smile, it's the weekend.

It's official: our weekends are becoming more and more like weekdays. But it's nice to be busy. Reminds me of a recent Facebook status update by one fellow Hazelwood Central alum: "(Paula Rhodes) isn't crazy about weekends, but acknowledges that this is odd. Every day is potentially a weekend as an actor, and she looks most forward to the days she works."

And so, this is how we kept ourselves busy this weekend (in addition to hanging out with Los Maddox and Los Morgan to score some killer Mexican food):




Kinda' wish our blog lent itself to something more than just squares. Some pictures just weren't meant to be chopped down to a 1x1 box... Oh well.

one last thing before you go...

Before the Mattei family sends their son (yup, the one in the suit) away for a two-year proselyting mission for the LDS Church ... Pictures. 262 of them. We avoided heavy downpours and endured gusty winds last evening at the park and came away with some good stuff despite the odds. And since there's not a lot of time left between right now and when Greg ships off to Boise, it's good thing the weather held out. Whew.

chrisse

It's nearly impossible to shoot outside in the summertime in St. Louis. It's practically impossible to do just about anything outside in the summertime in St. Louis. Except this summer. Yesterday, we had a high of 80, and today shouldn't be much different -- not bad for the middle of July! And while it was a little warmer the day we took these pictures of Chrisse at the QRP, it wasn't bad. Whew. This year, I love STL summers... and these pictures.

barbecue crossing

We saw the strangest thing this evening, and Becca handed me the camera and told me to "RUN!" Immediately, I booked it across the street -- 30D and 70-200mm lens in hand -- and came upon this strange site...

Only thing missing: a yellow caution sign with two guys pulling barbecue grills behind them. PRIZE ALERT: We'll ship a summery picnic surprise to the person who converts the STOP sign into the best/funniest/coolest BBQ Crossing safety sign. (I'd do it myself, but where's the fun in that?)

PS, moms and dads, they looked both ways before crossing the street.

ltl kds r fn

Not going to lie... Taking photos of kids isn't always easy :) but it's so worth it with their funny, happy expressions. Ready, aim, shoot, focus, repeat.

These were all shot by Becca: Zoom approx. 70mm; Shutter between 1/300-1/500 seconds. Converted to B/W in Lightroom except the second one in the sequence (and it shows a bit...)

meet me ... in forest park

Becca's out of town -- Florida this time -- so it's my turn to post... It's been a busy few weeks with all our travels and what not; nevertheless, we squeezed this couple-hour shoot in of Rachel early this week at Forest Park and in the Delmar Loop. The shoot was a lot of fun, mosquitoes and all, and we definitely look forward to photographing Rachel again sometime down the road.


The majority of the photos here were shot with a fast 1.4 lens using a variety of lighting, while others were taken using the 17-70 Sigma. Look for these and more in the coming days at our Photoworkshop site.

not to burst your bubble...

We were running through some photos of our ward friends, the Nays, when all of a sudden the brilliant idea came pounding on the door: make a bunch of colorful bubbles appear on the screen to add another splash of color, but make sure the pictures are somewhat blurry so the bubbles stand out...

Okay, so we really accidentally stumbled upon the idea (isn't that the way it usually goes?) because as we got talking and what not, our Vista screen saver randomly started and brightly colored orbs were scattering everywhere, uncontrollably. It really came just straight out of the blue since our screen saver hasn't worked for more than 6 mos. since we cut the cable and went to a wireless mouse. (Apparently, the CPU thinks that you're still hard at work even when you're not because the little blinking red tracker light keeps trying to communicate with the tower. Strange that all of a sudden the screen saver feature started working again.)

Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Everywhere

It's been a fun -- and long -- past couple of weeks. Since a picture's worth 1,000 words, I'll stop typing and just start showing...



Now, check out a bunch of others (horizontals) on our Travels/Journeys page -- from music to 3D movies and from mountains to cool silhouettes...