Looking Through Some Old Photos

Well, not "old" per se, just not new.

June 2011.
Lots of great things happened in June that I documented with my camera. It's times like these that I'm grateful for my camera-journal. I forgot half of this stuff even happened, let alone that they all happened in June!

• Family portraits of the Ploeger Family (not pictured below)
• Girls Camp (not pictured below)
• Company golf tournament (not pictured below)
• Katie and Eric's wedding (not really pictured below...just shots of the temple)
• 1-year birthday party at Rock Canyon park (for June, I think)
• A visit from the Vic & Mona fam (shots on the Heber Creeper)
• Haskin family campout (this technically happened in July, since it was for the 4th of July, but it's in my June pictures folder, so I'm keeping it on the list)

Salt Lake Temple

Salt Lake Temple...AT NIGHT

That's Jeff and Dan making it a team effort to roll down the hill. And if you want to see some seriously sweet hill-rolling daring, check out Jeff as he takes a head-first leap down the hill, Princess-Bride style!

I call this: Waiting For A Train That Will Never Come

But mainly that's because they were waiting for the "men" to finish buying the tickets, and because the train was on the other side of the station, so technically, it never would get to where they were.

Playing an intricate game of dirt bingo. The rules are top secret, so I'll only say that it involves shovels, two toy cars, and a banana. And I've already said too much.

This is a still from Look Who's Talking 3.

And if you believed that, wait till you see my still of Home Alone 5.

First Month Down!

So last month I started a 3-6-5 Photo challenge where I have to take a picture every day for 365 in a row (click here to see my last entry about it).  I also have to write a little blurb about each photo, and post it on the blog I created for it.

Now that I've got one month under my belt with this photo challenge (yeehaw!), I'm getting a pretty good feel of what I'm doing.  Below are the pictures from last month which I posted on my other blog, along with my favorite shot from the month.  Enjoy!

Favorite shot for June:

Creeeepy!

I promise that the following images are not doctored, neither are they pictures of ghosts.  I don't want to see these floating around the internet with "real ghost picture" attached to them, so don't you dare try it!

We were setting up to take some pictures of the night sky and I was taking a few practice shots since I didn't know what I was doing.  I set the exposure to a full minute on the first shot, and Kim (who didn't know I was taking a picture) danced in front of the camera for a few seconds of the shot.  It turned out so cool!

In fact, I liked it so much, I decided to dance in front of then next shot.  I didn't dance long enough and I was wearing black, so it just looks like a floating head. haha!

Again, NOT A GHOST.  Just me dancing in front of the camera on a long exposure.

You gotta admit, they're pretty sweet shots!

Another picture from my trip...

On Saturday we drove to Arches National Park to get some shots of the the scenery and go on a hike.  On our way to the first stop I made Christine pull off to the side of the road because the view was so breathtaking.  As I stepped out of the car, my first thought was of indecision.  What should I capture first?  The scene before me was too wide to take in one shot, and almost all the pieces of that scene lost their magnificence when I tried to capture them individually.  So, I decided to capture every angle of my view and turn it into a panoramic picture when I got home.  Here's the result:

* Disclaimer: This is the only panoramic shot I took during my stay in Moab, and it wasn't a very good one.  Because I decided on a whim to do a panoramic I didn't fix my camera settings or get out my tripod, so I had to do quite a bit of editing to make the transitions between shots look not-so-obvious.  Not my best editing work, but I still like the shot.  It was my first view of Arches during this trip, and I was so excited to be there that every time I see this picture I remember that excitement!

Moab, Day 2

As promised, here are my favorite shots from yesterday.  It was such a great day, and we had so much fun!  I'll post the night shots separately because they are my favorite, and because I want to dedicate a little bit of time to that post.  This one is rushed because it's almost 2 hours past my bedtime.

The girls' car

The hail storm.

This is a great story that deserves a better telling than this, but there you go.  We drove to the last stop on the arches drive to try to outrun the storm that was bearing down on us.  We thought we were home free (I don't know why), but when we got out of the cars to start our hike the rain started to come down.  At first it was a light trickle, so we did a quick powow and decided to wait out the storm in our cars.  

Then came the lightning (Picture 1 is me trying to capture it, but to no avail.)

Then came down-poor (Picture 2)

Then came the hail (Picture 3)

Then it went back to sprinkling...

Our car decided to ditch after that, while the guys in the other car stuck around until they could hike a little.

A pit stop in the rain.

After we bailed on the guys, we were driving back to town when we saw this cool rock formation that we wanted to check out.  It was still raining, but Christine and I decided to brave the cold and head out anyway.  It was only 15 minutes or so, but I was drenched (poncho and all) and grinning by the time we got back to the car.

JUST after the storm.

