Portrait of a Man

We love you Granddad. You'll always be my cowboy.

The Malamutes

Sam wasn't very happy with this situation. At least we have a fence.

1st nice spring day...

has usually led to Kyle smoking his pipe... which he couldn't find, so he switched up his once a year vice to a cigar instead. It actually didn't smell too bad, though I much prefer the scent of pipe smoke.

Request

As per Erin's request, here is the "pre-action's" shot



I think I used soft and faded and then define and sharpen. Moderate differences, but noticeable.

Action!

Actions seem to be everywhere these days... at least in my photography blogosphere. When dealing with 100s (or god help me 1000s) of wedding pictures, actions can come in REALLY handy when editing pictures. Ree at The Pioneer Woman has made some FREE actions available for download that anyone can use to tweek their pictures into something even more wonderful than it already was, and even make a crappy picture come to life. This was just a crappy snapshot (can you take a snapshot on a d200? i think so) that I think really looks much nicer after using a couple of Ree's actions.

PS- Ree paired up with the folks at Totally Rad Actions to make these.... which is awesome as I love TRA, but have been jones-ing for a sharpening action. Thanks Ree!

More good news

Well, I did actually get 8 hours of sleep last night, which is fairly exciting. We didn't have a terribly eventful day; went to the MOA, got a $12 shirt at H&M, had happy hour at Figlio's, got a sweatshirt at American Apparel, got drenched in the ridiculous weather, checked out some non VOC and low VOC paint at Home Depot, and enjoyed our leftovers from Chutney. While at Figlio, my phone rang and my caller Id said :Erin. Erin usually calls to hang out, or give me news. Seeing as it was 4pm on a Thursday, I was expecting news. Being blogging buddies, and having dined at Punch together (with intentions of taking pictures for the "I love punch pizza" contest) Erin and I frequently talk about the other finalists whose pictures have been selected. Today she called to let me know that Punch chose one of MY pictures!There are lots of talented photographers that have been selected as finalists, so don't get all excited about being on my VIP list of people that I am bringing to the best pizza party ever. But I promise that if I win, and you have commented on any of my blog posts, you're invited.


For some more love, here are a few pictures of my cats, who are by the way, totally insane.
This is Sam . If the picture looks dusty, it's because he has a dander problem which is only accelerated when I brush him. I brushed him a LOT today. He loves attention.
This is Rosie. She is an enigma. Sometimes she loves and craves attention. Most of the time, we annoy her. She's pretty cute though. I can't wait for them to have 3x the amount of space to play "cat town races" (as we called the time when cats run around like crazy while I was growing up) in.

The good news, and the bad news...

The good news is that Bryan decided my desperate plea for one of his awesome t-shirts was funny enough to give me one. Killer! I'm already planning on the pictures I'll have Kyle take of me in this shirt, as one of the conditions of him giving it to me would be that I would post pictures of me in the shirt on my blog, and in my bios everywhere (obviously helping him gain international exposure).

The bad news. I guess it's only bad for me, but seeing as it's 1:37am, I feel compelled to make all of you feel bad for me. I did an over night at TJ's (ie, my real job) on Monday night. Mondays are my Wednesdays (are you following this?) so on Tuesday (re: my Thursday) I worked late again, as to not use my precious PTO to recover from inventory. We had a store meeting, and of course went out for beers after this meeting. Now, I function just fine on 6 hours of sleep. It's not my preference, but I can deal with it. 6 hours of sleep, of which 5 are during daylight is probably about 1/2 as satisfying as real night time sleep. So I got 6 hours Tuesday morning, from 5am-11am, worked from 1:30pm-11pm, went to the bar (I know this is my own fault) got home at 1:30am, returned to work at 8am, left work at 6pm, and am now here, on the computer, nary a yawn in sight.

I was actually sleeping about 45 minutes ago, until some crazy ruckus started going down outside the knight cap (it's a dive bar, it's Nordeast... of course they don't have a real website). At first I thought it was a fight, which i wasn't really interested in. Then I realized there was actually some shit going down. One guy in particular just kept saying "I didn't do nothing!!!" and "GET Off me!" I peeked out the window (you know you would have too) to see some guy being wrestled to the ground by some other guys. Another distinct voice said "just hold him until the cops come". At this point, I stopped peering and decided to try and fall asleep again. Then I heard the expected sirens, but also heard lots of commotion outside. I peered again, and saw 2 cop cars... then a 3rd... AND a 4th! For one dude that claimed to have done nothing (why do I not believe that) there were 4 cop cars outside the bar within 3 minutes. I guess the police in NE didn't have much to do on a Wednesday night. I guess that makes me feel more safe, or something.

Anyway, now I can't sleep, so I'm updating myself on 3 days worth of missed blogs on my google reader. I think it will take my entire weekend to get myself back on a normal sleep schedule.

And this my friends, is why we bought a house

That's me

Being the person always taking pictures means that there are very rarely pictures of you taken. Kyle took this, I think when I had all of my equipment out getting ready for a shoot. I look tired, I think. Anyway, this house buying thing is all business and no fun, so I figured I had to entertain the masses somehow, so now you all know what I look like when I don't have a big camera in front of my face. I do smile most of the time though.

Contest

No, not for you, my loyal readers. I really LOVE this t-shirt that abryanphoto
is giving away. I think he'd be even more inclined to give it to me if you posted a comment here
to let him know that you too think I need this shirt to take a picture for my Red Apple Images bio! Also, he is a really talented photographer that does really good things for the world (he's turned me onto TOMS shoes, which I think I will have to invest in this summer for a good cause... and cute shoes