Growing up too fast

You can probably tell from the last few posts on this blog that 1) I have a few days off and am enjoying just hangin out with Jordyn and doing nothing and 2) that Jordyn is my favorite thing to shoot! However, she is getting big, FAST! She is right on the edge of talking....babbling all kinds of jibberish that to me sounds like da-da. I think it will come any day now. She is also able to hold onto things and hold herself up for extended periods of time....take her crib for example. She can't pull herself up, but she can hold herself up and she thinks that is pretty fun.

Jordyn and Lexi

Jordyn and Lexi hanging out on the couch.

Pocket Aces

Last week, a pair of pocket aces kicked my butt. This week, the second hand of the night, I got a pair myself. The cards on the board ended up being 7, 5, 7, 7 so i had a full boat 7's over aces and a guy goes all in ON THE SECOND HAND of the tourney. Of course I call and right away my chip stack is doubled. Gotta love the pocket aces. Of course they would come back to haunt me as towards the end of the tourney I pull Cowboys, Pocket Kings, and raise, then get reraised all in and of course with kings you have to call...so I did...and got beat by pocket aces............again. Damn Aces.

Not just for cats

Ok, so Stripers' new cat bed is not just for cats....Turns out Jordyn likes to hang out on the end of my desk too.

Stipers's new home

I have 2 cats. R. Guy and Stripers. For some odd reason Stripers thinks I need her to type for me. Everytime I sit in front of the computer, she rubs on the keyboard straches the monitor, etc, etc, etc...basically getting in my way. If she is not in my way, she is laying on papers or notes, or licking prints I have on my desk. So I thought of a solution. While at Target the other day I saw a nice cat bed that would be perfect for her. So I picked it up and placed it on the end of my desk in my office for her. She loves it and it is her new sleeping spot, out of my way.

Jordyn strikes back.

This morning I'm throwing Jordyn in the air and playing with her when the unthinkable happens.....mid air with my mouth wide open laughing with her, she pukes and most of the puke lands in my mouth....the nastiest taste you will ever taste....I need to go puke myself now.

Jacks over 10's

Every Tuesday night I play in a poker tournament, then in a cash game after the tournament. This week I did not do so hot in the tourney, but was up like $80 in the cash game when I was dealt Jack/10 of clubs in the big blind. The pot is raised to $5 before the flop and I call. Flop comes Jack/Jack/10. Full Boat for me. Everybody checks and I hope someone has a Jack or 10. Next card comes Ace. Sweet. I hope somebody has an Ace so they bet it. Dealer checks, guy to my right bets $4, I raise $4, dealer raises $10. Sweet! They think they have me beat, but I know I am killing so I call very quickly. Next card is a 3, no help...dealer goes all in for $80. I call with my full house thinking I'm best.....but no! He has freaking pocket Aces and his full house beats my to the ground. Crap. Oh well. It's fun being in a hand with a big pot like that even if I did lose $100 on it.

Coming soon to a mailbox near you......

.....if your an editor that is. Part of being a freelancer is sending out promo cards. I had a few different portraits I was using on cards that I send out every other month or so, but I ran out and needed something new. I thought I would use something from my Mt. St. Helens file that I shot back in October. The goal is that editors will like the photo and pin it on the bulletin board and call me when they need something. We'll see how this one works. If you look real close you can see steam coming out of the volcano. Another kind of cool thing about this photo is that it was part of Getty Images' Year In Focus: Best of 2004 in the News category.

So True.

Erik Bishoff, a photographer/UO student down in Eugene has a new baby too. He listed a Mr. Mom list on his blog that is so true and so funny and so exactly what I go through everyday. Check it out.

Baylee Too

Not to be forgotten, Baylee got some photos today too. My sister wanted me to do the dumb black and white with some color in the photo trick, which I think is LAME, but I've never tried it, so i did it for her and it turned out ok.....of course Lexi wanted to be in every photo, but I really like the one at the top. Damn my dog loves that little girl.

Jordyn's First Easter

Jenn has been on me for some time to shoot photos of Jordyn in cute Easter outfits. It sucks that I have been out of town so much latley because a) I have not been able to see her as much as I would like and b) I have not had the time to shoot any photos of her. Well I finally had a day off today and we (Jenn mostly) went shopping. Spent like $150 at Old Navy. But I did get to pick out one thing...a shirt that reads "I love my Daddy" because everyone knows I am her favorite parent.