Still on our way back to town, and we stopped yet again to take some pictures of the scenery.  We may not have gotten a hike in, but we still had a chance to see a bit of the sights.

Fun day!!

Moab, Day 1

I'm trying a new thing here: posting pictures of my vacation while I'm still on vacation.  Maybe then I'll be able to share more stuff than previous posts.  The pictures below are part of the handful I took last night on our first night in Moab.

The gang, just before we jumped in our cars and headed to Moab.

Main street, a closed-up shop we passed on our way to dinner.

Random shapes on buildings.

Hanging outside a shop on Main Street.

More to come...

NYC - Take One

My sister and I went to New York this weekend for my birthday.  We stayed at her old roommate's apartment and it had the best lighting!

When I opened my eyes the first morning, this is what greeted me...

Another shot of my view from my couch-bed...

The view down the hall to the bedrooms...

An Expose on my Butt

So I've been going crazy with this new iPod application: ShakeItPhoto.  I'm sure anyone who owns an iPod Touch or iPhone knows about this awesome application already.  For those of you who don't...I'll simply say: Poloroids.

Awesome poloroids:

So, I've been having a blast with this new application, and converting my Yosemite photos to Poloroids like crazy.  I'll post more as I have time, but today I'd like to share the story of "The Expose on my Butt."

Here's how it goes:
Christine and I were on our second day in the great basin of Yosemite...taking an easy hike to the lower Yosemite Falls.  We happened along some old indian caves that we remembered climbing on as children when we used to take this hike, and I decided to take a few pictures in one of the crevices just for fun. 

I tossed my camera to Christine (well, not really...obviously) and ran to the crack (no punn intended) to pose for some pictures...

We laughed and had fun taking turns posing at the rock before moving on our way.  When we got home and I was reviewing the pictures from the trip, here's what I found:

The first picture: ok.  A little cheesy, but ok.  Couple it with the rest, however, and it looks like I'm the poster child for a constipation ad.  But, if nothing else...that last picture seals the deal on my never finding another date for the rest of my life.

Can you see?  How every picture automatically draws your attention to my butt?

That wouldn't be so bad, if I weren't STICKING IT OUT, and clenching my butt cheeks like Jack Black in Nacho Libre.  What was I doing?!?

"Then why are you publishing the photos if you hate them so much?" You might ask.

I'll tell you why.  Because it's DANG FUNNY.  I honked with laughter when I first looked at these shots, and then when I showed Christine, I laughed even louder - practically fell off my chair.  Why should I deny the world so much funniness just because it's slightly humiliating!!

Visiting Family

So...in the theme of the Yosemite trip, I'm posting the choice shots I took while we visited James and Rachel's family in Patterson. Again, this is out of order because we hit Yosemite first before visiting family, but these are the shots I got to editing first, so there you go.

After we arrived Saturday afternoon and had lunch at James' house, we all took a field trip to the local corn maze and pumpkin patch in Patterson. The original idea was to pick out pumpkins for the kids to carve, but after paying admission just to walk through the 'gate', we ended up just playing around with all the fun things they had for kids. First up was the giant pyramid of hay bales that the kids immediatey ran to when we arrived:

After conquering that 'hurdle' the kids made a b-line for the kids maze made out of hay bales.  The hay bales were tall enough for the smaller kids to actually navigate blindly through the maze and small enough for the older kids to climb on and play leap frog with each other.  It was so fun to watch all the kids try to jump from one "wall" to the other.  There were a few misses, but no injuries...and they had a blast. 

Pooped!

Here's my favorite shot of Josh leaping across a larger gap in the hay walls, while his younger brother Will sat staring into the sunset with what can only be described as a casually unaffected demeanor.

Priceless!

After a few more falls and some pretty cool sucessfull leaps, the kids moved on to the 'sandbox' of corn kernals (pictures to follow in another post).  While most of the children gleefully stuffed their shirts full of the feed corn in the boxes, James took little Will to the pyramid to race to the top...

James, being the awesome dad that he is, made a very convincing attempt at beating Will to the top without actually beating him there. 

The king of the mountain shot was awesome!

[Insert sarchasm font here] Then came time for the much-anticipated pig races!  It's a time-old tradition at corn mazes such as this one to starve poor little piglets all afternoon and then set them loose in a track-like pen while they all run as fast as they can to the other end for their dinner.

Even if I don't belive in the game, I still enjoyed watching the kids...

All-in-all...a great day at the corn maze!

Yosemite Posts

This is just a little forewarning that my trip to Yosemite yielded hundreds of awesome shots, so I will be posting my findings in sections.  Otherwise one of two things will happen: a) I won't post my trip until October of NEXT year, or b) (the most likely scenario) I won't post anything at all.

So...having stated that, I'll leave you with a few teasers (even though they're out of order):