'Tis the Season

Every year my beloved Valley plays host to the annual Ogden Marathon. Every year the time is heralded by the putting up of enormous lines of port-a-potties. Every year it makes me laugh, so of course one of my My World shots had to celebrate this grand event. Whenever I look at this I sing (to the tune of Never Ending Story), "Endless port-a-potties...la la la, la la la, la la la...".
...You need to hear it in person.

I decided to run the half this year with my Dad, brother Jake, and sister-in-law Becca. I also had to take a camera with me (my phone) to take pictures because hey, I'm me. Here we are all anxiously awaiting the start. Stretchin' and all that good stuff. It was very festive. Band playing, people cheering, cow bells ringing (why cowbells??). Sidenote: even with the plethora of port-a-facilities, the lines were still huge. Funny.

And here we go. Took minutes just to actually get to the start line.

Three years ago I started running so that I could run down Ogden Canyon (registered historic scenic byway) in the sparkly morning light. Training went well so I ran the full, unfortunately I was too late for the morning light and it was very, very sad. Last year I didn't register in time. Pointer to those who may EVER want to run this race: It sells out in about, oh, a DAY! So this year I registered early, ran the half, and enjoyed every minute of the magical, glorious Valley morning. It was breathtaking. There's the story as to why the pic below was this day's My World shot.


Yes, I was a dork and stopped right before the finish line for another shot. Lol, it was fun. :)

Team Wood. Dad, me, Becca, and Jake. Then it was off to Jeremiah's for breakfast with all the fam' that were kind enough to come cheer us on. Mmmmm, cinnerscone dippers...

Final race time for me: two hours, two minutes, fifty-four seconds. I'm disappointed because I wanted to run it in under two hours...Todd says that people who want to make a certain time shouldn't be stopping multiple times during said race to take photographs...he may have a point.

Salt Lake City Temple (Utah Fine Art Photography)

Every once in awhile I have an image that I work on, obsess about, and fret over...for months.
One of my photography goals for this year was to photograph a different LDS temple every month. For March I decided to photograph the Salt Lake temple mainly because I happened to be scouting locations for an upcoming shoot in SLC and figured I would do the "two birds with one stone" thing. Also, gas is expensive. So March 3, 2011 found me with camera in hand staring up at the temple, trying to think of a way to present it in a different and unique way. That. Is. A. Hard. Thing. To. Do. Here is what I came up with.

The photograph above is the reflection of the temple in the reflecting pool. I'm a sucker for reflections, especially at night.

Below is the picture that I've been working on for almost three months. I decided to turn it into a painting. First I took clouds from another picture of well, clouds, and layered them into the sky so that I would have texture to work with and not just a boring mess of blue. I upped the saturation for fun and took it into a program called painter where I applied all the brush strokes by hand with my fantastic Wacom tablet and pen (which I could NOT survive without). Yes, it takes forever but thanks to Hulu I am well entertained and only have to worry about eyestrain and carpal tunnel. I finished and posted it around April 14th but was not happy with it. It kept nagging at me and I would open it up, stare at it, get disgusted and frustrated and close it down.


The sky is just plain boring. I've always loved van Gogh's Starry Night so I decided to try to emulate it a bit ... isn't it so moving?

It took me forever to get up the nerve. Finally I was with my husband on a business trip and I was at the office where he was working. I was trying to watch webinars on Studio Management Software and was so bored I was actually falling asleep so I decided to bite the bullet and try to fix the sky. This is what I came up with and I like it a lot better.

After I came home from my trip I pulled this picture out again and tried painting in stars and the amazing swirls of Starry Night but it just made a mess, so I've decided that I AM NOW DONE with this month and need to get to work pretty darn quick because I am so terribly far behind that it isn't even funny. Ah well, some thing you just shouldn't rush!