First of all, just wanted to apologize for the lack of updating lately! I’ve been extremely busy lately without a lot of extra time for shooting! Add to that the fact that it gets dark at 7 here now, my prime hours are dark already! Oh, the joys of winter! 

In any case, I have a fun post today! I was at my grandparents’ anniversary party this past weekend, and their great-granddaughter Ondrea was visiting too! (She is my uncle’s granddaughter, I have no idea what that makes her to me...) She was being quite funny and having fun playing on the floor. Here she is playing with her puzzle.

She got bored about halfway through, however, put the puzzle back in the box, and left to go play in another room. Of course, me being the type of guy that loves to play with children’s heads, I suggested we put together the puzzle and leave it in the middle of the floor to discover. It took us about 3 minutes to put the 48-piece jumbo sized puzzle together and left it for her to find! Here she is discovering it!

Her excitement quickly turned to being confused as to how such a thing could have happened.  I couldn’t get a picture of her super cute “suspicious” look she gave me because I was sure that would have given me away.

When we asked her how she thought this might have happened, she finally decided that the puzzle “put itself together.” We had a good laugh!  And don’t worry, she wasn’t scarred for life. In fact, 10 minutes later, she’d forgotten all about it. I love kids.

I spent the week with my family in Minot, ND. Since the last time I visited, my parents got a cat! His name is Tigger! While I wouldn’t say I am a cat person, this is one cool cat! He is extremely soft, extremely people friendly, and crazy! I took a few pictures of him! I hope you enjoy!

Tigger knows how to open cabinet doors, and sleeps in the cabinet when my dad works at his desk.

Tigger peeking out of his home!

OK, a few weeks back someone had let me know that the “captcha” or the security verification for commenting wasn’t working, meaning that nobody could comment on my blog. I definitely want people to be able to comment, so I removed the captcha security. Imagine my shock when I found that over the last week, I had received almost 1000 spam comments on 20 different posts!!! After spending over a half an hour cleaning the comment boxes out, I re-enabled captcha, although I noticed it still isn’t working. I guess I’ll have to get together with my host to see why this is no longer working, but I can’t just leave things wide open any more, apparently. I want people to be able to comment, but this is ridiculous.

And although I know those idiots spamming my site aren’t even visiting, see above picture! Yeah, that’s right. Does anyone really click on your link and buy fake medicine from somewhere in Asia? Is it really worth your time? In any case, rant over! I hope those people that actually enjoy visiting my site keep visiting, and I hope to get the commenting fixed soon!

I’m not sure how this happens, but it seems on every shoot, I completely forget about a picture. Then a few weeks later, I’m going through and cleaning house and find it! Here is a shot of my friend David and his 1960s Chevy Camaro. I guess you can tell I’m not very good with classic cars, because I don’t know exactly which year it is. Ah well, it’s still a great car.

So I’ve been really busy in the middle of moving to a new apartment! Which, of course, means that I haven’t had time for a lot of pictures. So today I’ll leave you with one of the funniest videos I’ve seen this year. It’s completely nerdy, but also extremely entertaining and clever. I hope you enjoy it!!!

It’s called “The Font Convention”

Back in May, Steve Vickerman, the owner of a small business called Name Rings, got in touch with me about updating his web site. His old site was outdated and had not been properly brought up to date with new security standards. So I designed his brand new logo and brand new site for him, got new cart software installed on a new server, updated his security, and helped him get the whole site running! We went live with it last month, and finally have gotten all the kinks worked out! I really like how it turned out, I think it is clean, simple, and functional.  We have plans for the future to add pictures with models and flash work, and I’m looking forward to see how things go for him! Check it out!

Just 1 quick picture today. I went to a picnic on Saturday, and a bunch of friends started a baseball game.  The skies were so dramatic, I just had to capture a shot of the game underneath the incredible sky!

You may have read my post a few weeks back where I decided to definitely go from the ranks of doing just freelance jobs to going for being a professional photographer! I have been continuing to make steps towards developing a brand for myself, and a “store front,” as you will.  I am not all that interested in being a studio photographer, and so my store front right now is the web! To that end, I have just designed a brand new logo and launched a new commercial site for myself!

I am still not quite done developing all the sections of the new site, and am nowhere near finishing the galleries, but I decided to go live with it already because it is already much better than what I had up! If you’d like, Check it out!

This past weekend, I finally had a chance to get away from the routine of every day life and go camping! It was a very relaxing trip. It rained on Saturday, but a couple of in-house geniuses set up a tarp over the fire just before it started raining, which made it so we could all sit around the fire all day in complete dryness! Aside from a mild complication of my cotton sleeping bag touching the side of the tent in the rain, and therefore soaking the bottom foot, it was otherwise a very nice camping trip! I came back relaxed and ready to attack my week! Here are a few shots I took.  Of course, the pictures are a little heavy on the adorable Rowdy, but he’s just so adorable I couldn’t help myself!

When we pulled up to the campsite!

The Jore Fam, getting ready to relax.

Rowdy had such a blast on this trip, even though at times he got himself stuck!

Another dog on the trip with us, Mini!

Noemi and Kobe

I found these little colored dots in many places growing all over the leaves. They certainly were beautiful, although I don’t know if it was healthy for the tree or not.

We found time to play some volleyball, and after the game Brad and Pablo tried to play a little “soccer volleyball!”

Pablo enjoying the fire!

I am very excited! I have decided to go for being a professional photographer! I will be launching a new website within the next month!

Also, I have upgraded my camera to a Pentax K20D! It has a 14.6 megapixel rating, great color, and a lot of great features! I am very excited to begin doing jobs with it! Here is a picture of it with its battery grip!

And here are a couple of pictures I have taken with it so far! I am really enjoying playing with this new camera. The colors are amazing, and the resolution is incredible. I hope you like them!