Spring Has Mostly Sprung...

So, after Mother Nature decided that the first part of 2013 will have crazy weather, she eventually let the sun come out. Riley and the boys hung out in the yard with some friends. Riley loves doing this, rolling around on his back - even in the winter time when there's snow on the ground. It doesn't help during flea season...

At the Dog Park

One of the things that I enjoy doing is photographing animals. Owning three dogs, I get lots of practice capturing their personalities in action. When the weather permits, I take them to the dog park and watch them play.

Photos for a Church Directory

Easter Sunday, I worked with a couple of other photographers to take pictures of the congregation of the Kansas City Church of Christ. I ended up standing close to the door, rather than right outside the sanctuary doors, which left me with a clean background rather than posing people next to one of the 2 small trees. Lighting was a little tricky, because it was a mixture of daylight and halogen.

Pictured:
Top left: Rob and LaShonda Milner, Associate Minister and Associate Women's Ministry Leader
Top right: Mark Hayward, Elder, his wife, Jodi, and their daughter, Ariana
Middle: Mark and Dona Stephenson, Teen Ministry Leaders, and their children, Deric and Alyx
Bottom: Ed Mejia, member

     
For this project, was a forced to use my backup Tamron lens. I don't like it as much as my Canon lens, but my regular lens is currently busted and waiting on news from Canon as to whether it would be cheaper to repair it or just purchase a new one. Murphy decided to pay me a visit at a friend's wedding; I had put my camera down in the pew to get something out of my bag and the person sitting next to me knocked it off the pew. It hit the floor in just the right way so that the seating's bent and it will not focus. I usually don't use my Tamron lens, because it doesn't do as good or as fast a job of sharply focusing. So, despite my best efforts a few of my pictures were slightly out of focus:



Since it's going to be relatively small since it's going to be used in a directory, the soft-focus isn't going to be as noticeable, but it still bugs me! For the most part, the project worked out well and we were able to get most of the 300+ member church photographed.

An Empty Apartment...

Just a few pictures that I took as I helped my friend, Taylor, clean her apartment as part of her move. She'd gotten a new job in Miami, Florida, so she packed everything into one of those moving pods and having it shipped to Florida.

Mother Nature Says Even Though the Calendar Says It's Spring--

Winter isn't over yet.

  

Not enough to close roads, but enough to cover the ground with beautiful, beautiful snow.

Wedding of Jessica Miller and Kevin Fetsch

Since my regular lens is currently out-of-commission (in need of fixing), when I attended the wedding of my friends, Jessica Miller and Kevin Fetsch, I used only my iPhone for all my images. Since it's not the latest, the sharpness is limited by its 5 mega-pixel camera, but I think I was able to capture the essence of the event. I instagram'd the highlights of my edit, with the #Mr&MrsFetsch.

    

   

Finally! Let It Snow!!!

Riley (left) and Dudley check out the yard after the big snow.

Punxsutawney Phil predicted that Winter would be ending early. And I groaned, because I like cold weather and we'd had so little snow this winter. While Phil said early Spring, Mother Nature had other ideas.

Within two weeks, she dumped two major snow storms on the Kansas City-area, the first brought over 12 inches of snow, the second another 12 inches. Kansas City being Kansas City, that meant road closings and I ended up with 4 snow days from work.

    

Because my dogs are so short, I had to dig out a trench along the side of the house that they could do their business in.

        

Traveling to Chicago for Labor Day

For Labor Day, I traveled to Chicago with my friend, Taylor. These are some Instagram images from the trip.

    
    
Chicago architecture. Top left is one of the city's libraries. The bottom right is one of the glass buildings. As we were walking by this building, I realized that it was really the reflection of the building next to it that I was seeing. I thought that optical illusion was pretty cool, so I took a picture of it.