Week 7

Week seven already? This week I printed a bunch of my photos, learned about still life photography, heard Peter Reid Miller - famous Sports Illustrated photographer - speak, learned about matting and framing and started scratching the surface on learning Adobe CS3.

But this weekend Cora insisted that I come with her family to a cabin about 2 hours north of here. It turned out to be several families of close friends. I knew I was going to fit in when someone started giving me a hard time and I had only been there 30 minutes. I even included a group shot of my new friends.

Cora's mom and brother took me with them on a hike in the afternoon. It was hot but beautiful and we found huckleberries, which seem to be quite a valuable prize here. I told them that I didn't think I had ever tried them before so we had to photograph the momentous event.

But I had the most fun on the hike when we found this little waterfall and I lingered taking pictures as they went on ahead in search of huckleberries. When we got back from the hike we jumped in the river, that was much more like a lake, and lingered in the sun to dry off. After a fantastic dinner of grilled fish, Cora's dad took me out on the river to take sunset pictures. As it got dark we build a campfire and I started playing with flashlights, long exposures and painting with light. Here a couple of my favorite. Around midnight as everyone went to bed I set up my camera to take a very long exposure of start trails. Then a couple of us took a canoe out to paddle under the amazing full moon. A couple of hours later we finally got back and my camera battery had died at 74.5 minutes. Here is that cool photo.

Today we went for boat rides, went swimming, sat in the sunshine, had a beautifully simple church service and soaked up every minute. It was such an wonderful summer weekend it was hard to see it end, but I am so glad that I got to be a part of it.