Jer & Min Photography

I love sunrises, but the best part of the sunrise to me is what the light shines on.  This morning on my way to work, I noticed the sun shining on the ski mountains of Park City and pulled over for some shots.

For some reason, our kids think that each breadstick needs to be an unique shape.  These breadsticks are for Gage using his special ingredients.  He loved them.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been working on a photo challenge to shoot manual labor.  Doing so has been quite a task.  I’ve had to think about it each day looking for opportunities to capture something semi-interesting.  It has been very good for me.  An additional benefit happened to me today.  I specifically shot images of someone I did not know in a manner that it was very obvious that he was my subject.  I even spoke to him for a moment about what I was doing.  He was cool with it.

Sometimes I feel I have to strain really hard to find a good subject or to find good light.  Other days, it is so obvious that I couldn’t miss it.  October 31 was one of those days.  The light from the sunrise was so amazingly beautiful that all I had to do was point my camera in the general direction to get what I considered some beautiful light.  The subject could have been better, but it was changing fast.

No post processing has been done to these shots other than to crop.

We drive on I-84 from Echo to Ogden every time we visit my in-laws in Blackfoot, ID or my sisters in Logan, UT.  Along the way we pass a little place near Morgan, UT call Taggart.  From the exit for Taggart you can barely see the tops of the handful of houses that reside there.  One building in Taggart is Taggart Grill.  We recently stopped there and ate having passed it many times before.  While expensive, the food was really good and we enjoyed our time there.  It is amazing the things that are right in front of you that you miss year after year.

Our kids had a very fun Halloween this year.  Brinci dressed up like Hannah Montana, Toby dressed up like Batman, and Gage dressed up as a rooster.  We had very limited time for photos as the kids only wanted to go out and trick-or-treat.  I don’t blame them and did they every take home the loot.

Congrats to Min, she made Toby’s and Gage’s costumes.  She did a great job!

Last night we carved pumpkins.  It is so fun to watch my children explore new things and to see the excitment on their faces.  Last night was especially rewarding.

I shot these photos with my Nifty Fifty (50mm f/1.8) in rather low light.  The lens did amazingly well.  I then processed the photos in Lightroom 2 using some presets I found on http://x-equals.com/blog/.  They have some great presets over there, I recommend checking them out.  That being said, the last two photos I wish I would have reviewed a bit more as the preset I used on them added some odd artifacting that I’m not too fond of and should have addressed.

More photos from this and our Halloween adventures may be found on our Halloween 2008 set.

I’ve noticed quite a few of my photographs are very similar to one another.  I’ve decided to help me broaden my horizons I’m going to attempt to participate in some photo challenges.  Looking for photo challenges I found PhotoChallenge.org.  I am going to participate in their November challenge which is to photograph manual labor.

I will more than likely post selected entries from my photo stream on this blog.  However, if you want to view all that I submit I will tag them “novemberchallenge2008” on my flickr account.  As of this writing, there are no photos tagged as such on my account.  I will post the first one starting November 1.

Saturday evening I talked my daughter into letting me take a few pictures of her.  While I was scouting out a good background and workable light I noticed she was occupying herself with some little leaf project.  I have no idea what she was up to or trying to accomplish, but I decided to take a few pictures of her gathering and transporting the leaves.  She seemed almost frantic to get it done.  It was fun to observe and the results were the best shots I made that evening.

My youngest son Gage has PKU (read about it here and here).  Sixteen months ago when he was born and we learned of his metobolic disorder it was a difficult thing to come to terms with.  An individual with PKU cannot eat the things that you or I can.  It requires a very limited diet for life.  He will never eat anything with any trace of protein in it and will only be able to eat a measured amount of some fruits and vegetables.  It will be something he’ll need to think about every day of his life.

My biggest concern about this hasn’t been the work or the change of patterns for us, but making sure he doesn’t feel isolated and alone.  So much of our society is based around food.  Family reunions, celebrations, parties, holidays, etc.  They all typically have big meals as their center.

To my other two kids, Gage isn’t any different, he just requires special food.  Last night we made PKU friendly tortillas for him to eat as we ate ours.  It was an event the whole family enjoyed.  Gage isn’t alone.