Photoshoots galore!

What a busy, sometimes smelly, sometimes crazy, altogether FUN week!

First, I had an impromptu photo shoot with my little brother. He happened to be with a few friends so I packed them all ni the car and took them along. I learned that 4 nine year old little boys running around a park is NOT ideal conditions for any type of photo to be taken, other than blurry ones. There was a lot of "hey, get back here! turn around! Stop hitting him and look at me! No, dont get off the rock yet! DO YOU WANT YOUR PICTURES TAKEN OR NOT!??!

I kinda forgot that I made them come with me, and they never actually asked for a photoshoot in the first place. oops.

Here is a picture of Stewart and Mitchell, two very cute brothers (cute anyway, when frozen in a picture....)

For our photo class on saturday we went to the Great Salt Lake. Read the full rendition of the adventure here....it was interesting. Never have I smelled something so rotten, sunk in "sand" I later learned to be made from the waste of brine shrimp, and been accosted with billions of tiny brine flies every step I took, all in a ten minute window.

but the pictures turned out okay, no?




I also took Kam and Loni on a little jaunt up Provo Canyon. We went to this cool place a friend told me about...all in all we ended up getting chewed out by this little old man for trespassing on his property. Pretty sure he would have beat us down had he not been, like, ninety. And had we not brought along our trusty big brown guy, Jason.



And then...the crowning glory of my week. We somehow talked Sam's cousin Alexis into donning a wedding gown from the D.I. and playing "bridal photo shoot" with us. Not only did the dress fit her to perfection, she was the best model we have had to date, I think. She was so natural in her expressions, and we hardly had to pose her. She should look into a career as a fake-bride model. Is there such a thing? We took the pictures at this old decrepit mine. Now, I love how the pictures turned out, but in oreder to get to said mine you have to scale a small mountain and climb all over hige slabs of graffiti'd cement. All in the blazing heat, should you choose to do it in the hot afternoon August sun.

I'm thinking if we ever convince a REAL bride to go there, we should probably work out a pretty detailed Waiver of Liability form. Something along the lines of "...cannot hold us responsible for the ruining of your dress, the sweat pouring down your face, the inevitable trips and falls, and possible need for a tetanus shot soon after...."

We'll have to look into that.

In the meantime...


(click on this one to see it full size and fully appreciate it)





(click here for more bridal-y goodness)

*sniff*

I went on a great photoshoot today. And I'm so excited for the pictures. My computer at work; however, does not understand the emotion of excitement and therefore has decided that reading my USB cable to upload my pictures just isn't going to happen. Tonight has been so wasted.

Alas, you can see Sam's versions of said photoshoot here.

And tomorrow I will be bringing in the reinforcements (computer, that is) and spending the vast majority of the time that should be spent working, editing.

This past week has been awe-some. I shot my vert first wedding...ordered my new camera, camera bag, and flash and took some spectacular shots that I am danged proud of.

SEE!!!

(for some more neat-o wedding shots, visit Sam's page.)

We also took Sophie on a little impromptu mini-shoot. We have been searching for a field to take pictures in (and not get arrested for trespassing....) and we have found it! Alas, they will probably mow it down to nothingness soon to make way for new homes, but in the meantime....




And finally...We had fire training again on friday, this time we actually burned down the entire house. I got some pretty bad-A pics, but this...oh this. This lil' treasure is my new pride and joy. I love how it all turned out. Maybe you have to be directly involved with firefighting/EMS...I dunno. Tell me what you think.

Active Recruitment

Well the plans are underway. So far we have worked out a rough pricing schedule, some cool places to shoot, narrowed it down to 2 names (hmmm...perhaps a future post for votes on the names?), and have a whole list of things that need to be done but haven't necessarily been done. (less fun things, such as opening a bank account and getting a business license.) OH and we bought a really cute desktop calendar to keep track of the many upcoming photoshoots we have scheduled. Don't make fun of me.

Progress.

We have arranged a couple cool shoots to get our portfolio built up. Jenny (Sam's cousin) was fun to shoot and the location was awesome. (so awesome, in fact, we are keeping it totally secret and will probably go to the lengths of blind-folding any future clients going there just so they can't divulge the location. It will be like the bat-cave.)

Exciting stuff, no? We are also helping shoot a wedding tomorrow morning, as well as the Miss American Fork pageant in September. I am very excited for that. (again, all thanks to my cool hubby, see below post)

We are still looking for models to build our portfolio. If you live in or around Utah County and would be willing to donate yourself, child, spouse, yourself and your spouse or any combination of the above to the interest of our adventure, please do let us know!

In other news....Sarah over at Hollywood Flakes deserves a big kudos for sharing this little treat. It keeps track of all the blogs you stalk read and lets you know when someone has posted something new. It's pretty convenient to have it all at once click and not have to go rooting around for people who have new posts. I'm a fan.

The Best

Can I just say, I have the coolest husband ever!


