So we spent Christmas in the Historic Land of Four Seasons (a.k.a. Beaver, UT) with my wife’s family. She has a big family and Grandma wanted to get a new family photo of the whole gang. This group doesn’t all get together in one place very often so we only had two days to choose from, and those two days happened to be absolutely freezing cold. Normally getting a group of 35 adults to look at a camera at the same time can be a challenge, even in warm weather. It is also a known fact that kids hate looking at cameras. I had 19 kids in this shot, and I had to be in it too. I used my radio slaves (cyber commanders from white lightning) to trigger the camera and strobes while I was in the shot. It worked pretty well, but I really could have used someone like my buddy Dirk to try and get the kids (and adults) to look towards the camera. Anyway, we stayed out just long enough to get about 15 shots off and then high-tailed it back to the house before frostbite set in. That didn’t give me much to work with, but after swapping 25 of the 35 heads from other shots, we get what you have here. Parker never warmed up to the camera unfortunately, so he’s the only one you can’t see very well. Anyway, it goes without saying, don’t try this at home.

Merry Christmas everyone.

So, I was lucky enough to be able to photograph the LDS General Conference again with the full-time church photographers. Here are the photos that were selected for printing in the Ensign with the talks. If you are following along at home in your Ensign (or Liahona), these are found on pages: 3, 34, 39, 42, 49, 57, 106, 114, 119, and 127. This conference there was a lot of rain, and not a lot of awesome light. I’ll try and post some of my favorites the didn’t get published later. Anyway, here they are:

Above: The Salt Lake Temple and fountains early Sunday morning.

Left: I loved everything about this kid. I was shooting this with the 600 mm lens after the Sunday morning session, so I was probably 100 feet away from these guys as I was shooting. I loved the smirk he made as he realized that I was taking photos of him. The loose tie, the suit, wind blown hair, and dad’s hand on his shoulder. Awesome.

I liked the little moment the father and son are having in this shot of the crowds entering the conference center for the Priesthood session. Maybe someday that will be me and one of my boys, except, maybe my boy can be schlepping some of my heavy camera gear.

I’ve been taking photos for the church at the last 11 general conferences. I usually don’t see a lot of things that I haven’t tried shooting before, but this conference I was pleased to find for the first time these compass tiles on the main street plaza. I really like how this shot came out. I locked down the camera on a tripod and shot with a 16-35 mm lens. I easily have over 100 frames of people walking by here to get the blur and grouping of people just right. I’m really glad this one got published. Hopefully there are a lot more hidden gems out there waiting for me.

P.S. the talks were really good too, so don’t just get distracted by the awesome photos!

So, for Halloween this year at work, I was Mugatu, from the movie Zoolander. In fact, a good portion of our department dressed up as characters from the movie. Our events team was nice enough to throw up a runway and our boss, Shelli, was awesome enough to let us get crazy on the runway for the whole company. It was an awesome day at work, every bit as good as throwing back some orange mocha frappuccinos with your ridiculously good looking friends. Of course, when you work in the photo department, you have to take some awesome photos of everyone.

I really liked what the pleather corset did for me.

Here are my ridiculously good looking photo dept co-workers. Matilda (Jen Wheatley), Mugatu (Me), Derek Zoolander (Casey Hyer), and Hansel (Dirk Widdison). Can I just say that Hansel is sooo hot right now!

This is my evil posse. Denise made an awesome Katinka Ingabogovinanana.

By the end of the day Casey had “Blue Steel” down. He’s still perfecting “Magnum,” I shouldn’t even be talking about it right now. Hansel. He is soooo hot right now. Hansel.

Casey and Dirk had to settle their differences on the runway, old school.

Jordan played an impressive Maury Ballstein even while being restricted with today’s sexual harrassment in the workplace laws. By the way, that is my velour track suit that he is sporting. I knew that was a good find at the thrift shop. Hopefully he gets all the fake chest hair washed out before my next evening of relaxation in the suit. Speaking of uncomfortable, Denise gets extra points for sporting the least breathable costume, not to mention thigh high, platform stripper boots. I unsuccessfully tried to convince Kristin to borrow her outfit so we could go together for Halloween.

Here is the whole crew. The video of the Derelicte show/walk-off is linked here.

Happy Halloween!

So Kristin’s grandpa owned a ranch just East of Park City, Utah, in a town called Peoa. The 600 acres have been up for sale for the last few years, and ever since I married in to the family, I have been photographing up there. Some day I’ll get all the photos together on my site and hopefully some prints made, probably after the ranch sells and I start feeling nostalgic. Anyway, here are some of my favorites from the few days over Labor Day weekend that we spent there.

There are still horses kept on the ranch, and the one on the left is “J.J.” That stands for “Jaxon Junior.” Jaxon is my very strong-willed son and when they saw how stubborn and obstinate this horse was, it reminded them of Jaxon. That is such a sweet tribute to Jaxon. He has actually mellowed a little as he has gotten older, or we are just getting use to it.

Here is Kristin’s dad Bruce, or “Brucester,” as he likes to be called. The photo on the left was taken from horseback as I followed Bruce all over the hills east of the highway. Horses don’t make very good tripods.

The river flood plain and some nice clouds that stayed with us most of the weekend.

With nearly a mile of the Weber River crossing the ranch, you always have to spend a little time fishing (or swimming). Luckily Grandpa was able to catch a fish for everyone.

Here is Parker training to be an assassin. He’s got the rugged good looks down and he knows how to look cool with a gun. Now if he’ll just trade the race car pajama bottoms in for some camouflage, he should be set.