keith’s blog

Last week I photographed Audra Arnold’s baby for her first birthday pictures. These sessions are always fun because you never know how the baby will react to being able to make a mess without someone being right there to clean them up. Any way, we got great pictures. 

And today Audra showed up with THIS

a home made Oreo Cheese Cake. It’s FANTASTIC! Thanks Audra, you’re definitely the person of the day, make that person of the week around here.

I went to Trinity Baptist Church yesterday for the first time. A friend of mine and her two children were all baptized at the same time. She told me it’s been a dream of hers to be baptized with her children for a long time and it finally happened.

Friday night I got to eat at one of my favorite restaurants www.chefhenrys.com. The food and company was great! I also got to pick up some gift cards that I’ve needed to pick up.

The rest of the weekend was spent working around the house. I got a bunch of under brush cleared out and you can actually see through the woods at my house now. Lots more to do though. 

Keith

Tomorrow morning @ 5:00AM I’m hitting the road to Michigan with my Dad. We’re gonna drive straight up (almost 900 miles) and straight back. We’ll be picking up a boat he bought on, you guessed it, e-bay.

 If we slow down enough I’ll take a picture or two to post here next week. I HOPE we get back sometime Thursday night because I have sessions at the studio on Friday.

 If you look back at some of my posts you’ll see that I like a good road trip. It’ll be fun… I hope.

Keith

 EDIT:

We made the trip alright but we didn’t slow down enough for any pictures. We covered 1800 miles in 34 hours. My quick math tells me that we averaged about 54 miles per hour for the whole trip including stoping for eats & and fuel.

Today is the one year anniversary of one of my most life changing events.

June 1^st, 2007 I climbed Half Dome, in Yosemite National Park. I had been invited to go on the trip with some friends more than a year before the actual trip. I looked forward to it and thought it’d be a nice trip. It was just what I expected until I was on top of Half Dome.

The 5,000 ft climb and the 16 mile hike was probably one of the most physically challenging things I’ve ever done. Mentally, I had to have a real heart-to-heart with myself before actually going up the side of the rock too.

Once I got on top of Half Dome I had an epiphany that would change the way I look at life, living and work. I’ve written about it once or twice in my newsletter but the short story is, it was life changing! I can remember it like it was yesterday. All these thoughts hit me in the blink of an eye and I knew I’d never be the same. I decided on the spot, without any thought or consideration to make a LOT of changes. Mostly about how much work I put in.

Being completely honest I’d have to admit that before the trip was over I wondered to myself if I’d still feel the same way about the changes I was going to make over the course of time. That trip to the top of Half Dome is STILL as influential today as it was a year ago.

Here are a few pictures I took on that trip. The first is of me with Half Dome behind me. The second is me on top of Half Dome. To give a sense of scale, there are 20,000 people in the valley befind me and I couldn’t see a single one of them.

May you have a “Half Dome” event in your life.

Keith

Yesterday I went up to

http://www.wenzelstudio.com . He’s from

I’d love to take a couple of high school seniors up there for some night time test sessions. So, if you know of anyone that might be willing have them or their mom to give me a call. Mom or Dad MUST go on the session.

The first picture is a walkway that crosses a part of the river with the

Keith

Here’s one of my favorite Mommy & Me Portraits I’ve done in a while. Cadence is expecting a baby brother in a couple of weeks and I’m thinking she’ll be a good big sis. She came in really willing to do a great job for this session.

We’ve been covered up with Mommy & Me sessions this week. Today, I’ll photograph three Mommy & Me sessions along with six others for a total of nine sessions. No lunch break today!

Keith

Well the Lamb & Bunny Portraits are over for this year. It went extremely well, other than having a hard time getting the lambs here (see Wednesdays post). For the most part all the kids did a great job, the set looked great and as far as I can tell I only screwed up one session. I did a session with one of my lights turned off, NOT good! Any way, we caught it in time to do a redo, AND the kid did an excellent job when he came back in.

Here are a couple from today. The first ones are two of the sweetest kids ever, Abigail & Tripp. I’ve been photographing their family since Abigail was less than three months old and I’ve made friends with the whole family. I think we’re all gonna go the Henry’s soon. http://chefhenrys.com/ It’s one of my favorites and I’m way past due for a trip there.

The second photo is of Hannah. I’ve photographed her since she was a baby too. She’s going through a shy stage but once we kicked everyone out of the camera room except her Mom, Dad and myself she came around quite nicely, as you can see. She must be a good judge of character. 

I’ll be taking the Lambs home tomorrow. I hope it’s easier than getting them here was.

Keith

The Easter Sessions are going pretty well so far. Three days down and one to go. Tomorrow is all day no breaks. Hope I can stay on time.

I tried to post a video of part of a session. But that’s over itty, bitty technically challenged brain. So, here are a few of this years Easter Portraits instead.

Oh, by the way, happy Leap Year!… or is it Leap Day… or Leap Year Day?

I was up WAY before daylight today to go get the Lambs for today’s Easter sessions. This is where I sat for over an hour on Burnt Mtn. Finally the DOT salt truck pulled me out. I came back empty handed. So, this morning’s sessions are with bunnies only. I have a friend on the way to get the Lambs now that the roads are clear.

UPDATE 7:15 PM

The Lambs made it to the studio early this afternoon so all is well. Out of about twenty sessions today only two were disappointed that the Lambs weren’t here. One little girl just wanted to see the Lambs after her session with the Bunnies. I could tell she was really sad that I didn’t have any Lambs here. I felt terrible! The other folks actually wanted a baby Lamb in the pictures. So I photographed their boy with the Bunnies today and He’s coming back on Friday to be photographed with a baby Lamb.

A week or so ago I took a road trip to Nashville and back with the Bentley Gang http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=313178696 to see them do a show at a little place called The Foo Bar. It didn’t look like much from the outside but was pretty nice on the inside (as bars go). I got home at 4:00AM… on a work night. That kinda thing hurts more than it used to. Last time I did that, to see Robbie Fulks, I think I got in at 6:00AM. I remember the sky was getting light when I pulled in my drive way. At least that was on a weekend.

 Anyway, the boys made the trip to play for one guy that’s interested in working with them, whatever that means. I guess it worked out. After that show they were called back to play for someone at RCA??? and they’re going back for something similar next week. You can see the Van Lears here in Calhoun at Wall St Traders March 1st,  & at Harris Arts Centre March 8th. I’ll probably be at the March 8th show. See you there.

Don’t forget, our Easter Special starts next Wednesday.

Keith