I took a picture of some grass in the front yard tonight because, well, looking at this blog for the last couple weeks has been a lot like watching grass grow.  Not a lot happening.  Each year summer is one of my down times where I don't schedule photography sessions because, let's face it... 103 degrees and smiley, happy clients just don't go together.  Or maybe it's that 103 degrees and me don't go together.  Either way, I've been enjoying my R&R in the AC... maybe a little too much.  As much as I love being connected with technology - so much so that I'm contemplating whether I have an addiction - the last few weeks have been a little less stressful and I've actually felt refreshed and enjoying the actual face to face time with Kylie and friends.  Imagine... spending time with real people.  Crazy, I know.  And for a few days, I've been reminded what life was like before photography and before I was brain washed into believing that I had to be blogging, facebooking, flickr'ing, RSS'ing, photography foruming, tweeting, or just plain internet'ing every 5 minutes or I'd be missing out on something.  And on more than one occasion, I've been tempted to go back to that life.  But alas, the fstops have been calling my name, and I'm excited about the upcoming busy fall client season.  I've made a few behind-the-scenes changes, though, that will hopefully help me take on more clients but get more of my life back in the normally-crazy next few months leading up to the holidays.  I've got a couple sessions to post after clients come in to view the images first, so in the mean time here's a bit of randomeness from the last couple weeks. On the automotive front, we finally decided it was time to trade in Sophie, Kylie's 1998 Saturn SC1, for a new set of wheels.  Searching for a replacement ride was a bit of an 'adventure' with Kylie and I.  She's more into the practical side of cars and as long as it gets her from point A to point B and gets reasonable gas mileage, she's good.  Me?  If I'm going to be going from point A to point B a lot, I want to enjoy the ride.  And while reliability and practicality are also on my list, they're a little further down below the really important things... you know, like the sound of the doors closing, the feel of the turn signal knob, the sound of the horn, the look of the dashboard, etc.  And for the love of Pete, the car has to have an arm rest in-between the driver and front passenger seats.  Sophie didn't have this, and I can't even count how many times Kylie just rolled her eyes at me every time I completely dramatized the re-enactment of me demonstrating to her how I nearly fell into the passenger seat every time I drove her car because couldn't put my right elbow on an arm rest.  But while I admit I appreciate good design and am willing to pay a little more for it, I'm not willing to go into debt for it.  So, we bought another '07 car, this time an Infiniti G35... and I'm loving it.  After a LOT of looking around and doing some homework, we traded this...

for this...

Mayb the most amazing part about the whole process is that after we finally bought the G35 on Thursday, I listed Sophie for sale on Craig's List around 11:30am Saturday, and by 3:30pm that same day we had sold the car and had cash in hand.  That still blows my mind.  4 hours!  Thank you Craig, whoever and wherever you are. And on other random fronts, I went to the dentist last December and had some medical Flexible Spending Account money l had to use before the end of the year or I lost it.  So, I went to my dentist and told her I needed a bite guard because I was concerned about grinding my teeth.  Long story short, I called and went in on December 30th and told her I was in a rush to get this before the end of the year, so I paid for it that day but didn't bother going in to pick it up until April of this year.  And after using it for about a whole 5 days, Mia got ahold of it and decided to us it as a $400 chew toy.  End of bite guard.  It wasn't a total loss, though... I still have my wicked cool molds that I can put out as decorations to greet guests with a smile. Although... it looks a little disturbing and kinda like I have 3 week old Fruity Pebble bits stuck in my gums.  Zoinks.  Oh well, cheeeeeeeeeese!

I haven't taken my camera with me everywhere I go this year nearly as much as I did for last year's Project 365, and while I've enjoyed enjoying the enjoyment (oh yes, I did) of getting together with friends and not having a camera attached at the hip (not to mention my friends being noticeably more at ease) , lately I've guilted mysef into taking it with me just in case. This weekend we went to a pool party at our friend's Dave & Beth's house on July 4th.  I was too busy being pool monster terrorizing all the kiddos (and gettting terrorized), but I did fire off a few images.  Trinity and Ava are best buds, and I love the moment and the expressions in this first image. And in case you're wondering, Ava (in the background) really does have a killer tan.  Every time I stood next to her I looked like the cream center of an Oreo cookie.

Ice creeaaaammmmmmm!

Littel Zane lookin' pretty GQ serious.  Check out the size of those catch lights in his eyes.

I can't take credit for this next image.  My friend, Tina, picked up the camera when Dave and I were playing basketball's "PIG" equivalent off the diving board.  WARNING: protective eye wear is strongly recommended to protect your eyes from bright light.  What can I say... the sun and I?  We haven't hung out much this summer. Anyway I look at this image, I don't see a happy ending to this gem of a dive.

Tina again on the camera.  I just thought this image of Dave was funny.

