My brother is leaving this week for a deployment in Kuwait.  I couldn't let him leave without taking portraits of him and his family.  I shot family portraits, so he would have a current photo to take with him, and I took shots of him in his uniform so his family would have a current photo of him while he is gone.  He plans to use the full body photo and make a "Flat Daddy" cardboard cutout for his baby girls.  He is hoping it will help them miss him just a tiny bit less while he is gone.  Here are some of my favorite photos from the session.  

See you soon, Baby Brother.  We love you and our prayers are with you!

To see more portraits, check out my Portrait Set on Flickr.  Or visit my Flickr Photostream to see all my latest photos.

Oh, and I almost forgot.  My sister-in-law, Heidi, said my lighting set-up looked "very professional".  I bet she says that to all the photographers.  *blush* 

I am planting a garden this year.  It will be my first.  Well, it's my first garden if you don't count the so-called help I gave my mom in her garden while I was growing up, and not counting the community garden I have half heartedly participated in for the last few years.  

This year I've decided to try it on my own and get my hands dirty for a number of reasons.  For one, it just seems like a good idea to know how to grow food.  Second, so-called helping me in the garden will be a good educational and work ethic activity to keep my kids busy during the summer break.  Third, I need the exercise and fresh air and I know myself well enough to know that I need a motivating reason and responsibility, or I will probably just stay in bed all summer.  Finally, I spent a small fortune buying fresh, local grown tomatoes to make the 4 bazillion gallons of salsa that Scott needed to keep from starving to death over the winter months.  Growing my own tomatoes will hopefully be cheaper.  Scott would happily pay another small fortune for more tomatoes this year if it meant that he didn't have to dig up a 12x14 foot garden patch, but he knows I really want to do this, so he's been a trooper and has barely complained at all.  

Admittedly, ripping out the sod was a pain in the... well, it was a pain.  The dirt is pretty hard and there are a lot of rocks that we pulled out after the sod was out.  But I said, "Rent a sod cutter?  We don't need no stinkin' sod cutter." So digging out our garden spot was all that got done today. 

Well, there was that little incident where we tried to do a little tilling.  The tiller got away from us, took out a sprinkler head, and dinged the vinyl siding.  The cool part is that I had already worked out all my tensions slinging sod, and I didn't even care.  : )

We decided to wait and do the rest of the tilling next Saturday.  Wish us luck...

I won!  I won!

You will, however, be surprised to learn that it wasn't an Oscar.  I just thought that would make a good blog entry title.

Over the past several months I have enjoyed getting involved in the Flickr community.  It is a great place for photographers to share their photos, ideas, and suggestions for improvement.  There are about a bazillion different flickr groups you can join with every theme you can possibly imagine.  One of the groups I visit frequently is called LDS Photographers.  I like it because it is a gathering place for, you guessed it, pro and amateur LDS photographers from all over the world.  Recently this group has started holding contests.  The way it works is that each member may post one photo per contest.  Once enough entries are gathered, we come back and vote on our favorites.  In this case we voted for our favorite 3.  The first contest topic was "Architectural Details of an LDS Temple" so I entered this photo taken during my trip to Nauvoo last summer:

To see the flickr post and comments on this photo, including a write up on the history of the nauvoo temple, click here. 

Of the 27 entries, mine came in with the most votes.  I won!  I won!  Yes I'm bragging, but even though this is a small contest within a small group, I can't help feeling a sense of accomplishment.  

Whenever I shoot a photo that I think works well, I always wonder if it carries an impact for someone else as well, or do I just love it because the photo is a documentation of something I care about.  I put a lot of myself into my photos, both before and after the shutter clicks; before, as I set up a shot and after when I process the photos on the computer.  I always hope to end up with something that has successfully conveyed a feeling or message -- something that leaves an impression and is meaningful to someone besides just me.

So there it is, and it feels pretty good.  : )

Note:  If you want to see more of my latest photos, don't forget to click on the "Flickr Photos" link over there on the right sidebar of this page.