tomatoes and sunsets

Sunday evening... a great Stake Conference attended today... and enjoying the evening cool-down in the back yard. Here are the tomatoes we picked tonight. I have to thank John K who comes to the pharmacy for being so generous in sharing his tomato starters with us. These are real gems. The largest one here weighs in at 1 lb 2 ounces. We are glad they are starting to turn red finally.
The interesting shaped one is a Jersey Devil. They are really juicy and sweet. Mmmmm.

i love close-up

these were from Aug 7 when we went up to Douglas Wyoming for the wedding. We stopped at a fast food joint for breakfast and they had a playroom. I brought my camera in to take a picture of Sam hanging on the bar and ended up taking some close-ups. It's not always that the kids allow me to take close-ups. But I think the kids look just great close up. No flash used, just raw light.

And we thought we would post the video of Sam on here too, because some people aren't on facebook yet (we still love ya).

images images

First day of kindergarten for Camille and first day back to preschool for Sam. Fun day. They both were very excited and had a great day! Thanks Mommy and thanks teachers. For those interested, I put some notes abt the making of the pictures, but I put them at the end so that those not interested don't need to sift through them.







The images at the front door of Sam had an umbrella flash pointed at the door behind him. Also, he had a gold reflector in front. Hence the warmth on the face and the somewhat cooler blues behind him.

The picture of Camille inside the front door was set to manual exposure so that I could expose for outside lighting. And the off camera flash shot through white umbrella was set to auto to light subject.

In Camille's room I set the flash on one side of her on auto with Aperture priority on the camera. And she is standing next to a window which is bring in some light.

The last three shots were taken around 7:30pm on the trampoline. There was indirect sunlight and I brought the flash through umbrella out next to the tramp. I set my camera to manual (increased ISO from 100 to 200) and shot at f 4.5 and shutter speed 125. I put the flash on 1/8 power I believe (manual as well).

I shot all the pictures with the same color balance (4200K) and then adjusted color balance post shooting.

Scott is walking across the room now. Here are some pics from G and G Gerritsen's house.
Also, we had to post this video of Scott. There is one little jig on the piano in demo mode that, when played, Scott does the tongue dance. It is quite entertaining. Only does it on this one little song clip though.

And finally, here is a clip of Sam on his birthday this month.

Forgive the blurriness on the top half... we had some little fingers touch the lens just before Scott's dance.

school begins

So this is Spencers first day of school. He picked out his ensemble, including the crocs. And just before we took the picture, he ran and made this label to go on his shirt. It says "2 Grad" for 2nd Grade. I thought that was very creative. He is very excited to be returning to school. He really enjoys being with his friends. And I think he really enjoys the classroom environment. He has had great teachers thus far.
One other thing... I showed Spence the pictures on the LCD of the camera and he said "I can't really see my sign, can we write on pictures on the computer?" So for the one picture above, we enhanced his sign. Have a wonderful day Spence!

Reception Book

Here is the reception book. Not as formal and not as long as the wedding book. About 60% of the size of the other book as well.

July 4th and Picasa

 

 

 

 

I was sifting through some pics tonight and found these on the 4th of July. Scotty was so cute in his car... noises and all. in fact he got down under the steering wheel when he was done and couldn't get himself out... so we picked up the car and freed him. The funky light pictures were taken over a few seconds while the kids made motions with those necklaces that light up for a few hours.

And the Picasa thing... I installed picasa to try it out. I like a lot of its features... if I wasn't a Photoshop/Bridge user Picasa would be my stand-alone app for image management.

The Wyoming Wedding

Ty and Chelsea, thanks for the chance to be at your wedding and capture some of it for you. We had a great time being with you and the family for the weekend. The book is printed... now we just have to wait for it to come... here is the cover.

For those who don't mind spoiling the secret... if you click on the image above, you can see the browse the book.

storm in Wyoming

We just had a wonderful weekend in Douglas Wyoming (home of the jackalope) at Amber's brother's wedding. It was very enjoyable (pictures to come). On the way up there (Thurs night) we were kept awake while driving (a good thing) by the fabulous lightning storm all around us. Finally, around 9 pm I couldn't stand it any longer and Amber consented to us pulling over off of I-80 and take some shots for 15 minutes. The kids were pretty much all sleeping anyway. This image was 8 exposures of 8 seconds each taken on a tripod at f8. No reason for the 8's... it just worked out that way. I took the images to photoshop just to lay them on top of each other with the layer style "screen" and hit the save button. I would like to try that again some time, but zoomed in a bit.

Neon Canyon

I finally got down to do a canyon with some friends. And I have promised Spencer he gets to go on the next one... it just won't be as long as this one. We did this one, which is down past Bryce Canyon, on Monday, August 3. It was a 10 mile hike. Somewhat strenuous, especially with the heat... but the water made for a nice cool-down. This was one of my favorite canyons we have done. The majority of these pictures of are the final rappel which is called the Golden Cathedral. It was spectacular. We have pools we had to jump into over our head, a few swimmers, and some tight spots at the beginning of the canyon.