Here are a few more from the wedding last weekend in Kansas City. The weather turned out to be quite nice, but it was not looking so good the day before the wedding. I barely got into Kansas City  due to over a foot of snow being on the ground in Denver, where where I was scheduled to catch my connecting flight. It took us three attempts to land. I’m not a nervous flier by any means, but by the time we were on our third approach;  I could have told you where every exit was and how many people I was going to need to climb over to reach it first… My connecting flight ended up getting canceled into Kansas City, as did the evening fight. As soon as I exited the plane I rushed to the gate for the earlier flight in hopes that it was delayed. Sure enough, it was still at the gate and they got me into Kansas City almost on time. My lighting stands didn’t make it, but they got delivered the next day. The weather in KC wasn’t much better, hard rain and wind. It continued to do this up until the night before Jason and Denise’s wedding day, and then Saturday turned out with no clouds and 60 degrees.  They are a fun couple and it was nice to see some of my brother’s friends at the wedding. Jason and my brother roomed together at the University of Kansas. It was nice to see everyone back together.

“Have you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight? I always ask that of all my prey. I just like the sound of it”

Batman, 1989, The Joker – Played by Jack Nicholson

I’m still processing photos from the wedding I shot in Kansas City last weekend.  I wanted to post this particular shot first though. It was taken of the bride and groom dancing during the reception. Since the wedding was on the 31st of October they turned the reception into a costume party. You really couldn’t of asked for a better setting. It was located at the Bingham-Waggoner estate in Independance, MO. The house was built in the mid 1800’s and really looked like it had a few unexplained stories behind its doors. The area where the reception/dance was held was VERY dark. Its tough to shoot in this type of setting because  your constantly trying to find an appropriate balance of off camera flash and available light. To make things more difficult, you have to maintain a decent shutter speed if you want any chance of your flash being able to freeze the action on the dance floor. Not to mention the camera’s auto focus is pretty much useless because its so dark, so the only option is to manually focus.  I think the lighting balance in this shot turned out perfect and I squeaked by with a just enough shutter speed to freeze the action with a few light trails in the background. I guess it just goes to show how much goes into a shot like this to get it to turn out the way you want.

Technical details.

24mm @ f3.2 1/4 sec shutter ISO 1000

HDR stands for High Dramatic Range. Basically its the process of taking several photos of the same object at different exposures. You then combine, or layer all of the images into one photo. It can be done at several levels. I have seen some images that were made from 10-15 different exposures. At this point the images beginto look less like photos and more like paintings. I took these at my dad’s hanger on my recent trip back to Kansas to shoot a wedding (coming soon to the blog) All three of these were made from 5 different exposures. I then combined them in photomatix and tone mapped at different levels. If your a purest I guess this may be considered pushing the limits of true photography. I was just having a little fun.

Well this is a first, back-to-back niece photos on the blog. I just got back from a weekend trip to Colorado. This first one was taken at the KU vs CU football game. I wish we would have ended up winning; never-the-less it was a GREAT game to watch. Our defense gave up some yards in the first half, but shut down the Buffaloes in the second half. We allowed nearly 200 less yards as compared to last week against Iowa St. Not bad considering this was done with several first time starters. We have the Sooners coming into town this weekend, so I hopefully the bugs will get worked out. All of the other shots are from our Sunday trip to Estes Park, Co. I’ll post a few more later. Too tired right now from the early flight!

Adidas has picked 4 NBA players who skipped college and entered the draft to cheer on an adopted college team during this year’s March Madness Tournament. I believe they are releasing a shoe in conjunction with the ad campaign for each school. You can see Dwight in his #12 home Kansas Jersey  here.