Reasons why he rocks:



1. He has been super supportive of my latest scheme to start my own business (a photography studio with Sam ...very exciting but scary and intimidating stuff)



2. Not only has he been supportive, he just so happens to know some of the coolest places (and coolest people) to photograph, and has arranged for some awesome photo shoots for us.

3. When I thought all hope was lost when my digital camera deleted 500 of my vacation photos, he figured out how to get them recovered for me and brought them home to surprise me


4. He knows EVERYONE....seriously. It doesn't matter what city or state we are in, he will run into his junior high football coach, the lady who cut his hair as a kid, the girl he took to junior prom, and/or a host of other characters from years past. He remembers everyone...and everyone remembers him.

5. Come to think of it....he is actually really supportive of most of my schemes, ideas and quirks. Its a really good feeling to know you have a good man standing behind you, whatever you do. (especially when that man is a big brown guy who can look really mean and intimidating, should you ever need him to stand up for you.)


okay so thats not all the reasons why he rocks, but those are the main ones that are sticking in my head right now.

Vacations and more...

So you know how I was all "yeah I have 4 whole nights this week with which to blog, and yeah I will post all my pictures from my trip" and blah blah?
yeah obviously, 6 days later that didn't happen. It's a really long story involving graveyard shifts, CPR classes ALL freaking day, and 12 hours of sleep in 5 days. I won't go into all the gory details but it was NOT a fun week.
And THEN I went to upload all my vacation pictures to find 400 (of 550) of them gone. Vanished. Poof. So many good, fun pictures, never to be seen again. Such a bummer.

On a funnier note:
We all went to Hooters one night in South Carolina. (6 boys vs. 2 girls....we didn't stand a chance) We had Kaden (11) and Kamber (8) with us. The conversation was as follows:

ME: Hey, Kade. Do you like the girls' uniforms?

Kade: Well, they are kinda wierd. Their socks slouch all wierd around their ankles!

Kamber: [cracking up] UMMM....I didn't even NOTICE their socks!!

It was hilarious that the younger of the two picked up on it, while Kaden was absolutely oblivious to the world around him. And it was also kinda sad to think that Kamber is that young and is completely aware of the world around him.

Anyways, 2 rental cars, 1 accident involving a deer in SF canyon, lots of relatives 100+ hours of driving later, we are home safe, sound and sane. Probably less sane than before the trip altogether, but happy nonetheless.

The Smell of Success

Well, we are back from vacation. Safe and alive, albeit exhausted and less sane than when we left. More on that later.

Hypothetical situation.

IF you ever decide that buying a new house, moving out of your old one and packing for/planning a 2 week vacation in 3 days is a good idea, and IF your plane tickets get screwed up last minute and you and your insane family decide to rent a couple cars and make a cross-country drive in 40 eye-blearing, mind-numbing non-stop hours is a good idea and IF you decide that in the midst of packing for the move you will just wait and pack for the vacation after you have moved all your crap over and cannot find ANYTHING and thus have to resort to packing in a frenzied mad-dash sort of sitation is a good idea.....

For the love of all that is good and gracious in this world, make sure your freezer door is closed tight and the 10 pounds of hamburger you have stored in there do not defrost, leak and rot all over your new-house kitchen for 2 weeks in 100+ degree heat with no AC turned on.

OHHHH YA. We exhaustedly made it back to our humble abode around midnight on Saturday to the smell of ROTTING DEATH. Seriously, folks. There are no words to describe the smell of it. We gagged our way into the kitchen to find pools of rotted hamburger and blood all over the kitchen floor, the freezer looking like somebody had been shot, blood and gore drippings all over the shelves....I cannot even begin to describe the horror. It has been hours and hours of scrubbing and bleach-baths and still we aren't finished. 10 lbs is a LOT of rotted hamburger. (I won't go into detail about the use of the steam cleaner except to say this: if you thought rotted raw hamburger smelled bad, try smelling it after it has been cooked with a blast of steam.)

The smell had permeated the entire house. The blood pool had gone clear under the freezer in big gloppy dried-up messes, the water tray was filled, the bottom of the freezer was filled, and it was all rotted.

So, 2 days and $50 worth of Febreeze and Air-fresheners later, we are starting to get the smell out. I say starting to because it is not near the gagging death trap it was earlier, but you can still smell it when you walk in. It was in all of our bedsheets, the carpet...everything. We have air fresheners plugged into almost every outlet, little fans that blow air-fresheny goodness throughout the room, I am Febreezing EVERYTHING that is Febreezable, and we have super heavy-duty Arm and Hammer carpet deodorizer for when we get all the boxes moved and can actually SEE the carpet.

It has been a disaster of epic proportions. Who knew being a home owner was so much fun??

In other news, I have lots of pictures and stories from the South Carolina trip. However, this is my first week back on graveyard shift so I have countless hours ahead to blog it all away. So stay tuned.