night at the drive-in

night at the drive-in

I was thinking that we should go to a drive in movie, but they tore it down a couple of years ago.

Friday Night

handsome

My beautiful Aunt Celanie introduced me to a nice girl on Sunday. Celanie had given me her number a week or two ago, but I wanted to meet her in person rather than just call up a complete stranger. I talked to her tonight, she seems very nice, and we have a date on Friday.

She seems very familiar to me, I think I probably have met her before, sometime in my teens when I would go to dances in Taber, and I could swear that I at least saw her in Calgary last year at the mid-singles conference.

I guess I'm going to need to get all spiffied up for my date on Friday.

-Gary

Breaking Bad

Breaking Bad is hands down the best show on tv right now. 10 episodes in and I am completely hooked.

Walter White, the anti-hero of the new AMC series "Breaking Bad," is a chemist, and always defines himself as such. Twenty years earlier, he was part of a Nobel Prize-winning research team, and though he's down on his luck now and teaches science to bored high-schoolers, his voice still breaks a little as he describes the wonders of chemistry, how it features "growth, then decay, then transformation." And when he discovers he has inoperable lung cancer, he decides the only way to care for his wife and disabled son after he's gone is to put his lab skills to use cooking crystal meth. "Breaking Bad" is itself a chemistry experiment, an attempt to combine several unstable compounds - one part "Weeds," one part "The Bucket List," one part "Falling Down" and 12 parts Coen Brothers - to see whether they lead to synthesis or combustion.

I can't wait for the next episode to air.

Basketball Shoot

DSC_2343

I made a couple hundred photos of a basketball tonight. Tomorrow I'll narrow it down to 20, then edit five of them to upload to istock. Hopefully one or two of them will sell 10 or 15 times a month over the next year or two. I'm sure that I have five that I really like a lot. Which is good for me. Generally from 200 I have 10 that are nice and one that I really like a lot.

My new lights, the alien bees are great. I find them a lot easier to use than my Nikon speed lights. Maybe I just like the manual-ness of them, it is what I am used to working with everyday. Turn a dial, adjust the power and go. Not to mention having a trigger mechanism that doesn't rely on some sort of hard to figure line of sight.

I would like to find more projects to do with them. I have a few ideas lined up. Some need to wait for spring to be fully sprung. Some need to wait for models to be old enough to sign releases. Some need models. At least one needs a robot costume.

I'm particularly interested in the robot.

-Gary

Kite Aerial Photography

I really want to try this.

Unicorns and Rainbows

Unicorn

I listen to a radio show called, "This American Life". In one episode a woman is telling a story about a party she was at. Everyone was discussing endangered species and she said to the group, "Are unicorns endangered or extinct?" After a awkward silence, she realized unicorns aren't real. It is so easy to believe they are though, they just live in Africa, like zebras. After all aren't dinosaurs real? How much easier is it to believe in a horse with a horn than a giant lizard?

Anyway, I've been shooting grad photos. Photos of kids graduating from high school. I chat with the kids. Did you get your prom dress? What are you doing next year? Do you play sports or have a job? Where do you work?

There is one question that I stopped asking. Can you settle a bet between me and my assistant? I think that unicorns are extinct and she thinks they are only endangered, what do you think?

Now, obviously the correct answer is: Unicorns aren't real.

Too many kids don't know that I'm joking when I ask that. They are easily fooled by the way the question is formed, the way it assumes unicorns are real. The kids say unicorns are extinct in front of their parents.

I truly hope the kids aren't actually listening, just responding to my questions. Flipping a coin in their heads, extinct on one side and endangered on the other.

I'm sure very few kids are actually paying attention to anything I say, because when one is paying attention, when there is one that gets that I'm joking we can tell. The kid is having fun and playing along with the game.

-Gary

Talia and Scott

Talia and Scott

I did a basketball photo shoot with Scott this evening. I'm pretty sure that I got a ton of really great shots of him. His girlfriend came along to watch. I had a shoot with her and two friends right around this time last year.

They were both really great to work with and I had a ton of fun.

-Gary