Christina's Alice costume didn't fit when it came Friday. The sizing guide online and on the packaging was different from the tag in the actual dress. Argh.
So, she wasn't really feeling it Friday and we ended up staying home. And we didn't want to get another costume for Saturday so she just wore her cat ears and tail she already had.
Also, I didn't even make the list of finalists Saturday night despite getting lots of good comments all night.
But NONE of that matters... we beat Tennessee Saturday night up in Knoxville! Would have loved to have gone to that game! I had it circled since last year too as the road trip I wanted to make the most this season of our away games. Oh well, plenty of years to see the other stadiums around the conference I suppose. Hopefully this was the first of many signature wins for Spurrier here at USC.
I took plenty of pictures Saturday at Jillian's and will at the Halloween Party tonight... it'll probably be Wednesday though before I've gone through them all, post-processed them, and got them uploaded to Pbase. I think I'm also going to start up a page of costume contructions like this guy has below:
Not all of his stuff is costumes, but many of those are. Each link is usually a few pages long and has pictures and running commentary. He builds some cool Halloween costumes... I particularly like his Paparazzi and Doctor Octopus costumes on that site. I've already got a couple ideas about next year.
Halloween 2005 is almost upon us! Going to be a busy weekend. Today is also my brother Brian's birtday... hope you got to take off work and have a good one! Happy Birthday!
As many of you know we've ran a Haunted House (garage) the last couple years... however, due to the cost of doing that and the fact that we just didn't get enough kids to warrant the work, we're not going to do it this year. In fact, just had to disappoint a couple of neighborhood kids asking about it this afternoon. Oh well, they better get used to letdowns, they have a long life ahead of them. LOL. Just kidding... mostly.
Anyway, we've got plans so we couldn't do the Haunted House this year anyway. Kids here are trick-or-treating on Monday night and someone I work with is having a big Halloween party we're going to instead. We went to her party last year and had a good time. I posted pictures last year.. we went as the Paprazzi and a Movie Star.
Which brings us to the point of my rambling... this year's costumes. I am going as a tourist and Christina is going as Alice in Wonderland. My costume idea started when I realized that would be a perfect costume where I could incorporate my camera (like the paparazzi last year) and therefore get to shoot pics all night. Christina wanted to do something cute like Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy, Goldilocks, etc... she settled on Alice.
Of course real pictures will be posted as soon as the costumes are finished, but just for a laugh, I threw some stuff together in Photoshop real quick and a little image editing later I have some mock ups of our costumes below:
Mine will consist of a Hawaiian shirt, bad sunglasses, fishing hat, red face paint (sunburn), white face paint on my nose (too much sunscreen), khaki shorts, tacky fanny pack, sandals (with tall white socks), and of course a camera. The mock up shows backpack straps that will hold up a large cardboard cutout of various "destinations" behind me. I am also going to wire up some bright white LED lights in the cardboard cutout for the Epcot Wand, the Statue of Liberty's torch, 10 lights or so around the Vegas sign, some lights on the Eiffel Tower, and some lights in the windows of the Taj Mahal. I was inspired by this guy online who constructs larger than life costumes each year and wins costume contests with them. We'll see how mine turns out. Sorry I didn't add arms to the picture... creepy, I know.
Christina's Alice costume is going to be really cute... comes with a petticoat, the choker, and the big bow for the hair. There will be no flowers like in the mock up. Those arms and head are from one of the recent bridesmaid pictures of her from Christy's wedding in Dallas.
So, those are the teaser pictures... like I said, I plan on posting some actual shots of everything once it's said and done. I've been looking for a use for the handful of white LEDs I had anyway, so this should be a nice effect.
We're going to a costume contest Friday at a new place in Columbia called Saddle Ridge in the Vista... prizes are $250, $100, and $50 for first, second, and third place respectively. Who knows how well we'll do, but it should be fun regardless. Saturday we're probably going to Jillian's for their costume contest and to watch the Carolina-Tennessee game. Gives us a chance to use those gift certificates that Brian got Christina for her birthday too!
Well, I'm officially a professional photographer now. Okay, so not really as a profession of course, but many people on the photography message boards out there say that you're a pro once you make money taking photographs. Hey, who am I to argue?
We drove down to Summerville yesterday evening to shoot some Graduation photos in Azalea Park for Angel. She's graduating with a double-major in December and wanted to include a 4x6 in each invitation.
While I was there doing that, I had her husband Albert pose with her for a couple shots... always nice to have portraits and since I was there it seemed like a nice extra.