So after the shopping, Jenn got to play dress up with Jordyn and we fired away in the studio. Jordyn was having fun for about the first 5 minutes or so, after the third outfit change, she had enough. I hope you enjoy these photos of my little munchin. She is getting big and really starting to not be so boring and be a little more exciting, she can sit up by herself, roll over both ways, grab things, everything.....and loves the cats.

I hope you all have a good Easter too!

Dirty Dog

Friday evening, my little sister Betsy and my 3 year old neice Baylee call up and ask to take Lexi to a park near the river. Now, Lexi, my dog, is like my first child and a little spoiled. I've never let you go with anyone to anywhere without Jenn or myslef. I guess I'm concerned that she will run off or get hit by a car or something dumb. So I wanted Jenn and I to go with them, but I had a ton of work and Jordyn was going to need food, so, after deliberating I let her go. As she is leaving Jenn points out, "Isn't it nice that he will leave his 6 month old daughter with you and let you take her anywhere, but with the dog he has concerns." I thought about that for a second and how true! Funny. Anyway, they come back from the park and Baylee comes running in laughing and says "Ceg, we lost your GOAWG (dog). She thought that was pretty funny. She was not lost, but Lexi had found some real nice mud puddles to play in and was covered in mudfrom head to toe. It was 7pm. Great. There is a dog wash place down the street, but I was not sure if they were open so Baylee, Betsy and I drove down there, hoping to god that it was still open. It was and it took 45 minutes to clean the mud off of her. Good Grief.

Yesterday's Wedding

I shot part of a wedding yesterday at the LDS Temple in Lake Oswego. What a cool building that was. I say part of a wedding because I'm going up to Seattle today to shoot the reception, but here is a portrait with the cool Temple behind them. I wish all weddings could be in a building so fantastic.

CRN Cover

So yesterday turned out to be a pretty fun day. I was out until 2AM on Tuesday night playing in a poker tournament (I placed 4th if you care) and was real tired Wednesday morning. My phone rang at about 9am, the photo editor at CRN Magazine in New York (a technology trade magazine) had a last minute shoot that they needed for the cover of the magazine and they needed it shot and transmitted that afternoon. Well, this woke me up. No problem. I can do this. Even better they flew me to Seattle so I did not have to drive for 3 hours, instead, just a quick 30 minute flight. Anyway, so as I'm driving to the airport I'm talking to the Art Director about the shoot and they object of the story is that some smaller companies are bigger than they appear...like the meat loaf song. Anyway, the subject was the president of a small networking company in Bellevue, WA that is coming up with some pretty slick new programs and firewall stuff that will, in his words, make microsft worry. I shot a bunch of different things with him for a couple of hours and of course after a winter of nothing but sunshine, it rained the entire shoot. Afterwords i went back to the airport and thanks to Wi-Fi, transmitted all the images back to New York while waiting for my plane to board. Here is the photo they used and a dummy of the cover.

Kevin and the French Alps

My only brother Kevin just spent 4 days on a ski trip in the French Alps. Go Read about it. Looks like a lot of fun in a really, really cool place. Scroll down the blog a little and start at Day 1, then e-mail him and tell him how much he sucks and how its good to see our tax dollars working so hard so that his little Marine butt can spend time in the Alps.

Lexi at the Beach

Today the Seattle P-I sent me to Long Beach, WA to shoot a feature. I had not been to the beach in a while and neither had Lexi, so I thought I'd take her with me and let her run around for a while when I was done. My shoot was at 7:30AM, so I left at 5:00AM this morning and got to Long Beach at 7:00AM. Lexi and I went to the beach (you can actually drive right onto the beach and park your car in the sand...pretty cool) and I shot some photos of her playing with her favorite toy, a football, in the nice light. Then we left, I went and did the shoot and then we went back to the beach for an hour or so. She loved it. Slept all the way home.

