant at The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake.

We’re excited to see all of you!!

Ward Youth Sledding Activity

I took a bunch of pictures at a youth sledding activity and have compiled them in this video.  It was too big for me too upload in HD so unfortunately you only get it in standard def today.  We had such a blast sledding, drinking hot chocolate, and having impromptu snowball fights.  I got hit in the head twice!  I think it is because my head is so big!  Enjoy.  If anyone wants to get this on DVD I can hook you up.  Just let me know.  And I’ll put the photos up for download soon! 

Can’t Sleep…so Photos

The title pretty much explains it. It’s 2:18am and I (Julie) can’t sleep. I’m jealous of Rob. He can ALWAYS sleep. It takes him just a hair under 20 seconds to enter dreamland. I was sleeping, but Nate woke me up twice crying. Before I went to bed I checked on the kids and noticed that Nate seemed to have a slight fever. I was right. We’ll see if he wakes up more tonight. I hope not. Poor kid.

I’ve uploaded a bunch of photos from…wait for it…last November and December.  Terrible, huh?! In our defense, I totally forgot they were taken.  That’s not much of a defense, is it?

Here are a few photos from Thanksgiving at Rob’s parent’s house. Both sets of grandparents are there along with an aunt, an uncle, and two cousins. Holidays are great for getting together with family.  I thought just the other day that I don’t think we’ve gotten together with either side of the family as a group since Christmas, even though we all live within 45 minutes of each other. Crazy! We need to do something about that.

Here are a few photos from a service project and scavenger hunt my mom put together for her grandkids. She decided that it was a good idea for them to buy toiletry items and put together hygiene kits for the Humanitarian Center instead of trading gifts. To make it even more fun, she made each of the kids (13?) a scavenger hunt. They went around the house looking for little gifts and goodies with messages pertaining to the reason for Christmas. It was a good time and a big thanks to my mom for coming up with such an enjoyable and thoughtful activity.

Here are three random pictures. 

And finally, a few funny pictures of Rob as a preteen.

Now it’s 2:51am and maybe I’ll be able to fall asleep.

Foto Friday – White Trees

Rob always makes fun of me for my lame, uncreative titles. I always make fun of him for his “thesaurus” titles.  We’re at an impasse…haha.

This picture was taken last month when we went up to Farmington Canyon with friends.  We snow shoed away from the cabin and came to an open, snow-covered field. We all stopped, took out our cameras, and looked around for different perspectives.

When I was taking this shot, I already knew what I wanted to do with it, stylistically.  The white trees already stood out against the darker green background, but I wanted to pronounce that a little bit more and tried to make the trees emanate or “glow” a little.  It took some experimenting and a hard decision between keeping it in color or changing it to b&w, but this is what I ended up with. It’s not perfectly in line with what I had envisioned in my head, but pretty close. That’s such a hard thing sometimes, getting your vision captured. I’ll keep working on that… 

Randomness

A collection of random thoughts and happenings of the day thus far.

I let Nate butter his toast. When I came back and inspected it was covered with gobs of gross butter. As I was scraping it off I told him that much butter would hurt his belly. When I gave it back to him, in a sad voice, he said, “Oohhhh. Butttttterrrrrr. The butter’s all gone.”

Rob has a friend from high school who is an interior designer. We bartered our photography services her her design services. She’s stopping by in the morning and I’m so nervous! She’s a very honest ;) professional and will be critiquing my home. Makes me a little sick to my stomach.

I’m planning our road trip to Tucson for Rob’s cousin’s wedding at the end of March. I’m SO excited to take to scenic route along scenic byway 12 and visit some of the most beautiful scenery in the country. There are so many places to see and so little time.  I’m trying to choose the highlights and where to camp.

Better do my write-up for Foto Friday. I have a picture chosen, but I’m not sure what I’m going to say about it, yet.

Cub Scout Blue & Gold banquet is next Tuesday. I need to make phone calls and gather some info about each of the boys. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s making phone calls. I will procrastinate it for as long as possible.

Madeleine still only has 2 teeth. She’ll be 1 next month. I’d love to give her more people food and stop hand-feeding her baby food. 

I REALLY need to get to the gym tonight. I’ve been wanting to go to “Yoga Tone” on Thursday nights for weeks now but something always comes up.

I wonder what I should do for dinner. I was planning on BBQ chicken pizza.  Then I realized we’re out of BBQ sauce. I looked for a recipe online and it takes more effort to make than I’m willing to expend. The other option is Cheesy Potato Soup.  Hmmmm. That takes effort, too…

I can finally breathe again today. I’ve had a cold since Valentine’s Day.

I can’t wait to get my storage closet cleaned out and organized. I got a new file cabinet but can’t get into the closet to put away all the piles of paper from on my teeny desk in my teeny “office” on the landing at the top of our stairs.

I need to clean the bedrooms today. They’re too messy to play in.

The Office is on tonight and I’ll miss it since I’ll be at the gym. Will have to watch in online. Wondering if I can tonight or have to wait until tomorrow. Nevermind. I just looked and it’s a re-run. I hate re-runs. I swear half the season is re-runs.

Nate and I made apple crisp.  I LOVE that he LOVES cooking and I LOVE spending that special one-on-one time with him.

Madeleine is SO CUTE!! She just walks around and around and around finding toys and books and keeps herself entertained very well.

Well, I guess that’s all for now.  Thanks for letting me get my thoughts straightened!

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10 Favorite Songs – Rob Edition

Those that know me well are aware of my crazy love for music.  Every once in a while I want to share some favorites from my itunes library here on the blog.  Who knows you might find something you like.  Without further delay, my 10 favorite songs for February 16, 2009. 

• Stolen – Dashboard Confessional
• Coalminer – O.A.R.
• Release Me – Mae
• Dig – Incubus
• Lazarus – Porcupine Tree
• Buena – Morphine
• Glass of Water – Coldplay
• In Your Atmosphere – John Mayer
• Microcyte – Beast
• Granny – Dave Mathews Band

Check out these songs.  Maybe you’ll like some of them.  Of course, you may hate some of them too.  My musical taste is not always universal.  :)