Busy Week

Last week I was on spring break at school. How cool is it to get a paid week off! Well it was a really busy week. I took photos for Ballet West, Utah Ballet, University of Utah Ballet Seniors, and then went hiking with my Dad in southern Utah. I got some pretty awesome photos while down there. I will probably post them tomorrow.
I thought I was going to get a lot of stuff done last week, turns out I was to busy to do most of the stuff I thought I could. Looks like they are still on the "honey do" list.
One thing I did get to do was read a book. My wife and I are big fans of the Fablehaven books. They are fun fantasy books writen towards younger readers, kind of like the Harry Potter books were. They are a fun read for all ages though. The latest book is also the last in the series. It's called Keys to the demon prison. I thought the author did a great job finishing off the series. I have always like swords and in this book there is a pretty awesome sword, it made me happy :) I know I'm a giant nerd, but thats ok with me.
I will be posting a lot of photos later this week.

Busy photo week

Last week was a busy photo week for me. I only took pictures one day but had a couple of photo events that were really cool. On Thursday night I was able to go up to Salt Lake and rub elbows with a bunch of local photographers. The event was for a pretty well known guy in the photo world named Zack Arias. If you don't know who Zack is, he is a pretty amazing music photographer. He does a lot of bands press kits and CD covers. I was able to talk to him for a few minutes and he also spoke to the group about how he got started and what he does. He's a great speaker and was really entertaining. There was a photo booth set up at the event and I got a couple photos with my buddy Sam and a new friend named Alex.

The other photo event I had was a thing called Photocamp Utah. It's an all day workshop type thing. I went up with my friend from high school and good photo buddy Jeremy Stowell. We were able to learn a few cool new things from some great photographers. I will admit though that I went in with pretty high expectations and was expecting a little more from the workshops. Still, even though I didn't learn as much as I was hoping I would I learned a few new things and again got to hear Zack Arias speak. Over all it was a fun day of photo nerdiness.

Elements

Last week I gave my students an assignment to take photos of the Elements of Art. If you are not sure what those Elements are they are Color, Line, Shape, Form, Texture, Value, and Space.
I had a training I had to go to at UVU las week as well, just after I gave the students the assignment. As I was walking through one of the new buildings I noticed that the stair wells create these incredible shapes so I grabbed my camera and took a few photos. I'm going to show them to my classes today.

Swan Lake

So I've been taking a lot of ballet photos lately and have been really enjoying it. I was recently invited to take photos at two dress rehearsals for Ballet Wests production of Swan Lake. It was a pretty big honor that they invited me to come photograph the show. I guess they have people all the time ask if they can come take photos but they never turn out very good, and rarely do they invite photographers to come.
Here are a few of my favorites from the two dress rehearsals. It was a pretty amazing performance!

Slacker

Well I've been more than a slacker when it comes to blog posts so I think I'll fire it up again and try posting more often. I have a few minutes every monring before I head to work so I'm going to try posting then.

Picture a Day - Project 365

I have recently started my new job as a high school photography teacher. I spent a lot of time over the summer preparing for school and a lot of my evenings since starting planning all night. This past week went pretty well because I've been able to plan a couple weeks in advance and my plans have gone well. BUT since I am doing well on my planning I've had a few free nights this week that I didn't need to work on school stuff. Well my wife is working nights so she is asleep for most of the evening when I'm home and I'll be honest, I'm getting bored. So, instead of sitting on my butt playing video games and not doing anything productive with my time I have decided to start taking a photo a day, or "Project 365" as many people call it.
I'll probably start tonight but will probably only upload my photos once a week. That way you can see all weeks photos at once. I'm not sure where to start so I think I'll just look around my apartment tonight and see what I can find.
Wish me luck. This will be a fun, but long project.

Solar Delta

So a few weeks ago I went down to Delta to get my car inspected and see the family. I hung out with my dad most of the day and we drove around looking for stuff to take photographs of. He took me to some killer spots and I got a few great photos.

The first stop took us out by Hinckley where some one is building these weird solar panel things. They panels work like huge magnifying glasses, we walked under a few and man it would burn you to a crisp if you stood there long enough.

Papa also took me into and old building where they sell grain and seeds. They have these really old shakers that separate grain and the nasty stuff that you don't want in it. Lots of dust in there but it was sweet.