Stephany's Book.
I've said it before, one of the things I love most about our volleyball and portrait work is being able to take images from years worth of events and merge them together into a keepsake book that will remain in the family for a long, long time to come.
I had the pleasure of designing another album recently, for a good friend of ours, Stephany Leonard. We've been photographing Stephany for several years now and she's a lively, lovely, feisty young woman who is a real joy to know and photograph.
She just graduated from high school and received this album as a gradaution gift ...
The gathering storm.
My daughter Ryan is really getting into taking pictures - she grabs my phone whenever she can and snaps away. I keep an album of her pictures on the phone, so I can check them out because she has a really neat vision and it's a lot of fun to look at them.
Last night, as I drove home from picking her up from ballet, she's taking pictures and I'm pointing out different things for her to see, I notice a beautiful cloud formation to the East. I knew right away what I wanted to do and told Ryan that when we got home, we wouldn't be staying for long - just long enough for her to make sure her hair was brushed and there was no In N' Out on her face and for me to grab my gear and then we were heading out.
So we got our stuff together and hopped back in the car - I needed to find a ridge or hill on which Ryan could perch so that I could frame her against that beautiful sky. I had to do it quickly - the sun was going to set fast and I knew I didn't have a lot of time.
We wandered the neighborhood a bit - the local high school was out. They used to have the perfect spot, but it's fenced in now and I can't get to it. Instead we headed over to a small elementary school and I saw what I was looking for. The school sits on a small plateau that is about 12' higher than the level of the street. A gentle incline from the street to the playing fields was the perfect spot to work. Ryan likes to help, so I let her lug the camera bag (it's a small one for fast field work) while I dragged along a couple of small flashes.
I broke out a flash and umbrella and we set to work. All told, from the time I took my first test shot to the last image taken, we spent about 15 minutes photographing. As I mentioned, the sun was setting quickly and it turned out those clouds I was admiring were moving FAST, I kept having to scoot and change angles as the clouds moved behind her.
Still, I am really happy with what we got. Considering the 10s of thousands of pictures that have been taking of her starting at only a few days old, Ryan is very, very comfortable in front of the camera.
It was a really nice evening. As we were packing up, behind us the clouds turned a brilliant crimson. Though I didn't take any pictures of it (the angles were wrong and houses and trees would have made it not work) we did sit down and enjoy the sunset. There was a cool breeze, the cloudscapes were beautiful and I was hanging out with my awesome nine year old daughter.
Then, it got better. After the crimson had faded from the sky, I loaded the gear back in the car and we were just getting in, when I looked to the east and saw a flash of lightning. It was too far off to even hear the thunder, but it was beautiful. I pointed it out to Ryan and we watched for a few seconds to see if we would see another strike. We did ... and another went ... and another ... and another. It didn't stop.
"Wanna stay and watch?", I asked.
"Sure!"
So we sat out on the grass, watched the clouds gather and saw the most incredible display of lightning I have ever seen. It was continuous, non-stop lightning strikes. Clouds were lighting up like they had the worlds biggest strobes in them. Lightning was arching from cloud to cloud and from high in the sky to the ground.
We lounged on the grass in the breeze, with gorgeous clouds bunching and gathering above us and saw a show that beat out any fireworks display I've ever seen. After a while we could hear the continuous, low roll of thunder breaking over us.
The thought of pictures crossed my mind - but I was happy to realize I had left my tripod and the lens I would use back at the house, so I just sat back and enjoyed the show with my daughter.
Eventually, it started sprinkling, was nearing dark and the clouds above us were looking a more and more ominous, so we headed home.
But losing its audience didn't stop the lightning - it's performance continued all night.
Drips and Drops #1
I've always loved water - as far back as I can remember. Clouds, rivers, streams, the ocean ... I just like water.
And I've always admired those stop motion photographs of water drops - the amazing sculptures that result when water strikes water are incredible to look at. As a photographer, I've always wanted to try my hand at that sort of photography, but never bothered to give it a go. Recently, I saw a little few minute video on techniques for that sort of photography and realized how silly I was being - it requires patience and experimentation, but the techniques are quite simple and I have everything I need right here in house to do it.
So, about 1 AM the other night, looking for something to do, I pulled out some gear and had a bit of fun.
These were taken on my dining room table in a 14" frying pan filled with water. Drips fell from a sandwhich bag suspended over the pan. Getting the images was then simply a matter of timing my photographs with the water strikes and varying that timing to get different types of images.
This was the first go and I intend to continue to play a bit. One of the most amazing things about water is its surface tension - it likes to hold itself together. A lot of these images are of cold water with nothing added - this means the surface tension of the water was high, so the splashes aren't as dramatic as they could be. The more you lower the surface tension, the splashier it gets. You can lower the surface tension with temperature or by adding things to water. Also, you can play with things like drop size, impact speed (by raising or lowering the source of your drips), lighting position and color, coloring of the water, etc. So, there will be more to post on this in the future. In the meantime, a few drips and drops.
