ReBlog/Reesers [Family Shoot]

Welcome back folks. It’s been awhile, but I’m finally up and rolling again. Thanks to the lovelies over at State Farm, this Mikerophonity is coming to you straight from my shiny new MacBook Pro’s keyboard. Insurance is by far the best investment I made this year… Err… Last year.

Yup, yup. As you may have noticed, it’s now 2010, which means I should probably look back to this post and give you an update on the resolutions made there [spoiler alert: the results are surprisingly similar to most other people’s]. A new year isn’t all bad news… I’ve got some exciting stuff for your lovely eyes to check out coming up soon. I have my good buddy/Javascript genius Josiah whipping up a spifferific website for me, and a full on rebranding on the way.

I also need to throw up some Scotland shots, the results of my final photo project, and some fun snowboarding action. Needless to say, I’ve been busy.

But for now, I’d like guys to meet the Reesers; a supremely photogenic and fun family that I shot on the day after Christmas. You’ve already seen Brandon and Breanna strut their stuff in their ridiculously cool 30’s shoot. This time, they brought along the rest of the family for the party.

Rollfest.

My Apologies on Behalf of Apple

Hey folks. I would like to sincerely apologize to you on behalf of MacDaddy, the lovely MacBook Pro that normally handles my life for you all to enjoy in a visual manner. The past four days, he has not been listening to me. No matter how hard I pound on the keyboard, no matter how sporadically I click on the mouse, no matter how many times I take it apart, the laptop refuses to respond to anything. It just sits there. Smugly taunting me by running its screen saver and automatic back ups perfectly. Such is life when you work a computer to the bone. It was only a matter of time before it staged a revolution against me.

All that to say, sorry that the Scotland shots aren’t up yet. They’re just chillin’ on the hard drive; edited, exported, and ready to be thrown up on here. Just as soon as my computer decides to cooperate again. Apple store appointment is scheduled for tomorrow, so hopefully it’ll be up and running by tomorrow night. Until then, these library computers are suffering under my keystrokes.

Speaking of revolutions, we just happened to witness one today. Ok not a real one, but an acted out one. Us lovely Biolans went on our final “field trip” today that involved the Charles Dickens Museum, more food than I’ve ever seen, and a legit showing of Les Mis. A beauteous day in my book.

London is truly an amazing city. Every single time we go out we might as well be in a different country. Today we popped out of the Tube (subway for the non-British folk) and Bam! We were in a huge mall district that I’d never seen before. There is literally something to see here every single day of the week. I could easily spend another year here and only visit places I haven’t been. Crazy.

Rollout.

Fording the Ox

Class field trip. Yay.

Two things you should note about this pictures above:

Oxford looks (and feels) like it came out of a Harry Potter movie. They did draw a lot of inspiration in the movies from it, and even recreated Oxford University’s Great Hall for the dining hall in the movies. But even the people, country, other buildings, it all feels like a fantasy land. The whole trip (for our class) was about C.S. Lewis, and it’s easy to see how much inspiration that he, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien, were able to draw from this crazy little college city.

The other thing you should note about my photos is that anything that is in focus past 10 ft was shot with my 135L telephoto lens. Why? Because I dropped my 35L (wide) lens. Now it refuses to focus past 10 ft. Grand. We’ll have to see what Canon UK has to say about that. It made for an interesting shooting day, that’s for sure.

Peace.

Camden

These photos have been chillin’ on my hard drive for about a week now. I couldn’t let them be neglected any longer.

Oxford visuals = up and coming.

Rollout.

Will the Real London Please Stand Up?

Oh. There it is.

Peace.

boston.

Ok. First OFFICIAL blog of the trip. I’m gonna try and do these suckers one at a time for you folks, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to contain my excitement to share awesomeness into a chronological order. We’ll see what happens. Starting out, Katie, Kelsey, and I all flew out to Boston to party with Beth and the Cissels. Fun time. Crazy Festival thing. Ski tagged along. Check it:

Peace.

Aaron & Ira ::: Old Town Scottsdale

Heyo! Another married couple/friends of mine wanted their own shoot (for no reason whatsoever) so I happily obliged. We started off about an hour later than planned so we missed out on a lot of light.

They were a really fun couple to shoot. Just kind of goofy people. However I think they pulled off the serious shots pretty well. Ira is a photographer herself and helped me with this shoot.

Things I learned:

DON’T cut it close at dusk.
The nifty fifty + 5D2 isn’t always glorious (where the crap are these focus issues coming from?!)
Even with the focusing issues, and even with some nice L glass, I still love my 1989 50 1.8.
I need to invest in some Pocket Wizards ASAP, cause I’m totally fed up with Canon’s IR.
Post processing to the rescue!

Gearcheck:

5D2
50.8
135L
16/35L
3x580EX

This is them telling me there’s a car coming… While I’m telling them there’s a car coming. Haha.

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As for the flash shot from a few posts ago, the hotshoe on my flash broke so I finally got around to fixing it. I got my Eurail pass (2 days! Whoo!), and Steffi’s prints came in. They look dang nice.

That’s about it for now, I’ve been crazy busy trying to get ready for London!!! My next post might be from a different state, country, and/or continent!

Peace.

Welcome to the 30’s [20’s?]

Hello dearest readers… Summer’s coming down fast. Days are starting to speed up again. In 3 1/2 weeks I’ll be in freaking Europe. Heck to the yes.

So the most recent chaos that is occuring in the Villa home is Dave’s rebroken wrist. Ok, we don’t actually know if it’s broken yet [he is on route to the hospital as I’m writing this] but we’re pretty sure it is. He broke it playing football. Again. He did the exact same thing last year. Twice. So far Dave’s football casualties have include three broken fingers and two broken bones in the hand. All in his left hand. And that’s not even including this time. Needless to say his piano teacher is pissed. Bonehead.

My photofriend Ira and I went on a shoot last weekend and it was pretty fun stuff. Got to mess around with some new lighting and processing and I think I’m liking how they turned out. Brandon and Breanna [our lovely models] got all tuxed-up in a 1930’s [maybe 1920’s] get up and we headed into Downtown Gilbert for some lens flare fun. Here are my faves from the shoot:

Third favorite from the evening:

So they were dancing here. But it kinda came out looking like a boob grab. Either way I love their expressions. [Second favorite]

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