BBDN Online Journal

…is a trip.

It’s the Big Time. It’s the Big Game.

It’s you, your (photographic) subjects and some 15,000 of your best friends.

It’s walking in and seeing NBA players in sweats and getting loose before the game. It’s listening to the Nuggets receive advise, blessings, and prayer before they take the court.

It’s slapping hands with the flying, flipping, scooter-wheelie-pulling mascot.

It’s getting through security with a smile and a large camera. It’s telling jokes and hanging out with the on-court entertainers backstage and spending time with them while they warm up.

And… for a few minutes, it’s a sprint onto the floor, sliding into position and feeling a small amount of the same adrenaline rush my friends who’re dancing feel. It’s my dance, it’s my time, it’s my chance to play in the NBA and even though I don’t get to share the court with ‘Melo and Co. for a few minutes I’m part of something huge and bright and extravagant and the applause being directed at those about ten feet in front of my lens falls onto my shoulders and I know there’s a shutterbug kid watching me with the same wonder a ‘baller looks at our boys in the blue and white.

It’s unbelievable, addictive and I want more.

Stage left, a crooked wooden door groans under pressure on its handle. Its top corner, wedged into the frame and fused to it through time and dust and forget, breaks free. A rush of uneven footsteps echo through the dark room as a cloud of dust passes through tangible beams of sunlight that have faded untouched pine floors.

…or so I feel my blog has become over the past couple years. About every six months I write “I’ve been getting busy living” or some other such nonsense. Well, not nonsense, as it’s true that Miriam and I have been doing our best to avoid a sedentary lifestyle despite our proclivities toward resting after long weeks spent in the office (or in the ‘home office’ — actually just a corner of the apartment that sees MUCH too much of my time). Now that our wedding year has come and gone and we’re starting to pull our future together into sharper focus we’re finding out much more about ourselves than most people spend time talking about. The nature of friendships new and old, come and gone have been the topic of frequent conversations, as has our own direction in life and how we choose to enjoy the time we spend in between punching in and out of our respective occupations.

We enjoy ourselves, we enjoy each other, and we’re living life on our own terms as much as we can right now. That Miriam and I married later than many folks we know simply means we had more time to get to know ourselves before we entered into a life together and that’s allowed us to focus on getting back to basics and just being ourselves, both together and as individuals. I dunno… I’m just happy being a married man, happy I married the right person, happy that we get along on just about every level and happy that we love each other dearly. She’s been completely supportive of the risks I’ve faced in starting up a homespun photo business and I couldn’t do this without her — she is my partner, my photo assistant and my front desk person. OK, enough of that silliness… but it’s worth saying that I got myself a good one

Photography has been slowly ramping up, as have our plans to enjoy an active summer. We’re both working full-time and trying to squeeze as much fun out of this spring as is possible, given our recent weather and commitments. It’s now time to dig out the Jeep guides, break out the newly-acquired ‘car camping’ gear (as opposed to my aged but high-quality backpacking equipment) and get lost in the Colorado backcountry for a couple days at a time. I’m really looking forward to loading up the back of the Jeep and doing some camping as soon as it gets a little warmer and drier up high. We’ve got one trip planned for July and are looking forward to being done with this moving thing so we can get back on track with spending our weekends as far from town as we can. We spent much of last weekend on the motorcycle — we didn’t get too far from home but the important thing is that we donned leather and spun the tires down the road.

Well… I hoped this would make more sense, but I’ve been writing over the course of the day and it’d be a shame to let it go back into the great aether of ones and zeros.

We work to live, we live to put in hours at the office… repeat that about 250 times a year over the course of 40 years and it’s pretty clear that we spend WAY more time paying for those precious few hours after we clock out and when we hit the sack. It’s not a bad life, though. We find purpose, utility and some levels of satisfaction in our work — or we should, right? However, it’s also a safe bet that more of us feel trapped by our jobs than uplifted by them. Or at the very least I know I do…

I hadn’t given it much thought lately until I jumped back into photography after a several-year break from serious snapping. Fortunately, I still have the eye that got me excited about it back in my mid-teens and am taking steps to further tune my skills, create fantastic images and even use my abilities behind the viewfinder to help friends and create a bit of a backyard business. Lately, I’ve been eating, breathing and sleeping photography. So much so that my trips to work are punctuated by desires to pull over and photograph early morning fog being lit up in shades of champaign and gold by the sunrise and reflections of bumper-to-bumper traffic and the perpetual wish that I had my camera with me at all times. I’ve spent the last couple weekends either shooting for fun, shooting for friends, or shooting for my lighting workshop. My kit has grown significantly from a ‘perfect for soccer matches with the kids’ camera bag to include a number of lenses ideal for high-end work, a new body and a new lighting system ideal for portraits and action lighting. I’m also starting to book shoots, which will ease the burden and the anxiety of recovering those costs.

