Wyoming

I just got back from a brief backpacking adventure in the Wind Rivers mountain range in Wyoming. It was my first time backpacking in Wyoming, and I can’t wait to do it again. I went with my old college friend Justin, who was kind enough to put a human face on some of the pictures I took. I used my old digital rebel (D300) with a Tamron 18-200 lens. The first day was perfect. We hiked along Big Sandy River to our campsite near Clear Lake, then we hiked a loop up past Deep, Temple, Miller, and Rapid Lakes on our way back to camp. That night we got hit with thunderstorms, and a front moved in that we’d heard was going to dump lots of rain on Sunday and snow on Monday. So we hiked out a day early in the rain. I was a little disappointed to miss climbing over jackass pass to get a peek at the famous Cirque of the Towers, but they were obscured by clouds so we decided to skip the extra hiking. Next time…

 

Justin with some impressive granite in the background. I think that’s Haystack Mountain behind him.

 Deep Lake. East Temple Peak on the left, Temple Peak on the right.

Temple Lake. This is where we hung out for a while… Justin caught a few fish, and I went swimming. For about 45 seconds. Ice water is cold. Sure felt refreshing, though!

Hiking past Temple Lake, I have no idea what that big rock is in front of us.

 

 

Justin pumping water.

On the hike out passing by Big Sandy Lake.

technical difficulties and tahoe pictures

I’ve had a few minor hosting issues lately – so if you’ve tried to send an email to greg@gregneilphoto.com over the last few weeks, it has probably not worked! I’ve got it working again now, but you’ll notice the blog web address is now with wordpress. I’ll try to get it sorted out soon. For now, you can follow the link on the gregneilphoto.com page, or bookmark this wordpress address.

A couple weeks ago I went to Lake Tahoe with my dad, brother, brother-in-law, and his kids. It was a bit of a guy’s adventure before my dad leaves for Albania for 3 years this week. We had a blast. Here’s a few photos from the trip.

One of the highlights for the kids was fishing. I’m not into fishing myself, but my brother brought his gear and taught the nephews a thing or two. They didn’t catch anything, but really loved it anyway.

We decided to take a hot air balloon ride over the lake – got up at 4AM and drove to the dock where we took off in this giant boat that launches the balloon from the middle of the lake. It’s the only spot in the word you can launch in a hot air balloon from a boat. The boat then motors around following the balloon and catching it when it comes down. They sent up these yellow balloons to test the wind before getting the big balloon ready. Apparently there’s 5 micro-climates up there to deal with. And apparently the weather was not cooperating – too windy. So the trip was scratched. Big bummer. Imagine the pictures I’d have come back with from up there! Anyway, it was still a fun little ride out on the lake.

 

a cat named wednesday, and blue sky

One of my favorite cats, named Wednesday, lives in San Francisco. Here’s a few cat portraits from our visit last week.

 

 

Totally unrelated to Wednesday, but I’m going to throw them in the same post, are these landscape photos I took in the hills above Palo Alto from the Arastradero Preserve. I don’t do much landscape photography, but I wanted to walk around outside and that’s where I ended up. I’ve always loved the way the rolling hills above 280 look, yellow grass with spots of green trees and shrubs.

 

 

nieces and nephews

I’ve been in Los Altos, California visiting my parents before they embark on a 3-year mission to Albania for the LDS church. All the family was here, and it was a great time for kid headshots! My nieces and nephews are the most fantastic, fun, intelligent, adorable little critters on the planet. I’ll be stoked if mine turn out half as well, when the time comes…

Grace, age 5 weeks:

Christopher, age 15 months:

Eliza (and Emily), age 18 months

Joshua, 3 years:

Andrew, 5 years:

Maren, 5 years:

Jack, 6 years:

We tried to get a group shot of my parents with all the grandkids… of course, they were getting tired and not all of them were cooperating, but we still got some fun shots out of it!

Thanks for taking pictures with me; I can’t wait to see you all again!

Cave of Love, by Jenni

OK… some background… a few months back, my friend Dave purchased a song at a charity service auction from the very talented singer/songwriter Jenni B. Roake. Jenni agreed to write a song and perform it for Dave. The song was to be written in the style of an ’80’s power ballad, and sung from the point of view of Dave – as if Dave were the singer. In essence, Jenni channeling Dave in ’80’s piano power ballad style. A recipe for total awesomeness. We’ve got a piano in my apartment, so Jenni came over to perform the song for Dave and 15 or so special guests. Once I saw Jenni all decked out with the make-up and hair, and pulling the candles out of her bag, I knew I had to get some sweet shots.

(warning, photo geek talk ahead…)
I set up a remote flash that I gelled with 1.5 CTO, and then dialed in the aperture to get a good flash exposure. I was getting too much spill from the flash, so I put a couple gobos on it to block the light a little. I wanted to make it look dark, contrasty, and a little surreal, but also like the light was coming naturally from the candles. Once I had the aperture set for the flash exposure, I was able to play with the shutter speed to get the ambient candle exposure just where I wanted it. I’m pretty happy with the results. The song was about 4 minutes long, so I didn’t have too much time to get tons of shots. If I were to do it again, I think I’d try a bounce behind her to see if I could throw a little light back on the piano.

Most importantly, the song rocked, pure awesome, and everyone gave Jenni a huge ovation. Thanks for rocking at my house, Jenni! The song’s a hit, just need to record it and get a sweet video made.