September, 2006

One of the photography students in the BFA (senior independent project) classes has been photographing homestead in the area. She’s been having a couple of issues with handling exposures and contrast in the dimly lit interiors. Since we didn’t hold class on Friday I was happy to go out with her and another student to help. We went to a couple of neat homesteads. One was in Hog Hollow, the other was in Squirrel. Those are a couple of sweet place names. Anyway, I was primarily there to help the students, but I managed to make a few photographs.

Shalese and Jessica, Hog Hollow, ID 2006

Homestead Exterior, Hog Hollow, ID 2006

Interior Detail, Hog Hollow, ID 2006

Homestead Exterior, Squirrel, ID 2006

Homestead Interiors, Squirrel, ID 2006

Here are a couple of different nests I photographed on Saturday.

Hornet Nest, Madison County, ID 2006

Belted Kingfisher Nest, Madison County, ID 2006

The weather report called for a low of somewhere between 28-34 Saturday night. We still had a few vegetables in the garden that needed to be picked. Most of it was ripe, but we still had a lot of green tomatoes. Anyway, we picked it all. We made fresh salsa, fried up some green beans, grilled zucchini and squash, and have green tomatoes lining our window sills. This morning the car windows were icy. I guess our growing season has come to an end. The arctic death of winter can’t be far off.

Susan Picking Green Beans

Zucchini and Squah Plants

Carrots, Onions, Jalepeno Peppers, & Bell Peppers

Green Beans

Ethan & Zucchini

Today when I was in the art office on campus a student said to me: “Can I ask you a question?” He then looked at me for a good 2 seconds (which is a long time when you’re waiting) and said “uhhh nevermind, I need to find a face to paint but..” and then he just sort of trailed off. I left before he had to awkwardly get out of whatever he was going to say. It was pretty funny, but I guess I don’t have a future in modeling, dang.

I know it’s been a while since my last post, but this one should be fun. I’m teaching digital photography this semester. I haven’t taught it for a couple of years, so it’s been a lot of fun. Tomorrow I’m giving the students an assignment to do as many strange and/or interesting image adjustments to one photograph as they can. I did a sample today of a picture of Kevin I took last week. With apologies to his mother here it is:

Mike Slade is going to show a selection of his Great Salt Lake imagery in our university art gallery. Brian was asked by our gallery director to curate the show. He was going down to Mike’s for that purpose and I tagged along. Along with editing Mike’s images for the show we also helped him make a few frames and cut some matte board. I also taught Mike’s son Connor (or maybe it’s Conner) a thing or two about tetherball.

Mike Cutting Wood

Mike Cutting, Brian Sanding, Me blogging

Eleven Mostly Finished Frames

Tetherball

The other day while doing bird counts at Mud Lake I was able to approach this pair of mating dragonflies. Apparently this is known as a mating wheel. They didn’t seem too concerned until I tried to remove a weed that was in the way, which caused them to fly away.

Dragonflies in Mating Wheel, Mud Lake, ID 2006