Learning as much as I can from everyone I can has been an unofficial credo and has lent a bit of perspective to a life that was at one point serving to feed the corporate profit margin and corrupt my liver. Today, with a wonderful wife who supports my dreams and the drive to pursue a talent and turn skills into artisan trade along, I find myself more than dabbling in something new or interesting and becoming part of the greater photographer universe and can see myself working toward a retirement dream of running a small studio and would love nothing more right now than to combine my lifestyle, my passion for imaging and my job all together. The ‘perfect’ life would be one as a photographer with a small studio downtown on Main St. and a loft above. To travel the country by bike or by Jeep, documenting life on the road, people we meet and places that are quickly passing into anachronism. To have young couples ask me to create the images their grandchildren will one day stare at. To shoot my own growing family, to sell art prints to passersby, to make a small name for myself in my community rather than simply occupying a gray 10×10 with an oversized monitor and joint-numbing ergonomics.

I’d like for my life’s work to be the work I love, not the one I simply do out of a need to keep the Jeeps under our butts and the roof over our heads. The steps I’m taking now feel like those first tentative steps into that world, and I’m equally excited and nervous.

Bullseye.

If you’ve been keeping up with the photography sites I’ve been managing, you’ll know why I haven’t been writing here lately. My Flickr site has grown to over 1200 images in less than a year and I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time working OT and trying to grow my photo skills.

This year, the focus is going to be on tightening up my understanding of light and how to manage natural and artificial light sources, especially in portrait and candid photography. People are by far the most interesting subjects I’ve shot to-date and I have a knack for capturing people in such a way as their inner selves tend to come out to play. Learning how to control light, control the scene and gain the skills to let the shoot happen as it should is going to be something I spend a lot of time working on this year. In fact, (schedule and openings permitting) I’m signing up for a workshop at the Denver Darkroom next month that focuses on just that. From there, I’ll work on boosting up my lighting gear so I’m not hampered by 5′ cables that want to pull my light rigs to the floor or limit me to barely-off-camera lighting options, although I do have to admit that this one was particularly priceless.

Along with the techniques behind the camera, I’m also working through a textbook on Apple Aperture 1.5 — my photo editor of choice (at least until Photoshop CS3 and a willing student come my way) so I can take better advantage of the ‘pro’ features baked into the software iPhoto can’t even come close to touching. Just about everything recent on my Flickr page was created through Aperture; I’m extremely pleased in working with it so far and look forward to learning how to control and creatively (or correctively) alter and edit my photos. It’s a fairly dense text and the software is designed for the working professional; that being said, I’m picking it up quickly and doing some really cool things.

I have yet to snap a shot of me in my new Emeril-esque chef’s coat or get some shots of me working in the kitchen, but maybe I’ll get Miriam to grab one of the Nikons (hers or mine, he he) and snap off a few action shots while I’m in my element and cranking out some new flavor of dry rub or threatening an innocent, healthy green been with a bath of olive oil, butter, garlic, salt and pepper (otherwise known around our house as Ben Beans, leave it to me to make veggies into something a cardiologist should fear).

Last night, for Valentine’s Day, I showed up with grocery sacks full of shrimp, steak, fresh veggies, and still-warm French bread. We went nuts on the shrimp cocktail, enjoyed halved cherry tomatoes and mini-carrots, moved into a main course of sirloin and Ben Beans, and sipped Colorado wine throughout dinner. Ben and Jerry’s is STILL in the freezer, if you’d believe it, and we could only eat half a steak each! Each HALF was about the size of a $9 sirloin at any strip-mall franchise eatery! I threw down my soon-to-be-famous garlic/parm bread for the coup de grace and we’d had it. This morning, neither of us had recovered our appetites — a Nutri-Grain bar somehow topped me off! Even though me and the boys pulled off the ULTIMATE Valentine’s Day surprise (how often do you see a limo waiting to take you on a date???) I still felt like doing something nice on the day. Note to self, however, too much food has a tendency to put the wife in a state of super-sleepiness Needless to say, we both got a good night’s rest as our bodies had an evening’s worth of work cut out for them.

