On Location Bridals

Yesterday a young lady requested that I put more of my wedding pictures on my blog since she loved to look at wedding pictures. So I decided to do just that and started with a wedding that I was asked to do last December of my beautiful niece. These are some of her bridals.

She had requested that since her reception was going to be in this building, Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, that we do her bridals there as well. So on a very cold December evening we drove to SLC and did the bridals. 

It is always fun to shoot on location since you don't always know what places there will be to do the pictures. I have done them here before though so I had a pretty good idea of where I would go and what I would use as props.

There were a few other places though that we had not used before that were really fun such as the window through which the temple became a backdrop and then the outside shot with the temple in the background and finally the decorated trees just outside of the building. 

It was a fun evening and here are only a very few of the images.

My little Colorado Sweethearts

As a Grandpa it is always fun to see my grandchildren, even if I do have to travel 8 hours, one way, to see them for three short days. Then there is the one thing that I really like to do when I see them and that is to take their pictures.



And then of course following that is to take a few minutes with the images in photoshop.



And after that to play just a little bit longer in photoshop.


It was a fun weekend and this is only two of the images that I have of them. Wait till you see some of the others.

My Favorite Flowers

It has been a few days since I posted a blog since I have been in Colorado and been sick. So today I thought that I would keep it simple and just post a few images from the past of flowers in my yard that I have always loved. Hope you enjoy.

Another fun friend

When I got home from work the other night we had a visitor on our door jam. So I decided she must have wanted a photoshoot and felt quite inclined to give her one. I took her on my hand and went around into the better light, set her down on a piece of board, went and got my camera, and then took a few pictures of her. It was really quite fun. The front legs look like they have been copied in design by some of the knife makers in history as they are so jagged. I was also having a hard time deciding why the eyes had the one little color slit in them. There are so many things that I don't know about this great world we live in and on. I do know though that this particular type of bug is one of my favorite ones right along side of Daddy Long Leg spiders and Lady Bugs.

A light trip

More from my Saturday morning trip, specifically the light part of it as I was looking for the light coming from anything, anywhere. I had decided to try and capture significant amounts of light so that I could create the star effect in my images with a star filter attached to the lens.

Since the sun had just appeared over the mountain it came at such an angle to the camera that I was able to capture very significant star shapes. I started with the first thing that caught my eye, a clothespin on the clothesline.


Then just beyond that was the fence shimmering in the morning sun with each horizontal wire adding it's own portion to the image.


Followed by a glimpse toward the sun I could see the rays being split into small narrow streams by the needles of the long needle pine tree.


Finally beyond them all was the neighbors fence around the water tap in his pasture.

Each had their own beauty and each a part of the other by how they reflected the light toward the camera and into the lens to form the beautiful images.  I am always amazed by the creations of our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ, the closer you look at them the more spectacular and intricately beautiful they become.

Saturday Morning PhotoWalk

Recently NAPP held a photowalk around different cities in the world. I was unable to participate in one but decided Saturday morning to do one of my own. I have often commented on this blog that you can always find new things to photograph even around your own home. Well this time I found a number of things such as the bushel of ripe peaches just waiting to be processed later that day. I had recently read an article in one of my photo magazines that suggested that to continue to improve your photography skills was not only practical but necessary. Then it listed 5 exercises to do to help to hone your skills. So I was also thinking about this as I went out. One of those things was to just look for color and another to just look for light. Well the following images came from that little exercise. I also had fun realizing how different things can be in only a few seconds. I will put more images from this photowalk on the blog later but for now here are three of them that I really quite liked.


My wife wanted to walk over to one of the neighbors and deliver some gifts that she had for them to honor the wife and mother that had recently passed away at age 95. We were waiting for their grandson to come out of the field from feeding their horses so I decided to continue shooting more pictures since I still had my camera with me. I loved this old piece of equipment that is in the yard.



My favorite image however came as I was passing one of the sheds and the sun came out from behind the clouds and shed light through the windows and cracks in the wall on the other side of the shed from where I was walking. This took me back to the days of my youth growing up on a farm with many of the same types of scenes constantly in front of my view. I didn't photograph as many of them as I do now but the images are still very much in my memory,
Finally I wanted to brag just a little. I was honored this week by having one of my images picked as one of 6 editors choice images for the NAPP Portfolio. Go to the following link between now and Wednesday to see the image and others that were chosen. http://www.photoshopuser.com/members/portfolios/

Looking Forward, but not too fast.

So I'm having a little bit of fun with your mind. I happened on to these images this morning and decided to post them while I could still go outside and enjoy the hot car as I rode home. It is often interesting to me how we are always wishing it was cool when it's suppose to be hot and warm when it's suppose to be cold. But I often think that if we could accept the seasons when the are there and look for the beauty in each that we might not have to wish our lives away all of the time. The summer flowers can only grow when it is hot outside but the beautiful frost after a cold foggy night can only come when it is cold. Each has their own beauty and each can be enjoyed in the season that they are intended to grace.

There is some blurring that I had added to these images but it wasn't done in photoshop. It was done with vaseline jelly on a haze filter on the lens thus the uneven effect of the blur. Now I do it in photoshop but still understand the fun of doing it on the camera. It was always a bit messy and so I dedicated only one filter to that process so that I could keep the others clean.