A Mothers Day Gift.
Well this post marks the end of quite a dry spell. See, for those of you that don't know, we run another site: www.vbpics.com for one of our other specialties, volleyball photography. The traveling involved in photographing volleyball (we've driven through California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado this year) keeps us on the road quite a bit and between organizing our efforts, photographing tournaments, processing orders and keeping up with emails and phone calls makes taking other types of images or updating a blog like this for pleasure a very daunting task.
However, volleyball starts to ease up about the beginning of May ... just in time for a Mothers Day portrait of two very special young women.
Both Ryan and Sierra have been featured here before, last summer. This time, we had a picnic dinner at Gibson Ranch and took the time to do a few fun pictures at sunset in time to give a portrait of Ryan and Sierra to their mother, my ex-wife and good friend, Christina, for Mothers Day.
These two hambones had a great time, giggling, laughing and generally being silly gals. Which meant I had a great time hanging out with them.
There are a number more from this mini-session that I would love to share, but - although volleyball is easing up - it hasn't ended for the year and there's still plenty of work to be done.
Yosemite - my yearly pilgrimage.
This year, with the investment in our new high resolution camera and large format printer, one of my decisions was to spend more time outdoors photographing. So far, I've done more of this sort of work in the last six months than I had in the last several years combined.
Right around this time each year, as high school and college volleyball start to calm down, I get the opportunity to head out of town and visit a friend of mine, John, who has an apartment in Yosemite Valley.
This year, rather than spending only a couple of days, I stayed an entire week. And rather than spending pretty much all of my time lounging about and watching movies, I actually spent a good portion of the time photographing.
Most landscape photographers will tell you the best light of the day is at dawn or at dusk. I enjoy dawn more because there are fewer people out and the landscape is quieter - everything is just waking up. However, much as I like dawn, I've never been all that great at getting up for it when I visit. So, this time, rather than getting up for dawn, I just stayed up for it. John has a pretty good movie collection going, but he usually introduces me to a few TV series while I am down there. Last year I started watching "Dexter", a Showtime series. This year it was True Blood on HBO and Supernatural (John is big into vampires, werewolves and other scary stuff).
So I occupied my nights watching movies and, as the sky lightened, would head out to photograph.
The first morning I headed out, there was a beautiful ground mist throughout a large portion of the valley.
It made for some nice, moody images.
Heading down the valley, I went to a popular valley overlook where you can easily see El Capitan and Cathedral Rocks with Bridalveil Falls.
Usually, at this time of year, the Falls have all dried up. And, as of a month ago, they were. However, the big storm system that dumped a couple of inches of rain in Sacramento, also dumped a good amount of precipitation in the high country, causing the falls to start back up again.
This image was the result of catching a fleeting glimpse of the river and El Cap as I drove the circuit of the valley. I pulled over the the shoulder and headed down the hillside towards a cliff about 20 feet high overlooking the river. The morning light on El Cap reflected into the waters of the river and made a really striking image.
Throughout the rest of my stay, I didn't look for grand vistas, like you would normally associate with Yosemite. Sure, I drove to Wawona tunnel and photographed the valley at sunrise and sunset, but ultimately I was more interested in smaller images.
I've always really liked water. When I lived in Yosemite years back, I realized I like photographing water in all of its state - solid, liquid or gas. I like snow and ice formations, streams, rivers and the ocean and clouds. So it's not uncommon that I find myself down at the river, and that's where I spend a good deal of my time this trip: the Merced River.
I spent my last evening wandering around the valley. I noticed some nice light on Half Dome and thought I might try for an image of it. However, I wasn't seeing anything worthwhile, so I kept wandering the river and wound up in a very quiet spot where I saw some incredible ligth on the water. It was a golden sparkle - a reflection from the light of the canyon wall behind the river that made the water look like molten copper. It was really gorgeous and I spent the last 45 minutes of the evening just sitting there watching the light change and listening to the water, occasionally making an image.
Though I did enjoy myself a great deal, I got stir crazy after a while. I was keeping up on my emails, but couldn't tell get any phone messages via my cell phone or office line and I had some work that needed doing, so I headed back home after a week in the valley.
There are shorter routes in and out of the valley, but I like to take Highway 140 from Merced because of how pretty it is. This trip that really paid off. About 5 miles outside of the park borders, I spotted a beautiful cascade in the river. Before what I had seen really registered, I had the car pulled off the road. I spent about 35 minutes on the side of the road photographing this one really spectacular spot, and walked away with some of my favorite images from the trip.
University of New Mexico Soccer
Well this was a refreshing change.
Today I got the chance to photograph some college soccer - my first time photographing it at this level.
My subject was Chris Wright, older brother to Taryn Wright who plays volleyball for University of Montana and who we photographed playing against Sac State earlier this year.
Well, it was back out to Sac State to photograph Chris. Today was a gorgeous Fall day - the temperature was perfect and the quality of the light was really nice. Unfortunately, Sac State's soccer field is surrounded by a chain link fence along one side and backed by some light colored buildings which reflect the sun - a difficult situation when most of the field is in shadow, but there were certain angles which were really nice.
