Well, Anne and I spent all day Saturday at the last swim meet of the 2007-08 Short Course season! I brought my camera but didn't take many shots except these two that epitomize the opportunities and the attitude that I seem to engender in my wife and our friends! One of these things is not like the others!

Shannon swam great and the team as a whole had an awesome meet! The long course season starts next week... oof!

Here's one for Dan! Also, notice a link on the right side for his website! His blog is great, too!

Yes, we're back from Santa Fe and back to work. It was a long day yesterday trying to get back home - Albuquerque, St. Louis, Baltimore, Buffalo, and then the drive to Rochester! We finally got in around midnight and Scott and I are both pretty wiped out. It was a fantastic week at the Workshops and we both learned so much from Dan Milnor! We can't wait to get going and shoot some weddings - I think everyone will be pleasantly surprised - we both have a new appreciation for the art side of photography! The west coast style that Dan taught us more of is really cool and I'm sure that everyone will love it!

So, the last assignment for class was to walk around Santa Fe and approach strangers and get a portrait and the answer to a question. This is a pet project of Dan's. I asked people if they liked dogs or cats better! I received some odd answers though - Willie said that he likes Hot Dogs!

Here's a few of the images. I was only turned down by one gentleman from Washington, DC. He looked very nervous...

Look for updates to our website soon including changes to the images we have there! See you soon!

It's early and I was up 'til almost one am last night downloading, editing, and re-editing my take from yesterday. We had the most amazing day! We had about 5 hours at the Scottish Rite Masonic Center with six photographers (us) and six great models, Mawgie, Deserae, Katie, Jacob, Zack, and Boril. Not only were they all good looking, but they were all willing to do just about anything we could think of, and have fun doing it!

We paired up with another photographer - Scott and I split up - and a pair of the models and then went to different rooms for a one hour session. After that we rotated models and went to a different room. The building itself is phenomenal! I could have spent all day just shooting the architecture and details in the rooms! The building predates California!

The tough part of this whole assignment, outside of the time pressures with each set of models, was the edit. I personally took about 13 MB of images! And I'm sure that Scott took more! Then Dan says that we have to come to class this morning with a maximum of 10 keepers! Ooof!

I think I was successful and here are eight of them! Have a great day!

Well, I ran out of time and couldn't get any images up so here's some from yesterday and Monday!

We spent much of the morning in class looking at Dan Milnor's work and discussing how to see light and how to use it to our advantage. Then we got our first assignment and spent the afternoon making images using different lighting conditions - back lighting, side lighting, etc. Scott and I went to Jackalope, a kind of bazaar/flea market/furniture store/zoo. What a great place! So many different things to look at!

Another highlight of our day was to meet some of Santa Fe's finest delivering a brand new fire engine! The guys were great and let us shoot some portraits of them before they took off. Captain Rael was very gracious and I think the guyss had fun!

We also met our first Republican - lots of Kerry (yes, old ones) and Obama stickers. The people here appear to be much more environmentally conscious than we are in New York. Anyway, it was refreshing to see this guy and know that there might be some balance here!

Today we'll be going to the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple (?) for a shoot with models! It's going to be nerve racking but a great experience, I'm sure.

After a buffet dinner and a short presentation last night we got together as a class, “Transitioning Into Weddings.” There are 8 of us taking the class from Daniel Milnor. Dan is a high energy wedding, commercial, and portrait photographers from Los Angeles and an all around nice guy!

So after a few hours of sleep and waking up two hours early our first day of class started! Dan is so full of information, opinions, stories about himself and other photographers that it was close to information overload – but in a good way. We were all wishing for some WD-40 to spray on the chairs to keep them from squeaking whenever anyone moved though!

The experience levels in the class range from Tony, a printer and beginning photographer, to John, who was a staff photographer for a newspaper but is just branching into weddings. We come from all over – California, Florida, New York, and Guatemala. It’s a very diverse class!

After all day stuffing information into our heads we finally broke up around 5ish and Scott, Kyle, and I took off for the mountains. We were all really hungry but wanted to get somewhere to shoot first! Scott picked a place called Hyde Park that is a little Northeast of the city but is sitting at somewhere around 10-11,000 feet. A winding road carried us up through the mountains around hairpin turns and evidence of old snowfall. As we went higher and higher the snow became deeper and you could see striation in the bank of clean snow and dirt from traffic. The road was well kept and clear of snow though and, although the sun was hidden behind low clouds, we were hopeful.

We finally found a lookout stop that had an incredible vista looking down into the valley at Santa Fe and across to more mountains to the west. The slopes were covered with aspen, pines, and snow and it was pretty chilly. The snow was a few feet deep and well packed in front of the lookout and we noticed that all the aspen trees seemed to have a small hookshot in their trunks, all at the same height. It turns out that the reason was fires in the 80’s damaged all of them and then they continued to grow!

I set up my tripod and suddenly the sun broke through the clouds with rays of bright yellow that lit up the mountains and the trees on them! We shot like crazy until hunger and frozen fingers drove us back into the truck in search of food! Here’s some of the take – enjoy!

Yes, even after over a foot of snow was dumped on Western New York we were able to get out of the airport in Buffalo on time! We did decide to get a hotel in Buffalo the night before and drove through some rough weather to get there though!

One interesting thing happened on the way to Buffalo... The roads were not that great and the snow was blowing pretty well but that didn't deter a little Kia from blowing past us at 65 mph! Scott and I looked at each other and said "We'll see him in a ditch soon!" Of course a little while later, as we were passing a slow moving truck, there is the Kia on the right side of the road. Not stuck, just sitting there. Then he suddenly pulled out in front of the truck we had just passed and I was sure that he was going to be run down. He didn't and then proceeded to fly by us again! Just amazing. A couple more miles went by and sure enough, there is the Kia, deep in the snow in the center median. We waved and kept going. Survival of the smartest...

We arrived in Albuquerque around 10am MST and, after getting our rental car, we drove up to Santa Fe. The landscape between is barren and monotone for the most part. However, every once in a while we would pass a small wash or stone structure that made it worth looking. My ears kept popping constantly as we made our way up into the mountains. Santa Fe sits 7500 feet above sea level and you can feel it. Not as bad as I was expecting though – you can still breathe!

The workshop check-in wasn’t happening until 2pm so we had a couple hours to kill. We ran in to Kyle Murphy after the van from the airport dropped him off at the Workshops early also. He’s a great guy just starting out with some very nice images already to his credit! So, being the nice guys we are, we took him with us into Santa Fe!

I guess the residents here must see a lot of this – three guys with pro cameras around their necks taking pictures of the weirdest things from the strangest positions… Here’s a few of mine! The most interesting one happened when a small pickup drove by with a dog in the back. I thought that was nothing big but just as he went by a small cat crawled out of the back window, too! I was taking the image and Kyle was yelling behind me, “Get it! Get it!”