Given everything Miriam and I have been into for the past few months, you’ll have to excuse my lack of blog-terial as of late. Quite simply, I’ve been too busy cooking, entertaining, photographing, driving, fixing, working, and trying to get my blood pressure back down to normal human levels in my off-time to sit down and wax reflective on everything that’s happened to us since the snow started flying and our lives got chunked into 4-Lo just to keep traction.

Well… I suppose you could say (’you’ being rather subjective, as I hope I still have readership left after my unannounced departure from the Blogosphere) there’s more I could write about, vent about, and hopefully de-stress from here in everyone’s favorite keyhole into my life. As the world continues to nerd out on HD TVs, iPods and operating systems, I find myself a half-step behind the bell-shaped curve and I’m OK with it. Sure, it’s fun to ogle the latest but it gets a bit tiresome. Instead, I’ve been trying to spend more time using the technogizmagical items I already have to their fullest, and when you combine the technology that drives our living room, my photography, our mobile listening delights and all the space in between, we have enough collective power to compute our way to Mars and back. Instead, we jam our way through work, we email and surf long into our evenings, I stay connected to every shred of communication sent my way anywhere I may roam and spend more time culling the spam out of my BlackBerry than I do tending to the business of staying in touch with family and friends.

I find myself, after spending a year immersed in the hobby, more curious and more willing to learn about photography than when I started, this time last year. Back then it was wide-eyed amazement at clear images, giant prints, and rediscovering the art in taking a picture. Today, I find myself looking for greater inspiration, for a unique angle, to discover a voice that complements my mind’s eye and can tell the story behind my pictures instead of simply creating pretty images. This year is going to be all about learning how to harness raw talent using imagination, technique, composition and creativity and to take the art in making beautiful images to the next level, as cliche as that sounds. I want my voice, my heart, and my soul to express themselves in my artistic work, and for my snapshot photography to grow into something spontaneous, vital and essential.

And where would we be without the friends that season this crazy stew of a life? 2007 has packed more into the first six weeks than we have experienced in years past. It’s been up — way up. And it’s been down — way down. Somewhere in between, I think things are doing well. Over the years we lose track of some people, discover new people, and dust off lost friendships. Even though we’re all finding that life is more than the downtime between beer runs and barhops and mortgage payments or run-ins with the consequences of wild living, this year holds the promise of great change and interesting growth. Moreso than anything else, I’ve started to have new conversations with myself — and not in that “call the shrink” kind of way, either. I’m finding that with marriage and with the stability of new life paired with the rebirth of old passions I’m coming closer to being reunited with the Ben that moved to Colorado on July 6, 1998 instead of becoming something completely different. The cars have changed, the income has more than doubled and my digs have become more wired and much more elegant, but at heart I’m still a wide-eyed kid who loves to cook, loves to explore, loves to take pictures and most of all loves to love.

I’m human, I feel and I react. I am OK with the notion that experiencing the most in life means taking the bad with the good but most importantly facing all of it head-on. I’m not afraid of challenge anymore. I’m not afraid of confrontation and I’m no longer the scared and uncertain kid rolling into Boulder on four wheels, an empty tank and a couple hundred bucks (ok, maybe the last part hasn’t changed too much). I know who I am, I know what I am and I know how to be the best person I can. Thank God I have a wife to share that with, dreams to reach for and art to express who I want to be along the way. Sometimes that way takes me onto my deck after midnight to listen to the silence and find a little inner quiet; other times it takes you and your close friends into the leather-lined cocoon of a snow-white limousine, to be whisked away on a night of fantastic eating, front-row-center parties and champaigne toasts, but that’s a story for another time.

Okay… so maybe the tea par-tay has gotten a bit old. Heck, I’d forgotten I’d embedded that goofy piece of musical schizophrenia in my blog, much less left it there, front and center.

With Miriam starting her new job and me putting in galactically idiotic amounts of time into mine in order to keep my paycheck from dipping down during the holiday season (God bless no paid vacation, huh?) I haven’t had too much motivation to blog as of late.

