the face says it all

We have a tradition that everyone gets to open one present on Christmas Eve; and it is usually a clothing item: PJs, gloves, robes, or the like.
Sammy really pulled a cute face on this one, and we were lucky enough to get a picture of it. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We are grateful for our Savior and His life. We know He lives. He is the reason for the season.

Spence is our poser. And we appreciate his willingness to pose for a picture.

Camille, on the other hand, avoids the camera. So here I snuck a shot.

Amber is very photogenic, regardless of what she thinks.

And Scott... I think he's the cutest kid in the world!


Daddy loves you all!

Thanksgiving 2008

We drove up to Douglas, WY (Home of the Jackalope) and had a grand time with G and G Mower and Ashley's fam.

Swinging and Seeing better

From kids

From kids

From kids

From kids

From kids

From kids

branching

I decided to make a blog for my photography hobby and knowledge. So, feel free to check it out and tell your friends to check it out. I have toyed with the idea of teaching a photography class... but I will most likely gauge that idea on the success (or lack of) of this new blog.
ALL THINGS LIGHT at Skytangphoto.blogspot.com
My idea is to share photo hints and tips while pushing myself to learn and try new things with photography, while sharing the results.

High Spur Canyon - Spencer's First

Spencer did a fabulous job in this canyon. What a trooper... 4.2 miles and an 80 foot rappel.

sorry, venting again...

So I was cleaning off my desk and found the flag etiquette pamphlet that came with our flagpole. As I was reading through it, I remembered something that really disturbed me last Spring. I was with the friend up at the City County building in Salt Lake. There is a statue there done by my great-grandfather. It is of 2 kids, one pointing up at the flag. On the side of that statue is a plaque with what used to be the pledge of allegiance on it. Now what exists there on the plaque are the words of the pledge of allegiance with the words "under God" taken out. How in the world does a city get away with taking one of the most (if not the most) important elements out of the pledge of allegiance? I was and am appalled and disappointed.

Update:  5/3/2011
It was discovered that the words "under God" were not included in the pledge until 1954. 

photog notes

I went out to shoot my sister's family tonight and it was a little darker than I had hoped. So we rearranged and made do. Here are a few of those shots...
In this image, I have a flash behind them to give a rim light and I have a flash through an umbrella camera right on a light stand. Both flashes have warming gels over them. I have been shooting with a really cold white balance (around 3000-3400) today to try a certain cold background with warm subjects.

From Allens2008

Here I added a small (Lumiquest) softbox over the flash behind them to give a softer light and moved the umbrella flash to camera left. Unfortunately, my f-stop was too wide open and didn't allow everyone to be in focus. (Mental note... even in small groups, shoot at f-stop 4.0 or 5.6, no smaller) One more...
Moving on... I wanted to see how far I could use commander mode on my Nikon to trigger the 2 flashes, so Amber got to be my subject again. Here I used a gold reflector (36 inch, I think) on the floor in front of subject. I shot a flash from 3 feet away from reflector to bounce up at subject... no warming filter this time, but still WB3000. The blue on the background was a CTB (blue gel) over a flash aimed at wall behind subject. I was pleased with being about 17 feet from subject and still trigger flashes.

On Camille's I just used one flash lower than eye level on camera right and still shot at WB3000. This one I took into photoshop and blue'd up the background a bit.
With all of these shots, I set the exposure value to -1.0 to -1.3 stops on the camera. Then I set the flashes to +1 on most of the shots. That way, my background was not as bright as my subjects. The flashes compensated for the camera and correctly exposed my subjects. The only exception was Amber's shot where I had the flashes set at 0 and the camera still at -1.0 stop.