Baby Banner &hearts

by Ben

So, on March 9th, our good friends Jared and Kristen had their their first baby; a beautiful girl named Banner. They didn't get to come snowshoeing last weekend with us and mutual friends Travis and Laura, so we decided to make a little note for Banner in the fresh powder on a frozen pond.












Yesterday, Travis, Laura, Genny and I spent some time in Denver trying to mutually expand our photo skills. Afterwards, we all headed over to Jared and Kristen's house to have dinner together. But before dinner was to be served, Banner needed to go on her nightly walk. Here are some photos of us and the walk.

Funny Photos

by Genny
Now that Ben's back from his trip, we've got lots of photo talk going on in this house again, and fun photo experiments. The first set is from Wednesday, long shutter speed with multiple flashes... Wow, look how many of me we can make!








































































































































Then on Thursday we had friends over and continued with the slow shutter speeds. Bryan's very patient to listen to so much talk about cameras and photo business all the time. So above, Bryan, with a long shutter, taken by Jeff? Next Travis moved the camera at the same speed as Ben's hands to create these photos.



Travis wrote Laura a love note, and then Laura drew Travis a dog to walk. In case you're wondering, it's a lab. Then I drew Laura a giraffe and she hugged it, and I painted a cowboy costume on Jeff. Then it was Travis's turn and he made Jeff speed along on a motorcycle. To end the night, Laura made me into a diver with a fish. Ben was behind the camera for most of these light painting scenes. He sure is a talented photographer.

Le Weekend Avec Diane

by Genny


My friend Diane is here from France and we're showing her all the Colorado adventure living we can while she's here. Diane had never been rock climbing, so we decided to bring her to the indoor rock gym on Thursday night, just in time for her to get a feel for things before we took her outdoors onto some ice on Friday afternoon.

Diane is so brave. She's basically up for trying anything, and constantly wears a smile to do it. She gave ice climbing a great try, and then got up early the next morning to go out for a cross country ski in Rocky Mountain National Park with our friend Elisabeth. We had some beautiful scenery, interesting clouds, a few flurries, a couple of really fun skiing sections, and lots of falls and laughter.






By the time we headed over to Bear Lake the clouds had come in and there was barely a view, but we did see a small wedding ceremony taking place out on the ice. Then we walked on the railing back toward the car, and headed back to Boulder, with everyone but the driver napping a bit on the way home. Sunday we took a rest, and of course watched the Superbowl. Just a note to our out of town friends: You don't have to be from France to go on this special adventure tour.
COME VISIT!

A New Year

by Genny

In case you haven't heard, Ben's got a new blog on his new website. That's why there hasn't been anything new here in a while. Now I'm taking over, at least for today, to catch up on things. So far in 2010, I've been working on the Gear Guide at Backpacker and Ben has been working hard on the photography business... getting published in catalogs, going to trade shows, and making friends with professional athletes and marketing managers along the way.
In the midst of all this work, we've both still been finding time for K-Life, the youth group we love helping with. I'm a leader for middle school most of the time, so there's been a lot of hanging out with 6th-8th graders on weekends when Ben's away. Since Ben's a high school leader they let me join them on the high school snowmobiling trip which was great! We got to enjoy an awesome cabin over Martin Luther King Day weekend... snowmobiling, snowshoeing, playing

lots of games, putting together a glow-in-the-dark puzzle, singing and we even went to the hot springs. There's a climbing wall there, but none of us were too successful in climbing it. Luckily it was very fun to climb up a tiny bit and then drop down into the warm water.

Ben and I finally had some time at home together this weekend, so Friday we went ice climbing in the afternoon. This is the first time we've gone together using our new ice tools. (Those photos aren't downloaded yet, but stay tuned.) And then yesterday we did a little bit of walking up a mountainside with some friends. No summits, but it was great to be out there!


<<--Left: Kim tells Ben to watch out. He may be taller, but she's faster.

A Cold Day In Boulder...

...and in the outdoor media industry.



It was 11 degrees this morning, and the Flatirons were covered in snow and looking good. It my typical sloth like fashion, I gathered some camera gear, then went to Starbucks and sat there for a while sipping on my pumpkin spice latte and warming up, then headed to a spot with a good view to try and take a panoramic of it all. I've heard that other more successful photographers go take the picture first, then go warm up at Starbucks afterwards. I don't really know much about that, but it sounds like it's worth a try since by the time I got to my spot, the mountains were buried in clouds and the light was completely flat. I took the shots anyways. It looked much better about an hour earlier, but this isn't so bad either. I think there's a lesson here. Probably something about drinking your coffee faster.

When I got home, I uploaded the 12 images I took, and stitched them together in Photoshop to make the panorama. While I was at it, I dug through my hard drive to try and find some other images that felt like a cold day, and figured I would make a blog post out of it all. While I was working, I got an email from Genny entitled 'This is the industry in the toilet'. Within the email were two links to Rob Haggart's blog A Photo Editor, and Steve Casimiro's blog The Adventure Life, both talking about how the magazine National Geographic Adventure has officially closed down it's operation today. The economy and the changing media world got the better of this great magazine, and it goes to show that moving forward with the current industry situation, no one is untouchable.

Adventure was a great magazine. I loved reading it, and as an adventure photographer who is getting started, I was really excited with the prospect of working with them in the future. The staff there did a great job, and I've heard nothing but good about them from others I know that have done work with them. It is not only a huge bummer to see more evidence of the troubled state that the outdoor industry and media is in, but it's also a bummer to know I'll never have the pleasure of working with Adventure. I hope to someday cross paths with the NGA staff in whatever the future becomes for them and wish them the best as they move forwards. I also hope that even though the magazine is gone the word 'adventure' will continue to define their lives.

Joshua Tree Volume Deuce

So as promised, here is a second installment of images from my recent trip to J-tree. During the Redefining Balance Retreat, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by lots of talented and beautiful yogis. These are some of my favorite images from the actual retreat. The final installment of images, which will be from the dedicated photoshoot with Team Yogaslackers is being kept in a ziploc bag to stay fresh for the launch of my soon coming new website.