We did happen to catch the sunset the other night — it was more like some groovy trip into a 60’s acid rock video. First the sky turned this crazy shade of warm yellow (no, not like pee, jeez!) and the clouds started to form up into crazy shapes and curves. Having seen this only once before I ran for the camera bag and waited for what I knew would turn into one heck of a light show. This time around, though, I started shooting before the sun had gone down and lit up the sky even harder than the last time. Here’s a bit of a pictoral story of that evening’s photo adventures:

At this point, I knew good things were a’comin our way

And then it happened… our apartment had been permanently relocated into an infernal dreamscape

Even the mundane had taken on a sinister feel

And the sky became as a lake of fire

We were eventually cast into darkness, but not until the sky had its way with the sun

…is on a UPS truck and out for delivery.

Just a couple little somethings I think she’ll enjoy.

Who do you look like?

Here they are, in all their Colorado sunset glory!
Our 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee Laredo (it might as well be a Limited, less the body-colored lower panels, though).

This morning we were treated to a cloudless beautiful Colorado morning. Unfortunately, when it’s about 28 degrees outside when you’re making your way to the parking lot, that glorious sunrise just starting to peak over the eastern horizon never comes quickly enough — that is until today.

Seat heaters. Oh yeah…

One of those truly floofy luxury options few cars get and fewer drivers yet experience. Fire up the heaters, pun intended, while the car is warming up and defrosting and when it’s time to hop in you’re a few seconds away from the first relaxing turns down the country road leading to your office. We’ll… that is if “you” are “me” and you happen to have a 10-minute jaunt to work. I can’t gloat too hard, thought. My lovely wife’s new Wrangler trades in some of those creature comforts for cache and off-road ability (which is hardly lacking in the Grand Cherokee) and the soft top barely counts as a “plus” on days like today, although the heater in it could have singlehandedly ended the Little Ice Age, so it’s not as if she was chattering her way to work today.

Between the seat heaters and the premium sound system, my mini-commute today went quite well, thank you for asking, and I really can’t wait until I get to (not have to) take our new 4×4 back home.

If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend buying your next car “pre-pimped” from the factory. There’s something nice about seeing woodgrain accents and getting bangin’ sound from a “stock” deck and having everything look original and just plain work.

Well… Miriam and I realized another little life dream today. We’re officially a two-Jeep household as of about 4PM today.

We have welcomed into our family a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It’s been around a bit, but it runs like a champ, is loaded to the gills and replaces the Hyundai I was driving on occasion but paying out the nose for. My car payments went down, we’ve moved on up (but not to the east side…) in the world of automobiles, and I’ve now got a car I’ve been dreaming of owning for quite some time.

The quick run-down…
4.7L V8, Quadra-Track II full-time AWD with 4LO, leather, sunroof, Infiniti sound system, ABS, auto headlights, factory-tinted windows, heated seats, steering-wheel-mounted audio controls, cruise control, power seats, towing package, trip computer, luxury interior, overdrive lockout… the whole 9 yards. Someone had basically ordered a Grand Cherokee Laredo and ordered every imaginable option for it. It was driven under lease for 3 years, returned with 34,000 miles on it to a dealer in Denver and snapped up by another driver who put highway miles on it for another three years until it found its way onto King Jeep’s lot. The Carfax history report pulled on it was squeaky clean — scheduled maintenance and dealer transactions only. It’s smooooooooth on the highway and capable on the dirt. It’ll be the car we hopefully put a car seat in one day and a slightly-less-frugal but insanely cushy roadtripper.

We picked it up for $8700, which with the high interest rates and phenominal depreciation I was dealing with on my old Hyundai, basically created a wash on what was left on my Hyundai loan. In fact, I’ve only got a handful of payments added to what we had on the Elantra but I’ve reduced the monthlies down to a smidge over $300/mo. Sadly, used car interest rates have been climbing, but I still cut my interest by 1/3 and have a car that I’m going to be proud of for years to come.

I never would have expected I’d be getting into a new car anytime soon, but I sat down and did the hard math on how fast my Elantra was losing value vs. how long it was taking to pay my loan off. Today, my credit score is 100 points higher than when I bought the Elantra 3 years ago and I was able to leverage the favorable position with a trade-in very close to the NADA book value (almost impossible to do around here) and only get left with an “upside-down” amount which put the new loan right about where I was before.