Jail Break

So this morning Jordyn was taking a little nap, or so we thought, when we hear her making a lot of noise. Not crying, more so just entertaining herself, so I went in to check on her and found her in this position, crib bumber over her head, looking at me like a little prisoner trying to escape. After I stopped laughing, I went a grabbed a camera of course.

Not all for nothing

So, I just found out after my buddy Trevor up in Seattle called me that my Mt. St. Helens eruption photo was used by the Seattle Times. So the effort was not all for nothing. The photo did get used and I was happy to hear that.

Champs!

Well, tonight was the final of the Big Sky Tournament and Montana won it all and a trip to the NCAA tourney. Here are a couple of jube shots from tonight. Funny thing happened today....before this tourney started, I sent e-mails to sports and photo editors offering coverage of thier team. Each answered with "no thanks, we'll use AP." No problem I answered each back, if you change your mind, I'll be here.......I was going to shoot this regardless for a new wire service called US PRESSWIRE and knew that the light in the old Colisieum sucked and sucked bad, like ISO1600 250th @ 2.8 bad, so I went in on Monday before the tourney and put lights up in the catwalk so that my photos would actually look good. Anyway, today right before I'm about to leave for the arena, I get a call from the sports editor at the paper in Missoula, MT asking me if I can shoot for them tonight because they were very dissapointed with the AP photos from the night before and wanted good art since it would be played real big (Montana going to the NCAA's is front page news in Missoula) the next day. So I shot the game and sent some nice photos to them.

When News Breaks

Well yesterday turned out to be rather interesting. Here's the story....I was to shoot the Big Sky Conference semi finals at 6:15. So I arrived at the arean at 4pm to set up a remote, get my computer setup, send a test photo, etc, etc, etc. At around 5:30 we (the media) are all sitting in the press room doing nothing when BOOM! Mt. St. Helens had blown and blown big. You could see the ash cloud from downtown Portland. So now I am thinking..."shit" I have to shoot a basketball game I can't go run off to the mountain. I call my editor at Getty and told her what was going on so she could call another stringer. 10 minutes later, no dice, nobody to shoot. It's now 5:45, game time 30 minutes. Crap. So I grab cameras and a long lens and run out the door to try and find a spot high enough to see the mountain and off I go. The first place I went was the highest building I saw near the arena. I figured I would be able to talk my way to the top and get a nice shot. I walk in and a lady offers to take me to her office....sweet...only security would not let press in the building without permission. Normally I would talk my way up, but she was having nothing of it and I had no time to waste....I got back in the car and see a Holiday Inn. I run into the Holiday Inn and talk to the manager, who is more than happy to take me to the roof. Nice, now it is 6:05. We get up to the roof and have a great view, only now it is getting dark and some clouds have formed over the ash. Crap. I got one shitty photo out of it. I ran back downstairs, jumped in the car and hauled butt back to the arean to send the photo to New York real quick. They were happy to have something, even though it sucked, but they had it before anyone else within an hour of the event. Not too bad. Finally after I sent the photo it was 6:25 or so and I had only missed about 9 minutes of game time. I ran into the arena at a time out and turned on my remote, then sat down and shot the rest of the game, sweating like a pig from running around. That is one of the things that make this job so much fun. Spot News. Fast Deadlines. It really is an adreline rush.

So now, back to the game(s), I set up a remote on the post again and got some good stuff. I did not fire it as much since I was shooting on the same side of the court as the remote was, but it worked. weber State upset Portland State. Tonight will be the championship game between Montana and Weber State with the winning getting a bid to the NCAA tourney. Should be good.

March Madness in Oregon

March madness here in Oregon continues. Today I shot the third place game between Oregon City and Tualatin. I showed up extra early to set up a remote in a place I've never done one before, at the joint on the post. This is a shot from that remote. I think it turned out pretty sweet. Looking forward to 5 straight days of basketball next week.

Basketball, Basketball, Basketball

I am in the middle of a 2 week period where I will shoot about 15-20 basketball games between Thursday the 3rd and Saturday the 12th. This week is the 4A girls tourney. Here is a photo I shot today. Next up, the Championship game tomrrow night, then the Big Sky Tourney Tues-Wed, then down to Eugene for the 4A boys tournament. I will be so tired of basketball come next weekend. Stay tuned....