Merry Christmas!

When Karen and I went to the Hines Drive Christmas lights in Livonia this year, I took some long exposures of the tree at the very end of the drive. I did the top one by doing a quick zoom and the second one by walking around the tree and moving the camera up and down while twisting it.

My grandma died today

So I give you something I drew and wrote in the second grade for grandparents day. Click for bigger.

Joel and Michelle's Cake Cutting

So, Joel and Michelle, if working at Intel doesn't work out, consider teaching a self defense course:


[mirror in case original runs out of bandwidth]

Adam and Jess

A Mike and Karen Halloween

Hello there, loyal followers. Allow me to reward your loyalty with photos of our Halloween. I went as the traps from Home Alone.


Karen went as the bee from My Girl.


It's a Macaulay Culkin theme.

Now if only we could have gotten Ciara to be him in Saved, it would have been complete. I'll let her reveal her costume on her own site though and not spoil it here (because it was great and creepy)

Today I made pizza from scratch

Well, to be exact, this is bread dough I made + cheese from a bag + sauce from a can. I told Karen that she might want to have something lined up for dinner just in case I screwed it up, but it was surprisingly good.

Fall Field

The last gallon of milk

From Kroger's closing day.

GPS, you make everything wonderfully quantifiable

The best thing about having a GPS is you're able to assign a number to everything: Your turn is .5 miles away. You will arrive at 3:40pm. You are averaging this speed.

I took the GPS with me on a bike ride while getting some stuff done around town today (hence the 18 minute stop time) and it was pretty great. I think I ran a pretty respectable average speed given that my chain bound up and rendered by bike unpedalable 4.4 miles into my 6 mile ride. Luckily for me, I was done with the uphill part of the ride and actually set my 19.5 mph max speed while unable to pedal.

Goodbye Kroger 1

After being around for 30+ years, the Kroger near us closed last Saturday. I went 4 hours before they closed and things were pretty picked over (notice full dairy section on the left is mostly empty). I got a loaf of bread for 40 cents, but other than that, everything was regular price.

Steampunk Cake Topper

In an awesome combination of traditions, I photographed an Jewish Steampunk wedding today. This was their cake topper.

Cobblestone Farm Siding

Karen is flying away

So is Zooey

Zooey helps us with a puzzle

Riding the Ferris Wheel 2

Hold on

Staples

Riding the Ferris Wheel 1

The Sonic Booms

Karen performing with the rest of The Sonic Booms. Videos to follow sometime in the future.

The Art Fair

It wouldn't be The Art Fair without a new sculpture from this guy. Everything else at the Art Fair was basically the same as last year (but with nicer weather).

Plant on our balcony

Elephant

A wedding I recently shot had these great carved wooden elephants as wedding favors, so I took a photo of one silhouetted against the candle centerpiece.

Botanical Gardens Flowers

Fourth of July: Drawing with Sparklers

I'll leave it to Karen and Brian to post the other photos over the next few days.

Here's how's it's done: These aren't photoshopped. With each of these photos, I set the camera up to do a 15 to 25 second exposure. Since the sparkler itself is so bright relative to everything else, it exposes the "film" really well in the short time that it is in a location. Anywhere that you drag it, it will show up on the exposed image. Think of it as using sparklers to draw with light.

Since it is such a long exposure, people don't show up in the image unless you add supplimentary light or unless they stand in one place for a long time.

In later images (where Karen is on both sides of the heart for example) I added
people to the image by flashing my flash at key times. Since they are so bright when they get hit with a flash, that moment makes an impression on the film. I hit Karen with flash twice. Hence: two Karens.

In the group shot, you can see me holding the flash (which is why it was so hard to get Demoree, Brian, and Joy well lit). We took this photo by having Karen press the shutter and then run into place. I then hit the flash so that you would be able to see us all in place, and then we passed the sparkler down from person to person.

In Joy's shot, I hit Joy with flash and then Karen ran into the shot, painted on wings, and then ran out (covering the sparkler so that it wouldn't leave a trail as she ran out of frame.

New Post: Joel and Michelle Get Engaged

Click the image to few the full photoset of Joel's proposal to Michelle

Bear Lake

While in Colorado, we went hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park with Joel and Michelle. If you click the second photo, it's a wide panorama.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Into the Cavern's Great Maw

Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Consider this a teaser for when I get an actual full entry together.

Cincinatti Museum of Art

Florence Y'all

Water Tower in Kentucky

Pecos National Park: Gate

It is absolutely overwhelming how many photos we took on our road trip and so far Karen has done a far better job than I have getting photos online. Figured I should put something up. I worked for about 2 hours today on making a panaorama from different locations, but they didn't turn out like I would want, so for now, this gate will have to do. I'd like to dedicate this photo to channel mixer.

Karen

Brian and Demoree just got married. I'm going to wait until they're back to post any pics of them, but in the meantime, here's Karen getting prepared to be matron on honor before the wedding (Joy did her hair).

Senior Photos at Law Quad

I did some senior photos a few weeks ago. I'll have to work on a full entry, but until then, here's one:

It's like displaying one painting so that it blocks another painting

Also at the art show were some really cool visualizations that went along with music. They were really hard to enjoy though since they were right by the percussion-based performance art.