The only down-sides to the new ride are the miles are a bit higher than what we had on the Hyundai and, being a 2000-model-year rig any repairs we’ll have to make will fall out of warranty, but such is the life. After driving the Wrangler since March, Miriam and I simply knew that there was no other car for us. We’re Jeepers for life… and there is some funky intangible we get when we hop behind the wheel of either car. I hate sounding like an elitist at anything — I’m just lucky to have found things I can identify with in life, but the phrase “It’s a Jeep Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand” kinda resonates. People wonder why on earth we’d go this route, what with the rampant urges for people to buy smaller and smaller tin can cars, but spending an afternoon bouncing around places that would rattle plastic SUV’s and returning the waves from others (you never see two Elantra drivers exchanging greetings in passing) as you zoom by in town speak volumes it’s hard to relate to those who haven’t done it. It’s not an elitism thing — it’s simply that we both identify with our Jeeps for the same reasons and for very different reasons. Not to wave Old Glory too hard, but there’s something uniquely American about driving a piece of heritage, and the Grand Cherokee is simply an extension of what we enjoy undiluted in the Wrangler.

Now, the only hard part is going to be figuring out who’s driving which rig on the days I don’t ride the motorcycle into the office

(this is the dealer advertisement shot… I haven’t had time to take any pictures of the new ride yet)

With several upcoming opportunities to photograph people in more controlled settings, I’ve been trying to work through how best to light fixed subjects. A bracket-mounted flash is kicking butt but I have some new ideas, thanks to the rediscovery of a dodgy old tripod I had laying around. It’s far too flimsy to support the Nikon with Lenszilla attached, but I found out it’s perfect for connecting my flash as an off-camera directional light source. Add the diffuser and it’s a poor-man’s studio light.

Miriam and I spent some time looking at various options for lighting studio and portrait settings and explored a number of things ranging from the mild to the wild and while we’ll be runnin’ what we brung for some time to come (which is a fair shake nicer than anything Aunt Marge will be bringing to snap the kids unwrapping Santa’s deliveries) I’ve got about 6′ of flexibility on where I can set at least one light. A reflector umbrella and some zip-ties or a home-maid mount would open up the lighting options even farther.

Hmm… good things to come, folks, I promise.

…for a genie to pop out of my camera bag or the DVD slot on my iMac with a job that has me writing and shooting and making at least $50k a year. Why is that too much to ask for? My office is about 85 degrees today and I’m dutifully toeing the line for Big Blue. If I sound a little strange it’s because the parts of my brain that control rational thought and cogent writing are about 2degC from hitting their melting point. I work in a beige/white/gray office purgatory, I can almost feel my creativity being sucked out.

Time to get back to my PC — it does like its numbers so…

Hoping upon hope, I may soon be the lucky recipient of Dad’s old Nikon FE2 and assorted lenses… that would be a REALLY fun camera to play with when we go out on photo shoots. During the 1980’s the FE2 was the king of the “pro-sumer” SLR market. Offering electronic metering and aperture priority along with a flash sync of up to 1/250sec, it had pro-quality build, pro-quality featues and was highly desired. Dad had won this body, along with a collection of lenses which I’m almost salivating at the chance to shoot with. They’re going to be all manual lenses, meaning that I can use them on my D50 but I’ll have to “wing” or guess at the metering — on digital that’s not a problem at all since all I have to do is chimp my shots and see where adjustments need to be made.

Old Nikon glass is groovy stuff — especially when mounted on the newer bodies. How cool would it be to head out on a landscape/nature shoot with the newest technology and the older stuff? I think that’d be a blast. I’m wondering if I’m going to be lucky and wind up with a bevvy of fast (albeit manual) glass — it’s kinda like waiting for Santa to show up!

It’ll be kind of a return to my roots — I’ve had my mother’s old camera for about 17 years now and shot the heck out of it when I was in high school and a bit in college. That old Mamiya still takes sharp pictures, but the shutter sync is off and I’m discovering how hard it is to find someone who’ll work on a ~30 year-old obscure Japanese camera. Sure, it may say Sears on the body, but it’s really a sweet old Mamiya — that was quite the surprise to find when I was 15 and in my one and only photography class. From then I stopped being the kid with the Sears camera and started to be the kid with a decent camera… too bad the teacher didn’t really like me and I wasn’t very good at souping my own film and developing my own b/w shots.

