Ballet West Review

Check out this great review of Ballet Wests "Balanchine's America" by Betsy Hijazi.

http://www.betsysview.com/2010/05/the-brilliance-of-ballet-west-and-balanchines-america/

Balanchine's America

I have recently had the privilege of taking photographs for Ballet West. They are one of the premier ballet companies in the United States.
Ballet Wests latest performance was a show called "Balanchine's America". Based off of the famous choreographer George Balanchine's ballets. George Balanchine was probably the most influential choreographer in the 20th century. The performances included three ballets choreographed by Balanchine: Serenade, Agon ,and Stars and Stripes.
Here are a few of my favorite photos from the show.

Hike

Last week I was on Spring Break at school and thought it would be a great time to get out and do something. My Dad has been asking me to come do a hike with him for a couple of years now and I'd never been able to work out a time that I could go down. Spring Break worked out perfect though.
The canyon we went to go hike is called Buckskin Gulch. My Dad said it's the longest slot canyon in the world. There is a lot to see down there, not just the canyon. Our first day there we stopped and watched a bunch of condors that have been reintroduced into the area. They feed them up on the Vermilion Cliffs, it was cool to see them fly around. We went to a place by the Honeymoon Trail where people traveling in the late 1800s carved their names into the stone. And later in the day found some pretty amazing rocks to hike around on.





The second day we went down and hiked around a place called Coyotte Butes. That place was amazing. The hills were multi colored and we found all sorts of amazing rocks there. After hiking around and taking photos there for an hour or so we headed to Buckskin. My dad thought we wouldn't be able to get real far in because there are usually pools of water to go through that could be pretty deep. Turns out this season they must have been filled in so we were able to walk up a few miles. There were still little pools of water but none we had to walk through.

After spending some time in Buckskin we headed off to a place called the Wave. This is a pretty famouse landscape and I've been wanting to go there for a while now. The directions we had were not the best and we wandered for a bit longer than we really needed to but we eventually got there. It was a pretty amazing place and well worth the hike to get to.

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!