Fireworks

Here are some images I shot at the local fireworks show. I did actually get some traditional fireworks images but I liked these a lot more.

Beach Portraits

We Won!

In an earlier post I showed Brady's first hit in little league. This was the first year he played baseball after playing soccer for several years. Our year was nearly perfect. Brady got on a team with a great coach, great kids and they were pretty good at baseball as well. We came in second in the regular season and here is a picture of the kids after they won the tournament. Brady drove in a run so he was happy. Everyone who has been within earshot is tired of me talking about baseball so you might not want to bring it up unless you want to spend the next 30 minutes talking about our little league team.

Ellen & Jeri

Here are some images of Ellen and Jeri from their Senior portrait session. We had a lot of fun and their images turned out really nice. Ellen and her friend Jeri's session was fun as they kept saying 'can we climb in this tree? can we get in the creek? etc.' I need to have a contest for seniors for who can come up with the wildest idea!

Cruisin' with the dog...

Paula and I get a lot of grief from her sisters husband about our dog. He always says if he is ever reincarnated as a dog he wants to come back as our dog. I was driving down the highway and looked in my rearview mirror and saw this boxer with his own special set of goggles. The driver pulled through McDonalds and I turned around to get the shot to proove we are not as animal crazy as Terry(my brother in law) says. by the way does anyone know of a store that sells goggles.

Oliver North

Oliver North was in Lexington yesterday for a book signing. He had a pretty big crowd to see him and I really did not want to stand in line or buy a book to meet him so I just got a picture instead.

Baseball

For two games Brady has been having trouble not slinging the bat after hitting the ball. The second time someone on the team slings the bat it is an automatic out. We have been working on it at home and yesterday went to the batting cages to do some hitting as well. Brady hasn't had a problem all year making contact and/or getting walks. Last night he hit a hard line drive to center field and eventually came in for a run. Here he is sliding into home and as you can see he was safe. Brady said that the slide knocked the ball out of the catcher's hand.

Guitar Center

How come these guys never show up at my guitar center? When I go in there is some kid playing Metallica as loud as possible!

Red Cadillac

I first heard this song on a Brian Setzer cd. I think this is a pretty cool version. I wonder what is it about a song that makes one person think it is the coolest thing ever and then the next person looks at you like you are from another planet? Hope you enjoy! By the way the sound is lagging on the original post as well.

Band On The Run

Here are some images from the area youth rally last night with worship band we threw together for the worship service.

Ryan

This is a senior I just photographed. Really like this image with the b/w toned treatment.

First Hit

this is the first game of Brady's baseball career. He got a hit the first time up to bat.

King of the Hill

Somerset Place

Here is the plantation mansion. There are quite a few other buildings that have been renovated or rebuilt on the original site. Here is a link to the NC park site that tells about the plantation.
http://www.ah.dcr.state.nc.us/sections/hs/somerset/somerset.htm

Pick'n Corn

While we were in NC we stopped to watch a farmer picking corn. Ends up it was someone I knew when I was a kid. His name is Milton but everyone calls him Buddy. Buddy and my cousin Rick were best friends in school. Buddy's wife was riding the combine with him and when they came to the end of the field to dump the corn in the truck she got out to see what these people in a minivan were doing parked in the field. After we introduced ourselves and found out we knew each other they let the kids ride in the combine. Brady and Sydney made one round(up and down in the field) and then on the second round I noticed the driving was a little more eratic. I looked through my zoom lens and realized they were no longer riding but were now driving the combine. They got a big kick out of driving the combine. If you zoom in on the pictures you can see some big smiles.

My Dad told me two farmers in the area had just bought new combines that were somewhat larger than this one in the pictures and they cost $500,000 each. I'm sure there was a salesman someplace that was happy.

We also stopped by Somerset Place which is a historic slave plantation and state park. It is about 3 miles from my house. This is brady pumping water with a hand pump. I remember they used to say that my grandma was one of the first people to have running water in the kitchen because my granddad put one of these pumps where it would pump into the kitchen sink so they would not have to carry water from outside. I don't know, maybe everyone did that? When you use this pump you always leave water in the bucket because you have to use that water to prime the pump the next time you use it.

Coe

My niece recommended me to Coe for his senior portraits. His portrait session instantly seemed like I was taking pictures of someone I had known for a long time rather than someone that I had just met. The baseball images are some of my favorites. I told him I would look behind him and he would look behind me and make sure a train didn't come down the track and surprise us. (I don't think there was really any chance of that happening)

Seniors

To see more senior images look at the post in 2006.

Courtney & Gabby

Courtney and Gabby are twins. Although they did not want too many of them together I think these images on the bridge turned out really nice. doing senior portraits is a lot of fun as there is usually a lot of energy from these sessions. When I get home I am completely pooped!!

Jessica

Here is a senior session with Jessica. She was a lot of fun to photograph. She had some specific ideas on what she wanted. It is always cool to work with the ideas that seniors have for their photo's.