The Spears

Last Sunday I had the awesome chance to go take pictures of some friends. Two of my classmates joined me to photograph Mark and Abby's family. I worked on some of these during the week and wanted to share them with you because so many of you actually know these fun people. They were so generous and let us take over their home for several hours, fed us dinner and let us play with their kids. Mark even left his football game to let us do some family pictures... now that is sacrifice.

RMSP Fun

Today the new Rocky Mountain School of Photography web site was updated. And a little work I did back the beginning of August paid off. I am one of the student focuses this year! You can check it out here.

The new catalog should be out next week, so we will see if I made it into that as well. It is kind of fun to see myself in the material because I have read everything on both the web site and catalog in the last two years.

Advanced Intensive Week 2

Wow, I have a lot of work to do in the next 4 weeks. But a lot of my thoughts are of what is going to happen after October 17th. Putting together business plans, pricing, scheduling, logo, and much much more. If you are interested in having any type of photography work done(i.e. portraits, product, commercial, architecture, web images, etc), please let me know. I am also able to do photo retouching and restoration. I need to start building my business to pay for this adventurous summer and would love to start off busy. Ok, that was my plug for business... on to images.

I did manage to shoot a little this week. Here are a couple I like.

Advanced Intensive Week 1

I have begun the final weeks of my time here in Missoula. Advanced Intensive focuses a lot on editing photos in Adobe CS3 and building a portfolio. I have spent a lot of time with my computer in the last week and there is more to come. I am hoping to make some time to take more photographs in the midst of all the editing.

A fun surprise this weekend was a visit from my great uncle and aunt. They were here visiting some of their family and found out I was here. I had a lot of fun visiting with them over coffee on Sunday morning. Thanks for contacting me, Larry and Virginia!

Adventure Photography

This past week was focused on Adventure Photography. Our instructor, Heath Korvola, taught us about doing action shots, working with editorial (magazine assignments) and commercial (product and people assignments), working in stock, and how to get great shots. It was a fun week, but I am tired. The intense schedule of the summer is really starting to wear on me and the 7am shoots this week didn't help.

Here are some of my picks for this week.

Tomorrow I start Advanced Intensive. My last 6 week course here. This session will be focused a lot on computer editing and building a portfolio. I will let you know how it goes.

Trash the Dress

For those who don't know. A new trend in wedding photography is to have a trash the dress session. During this photo shoot after the wedding, the bride is photographed in an edgy style and her dress can get dirty. Here are some of my shots from our Wedding class.

This shot is just a small taste of the photography frenzy that was happening.

National Politics in my Living Room?!

Hey, look at this... it's my mom!

Sarah Palin

As a proud Alaskan it has been fun to have Sarah Palin in the news over the last week. I don't know her personally, but have seen her around Wasilla quite a bit and think she did a great job for Alaska as governor.

I really liked this article about her and the character of Alaska.

Whirlwind Wedding Week

For as bad as last week was.... this week was so great. I wasn't sure how I would feel about doing wedding photography. But the enthusiasm and passion of our instructors, as well as all the practical information that they shared with us, was awesome. I almost want to be a wedding photographer. I also have a few shots from my friend, Sue... she dressed me up while I was shooting my bride and groom.



I am trying a new way to share some photos with you since I wanted to share a lot of them. Enjoy!



Oh, and we had a bonus session of Trash the Dress that I will do a separate blog about.

Personal Portrait Week

This week was all about the Personal Portrait. It was quite a disappointment for me. There wasn't a lot of new information and I wish I had taken a week off and saved the money... oh well. I tried to make the best of the situation. We did get to experience paid models and location shoots. Here are some of my favorite shots from the week.

But one of the best things I leaned this week is that I already know a lot.

Tonight I start a week of Wedding Photography. I am really praying that this week is worth the money I spent on it.

What's Coming Next

I finished the Summer Intensive, the first 11 weeks of my adventure. Tomorrow I start an intensive week of personal portrait photography. It will be long days of just portrait photography. I should get a lot of time in the studio with studio strobe lighting. Next week will be wedding photography for a week and then adventure photography for a week. Following these week long intensive classes I start Advanced Intensive that focuses mainly on the computer side of photography and developing a portfolio. We'll keep you posted on the next chapters.

The End of an Adventure

Week 11... finishing up projects, last classes, final presentations, critiques, special speakers, inspirational pep-talks, last good byes, graduation, tears, knowing that things will never be the same again. Yep, that about sums it up.

Here are the images I included in my final project about dreams.

Week 10

Things are wrapping up with the end of Summer Intensive (my first half) on the 15th. This week we had two finals. In Business and Marketing we had to turn in a business plan. I dreaded this final all summer, but it turned out ok. And it was a good exercise to think about how I would start a business. I also had a Lighting Class final that was five of my favorite images from studio. Which I have included for your viewing pleasure.

This week we also had final days in the print lab before our big Visual Studies project is due. We had an open studio time where we could do whatever we wanted with the studio strobes. And there was one last computer class and a help session for the on camera hot shoe flash.

I didn't do anything very exciting this weekend as I had to go to school on Saturday morning and work on my Visual Studies project. Cora had family in from out of town so we spent several hours on Saturday cleaning the house and cooking for dinner. It was a fun evening with lots of good food. Today I went to the Western Montana State Fair for a city-wide church service. It was a beautiful day to worship outside. The best part was that I met a guy from Wasilla who goes to WBC and knows a lot of my AK friends. What a small world! I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing my Photo Studies final. This final is a photo journalistic essay with a magazine query letter to an appropriate magazine. It felt a little like being back in college.

next week will be a week of finishing up and saying good bye to some of my friends that won't be staying for the rest of the program. Friday is graduation if anyone is in the Missoula area and wants to see a lot of photography.

Too Late...

I picked the blue one but turned it as a vertical. Thanks, Laila!

Graduation is coming....

Summer Intensive graduation - my half way point- is next Friday. I have to pick 5 photos to show at graduation during a slide show. I am going to put some of my shots from my Visual Studies final but have to choose another one to go with it and I am having a hard time deciding. So if you read this before Saturday afternoon, write me a comment on your vote between these three.

I also put some new photos on my school web site.

Week 9

It is high time I caught you up on last week. It was a short week of class with only two full days. Most of them were in lighting and studio. We had one class to get ready for our big final project where our classmates looked at our images and gave us feedback. It was good, but confusing for me. Some of what I had in my head didn't translate to my classmates so that was a bit frustrating as we are in the final days of this project.

We then had a 5 day break from class. Wednesday I spent all day writing my business plan for my business and marketing class. Thursday I worked on my final project, ran errands, and went with Cora to her parent's house for dinner. Friday I worked on a few things and then headed north again. This time for a "photocentric" view of Glacier. Cora's brother, Lucas, took me to some of his favorite spots in return, I brought along my older digital slr and gave him some photography pointers. So with dueling cameras, we hiked a little in the Two Medicine area, drove up to the Chief Mountain trail head (but it started raining just as we got there), stopped at one of the most iconic photo spots in Glacier, took lots of pictures of waterfalls, and had coffee at Many Glacier Hotel where we saw the other side of the peak we climbed last weekend. Another great weekend and fun adventure.

Alaska Friends

Tuesday night I got to hang out with my buddy, Rachel Kroon, and her kids. They were in town visiting family and I got to sneak in on a little of that time. I have known her for 8 years and for 4 of those years we lead a group of middle school girls together at church.

When I left Alaska 2 years ago she only had one little one... now she had three. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of Rach, but here are her little ones.

Thanks Rach! What fun to catch up with you and play with your little guys!