Kevin Garnet - UCLA

T-Mac – Louisville

Josh Smith – Pitt

Dwight Howard – Kansas

I don’t like to play the “what if” game; however,  this would have been our starting lineup during the 03-04 season if this fairytale were true:
G. 6′4 215lbs Keith Langford
SG. 6′3 215lbs Michael Lee
PG. 6′1 175lbs Aaron Miles
PF. 6′9 255lbs Wayne Semien
C. 6′11 265lbs  Dwight Howard 
 
Bench: David  Padgett
 
 

I’ve been a bad blogger lately. These were taken a few weekends ago from my trip back to the Midwest. Originally Ash and I had planned to fly into Denver and meet up with the family at my brother’s house in Ft. Collins. The trip was altered a little with the passing of my Grandmother. Alaska Airlines worked with me to change my ticket so I could attend her service in Kansas. I have to say, while I wish under better circumstances, it was great to go home and see family. Doris lived to 99 years old; she was 3 years old when the Titanic sank and saw 17 different presidents take office and only missed seeing her 18th by a week. I will never forget her smile.

The original plans for the weekend stayed intact in that we all traveled to Bolder for the KU vs Colorado match up. It was Ashleys first Jayhawk basketball game; while it was unfortunately away from Allen Field House, it was in front of a home crowd since the hawk fans out numbered the Colorado fans.  

My mother has taken a liking to this tree which sits in the corner of a wheat field between Hutchinson and Ellinwood, Kansas. She travels between the towns often to visited her father (grandpa) and during one of these trips noticed this tree. She has brought it up in conversation several times, sent me her own photo of it and made a point to drive me by it on our way from Kansas to Colorado.  This tree could have easily been removed, but for one reason or another the farmer decides to plow, plant and cut around it every year.  I am my mother’s son, we both notice when someone goes out of their way to let a tree grow.  Does this make me a tree hugger? I gotta move…

This was the view from the television last Saturday morning as my Jayhawks played the Vols from Tennessee.  Since my brother and sister in-law both graduated from UT with their masters; you could say  everyone had a little bit riding on the outcome of the game. Even Kian broke out the orange and taunted me prior to tip-off.  Fortunatly though we played one of our better games of the year and won 92-85. I have had apprehensive tendencies  watching the Jayhawks play this year, but I saw a different team on the court during this game. Instead of running our offence like preprogramed robots I felt like we were streaking to open spots, moving the ball well and pursuing fast breaks. They are young, but its nice to see improvement. Things are tough again for both the Jayhawks and Vols as we take on Michigan State  in East Lancing and Tennessee has Gonzaga at home. (should be a good game)

 
These are the last of my photos to process from the stockpile that occurred during my computer shortage. I had a blast hanging out with the guys at my replicate 10 year reunion.  I say replicate because my real high school reunion was naturally planned for the weekend after Luke and I bought our flights back. I’m not upset that I missed it, I would have gone had it not been planned at the last moment though.  I love hanging out with my high school friends; it’s one of the few things that makes me want to move back to the sunshine state. We have a blast when we hang out and it never takes long for us to fall back into the old routines just like the ol’ days in High school.   We spent one of the evenings at Jason’s house. His son Caden is one of the most photogenic children I have ever met.  I just read an article last week in my photography magazines about shooting reflections to gain an interesting perspective of things. For once I am already practicing a tip prior to its publication. Ashley and I spent the last part of our trip at my parent’s cabin at Kanopolis Lake in central Kansas. In large I spent my childhood at this lake, so it’s always special when I get to go back.  One of my many childhood memories was playing on a mid-evil looking swing at the park. Some things don’t change, I still like to play on it and I’m sure it could still behead a yack if given the opportunity.

We hung out at the hotel and got some work done Monday morning before again returning to the river walk. Everyone was fairly subdued. It could have been the combination of beer and BBQ from the night before, but I believe nerves played into it as well. It’s tough to get to the National Championship game. Think about it, 64 teams play in the tournament and only one gets to end their season with victory. We had a chance to be that team. I was going to have a chance to experience it.
 
