Eoin Blue works the ranch
It’s been a long day on the ranch; I mean one long day. After baling a barnful of hay, corralling the cows and repairing a few hundred yards of broken down fence Eoin Blue decides to call it a day and get some chow. He gets in his faithful blue truck – the same one that he has had for 15 years – and slowly looks over the good work that he has accomplished. It feels good to have a nice productive day on the ranch and while the work was hard it was something that was sorely needed to keep his families ranch in tip top shape. Eoin Blue starts up the truck with a roar and smiles to himself as he slowly backs up – its been a great day. And I’ll probably wake up and do it all over again.
Geno in the Cardboard Ship
Geno is in the South Pacific. He is alone in a Cardboard ship drifting amidst the wreckage of submarines and battleships. In his Cardboard naval ship his gun turrets made out of penny whistles and cardboard are set to launch missles at the enemy. The enemy could be anywhere. Geno begins barking orders in the heat of battle to his squadron. Fight, he tells them. Fight on. We will destroy our enemy.
Bridget’s Window
Bridget has a very nice window in her front room. There is a nice antique couch with a side table and some nice flowers on it. Sun pours through the windows which are covered with white sheer and some cream colored drapes. The setting is quite nice and has a very warm charm to it. I got a chance to take a picture of Bridget in front of her nice window today. We were finishing off a big photography project for her and it turned out quite nice.
Writing Songs With Kevin
I had a pretty amazing day with my enormously talented nephew – Kevin Nash. Kevin is one of the most amazing and talented musicians that I have met in my life and to think the bonus is that he is my nephew. Kevin’s core talent is his ability to play just about any musical genre at the drop of a hat. I think that his ability to improvise is second to none. I can begin playing a funky jam and he will come up with the most amazing lick to play along with it. It is amazing to watch.
Kevin is at a bit of a cross roads in his life; having just graduated from College, quitting his job and breaking up with his girlfriend of many years he is more free than he has ever been in his life. But with that freedom comes some apprehension and fear. Kevin wants to begin starting his music career and if there is anyone that can do it, it his him. I hope he can because the music that he composes is some of the most beautiful that I have ever heard and I want to hear as many songs from his as I can in my life.
4 Geno’s are better than 1
What is better than 1 Geno? The answer is simple – 4 Geno’s. For good boys eating all their food groups at the same time. Camille helped me set up this fun shot and we had a great time taking it. As usual Geno was a fantastic model and subject.
When we were young
When you come from a large family you tend to have lots of photographs of your childhood. My dad always had cameras and film equipment to capture holidays and memorable moments. While he was persistent he wasn’t necessarily a great photographer. He was truly a point and shoot guy that would probably do very well in the digital age but the age of film that point and shoot mentality just meant a lot of unusable photographs.
Last month I started a very ambitious project to archive the best family photos by having them scanned in digitally so that we could share them and use them for whatever they needed. The first step involved going through tens and thousands of photographs sitting in my mom’s closet to determine what was even usable. That process took at least 20 hours and I ended up throwing about 10,000 photos directly into the trash either because they were duplicates or because there was nothing in the photograph that was remotely part of the family. You see my dad was the kind of guy that would take pictures of anything – the mailman, the grocer, the fuller brush man passing through the neighborhood. I mean there were so many pictures of people that really had nothing to do with us and had no real need to be in our archive. After trashing about 10,000 photos I was left with probably around 10,000 photos that were remotely useable. The next step was deciding what was important enough to scan and pay the 20 cents to have it digitally archived. That process was really arduous and took about 3 full days to complete. I ended up with about 2,000 photos that I felt were archive worthy.
So the scanning company took my 2,000 photos and sent them off to India to be scanned in my cheap labor no doubt. It took about 4 weeks but they finally scanned all of the images in and then sent me a proof sheet to approve them. I just ended up approving them all since I really didn’t want to make those $1 an hour employees feel bad about the work they had done. I am sure that there is some sort of mechanism there in India where they only get paid on what gets approved by the buyer. I wanted nothing to do with scrimping someone of their payday so I just approved them all.
This week the CD arrived and I had a huge number of digital photos of my family that are actually pretty good. I would say at least 1,500 of them are pretty good. Over the next 3 weeks I will be compiling galleries for each person in the family so that they can have all their baby pictures and see themselves when they were young. That was the whole point of this project – to help my brothers, sisters, mom and dad remember the times when they were young.
The Fendley’s
I spent Thursday afternoon up in the beautiful town of Encinitas at the home of the Fendley’s. We were taking family pictures for a special project that they are working on. It was a great day and as usual I always find myself having the most fun taking pictures when I am taking pictures of people that I know and love. It is so much easier to be able to take pictures when you know the people and everyone is comfortable. When you do, you can take the most personal pictures of them in a comfortable and non threatening setting. I think that the only really good pictures you take are when you are connecting with the person you are taking a picture of. I can usually tell when I see a picture if the photographer is really connecting with the person that they are shooting. If they are not, the pictures look uncomfortable – like when you see someone wearing a sweater or shirt that looks just a little ill-fitting. I think with the Fendley’s I am able to capture great moments because they are so great in front of the camera, but they are so connected with the moment. This makes every moment real and genuine so the pictures turn out great. It was a great day and I can’t wait to post all of the pictures in the next few days.
Isabela is still cute-ing it up
Look at this girl – is she not the cutest little thing you have laid your eyes upon? Well, that is Isabela and she keeps insisting on cute-ing it up until people can’t take it anymore. As she gets older by the day, she learns new techniques, faces and hand movements to make herself even more adorable than she was before. She has just begun adding in cute sounds and baby words into the mix to “take it to the next level of cuteness”.
This clever little girl knows how to work the crowd and will pull out an arsenal of cute activities if it means winning them over. For example, she has discovered the innocently extending her middle finger while sleeping or doing certain activities will create the ultimate ironic situation which will cause people to be bowled over by the cute factor. I mean a baby extending the middle finger while gently rubbing her eyes. Come on – that is genius. You have to hand it to Isabela she is cute-ing it up to a level we have never seen before.
