Last week my little brother calls and says, “Hey bro, going to Vegas next week.” So of course I clear my schedule and book a flight! Jenn and I met him and his girlfriend down there Tuesday and came back Wednesday, but not before visiting my favorite place to eat…….the Rum Jungle at Mandalay Bay. The place is a hopping night club with go-go dancers swinging from the ceiling on a trapeze after 11pm at night, waaaaay too cool for me, but before 11 its a restaurant and it is so good. Go there. Order the Fire Pit. It’s basically one of everything brought to you on a sword one by one, sample by sample, then you decide what you like and they bring you more until you can no longer eat. It’s pretty much awesome. Tiffany Brown met up with us for dinner and when all the girls got up to go to the bathroom together (why do they do that anyway?) I stole her 5D and did my best Tom Boyd impression while shooting this photo of the bar. I’m impressed with the 5D for sure, this is a 1600iso file shot at a 20th of a second (click the photo for a larger version). The Rum Jungle has something like 200 different types of Rum. We found a sweet deal at the Hard Rock for $89 and after dinner went back to the hotel and hit the blackjack tables, where Jenn and I quickly cleaned house and took the casino for $700! Then on Wednesday we rented a poolside cabana (the Hard Rock has the coolest pool in Vegas) and played some more Blackjack, only this time at the in pool Blackjack tables, so fun. Kevin leaves for Iraq on Saturday so it was good to hang out and party with him before he leaves. See you in 8 months Kev, stay safe!

At every wedding I shoot I tend to keep a close eye on the sky so I can grab the bride and groom should some cool sunset take place. Saturday at Willamette Valley Vineyards down in Salem, the smoke and haze that fill the valley from forest fires around the region made for a very cool looking sky. I saw this developing and knew it would not last long, so I grabbed a couple of Canon speedlights and the couple and we walked into the field. 1 light high 1 light low a couple of stops under the key light. I like it. Next time though, I’m going to add a third light for a rim light. i would have done that here, but this light was only around for about 5 minutes. Click on the image for a larger version.

Rough day….outside in the mountains on an herb farm with great scenery. I love this job. I can’t decide which of the flower shots I like better….let me know what you think.

Damn this kid is getting cuter everyday, but he has got some huge ears!

A Bumble Bee takes flight from an Echinacea flower at Trout Lake Farms in Trout Lake, Wa on July 21, 2008.

Robin Loznak always makes great images of wildlife, I can never be as good, but while shooting at Trout Lake Farms near Mt. Adams today, I saw this bumble bee taking off and thought of all his cool images. Click on the image for a larger view.

We played our final game of the season last night. Following tradition, here is our team photo. Last night was aplayoff game for 2nd place in the league. We lost by 1 run 16-15. Sucked because we gave up like 5 runs on stupid errors in the 3rd and we didn’t have our fastest outfielder/base runner Joel who had some lame excuse for skipping the game….something about having a baby two days earlier…..otherwise we would have won. Oh well. We finished the season 7-4 and in third place. Click on the photo for a larger captioned image.

Trying a new way of posting wedding’s on the blog. Click on a thumbnail to see a larger version. You can also scroll through the large versions once you bring one up. let me know if you like the new layout or if you just posting the covers better. I shot this wedding a couple of weeks ago and have not had a chance to blog about it with all the host changes and what not, but better late than never.  Ceremony was at the First Unitarian Church downtown and then everyone walked over to the reception at the Tiffany Center.

Sorry for the lack of blog posts lately. My web host is shutting down and I had to move everything over to a new host and get it all setup all over again and move all the data, etc. Basically a huge pain in my ass. But with that I did do some blog upgrades and now you will see if you click on an image it will bring up a larger version….I’ll be tweaking that a bit over the next few days as I figure out the best way to use it. I am shooting a wedding in Newport today, so I brought the fam out to the beach this week. We’ve been here since Tuesday and its been awesome. Nice and relaxing. Here are a few pics.

Shot this portrait for a feature that will run in the paper next week. I put a full CTO and a 1/4 CTO gel on the main light to warm the photo up a bit (and semi match the available light) and then left the backlight bare with a strip box for the blue highlight. There is also a blacklight coming from the arcade area of the roller rink (you can see the reflections in the top of the photo) so leaving the backlight blue matches that a bit too. I like how it turned out.

Spent last weekend in the Roseburg area, covering an awesome wedding on a private ranch in Roseburg on Saturday night and another at the Milo Academy in Days Creek on Sunday. Driving back to my hotel Saturday night down a one lane dirt road in the dark I almost nailed one cow and two deer. I didn’t even see the cow until I looked out my driver’s side window and he was about 12 inches from it, I about wet myself! Here are the proofbook covers, click on them to see a larger version.

Jordyn and I took a little trip down to San Diego today to go the Mariners/Padres game at Petco Park with my little brother Kevin. She had a blast. I never thought I would have to come to SoCal to beat the heat, but while it was 97 and muggy in Portland, it was a nice 78 with a light breeze here in San Diego. Perfect baseball weather. Here is baby J enjoying the centerfield sandbox.

Here is another photo from yesterday. We shot the Timbers team photo for a promo poster that they will give away at a game later this summer. We shot quite a few different angles/setups for the team shot and I have no idea which they will use, but I liked this version the best. The setup on this shot was pretty complex, I used a total of 6 lights, a mix of alien bee’s, white lightning’s and a speedlight, oh yeah and a silver reflector on one guy. I ran out of pocket wizards, and needed to have another setup ready to go inside the stadium after this shot, so I hard wired 3 of the lights together to free up some radios. I like it a lot more than the normal boring on the field using benches team photo we usually do. Oh and yes I know the board says Beavers, I believe the final version will have a little photoshop work on that part :).

Shot a bunch of stuff down at the park today for upcoming posters and programs, here is one I like. He is the “iron man” of the team, playing every minute of every game for the last 50 games or something like that. Pick up a program when it comes out and read all about it.

Shot a couple of good ones Friday and Saturday last week. First on Friday I shot for the first time at the Aerie at Eagle Landing, which I thought was a very cool spot and less than 5 minutes from my house, so that’s a bonus too! Jake and Lindsay hold the record for seeing their photos the fastest. The reception ended at 11:30 Friday night and I had to catch a 6am flight Saturday to Denver for that day’s shoot. Well, turned out that Jake and Lindsay were flying to Cancun, via the 6:00am Denver flight that I was on and sat two rows in front of me! So I threw a quick edit together for them on my laptop so they could enjoy a little slideshow from 40,000 feet up.

After landing in Denver at 9am, Jenn and I picked up a rental car and headed into the Rocky Mountains. The wedding site was about an hour/hour and half from the airport and the drive up was breathtaking. And the wedding was awesome too. I had a great time, thanks for having me out Jeff and Kari! Click on either cover to see a larger version.

More from Colorado, I want to go back.

Was doing a shoot the other day and looked up in the sky and thought this was halfway interesting. I mostly shot it for Jordyn, who loves the moon and airplanes.

Coming to you live from Denver, CO. I shot a wedding about an hour away in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, this was a cool looking church for sure. I will upload more photos soon.

The people over at PocketWizard liked my Beavers ring light photos and mentioned me on their blog yesterday (here). I thought that was pretty cool.

Jordyn had her big dance recital last night. So cute.

……another business portrait.