It has been a hectic Spring and Summer.
In late May I moved to a wonderful place in Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago. So I spent most of June getting settled and learning my new neighborhood.

In July I had the privilege to take some new headshot photos for my good friend Kevin M. Grubb who is an actor here in Chicago.

In August I visited family in southern California and had an opportunity to visit Joshua Tree National Park.

A dear friend of mine asked me if I would photograph her line of soups for her. I was more than happy to oblidge. It was a great experience for me and I think we got a few decent shots for her as well.

One of the great things about being back in Chicago is being close to all my family. So Sunday I took a drive to watch three of my young cousins in a wrestling meet. I’d never seen kids that small wrestle (some of the wrestlers were only _4_ years old). I brought my camera and caught a few shots from the stands. It made it obvious that I need to remember my new camera body can use higher ISO (I always forget since my older one was worthless at higher ISOs). Also it made me miss the VR control that I have on some of my other lenses that I do not have on my 50-150 2.8 zoom that I was using.

So here we have my wrestling cousins, and my cousin Wes who coaches and is the team photographer.

My friend Jen and I decided that we would create challenges for the two of us in 2010 in order to try to get us shooting more photos and stretching our talents and creative some.
The first challenge of 2010 was Color Week. Here are the favorites of each color from what I shot all week. Enjoy!

This past week while in Boston for work I had the privilege to spend some time with some dear friends I went to college with at Northeastern. Lindsay’s son Lucas is just short of 7 months old, and Debbie’s son Lucien is about 7 weeks old.

I had the awesome pleasure of doing a casual impromptu photo shoot with all of them. We had tons of fun. Here are a few of my favorite photos. Check out the link to my Portrait Gallery for all the rest. (Note: the portraits are about 3 GB in total so they will be slowly uploading for the next day probably)

This weekend we were church up at the top of Mt. Bonnell. I had never been up there, it appears to be the highest point in the Austin area. There’s a tall set of steps to get up to the top and then some various side trails and benches and stuff to wander. I made it up to the top and snagged some cool shots of Austin before we all got together. Visibility was not as clear as I would have liked. I’ll have to watch for an amazing visability day and head back up there. I’d also be interested in taking a longer lens up there and doing some sunset/dark shots as the city starts to light up. I definitely feel like I need to wander Austin a TON more and take lots more pictures – but I know so little about it it’s hard to find the motivation to get going. I may have to take a friend up on her weekly photo-walk idea so I start to caputure more images around this town.

This weekend one of the families that I lived in Community with back in Boston departed the Community and began their cross country excursion that will end in their moving back home to Europe. We all miss them already. (Yes, even from thousands of miles away I feel it too.) So this morning I went through and pulled up a few of my favorite snap shots I had of life while living with them.

I found myself in Boston and realized just how much I missed the true walking nature of the city. It just becons my spirit to walk and photograph and wander.

Here are a few of my favorites from today.

I am up at the Olive Branch for the weekend and part of my time is spent doing some product photography for Three Stitchers for their site and blog. I thought I’d share a few of my favorite images from this mornings shoot.

A couple of weeks ago I moved into a new apartment. It’s a really nice 2 bed 2 bath place only about one mile from work. Teela and I are loving it. And I finally got around to taking a few quick snapshots of the place to share with family and friends who live all over the country and do not get to come visit and see for themselves. Enjoy.