Shooting Stars and Blowing Winds

Holy Calzony. What a night this was.
Kevin, Krystal, Andy, Valorie and I went up to High Rocks to watch the Perseids Meteor show. Turned out to be a full night of shooting stars and camping good times.
It was Valorie's idea to pack up all the tents and get as many as possible in the shot. She wanted more!
She had a cool take on the scene also, she even got a meteor passing through:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/valorieshay/4888802337/

So, we stayed up all night taking pictures and yelling out, "OOOOHH!!!" with the rest of the group responding, "UH HUH! That was huge!" or "No way, I JUST looked away! Ah man..."
It was fun :-)
All night long, I expected other star gazers to show up and get pissed off that our tents were blocking all forms of turn around in the tight quarters up top, but to my amazement and joy, no one else showed up. We made good use of the view point, staying up till 3am before we all finally made it to bed.

The funny part came about an hour and a half later when I woke up to some howling wind.
Normally, the stiffest wind storm doesn't faze me because I'm confident in my tent and let the slapping nylon of the tent walls become a lullaby. But, this night, we decided to literally sleep out under the stars, skipping the tent, and just using a blow up air mattress instead. It was child-like fun laying on that thing just watching shooting stars pass by overhead. But, it all became a problem at this point because,
1, we didn't stake down the tents all that well since at 3am when we bedded down it was a peaceful, windless night and
2, 3 of the 5 tents were empty with nothing and no one in them!

So, I peaked my head up over my boots to look over at the tents and WHOA!
One was literally spinning like a top, only held down by one corner still staked to the ground!
With a yelp, I jumped up and barefoot ran to grab it before it went over the edge. Quickly I tried to break it down in the wind, holding onto bags and flys being pulled away by the sudden hurricane like winds. As I worked on that one, the others began to lift and flutter, pulling at their corners also.
We were short on stakes to have them all tied down completely, so I, fast as possible, broke down the tents before I lost them all.

The best was my friend Andy in a single tent. I come back to the mattress where Valorie is glowering at me for leaving her shivering in the blankets, but I couldn't stop staring at Andy and his tent! The tent wanted to completely blow away, and tumble head over heels, but Andy's body weight in the center was the anchor that kept pulling it down to the ground. The wind would gust, the front of the tent would lift 3 ft off the ground and a nylon profile of Andy would emerge from the taught tent floor material and then slam back down to the ground as the gust passed. To Andy's credit, he rode the storm like a cowboy barely holding onto a bucking bronco in the rodeo pen.

But, it gets better! At this point, the pre-dawn glow was happening on the horizon, so I further abandoned Valorie to go take pictures (she gave more dirty looks), but when I came back, the air mattress was on its side against the trees and Valorie was nowhere to be found. I eventually found her in the Jeep, still scowling at me. I asked what happened and she said the wind literally ripped the blankets out of her hands *laughing*
I lost major points that morning.

Grudgingly, the group all woke up and we wrestled all the tents and pieces into the Jeep in a big tangled mess and then high tailed it to the nearest source of hot coffee.

Good times for the 2010 Perseid Meteors :-)

Way Out There

Making this image was certainly an adventure and memorable experience.

Valorie found this house through some Flickr research and recommended we go here for the evening to shoot. We packed up, fueled up, and headed out.
Turns out, this place is out there. Way out there!  We spotted a structure in a wheat field on the peripheral of our headlights and pulled over to check it out. As usual, we got out there later than anticipated/desired; so didn't arrive until 11pm, so the place was completely dark. And did I mention we were way out in Nowheresville?

We get out of the Jeep and walk into the field to check the place out.
Wow- CREEPY.

The house is an early 1900's farm house in the middle of a field, abandoned, and devoid of all paint, windows and doors. A cliche would be to call it a shell of a home, but that's exactly what it was. More like a skeletal shell of a home. In the light of our flashlights, we could see the inside was a wreck of fallen wallboard and piled timbers. Carefully we approached the entrance, stepping over rusted farm equipment, each step rustling the dry wheat grass- the sound of our own steps making us constantly look behind or nervously peer into the darkness beyond our flashlights.

Finally we stood at the doorway, shining our lights into the house, neither of us making a move to go inside. The second story loomed above us, empty, but suggesting an occupant in the house biding his/her time to peak out the window above and looking down on us, ask us our business coming there. Fortunately that never happened.

Still standing there at the door, I called out into the house, "....HELLO!?...."
No answer.
I looked at Valorie. Valorie looked at me.
She broke the silence first, "...Why did this seem like such a fun, great idea when we planned this???..."
At loss for spine straightening encouragement, I merely replied, "....I know....."

At some point I got the guts to step into the house, then we proceeded to cautiously explore the residence.

I can only speak for myself, but I believe Valorie agrees, the fear never left us. Three hours there shooting and the hair never went down on my neck. She get's the prize of the night for staying in the house alone to pose in the window while I went back out to shoot from the field.

Finally, we both had our fill of self-induced fear and called it a night. Valorie was so unnerved by the experience, and unable to sleep, she voted to skip camping out for the night, and instead, jumped in the driver's seat and took us back home to Portland safe and sound, back in bed at 5am :-) 

Up and Running

Boy oh boy, where to start?
First post here on the blog- welcome and thanks for reading :-)

So, let's cut to the chase- EXCITING NEWS! This month I licensed images for Subaru and the band Adam's Castle! YES! It's been a solid month in response to my work, and also, very productive in getting out shooting under the stars.

Subaru licensed this:

And the image for Adam's Castle can be found on the home page of their website:
http://www.castleband.com/
Give them a look. They're a very unique sound with much thought and planning into their work.
There's a media player on the right side- I've been listening to "Johnny" track while putting this up. Take a listen. They make an experience, not just a song.

I'm not sure when my image with Subaru will be hitting the streets, but once it does, rest assured I'll be posting a sample of it in use :-)
The process was very eye opening to how much I need to learn about licensing and selling my work. I thought all the effort would be required behind the camera. This week has blindsidedly (it's a word now) shown me all the catching up I have to do on the business end of things. There's gonna be many cups of coffee required to get this figured out.

I plan on telling behind the scene crazy stories/experiences from nights out shooting here on the blog. Stay tuned for some entertaining stories.