Wedding

On July 22 I assisted Neysa with a wedding. It was an outdoor wedding and it fell on a beautiful day. The couple were great. I wish them nothing but happiness. Below are some images from the day.

A quick shot from the bride's room before moving on to hang out with the guys.

Preparing the marriage certificate.
The groom getting ready.

A little help from his mom.
The bride with her mother.
The happy groom waiting for his bride.

A little trouble getting the ring on.


Love the different style of cake.
"You lost that lovin' feeling"

Abbreviated Vacation

My 10 day vacation was cut short because of Hurricane Flossie. My husband had to travel for work so I was tagging along. I started in Coronado Island, CA and was to move on to Honolulu on Wednesday. Instead we headed back to Cincinnati on Tuesday night on the red eye (10:15 pm) out of San Diego. While moving the plane for take-off a maintenance light came on. The plane could not be fixed in time to take-off before the noise restriction hours. Luckily we got re-booked on a flight leaving at 6:15 in the morning. Which meant waiting about 4.5 hours in the airport until check-in and security opened back up. Had trouble checking in and did not get a seat assignment. Which meant we were not guaranteed a seat. After going back through security - oh did I mention that every time I went through security had to do the extra special security route. Pat downs and your luggage unpacked and checked. Everything electronic gets tested. Of course I had several pieces of camera equipment so it took awhile. All the agents were great though and were careful with my equipment and friendly. Get the gate and get asked if we mind moving to another flight through Atlanta instead of Salt Lake City because of overbooking. They both got in at the same time so not a big deal. The gates were even next to each other. Got to Atlanta and that plane gets delayed an hour because of maintenance issues as well. Finally get into CVG and had to find our luggage. It made it there via Salt Lake City. Finally I am home. I think I was up 36 hours with maybe 10-15 minute catnaps at the airport and on the planes. One of these days I will figure out what day it is and where I am out. Until then I am off to get more coffee and to start unpacking. The above picture is from the beach outside the hotel where we stayed.

Updated 08/23/2007:

We did get to see the Del - we stayed there since it was the only place that had room for us during our entire stay. Very crowded at times.

I do have high-res files of almost every image posted here and can definitely sell prints from them. I will contact you offline.

Nature

I found time to post for my friend in Columbus who always lets me know an email he likes my images but never comments :) I told him the other day that I was a little crazy to go outside in the wonderful 95+ degree day to take pictures of some birds hanging out in the shadow of my bushes. These birds have made an appearance in the shadows for the past 3-4 days. So I took my 300mm lens and used my 1.4 teleconverter to get as close as I could without actually getting close. I skipped the monopod I use most of the time when using this lens. It is a manual focus lens and tends to get heavy pretty quickly. So the first 2 images below are the birds. Wish I could have circled the block quickly and sat in my neighbors yard for a better angle. The rest of the images were taken yesterday from my kitchen window. A hummingbird was flying all around one of my honeysuckles so I grabbed the same combination of equipment and took a bunch of shots of it. Decided to stay inside because the heat and the fact I was close enough indoors.

I snuck a little closer
A short break.
Diving in.

I like it even though the main focus is not the bird.

Floor Project

The floor project is finally finished. The floor itself has been done for awhile but like most projects it spanned a few other projects. Adding the molding meant painting the baseboards as well. And while putting the flooring in the walls were marked up. So that meant painting them as well. Truthfully I think they needed it anyways. So all but one wall is painted. Trying to decide on the color of that wall but it means that I can start putting the room back together. Yeah! Below are some pictures of the finished floor.

Oak Hills Football Field

Oak Hills High School raised enough money to replace their grass football field with a synthetic field. They did an amazing job to collect enough money in a year. The field is scheduled to be completed this coming Monday. In plenty of time for the first football game. I stopped by the field yesterday and was amazed by the difference. It looks amazing! As a photographer I especially excited since that means the ground will be a bit easier on the knees and if it rains I will no longer by walking through or kneeling in mud puddles. I am sure all the players and coaches are excited about the new field as well. Below I included some before shots of the field and then some current images.

Lots of dirt patches

A black & white of the image from above.
Laying part of the field.

Great to see the logo in the middle of the field.



A black & white of the new field.

Distractions

I am really good about getting up in the morning and getting things done. By late afternoon though I can be easily distracted. I think I actuallylook for these distractions at times. Thursday-Sunday I worked on a slight re-design of my photography site. Every morning I would get up and work on it. I did not do too bad but occassionally I would have to just get away from things. I ran 3 times in those 4 days. I got new trim and painted it. Did some yardwork. Read books and watched a few movies. But one of my favorite things I did was grab a camera with one lens and walk around my house taking various images. Sometimes I did this in the middle of the day and other times at night. Not often do I get to just play with my camera so it was nice to have the break to do so. Today was the first time I took the card out of my camera and actually looked at what I took. Below are just 4 images of the ones I took. Check out the changes to my site and let me know what you think. More to come in the next month or so.

We have had some great sunsets recently.

Not quite a sunset but I liked the light and how the silhouette turned out.

Baby Session

I had a baby session towards the end of last week. This little guy is so cute! He was fussy at times like all babies but we waited him out so I could get some images of him not crying. I am glad the parents did not mind taking the extra time with me. Below are some pictures from the session.

Peaceful.
This chair they had was great.

Flooring.
For some reason I can not set a title for this post in the right spot. So I hacked it for now.

From a previous post you know that I tore out carpeting in a room in our house awhile ago. A little over a week ago we finally found the wood we wanted to put down on the floor. This past weekend we started to install the new flooring. I love it! There is just something about wood flooring that I love. We managed to get the room mostly done in one weekend. If I did not have to make us quit on Saturday for a shoot we most likely would have gotten it done in 2 days. Now I am working on getting the base trim to stain so we can install that after we finish laying the last few rows.

My husband looked up when I snapped this one.

Laying out the first row.
After lots of measuring to get everything set and some cutting for the vent, this is the extent of day one.
Day 2 went much better. Just a few rows left there on the left side.