Another supprise from my birthday last week were that my parents drove in from Kansas so we could all be together. It’s always fun to hang out with family. I wish I could do it more, but I also love how special it is when we get together since it doesn’t happen too often with me and my wife living in the Pacific Northwest. I made my brother, wife and niece take photos on Saturday evening.  I should clarify. I made my niece take photos, I made my brother and wife hold flashes. This is one of the shots. I was having trouble getting my flash system to work right. I have two speedlites with Elinchrom Skyport Radio Slaves to fire them. I was shooting on a low apreture with fast shutter and then remembered that the flashes will only sync up to 1/200th of a second with the Elinchrom system.  Easy fix, but if anyone out there is thinking about getting these radio slaves, just know that you will lose your high speed sync capabilities. She’s a cutie, I wish I could take more photos of her.

I just got back from my surprise 30th birthday trip . My wonderful wife set the whole weekend up for me. I woke up Thursday and the only thing I knew was that we were going somewhere. That somewhere turned out to be Colorado. We missed our original flight that morning, but luckily Alaska Air got us both on a direct flight to Denver. My brother picked me up  at the airport while my wife drove to Ft. Collins. He had sweet tickets for both of us at the Rockies game that afternoon. I would love to do more sports photography, but i don’t have credentials or a 500mm lens.  However, I didn’t need either of them with the seats we had! We were just off of home plate and only two rows back. I took this in the bottom of the 7th as Right Fielder Brad Hawpe waited on deck. I love this photo; probably some of my best post processing work yet.  A big thanks goes out to my brother for making it possible. I’ll post more photos from the weekend later as this game was only the first of many birthday surprises in store for me over the weekend.

Outside of the Discovery Channel, I can say I’m loyal to only three sitcoms. Last night I tuned in for the final episode for one of the three, Scrubs. Thinking back I can divide segments of my life with the television shows that were broadcasting around the same time. I remember watching old episodes of Leave it to Beaver in morning before kindergarten with my brother. I recall staying up past the 10 o-clock news to watch Cheers and Night Court when I was 8 or 9 years old.  I’m reminded of Mike Seaver, Zach Morris and Kevin Arnold when I think if my early and middle teens and of course the high school years were synonyms with Seinfeld and Friends. For me, the 8 seasons of Scrubs corresponded with my college life, moving to Oregon, marring my wife and exiting my 20’s (next week). I wasn’t manically addicted to the show. There are episodes I have never seen, and I even had to rent the first season to get caught up. My brother initially suggested that I tune in to watch because of the show’s witty humor which he knew I liked. He was right. Along with the humor though, I appreciated the occasional life lessons that were being taught, the way the episodes were sometimes written around specific songs by old and new singer/songwriters, and the way the writers would throw in past season references to reward those of us who regularly tuned in. I fully expected this season to be the last for Scrubs as it left NBC for ABC at the end of last year. To be honest I was fine with this enviable conclusion to a program that had been loosing viewership over the past years as the writers began to focus more on new characters. What I didn’t expect was the final season to be as good as it was. The shift to ABC seemed to energize the writers and I felt like I was watching episodes that I had never seen from earlier seasons. As for the series finale… probably the best episode I have ever seen. As for the last scene, I’ll be the first to admit that I was near tears as JD (Zach Braff) envisioned his life after the hospital as Peter Gabriel’s “The Book of Love” was slowly mixed in. The finale was clearly a “thank you” from the shows creator Bill Lawrence, who even played a near unnoticeable roll at the last moments saying, “Good night” to JD as he walks away. I believe the series was poetically reviewed last night with a final message that can easily be tied into the previous 8 seasons. Life is full of relationships, some will be easy, some will be difficult; but you will only get out of them what you put in, and its not up to you to determine which ones will be important. Finally, and most importantly, never be afraid to imagine your future or ashamed to remember your past.