A bonus to the day was that one of my favorite musicians, Bob Schneider, was playing a free concert. He put on a good show; played some of the favorites and threw in a few new songs as well. 
 
We arrived at the Alamo Dome about 80 min before tip-off. I wanted to grab the tivo remote and just fast forward to the start of the game, but it just wasn’t an option.
 
First Half: I was a little surprised that we didn’t play nervous. I had seen us do it in other games this year against defenses that weren’t nearly as good as Memphis. We ran our offence, worked the ball inside, and got great pressure and even a few steals with Chalmers and Collins. I believe we were up by 5 at half, but it didn’t matter. We were up by 29 at one time on North Carolina and I knew it didn’t matter. When you’re playing teams like NC, and Memphis no lead is safe. Right Billy Packer?
 
While I’m on the subject, I would have paid twice as much for my tickets not to have to listen to him during the games.
 
Second Half: I really don’t know how we got ourselves into a 14 point swing in the second half. We played fairly good and neither team was hitting from the parameter, it just kind of happened. I have watched the game several times on TV and it still surprises me when I look at the score and we are down by 9. Everyone credits Mario Chalmers for sending the game into overtime, and they should. He hit a well guarded, clutch 3 point shot. But if you watch the crowed, the vast majority of Kansas fans, including the bench, weren’t in hysterics when he hit it, they expected it. Sherron Collins is the one who gave us a fighting chance. In the final two minutes he created offence when they clamped down on us. He had an impossible steal on the inbound play and then managed to get the ball to Rush as he is falling out of bounds with two Memphis players in front of him. He then calmly rose, took up residence on the 3 point line and waited to deliver again with a 3 that cut the lead from 9 to 4.
 
Overtime: They didn’t have a chance. We ran our offence, produced high percentage points in the paint and finished it off with a fast break and a clinic on how to shoot high-pressure free throws.  When the fireworks went off I really didn’t understand what happened. 10 minutes earlier I was being called into the boss’s office to get fired and I just walked out with a raise, corner office and a shiny trophy.  UTEP, Duke, Arizona, Maryland, Bucknell, Bradley, Rhode Island, Syracuse, UCLA, Illinois, Georgia Tech, Kentucky. Off the top of my head these are just a few of the teams that have ended our tournament run in the past 20 years. It’s something you have to think about for the next 7 months until the next season. But not this year.

 
This is probably my favorite photo from San Antonio. Time was always a subject matter during the weekend. Whether it was a flight time, wanting time to move along with a 28 point lead on North Carolina, wanting more time when we were down by 9, an answered prayer at 2.8 seconds or a championship in overtime. However in this photo, time surrendered to the moment for us. We were all given the opportunity to remember when we watched the Kansas Jayhawks win the 2008 National Championship.

We didn’t make it back to the hotel room until around 3:00am on Saturday night, so all but 30min of Sunday morning was dedicated to sleeping. I always thought the Final 4 festivities would be only for those with a ticket to the game, but it wasn’t the case. They had free concerts and an event set up called “Hoop City” They filled the convention center with basketball events. Most of them were centered on kids (and Hank). I believe he waited in line for 30min to shoot 10 free throws. The final stats were 4-10 made and he only missed the entire hoop once. I think he blamed it on wearing flip flops, but the kid in leg braces behind him when 5-10.
 

 
 
 
 
 
When you have a cop sitting under a doughnut shop you have to take the photo. Problem was I didn’t have much time and I got the girl in the frame too. I wanted to crop the image with just the cop and the sign, so I had to remove her and rebuild the wall behind her to make it look somewhat believable that she wasn’t there.

 
 

 
We finished the evening at a BBQ restaurant on the river. I found out you can actually get sick from eating too much meat. My brother just got pale reading that last sentence. I’m not exaggerating when I give you these stats on the ribs he ordered.
 
6.5 inches wide
15-17 inches long
3-4 lbs in weight
 
That’s a lot of meat!
  

.