I didn't charge her as much as a pro would have because I'm not a pro and I'm having her get prints from WinkFlash.com (great online print site) instead of charging for those on top of a portrait session fee like most pros do. Regardless, it was nice being able to do this for her and to make some money taking photos. Now I just need around 40-50 more of these jobs to count the equipment as paid for!
Click on the picture or link below to go to a gallery of the 9 final shots from yesterday:
Also, I edited all the images with a filter called Velvia (after a type of film known for saturated colors). Here's a link to the same pictures, only with punchier colors...
We have had an amazing, huge harvest moon here the last couple nights in Columbia, so I thought I'd get out and take a picture of it. This is taken at the entrance to our subdivision... it's the clubhouse by the lake. Click on the image for a larger version on my Pbase site.
Well, the pictures are finally up. Takes a while to go through that many and crop and edit them.
There are a 4 galleries at the top of the page, one for each event as they occured... the rehearsal, the wedding, the reception, and then the brunch. The loose photos in this gallery were miscellaneous photos while we were in Dallas like the Gaylord Texan resort where they stayed two nights and their dog Max playing frisbee. About 180 or so pictures in total if you go into all the sub-galleries.
The trip was a lot of fun like I said earlier. We were pretty busy with the wedding, so it wasn't really a vacation, but it was nice to get out of town for a while. We had a good flight there and back and the hotel we stayed in was great... suite style room with a little kitchen and everything. It'll be fun to go back to Dallas someday on a vacation where we can run around doing the tourist thing.
It was great roaming around shooting the wedding and reception (since Christina was a matron of honor she was kind of busy). I wouldn't do it professionally or anything yet, but each time I go to one with the new camera I'm learning from my mistakes. Some of the pictures turned out better than others, but overall I was a lot happier with them after post-processing them on the computer than I was looking at them right after downloading them from the camera. Unfortunately, some ended up blurry... and not because I didn't have a fast enough shutter speed, it's because the lens I'm currently using has a habit sometimes of front focusing. Meaning it thinks the object is in focus, but the focus point actually lands in front of the object. I'm thinking of sending that lens off to the company that made it. They'll do a free calibration for my specific camera body.
I'm anxious to see the kinds of shots their photographers got at the wedding once he has them online because they were really on top of things. Some of his sample galleries online were nice from other weddings, so I know he did a great job on theirs also. I'll post up a link to his site once their wedding pictures have been posted.
I'm going to try to go through them tonight and add a text description below the image so that when you click on an individual picture itself, there will be some info about it.
He just wasn't getting any better and wasn't gaining any weight over the 4 weeks we had him. Even the eye infection... something simple in comparison... was a lot worse. It had gotten into the cornea. The vet thinks something's wrong with his immune system since he can't beat that or the other major issues. She didn't feel that he would ever get over the issues and that any life he did live wouldn't be that great for him.
I had been prepping myself for one of two results when we got back from Dallas... either he finally broke it and was much better or that the vet would say he wasn't going to get better. Still doesn't make it any easier.
As for the trip to Dallas, it was really great... I'll write more about that later, I still have a lot of photos and such to go through before that though.
Got in fine on Wednesday... uneventful flight, aside from Christina losing her driver's license somewhere on the plane or in the airport... not really sure. But she called and they don't have it but said that she shouldn't have a problem using the other forms of ID she has still.
Anyway, it's been a fun trip so far. We went to the rehearsal yesterday and then the girls split off so the guys went out to shoot some pool. Stayed out way, way too late last night... ought to make today a lot of fun! Since it's a later wedding, I've got downtime at the hotel right now though... probably should lay down and add some time to that 3.5 hours of sleep I got last night.
Also, here's a small teaser of a couple of the photos. One of the rehearsal with everyone lining up and one of Christina looking good and posing for me:
The party and the outdoor setup turned out a lot better than the game against Auburn, that's for sure. We only had a total of 8 people... a little more than half of what we expected. I think if it were a regular thing for night away games that the crowds would grow though. Anyway, here's a picture of the setup from last night before the sun went down completely:
The screen ended up really bright once it was dark... much better than I thought it would be even. I'm just glad that the projector worked at all actually, no matter how bright it was. When I opened it up Saturday around 4:30 I realized that whoever used it last at work forgot to put the power cord back in the case. And it's an odd 3 circle, Micky Mouse looking power connector. Nothing I would have here and of course since it's the weekend all the offices at work are closed and locked. I went to Radio Shack though and they had a power cable that fit and worked. That would have been a disaster. And it's a mistake I won't make again.