This next product falls in the category of "Really?  Seriously?".  Kylie had a cupon for one of these things, so she brought home a Schick Hydro 5 razor for me from the gracery store today.  Before she picked it up, she called me and asked if I wanted 3 or 5 blades for a razor.  5?  Blades??  I just wanna shave with it, not mow the freakin' yard. I remember a few years ago when the most blades you could get on a razor was 2... and yet men everywhere were able to get by.  Our lives were not in turmoil.  Well, if they were, it was for other more noble reasons... like the absence of Facebook, a phone with an app for playing Hangman, or convection ovens... but not because we didn't have a 3rd, 4th or 5th blade on our shaving instrument.  And for that matter, why stop at 5?  If 5 is better than 4, wouldn't 6 surely be better than 5?  Or, why not skip the whole one-up game altogether and go right to 11 blades?  Now that's innovation.  They could co-brand it with the Red Cross where everytime you shave you can donate the blood the extra 6 blades cause when you try to get that crevice between where your nose and upper lip meet.  What a scam the shaving industry is trying to push.  Okay, you're telling us more blades is better.  I get it. For the sake of a blog post, let's say I actually believed it.  Where I get more razor burn is the $13 they charge for pack of 4 replacement cartridgess?  Are you cereal?  Let's go on a little math journey, shall we?  I realize I could probably use the razor head cartridge for more than one shave before throwig it out, but currently that's not in my playbook.  I dunno, maybe it's a little compulsive, but I'm not a fan of the idea of shaving with a crusty, used razor especially if I cut myself the last time I shaved with it and got a little blood on the blades.  For that reason, let's assume for this example that I'm using a new razor cartridge each time I shave.  Currently I'm shaving at an average rate of about 2.5 times/week... the exception being when I occasionally think I might look cooler if I had a sweet 5 o'clock shadow goin' only to realize later that said 5 o'clock shadow makes me look more like a pedophile than Brad Pitt.  But I digress.  Focuuus. Okay, shaving 2.5 times/wk at a cost of $4.25/shave based on a cost of 4 razor cartridges for $13 (razor cost only, not shaving cream).  After 52 weeks (1 yr), I will have spent $552.50 on razors.  Razors.  Conversely, the current 3 blade razors I'm using cost about $9 for a pack of 8, or $1.13 per shave.  Using the same frequency as before, that totals out to $146.25, or a savings of $406.25/yr.  I could think of a lot of things I'd rather spend $406.25/yr on... like 5 1 hr full-body massages, 40 Papa Murphy's take-n-bake pizzas (50 if I use a $2 off coupon each time), or 325 boxes of Little Debbie Zebra Cakes. Okay, I'm realizing quickly that I've now spent 20 minutes on a blog post about razors, when the best thing to come out of this whole debacle is that I got to pull out my 60mm micro lens to take a picture of a razor.  Time to move on. After all that, though, if you'd like to get a free 5 blade Schick Hydro 5 razor and judge it's worthiness for yourself, go here.

My mom recently went through and cleaned out an old storage unit, and tucked away in a little baggy was my first pair of shoes.  (Everyone say it with me now... awwwwwww!)  Not exactly Air Jordan's, no hip colors, and for the love of clowns they have bells on them (what was I, a cat toy?), but they're still my first pair of treads, and they made me just a little warm and fuzzy on the inside as soon as I saw them because I instantly remembered the [Olan Mills?] 8x10 photo of me wearing them 37 years ago. Another gem found from the storage unit was a baby blue knit cap I wore during that first year as well.  I don't have a photo of it (yet), but it's become my lucky editing hat over the last two days.  I feel more creative when it's on my head, even though the straps that once tied under my chin to keep it on now barely make it down to my ears.  I'm sure I look ultra masculine and generally fantastic in it, and somehow that makes working on photos in Photochop more pleasant.

Here's my super sophisticated, completely proprietary lighting set up for the above images.  The secret ingredient is the artist Pino coffee table book under the elegant aluminum foil sheet... sure you could use any book, but I like to think his amazing painting works help reflect just a little better light quality.  You know, through osmosis or something.

It's been a couple moons since I last posted, and even now this will be more of a drive by post.  I've been at Texas School for Professional Photographers all week taking a class with Jennifer Hudson and Arthur Rainville, both of who are true artists to the core.  They live and breath amazing photography, and it's been inspiring to learn from them all week.  As with most conferences I go to, often it's the new people I meet and the friends I'm able to reconnect with that I enjoy most, and this year's Texas School is no exception.  Even more than the work itself, the thing I've enjoyed most about this photography journey is some of the people I've met and the lifelong friends I've made.  I couldn't ask for more in that regard. It's after 1 am, and I've gotta be back in class in just over 7 hours for another full day, so I'll leave you with the image below. The image is largely the result of the artistic genius of Jennifer Hudson (she created the dress for the model and taught the process/technique for creating these types of digital collages), but I'm posting it to show 1) the types of things I'm excited to be learning to do this week and 2) things I'll be offering to clients in the very near future. See you next week!