Chris is a Sacramento native, having graduated from Jesuit high school. He's been a standout soccer player for University of New Mexico and it sounds as though he's got a potentially bright future in the sport after college.
Today's match was a 2-1 victory over Sac State, with Chris supplying the game winning assist towards the end of the second segment of sudden-death overtime play.
I enjoyed photographing the match today - hopefully I'll have more opportunities like this in the future.
Clovis West HS Volleyball
Well it was down to Fresno today to photograph a volleyball match for Clovis West high school. In spite of the 3 hour travel time, we've started photographing them a few years back after they included me in a trip to Hawaii to photograph them playing in the Ann Kang Invitational volleyball tournament on Oahu - along with team pictures, and Senior portraits for three of the team members on Waikiki beach. It was definitely a memorable trip and I've been down to Clovis each year since to continue photographing the team.
That trip made me some great acquaintances in the Clovis area and since then, my main focus of last few years has been a young lady named Mikayla Pierce. We've been photographing her since she was in eighth grade and she graduates next Spring. We're set to do her Senior portraits when the weather warms up and she and her mom decided three years ago that they are going to get one of our Senior Albums, so I make sure that to get images of her each year. Her album will have from eigth grade through graduation, club and high school volleyball as well as her Senior Portraits. It should be quite a book!
After the stomping Salesian gave Kennedy in my visit there, I had checked the win-loss records of Clovis' opponents and selected this team because I thought it might be a competitive match. Unfortunately, Madera wasn't up to it. Clovis won easily in three straight sets. However, many really nice images resulted, here are a few.
Thomas and Pam's Wedding
You've got to be kidding - something other than volleyball?
That's right - a wedding!
This time it was my kid brother, Thomas's, wedding. He and his new wife, Pam, have been together for a number of years and decided to make it a formalized union this Fall.
I don't know how they did it, but they managed to pick the one and ONLY weekend it has rained in Sacramento since last February. Really, that takes some serious planning skill. And it wasn't just a light drizzle - it was two inches of rain over a couple of days, so it was a nice, steady fall.
The wedding was outdoors (of COURSE!) at Rusch park off of Antelope. It was a very small, family sponsored affair - I provided tables and several canopies from our outdoor event supplies, as well as Jason and I photographing (Thomas has a friend, Ken, who is just starting a photography studio and he photographed as well).
By the end of the day I was completely soaked - I mean drowned rat soaked. The first thing my neighbor said to me when I got out of my car upon returning home was ... "Your WET!" ... uhh, yes I am.
I had to pull the equipment into the office, lay everything out and let it dry before putting it back to avoid electrical or mold problems down the road.
In spite of the rain, it was a beautiful location and great to see Thomas and Pam get married.
There was one in the family that was thrilled with the rain ... her name is Aedyn! Yes, my fun loving niece who has been to town three times this year for family funerals has finally made it back to town for a more happy occassion, her uncle's wedding ... and she just loved the rain.
And this is Cadie, my wonderful sister who will probably want to kill me for sharing this picture of her. Isn't she a beautiful mom? Even when she's been standing in the rain!
This was one of my favorite pictures of the day. Aedyn just LOVED the rain and her cousin, Sierra, just LOVES Aedyn, so they wandered the park with an umbrella and spent some time hanging out on this park bench. I like the color contrast, the rain drops and the two pairs of feet poking out from the umbrella!
Sheldon HS Volleyball
As I've mentioned before, this may not be club volleyball season, but it's still volleyball season and we're photographing plenty of it (anyone want a family portrait or senior portrait done? - we love volleyball but are happy to photograph other subject matter too!).
Tonight it was out to Sheldon high school to cover their Seniors in action against Pleasant Grove. We've been creating Senior collages for Sheldon for about six years now (hard as it is to believe that that many years have gone by!)
The match didn't go so well for Sheldon, with them dropping the match in four sets 3-1. They showed some good life, winning the second set decisively, but seemed to fall apart communication-wise the 3rd and 4th matches.
All in all, some good images were to be had.
Nevada Union HS Volleyball
Nevada Union is another of the high school teams that we have been photographing for a number of years now.
It started when Bob Rogers, the NU coach who retired this year, asked us up to photograph Senior Night and provide pictures to the families about four or five years ago.
Unfortunately, with his retirement this season, we did not arrange to photograph the Senior Night portraits this year, but we did make it to photograph the match.
The Nevada Union team is always a fun one to photograph - they're a really solid squad, having made it to State Championships the last three out of five seasons. We've photographed them at State Championships twice, and the images from last year are still on our volleyball site.
We've sorted at posted all of the images from this match as well as those that we photographed at the Super 8 tournament on our vbpics.com volleyball website.
Hopefully this next season we'll be back out for the Senior Night portraits and we can add a few more Senior portraits like we did for Nevada Union #2, Taylor Japhet.