New Website Launch!

Well, the new year has kicked off and is well underway.  There have been some exciting developments here, the first of which is the release of my newly redesigned website!  The old website was well worn and used… but sadly out of date!  The new website utilizes web Flash technology that allows me to present my images in an active and high quality fashion!  The downside to the Flash site is that it requires a high-speed Internet connection and is not viewable on many mobile devices.  Therefore, I have also made available a standard website that IS fully accessible on mobile devices and slower Internet connections.

One of the really nice features of this new website is the new Calendar.  On this calendar, you can check for a request session dates.  If you are planning a date for a wedding, an event or other photographic session, you can go to this page, look at the calendar, see if I have any sessions booked and request a date.  Just one note, though. Just because a date indicates I have a booked session, it may not be an all day session. I may only be an hour long session.  If you need an all day photographer – for a wedding, race, event, etc. You can see if that day is open.

One of the other features I’ve included in the site is the Testimonials page.  Since I’ve been involved with the Operation: Love Reunited program, I’ve received many nice emails and letters from service personnel and their families.  I now have a great location to share the page with others.

Go to my site and explore it.  I’ve had a great time pulling it together.  I plan on changing the content and photos about once a quarter.  One last thing regarding my new site I would like your feedback on.  I’ve included music on most of the pages.  It is royalty free music, which means you will not hear the latest Fall Out Boys, We The Kings, or Yellow Card song.   Licensing that music is just too expensive.  My question to you is do you like the music or do you find it distracting?  I will add a quick poll to this post. Let me know!

As always, I will be interested in any feedback you want to give me in order to improve the site.

Thanks!

– Jeff

 

Winter Snows

Simply stated, it just does not snow here in Olympia… or didn’t.  But it did.  It started snowing on the 15th and didn’t stop until the 26th.  It was pretty at first.  I’ve always enjoyed heavy snows, snow falling so hard you can actually hear it.  I used to love backpacking in the winter.  It was a physical and mental challenge.  It helped to develop and shape my appreciation of the beauty of the settling of snow on the branches and boughs of trees; the million swirling individually shaped snow flakes collecting and gathering into drifts; the beautifully lit night as it reflects the smallest amount of ambient light transforming the nighttime world to an rarely seen netherworld.

It was with this anticipation that I stepped out the other day with my camera and took this photo.  The snow was falling as hard as I have ever seen in the mountains of Colorado.  So unusual for this area… but that is also what made it so beautiful.

As the sun set and neighborhood Christmas lights came on, I caught the following photo.  Winter is not the time to hide out inside. It is a time to explore and appreciate the many different worlds just outside your front door.

Happy Holidays and may the New Year bring you, inner peace, love and prosperity.

 

Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival

I joined a local Rotary Club a couple of years ago.  Rotary is an international service organization of folks working to help others around the world and locally.  One of Rotary’s greatest contributions has been leading the near eradication of polio.  With only a handful of polio cases in the world, Rotary International is starting to focus its resources on providing fresh, clean water to those communities and peoples who live miles from any source.

Locally, the Hawks Prairie Rotary Club of Lacey, Washington — the club I belong to — has focused its local service on providing assistance to the many needing military families.  Since it’s start in 2002, the Military Family Support March has raised and distributed over $200,000 to on-base organizations and families.  It has been this work that interested me in getting involved in Operation: Love Reunited, a nationwide group of professional photographers donating time and photographs to deploying or deployed military service personnel and their families.

OK… well… this year, Hawks Prairie Rotary lead by Greg Stevens, organized and held the first annual Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival.  It was a two day celebration of the editable fungus, held in Lacey and in conjunction with Ostrom’s Mushrooms.  Over the two days of the festival, I captured the fun in several hundred images. I wanted to provide the HPR something more than just a gallery of photos of the weekend and put some of those photos into a slideshow along with a song written and recorded for the festival by Greg Stevens.  

I’ve posted the result below.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I did putting it together!

– Jeff

Time Marches On…

Time is flying by!

The summer has come and gone.  I have received many comments on the photo of the my in-laws in the post “When Old Meets New“.  I am sorry to say that we lost Leroy August 7.  He was 89.  He grew up in Oklahoma, rough-necked in the oil fields, jumped trains to California, rubbed shoulders with the whiskey runners and outlaws of the time.  He married Ann 67 years ago and moved to California where he found work at Goodyear building truck tires until his retirement in 1976.  He and Ann adopted Sherry in 1955 and raised her in Southern California.  After she graduated and his retirement, Ann and he moved back to Oklahoma, in 1984.

Ann and Leroy moved to Olympia this past year.  It was during this time I took that photo.  I will never forget him saying, as if to himself, “I never thought I would see such a thing…”  Thank God I caught that magical moment.

He was a fighter until the end and we all miss him.

 

– Jeff

 

Elmer Leroy Jennings, 1919-2008

Weddings

The simple matter of the fact is that I am a hopeless romantic and therefore really enjoy photographing weddings.  Weddings are hectic, fun, stressful, exciting, nerve-racking and meaningful… and that is just what I am experiencing!  Seriously, though… weddings are one of the few special times in our lives where friends and family can come together and share in the happiness, love and dreams of two souls joining to face the world together.

I am always humbled and honored to be a part of their lives at this special time.

Wedding photography requires fast thinking while on the run. Yes, somethings are scripted (and in some churches, more scripted than others!) but inside that structure and ceremony, a photographer has to be ready for the unexpected.  This requires wide open eyes, good peripheral vision and a fast camera and shutter finger!

Camera gear must be top notch, reliable and trusted.  Lenses need to be clean and dust free.  Batteries need to be fully topped off with the spares ready to go.  For the past four years I have been shooting weddings exclusively in digital, so instead of pouches of film, I need to make sure I have memory cards ready to swap into place when one is full.  It is not a task to be taken lightly.

Weddings are very special times in two people’s lives.  I take the responsibility of capturing that day seriously and bask in the joy and happiness the day brings.  

Thank you for reading.