Cross County Road Trip part 1

With the weather still deciding if it wants to be cold and snowy or rainy and miserable, I haven’t really gotten outside much to do any photography.  So my family and I were hanging around the house when Brooke decided to go through old photo albums.  She pulled out the book I made of the cross country road trip I took back in 2007 with a buddy.  We took two weeks off of work and packed ourselves along with all the essentials (photography gear, laptops, tent, etc… in that order) in a Hyundai Elantra and drove.

I haven’t looked at any of these pictures in a few years and realized that they were not in my main Lightroom catalog.  So I started the import of thousands of pictures and realized that back then, I had no idea what made a good picture.  The few I’m showing below are the ones that I got lucky with… if only I knew then what I know now.

On the first leg of our trip, we encountered a billboard talking about a 50 foot tall Jolly Green Giant.  That wasn’t getting passed up at 6 o’clock in the morning.  Later in the day we finally made it to our first stop, the Badlands National Park.  This was a spectacular park with beautiful, if a bit dry views.

Coming up (eventually) will be the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstown, Grand Tetons and lastly Rocky Mountain National Park.  I hope you enjoy.

Christmas Portraits

Some friends stopped by tonight for some Christmas portraits of their kids.  I had a few lightstands with umbrella’s already set up and ready to go in the living room, the fire place going and the tree all lit up.

We tried to have fun, even though this wasn’t what the kids had in mind for ‘fun’.  They were great sports about it though, and even got to the point of silliness after a bit.

Once we got the Christmas shots done with, we moved to a solid backdrop for a more traditional look.  There were many good shots, but this is one of my favorites.