TED talk on Success

Here is a TED talk that applies very much to photography, and people losing passion or sight of why they entered the field and the results. Very informative and interesting. Only like 3 minutes long.

Flathead Cherries

Photos from Penny's house on Flathead Lake - the weekend of Flathead Cherries! I would so live there and own an orchard and be happy forever. I've been eating those cherries everyday for breakfast and look forward to making cherry rhubarb pie and cherry crepes. Mmm. And the bottom photo is my salad that I made from a recipe in Gourmet magazine "Strawberry Avocado Goat Cheese Salad". It had avocado, arugula, feta, orange pieces and juice, strawberries, lime juice and olive oil. It was yummy (but I recommend not putting the dressing on until right before you eat it...otherwise it gets a little soggy). Point being - Flathead Cherries are yummy.

Emma

I never got to post or use this photo of Emma and Lisa for my senior project. Somehow it never ended up in the book (probably because I already have a bunch of these guys - they are super photogenic). Maybe it will go in the next one. Anyways, its one of my favorites and I came across it when ordering proofs today.

Leslie and Josh

A snippit of Leslie and Josh's engagement photo shoot! Cowboy hats in portraiture end up being more complicated than first expected, but overall there were some really good photos in this session. I always forget how it takes about fifteen minutes for me and the couple to loosen up and get comfortable...but after awhile we were climbing on tractors, hay bales, bushwacking to the puzzle trees and dealing with horses who wanted to eat everything (including Leslie's hair, dress and car). AND I hopefully am shooting their wedding July 17th next year! Wooo hooo! I have known Leslie since she was less than a year old and she is probably one of the craziest coolest people that I know.

Child Care Connections Photo Shoot #2

Here are a few photos from my photo session with Nannette, Mike, Eli and Issac for the Child Care Connections brochure. The middle image is the size I was working towards and the size they will use of each image, but I included other family images that I really liked. Once CC decides what images they will use I will post them so everyone can see :) I haven't posted my first photo session yet because I have to get the media release from the mother. Everyone in that office is so nice and very eager to have their portraits with their kids taken. I had a blast and can't wait to work with them more.

Quote and Inspirations from books

I have this tendency to go up to the 4th floor of MSU's library and get almost obsessed with the photo books up there. I look through, intending on only grabbing 2 or 3 and end up coming out with 8-10 of them. I love books with great pictures/photos and I feel like if I don't check out that book right then, it might get forgotten or lost in the stacks so the next time I am up there I would just glance over it. And miss all those great images. So...when I check out books, I try to remember what I like about the good ones. In my Documentary Photography class we had to copy images and write about the books, which helped. But now, I read through these books and write down amazing quotes or inspiration or just the title if the whole thing is good. Here is a link to two good books that everyone should check out and two quotes from books that connected to me when I read them:
A Year of Mornings, 3191 Miles Apart
The Greek File: Images from a Mythic Land

And the quote from Photo-log book - a collaboration of photos from the website plus a few articles on photography blogs and such:

"People exist who feel the way I feel. Perhaps not here, but somewhere. Somewhere out there is someone who thinks the way I think, and sees the way I see - if not identically, at least enough to be interested in, and interesting to, me. People exist who might want to talk to me. People exist who wouldn't glaze over when they look at my photos, the ones I take just for me. They're just for me, but I would be happy to share them."
-Digital Commentaries by Nick Currie from the Photo-log book

And the quote that very much sums up how I felt after my visit Greece:
"The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being." Henry Miller from the Colossus of Naroussi

Contracts and Such

Putting together contracts and media releases and price lists and printing lists...ahhhhhh! Found a good site for an outline for Copyright and Usage Agreements...used a media release from Childhood Connections (who I am photographed for last Wednesday and am photographing for again tomorrow) - looks pretty safe. Price lists still in the process...I don't do math well so I have to go through and make sure I am not ripping people off for my printing services. Jeez business is complicated. Time for bed...brain dying...

Leslie/Josh engagement photos, kid photos from Childhood Connections, Flathead Lake photos and my own engagement/save the date photos to come. Once I get some sleep.

National Folk Festival in Butte

Folk Festival in Butte! Really hot, 120,000 people, good food and really really good music. Mom, Patrick and I made the trek out on Saturday July 11 and spent the whole day there. Didn't have a whole lot of opportunity to photograph the performers which is a shame. We did get to visit our favorite bar, a piano jazz bar named Julian's, photograph to be posted later. Some day I will go in when the pianist is in his tux playing classic jazz tunes and get his portrait. That and the bartenders always have so much character and deserve a portrait as well. I wish I could afford to travel to Butte all the time and photograph, but alas, the life of an artist...
This weekend, I traveled to Kalispell to get Patrick's and my engagement photos taken for our save the dates and the newspaper. I also took a friend's engagement photos which I will post once I start editing. I started my second family book portraits by photographing my sister in Woodland Park....we'll see how those turn out. I also took my camera with us to Yellow Bay on Flathead Lake and it was the start of cherry season. The trees were bursting with fruit and so Katie and I climbed up into the trees at Penny's house on the lake and picked a flat of cherries. And I got some good photos...of course. I am considering making an in depth book on the cherry orchards on Flathead Lake (recipes, orchard history, etc)...we'll see. Off to bed, may inspiration come to me in my dreams. Ciao.

A few more images

A few more images I couldn't stand to leave off the blog from the photo walk (I love some of the colors so much!). Enjoy!

Images from Photo Walk #1 - Success!

Our photo walk around the Story Mill Trail was a success! Bek and David showed up and the only issues we had were that we went the opposite direction of Story Mill on the trail, my battery died a half an hour in and we got attacked by mosquitoes on our last part of the trek. Luckily we found lots of cool subjects to photograph on our part of the trail, David and I just switched off batteries and the mosquitoes didn't kill us. We got to talk photo geekish and get back into the photo mode. Hopefully I'll do another photo walk here in a few weeks and more people will come. Any ideas as to where?

Butte Folk Festival tomorrow with my mom and Patrick, bringing my camera (charging my battery) and ready to photograph good ol' photogenic Butte. Hope to do some people watching and photograph the performers as well. Capturing a sense of place (like mentioned in an earlier update) - this time in Butte, which believe me, is not hard to do. Ta ta!

Submissions to do this month:

Getting my paycheck on Friday means a number of things. Pay off credit card and enter show submissions. Shows to enter for July and their due dates (don't mind my To Do lists, they happen often):

Gallatin Valley Fair (free?) - July 11
Blurb ($25)- July 16
Exit Gallery MSU ($15??)- July 15
Sweet Pea ($20) - July 31

Good god that's $60 in entry fees...hmm...I might have to drop the Blurb entry...and the bad thing is that I am probably forgetting an entry that is due soon. Hmms and haaas of being an artist.

More 4th

More images from the fourth. The moon photo was taken from a moving car but it was so big I couldn't resist pulling out the camera. The baby in the bottom photo has the most beautiful eyes and she just stares...very cute.

Fourth of July in Avon

Good food, bottle rockets (rockets made of bottles), intense clouds, 9 kids under age 11, and lots of Fourth of July fun in Avon with Patrick's family. That keeps growing. Without realizing it I shot 1600 ISO...I feel a little dumb not checking my camera beforehand, but hey, it happens to everyone. At least the photos turned out OK. The top photo was taken while he was jumping up and down and I could barely keep track of him in the viewfinder, but it looks like I captured him laughing pefectly fine. I didn't get to work on photos for my second family book, but I figure I can go and visit the Avon family anytime. I did show them the first book and explain the concept and my idea for the second book, so they know they'll be involved. Happy 4th!