Amy and Lance

For those of you who enjoy love stories. Here's the Hollywood version...
Boy meets girl.
Boy and girl become High School Sweethearts.
Boy and girl break up before graduating and go their separate ways.
Boy and girl separately encounter many difficult trials in their lives.
Boy and girl eventually overcome the difficulties of their lives.
Girl moves to the other side of the U.S.
Girl graduates from college and moves back to Idaho.
Boy and girl rediscover each other.
Boy and girl decide to get married.
For any of you Hollywood directors out there reading this blog and looking for a good love story...I'm sure Amy and Lance would happily entertain offers. Contact me for details.

Busy, busy, busy...

It's been a busy few months here. I have dozens of unfinished blogs and more to post that I haven't started yet. I think it's a good problem to have...it beats having all kinds of time to blog and nothing to blog about. I promise to get caught up here...soon.

Elisha and Amanda senior portraits

Two sisters that are as much alike at they are different. Both are Seniors in High School despite their age difference due to their homeschooling background. Basically they started homeschooling at the same time...thus they finish at the same time. How cool is that?








Their fondness for the arts are reflected in their portraits! Both are also active in world missions having served and supported several missionary outreaches in Mexico and Asia.

Reason number 562 to hire a pro wedding photographer...

Some time ago a digital print order came into a photo lab facility and the photos were a total loss. It was someone's wedding and the files were overexposed, there were severe color problems, and noise. To fix these images in Photoshop would have taken weeks! One of the technicians made the comment that this bride was not going to be very happy. The other responded..."reason number 562 to hire a pro to photograph your wedding".
This is a true story and it happens with alarming frequency.
Conventional wisdom would say that most of us can bake a small cake with a pile of frosting on top, but very, very few of us could bake and decorate a wedding cake. Most weddings require a large venue (building, park, etc...) of course there is the wedding dress, tuxes, minister, rehearsal dinner, reception food, DJ, Limo and finally the honeymoon...oh yeah...the photographer. The budget has now hit critical mass and is threatening to explode, and it is then the advertisement comes on TV; the miraculous Brand X camera that shoots beautiful photos all by itself! The potential Bride and Groom look at each other and think, 'Uncle Joe has one of those cameras...and he takes good pictures!. We could save a bunch of money!'
Uncle Joe and his miracle camera is recruited for the task. The big day comes and Uncle Joe (wanting to do a good job) takes photo after photo and in the mind of the bride, she can envision hundreds, maybe thousands of photos just like what she sees in the Bridal Magazines. Little does she know that Uncle Joe is shooting under conditions that he is not familiar with, there is no such thing as a miracle Brand X camera, therefore many of the photos will not turn out on that basis alone. Uncle Joe (wanting to do a good job) spent some time the night before reading his instruction manual so he could figure out what else his miracle camera can do, and having tried out these features for the first time...on their wedding.
Somewhere in some photo lab, a technician will be watching these photos fall out of their printer and they will shake their heads in despair, there is going to be a very disappointed bride and groom...and they think to themselves, they should have hired a pro to photograph their wedding.
You see, when the reception is over, the dress will hang up in the bride's closet, rarely to be seen again, the tux goes back to the store, the cake will have been completely eaten, the limo makes it's way to the next wedding and the friends and family will have gone home. All that remains are the photos.
Photos are our identity, our heritage and our memories. Shop carefully and wisely for an experienced photographer, and make the appropriate investment in remembering your wedding.

Paul Jr.

Paul is one of the most remarkable young men I've had the privilege to meet. Underneath his quiet and polite demeanor you'll find an ambitious young man.
An accomplished guitarist, he makes an appearance on at least 3 albums that I'm aware of and has played for numerous bands throughout this area. He has traveled extensively in China and how many times he's been there...I've lost count. His first excursion was to play in a band that was doing a cultural exchange in the Hunan Province.
Paul has already started his college career and is also studying in addition to medicine Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and plans to translate some of the original texts of the Bible to English as a project.

Clouds and Fire

Watch this year for the release of "Clouds and Fire", a new album by Christian artist Scott Riggan.
Scott and I have been friends for few years now and we spent several months with the graphic artist hashing over what his new album was going to look like. At first he was thinking of a '70's era illustration, then starting thinking about photography instead. The idea behind "Clouds and fire" was the Biblical account of God leading the Israelites through the wilderness of the Sinai peninsula by a pillar of clouds by day and a pillar of fire by night.
We talked about all kinds of possible illustrations, Scott wearing a parachute and falling through the clouds leaving a fiery contrail in his wake (get it, clouds and fire...yeah, Scott didn't like either). Scott with this backpack next to a campfire in the desert, resting after a long day of walking. It seemed that the journey that Christians travel was the predominant theme in our discussions.
One evening, he was telling me about some b/w photography he had seen of some musician doing just everyday stuff. Making scrambled eggs, hanging out watching TV, sitting by his stranded car in the middle of nowhere...and that's when it hit me...stranded car!
The idea was complex, but not obscure. The Israelites were on a journey that they had no control over, just a pillar of clouds and fire, and the God who was leading them to a promised land. The stranded car is the universal symbol of how we are NOT in control of our destiny at all times, and that our journey is not always our own.
We found "nowhere" somewhere between Middleton and Emmett, Idaho. It was the perfect location and yes, the Pontiac GTO was fully functional and not really stranded. (Thanks Kent!)
Check him out at www.scottriggan.com, and check out his music at www.indieheaven.com

PMA 2008 Las Vegas

PMA 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. I went with the expectation of learning more about what the photo industry was doing, and quite honestly I did. It has been 10 years since I attended the PMA convention and many things have changed. I saw an industry scrambling to reinvent itself in the wake of the digital age, some products and services looked interesting, many did not. One thing that seemed to me was striking was the fact that fewer and fewer people are making prints. This affects the print/processing industry the photographer, and sadly the one who didn't think it was important to make prints.
It seems seductive in this way when you can take a photo and park it on a hard drive free of any charge except for the cost of PC it lives on. Two problems exist...one, when the hard drive fails the photos disappear. Two, if you save your images on CD's or DVD's and put them in a trunk for your descendants to find in about 100 years, guess what? Technology will have moved on and there will probably not be anything to play those carefully saved and stored CD's and DVD's. Again the images are lost. A modern example would be Betamax tapes, 5" data disks, 8 track tapes...well the list could go on. What was "state of the art" of yesterday is unusable today. The ONLY way to preserve those memories is to make prints!
The visible image has been around for centuries! You can find them painted in the caves of Bordeaux France, the frescos of Rome, the oil paintings of the Renaissance, the photo of Matthew Brady. Never underestimate the power of the humble print.
The photographic industry is in the business of memories. Your local photographer and your local photofinisher are both committed to the same thing; providing the best quality images for you and your family to enjoy. Of all the personal items you can invest in, the only thing that will have any meaning to anybody will be the photos in the photo album.