Rediscovering photography has been amazing — since January I’ve taken a few THOUSAND pictures, many of them will never see the light of day and have already been sent to the byte recycler. However, I’m learning or seeing or doing something new almost every time I shoot. I know that technology obsolescence is now measured in months instead of years but I’m hoping my D50 will still power up when it’s time to teach my kid(s) about photography. What’d be even cooler would be to pull out gramma’s, grampa’s and my own cameras at the same time.

Groovy, huh?

Miriam and I went exploring up Bunce School Road yesterday. Or, as my poor wife would probably call it now — Bounce School Road. Some folks are the types to rush to seek out the craziest, bounciest, bumpiest 4×4 trails out there. Not us. Call it what you will, but we’re content with buzzing along fire roads and mining paths and seldom feel the need to get out and crawl up steep and rocky trails. What we did yesterday would hardly even pop up on the radar for most hardcore off-roaders but it was enough for us

I find myself of the opinion that when you have a car built for something more than hauling groceries to and from the supermarket, you should take it out and stretch its legs every once in a while. Yesterday, I think the Jeep wanted to go bouncing down the trail since, after a very mediocre breakfast at IHOP, we both thought it would be a good idea to go explore one of the easier 4×4 trails close to the house. I have to admit, I really enjoyed driving Bunce School Road, but I think my wife would have been happy looking for a safe little mud pit to play in instead of working our way over rutted-out trails and finding creative ways to creep over small rock ledges. A couple sections of the trail had us wishing for little shocks on our eyeballs, but it wasn’t too bad. For a girl from Wisconisn, she did GREAT and maybe sometime next season we’ll venture back up there and see if we can make it to the end of the trail (next time with an air-down and some buddies to spot us over the little rock near the end).

Going up, there was one section of off-camber rock on a corner defined by a sharp rock outcropping and the line we took over a small rock ledge was quite near the outcropping on the way up the trail. Heading down, the section closest to the outcrop looked too off-camber to be fun so we straddled the ruts, stepped our way down to the ledges and walked the front of the Jeep off of them. Creeping the rear end of the rig off the obstacle (which, again, would hardly rate to a built vehicle) proved interesting as the trail gave us a nice little tap on the ass right as I thought we’d cleared it. Actually, it was a little love-tap to the gas tank skid plate — nothing to worry about, it’s still firmly bolted on and only has a tiny scratch to show for it. After all that’s what they’re there for, right? We spent the rest of the day on the Peak-to-Peak highway, jammed down to Lyons and tasted many fantastic Colorado wines at one of our favorite places to end a nice drive in the mountains. Only in Colorado can you start the day with pancakes, pull the panels off the Jeep and run open-air up into the Front Range, do a little bouncing around, and end a mini-tour of the Rocky Mountains with some locally-made wine. All in all, it was a perfect day — love-tap and all. All praise and thanks to God and to our skid plate.

Miriam and I were up late, finishing off the processing and sorting of our wedding rehearsal, prep, and reception pictures. We’ve posted the best of them on my Flickr page (click here) while the wedding and honeymoon shots have been posted for everyone to enjoy. The prep shots are in the wedding gallery and the reception shots are in their own new gallery. Here are a few of the hits:

(all shots were taken by Mike and Lola Swedbergh; I completed the digital post-processing and development)

Long time, no post, my friends…

Lemme tell ya, it doesn’t seem like it’s been busy, but it has. Since we got back two weeks ago we haven’t yet been out to see friends nor have we given anyone a call. It’s not because we don’t love ya, it’s simply because two weeks have gone by and we can’t really figure out where they went! Both Miriam and I had a ton of work waiting for us when we returned to the US after an eventful week in partly-sunny Mazatlan, Mexico. We had the wedding things to clean up, put away, organize and catalog. Then there’s been the groceries, the house, more work in the form of overtime, trying to relax and now battling this crud that half the people we know seem to have been hit with. We have been getting out on occasion — occasional trips on the bike and a drive last weekend up into the high country to see the fall colors.

In addition to all the fun, I’ve been processing and posting photos, taking more photos and basically finding out that it’s darn near impossible for me to overload on camera stuff. Just the opposite — when things get to be too much it’s been easy forme to grab the camera and either work on existing photos or go out and shoot more. It’s a nice break and something I can dive into that’s not work related or tied to scrubbing or cooking. I’ve also jumped into finishing the Harry Potter novels. They’re not particularly difficult reads, but they are entertaining and it’s easy to get lost in that world for a couple hours at a time. For as easy as the books are to read, J.K. Rowling has created a universe that, despite the rampant marketing, merchandising and meme propagation (aka hype), is very complex and accessible to kids and adults alike. It’s escapism at its finest and right now that’s just what the doctor ordered.

