Advanced Intensive Week 3

I don't even think I can remember all that I learned last week. But it was more computer editing, web site design, and marketing... I think.

Then on Saturday I went with Hannah, in white, and Andrea to Butte for an overnight adventure. We stopped in Deer Lodge at the old Montana State Prison and took lots of amazing photos. Then stayed in Butte at the Hotel Finlin. It is a very unique hotel with old style furnishing. We had a blast photographing Butte at night and a little the next morning. We had to stop back at the prison on the way home for a few more shots.

I found the trip very therapeutic as I was just shooting for me with no pressure. Here are a few shots that I really like.

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.