Next on the list is Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I picked it up in Houston on our way back (after having finished book 4 of the Potter series in Mexico) and it’s dense, non-fiction, and reads more like a college text than your average book-store fare. It’s interesting stuff, though, and the progenitor to Dan Brown’s entertaining-but-hackneyed Davinci Code. It’s the story of the findings of a number of scholars and documentarians who, on their own, began to unravel the ties between the Knights Templar, the Catholic Church, and the mysteries surrounding Christ and the Grail mythology. There aren’t any crazed albinos or aging professors running for their lives but these are the “real” myths and stories behind what the Catholic church is trying to hush up.

Literary matter aside, and speaking of doctors again, my foot is doing better. It’s still a bit sore, but I’ve been taking it easy and not doing anything too strenuous. Life, though, has pretty much returned to normal. I will spend a LONG time thinking about the break and hoping everything is healing properly. The doctor’s office in Boulder is now in the past — I won’t be going back to them but will attempt to have my foot examined locally (in Longmont). The Boulder Medical Center rubbed me the wrong way from day one and I’ve never liked going there. They can’t seem to get the billing straightened out but they don’t hesitate to hit me for a copay every time I walk in, despite the doctor telling me that my follow-up visits should not be billed under a copay. I have had more stinking bills over my foot than I could have imagined. Everyone wants their pound of flesh these days, it seems. Insurance is a joke — billing me $100 to visit the ER and then finding out my healthcare plan only covers 80% of the ER visit is just insane — and costs for REDUCED benefits through my employer keep going up.

Dental is no better, either. Granted, I’m only paying a few bucks a month for it, but the bullpuckey surrounding HMO’s and “in network” providers is driving me batty. I have a tooth that needs fixin’ that’s been put off for way too long (I wrote it off as it’s a wisdom tooth and I figured it’d get yanked anyway… oops) and now my insurance company is telling me the one place in town I can go to may not be able to help me until next month because they only accept patients already on their roster (which is mailed — PHYSICALLY! — once per month). What the crap? Welcome to the 21st century, people!! Maintain a database of names and patients. Update it live, look at it live. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to give me ether to pull/fix my tooth and administer leeches to pull out the evil in me.

Like I said… photography has been a nice escape. Now that we’re past the wedding I can just focus on my art and my hobby. I have a number of shoots I need to do with friends’ families and now that I’ve completed most of the wedding processing I can focus on them. One’s a family shoot, the other is a baby/family shoot. I’m excited to do them as it will let me learn more about creative lighting and will give me the chance to have fun playing with a widdle biddy baby. I need to get on the stick with that — I’d like to explore homemade lighting options by checking out ways to create hotlights with hardware store gear. Figuring out basic lighting is next on my list of skills to begin to grasp. Between the wedding (thanks a million, Mike!) and the honeymoon we’ve got hundreds of really nice shots. Last weekend I got a little camera-happy as we took a drive to Idaho Springs and up toward Mt. Evans. The road to the summit was closed, but we enjoyed fall colors with the Jeep’s top down and hung out at Echo Lake for a while. Sunday, I woke up before sunrise so I could catch the early morning light against a Boulder landmark — an old barn bearing a painting of the American flag on its east-facing wall. That one was a bit tricky as it was a bit of a commando mission but the results of both trips were quite nice.

Here are a few of the shots that made it out of the can and onto the web:

We got married — it was a beautiful ceremony and our reception was a lot of fun.
We went on our honeymoon — lots of sunsets, corn tortillas and open-air taxi rides.
We’re back — getting everything unpacked, cleaned up, put away, and organized… it sure is busy after the wedding!

I’ll be posting pictures and sitting down for a write-up in the coming days. Until then, we’ll keep trying to get back into the swing of things at the same time our sunburns peel away into tans and we get sadly accustomed to low humidity and evening lows touching the 30’s again.

What more can I say?

4:00 PM Saturday, September 9th, 2006.
I become a new man.

The ceremony will be held at 4, not 3. A reception in Longmont will follow.