Craig's Blog

Our nephew Jason and his girlfriend Amanda stayed with us during their time in town and we had a lot of fun with them. They wanted to check out one of the local casinos and I brought them to the Wild Horse Pass casino which is not too far from our house. We started playing some games and I didn’t last long at the blackjack table. Jason spotted a group of machines that he wanted to try but all the seats are full, someone stands up and just as Jason grabs the chair someone at the machine next to this chair slides over right in front of him and takes the chair. Jason decides to take the machine that was just vacated and a few pulls later wins a jackpot of $1,074!! Amanda and I are watching all of this happen and it was spectacular, the guy that left the machine didn’t have much to say. They paid Jason out right at the slot machine and we left the casino to head to Juan Jamie’s to celebrate. Jason said he was paying for the drinks and the name “Papa Georgio” was used to refer to him since we were hanging out with the high roller who was going to take care of us. When we got home Jason started messing around with the money and I had to grab my camera and flash to see what I could get. These three shots are my favorites by far:

This next picture I really like with the expression and money falling around him.

Finally, this post would not be complete without this picture as a tribute to Papa Georgio. I didn’t have anything to do with this pose, Jason and Amanda did this on their own. As soon as I snapped this photo and looked at the preview in the LCD I had to see what it looked like on the computer. Every time I look at this picture I cry from laughing so hard. I stylized it a bit to look more like a painting, perhaps to hang on Papa Georgio’s wall?

It has been a long time since I have updated my blog – early September to be exact. School this semester has by far been the most challenging period since the start of the program. My photography has definitely fallen out of the picture (no pun intended) but I had a chance to shoot with lot of family in town for my cousin Mike’s wedding to his lovely bride Amanda on October 18, 2008. My first set of photographs is from a family dinner at my sisters house in Phoenix I don’t have many pictures of my mom LaRita, here she is in the kitchen taken with my on camera flash:

I tried using a plugin to PhotoShop that I have called MaskPro from OnOne Software that allows for quick masks of elements within a picture. Its supposed to work great for tough things like hair so I gave it a shot to see if I could remove LaRita from the background and this was the result. I tried to put some backgrounds behind her but they just didn’t look right. I consulted with my friend Mark on suggestions and the end result is that this picture is not really suited for what I wanted to do. Even though I gave up on the background I felt compelled to share the result anyway – pretty amazing what it was able to do:

After dinner our niece Courtney shared with us some of her amazing drawings, she is becoming quite the artist. Unfortunately she was not cooperating on the picture front so I had to turn to her sister Ashley. Ashley played a couple songs with her flute and this is my favorite from the set:

I met some of the family later that week at the Farm near South Mountain in Phoenix. The farm is an extremely popular place for photographers with a lot of open grassy areas, trees and a lot of other cool stuff to shoot. After a great breakfast we walked around a bit and ended up with this shot using my 85mm f1.2 lens wide open at f1.2 – I was surprised to see the result and discover that a fly ended up on the flower right at the moment I released the shutter.

This is my uncle Mike – a proud alum of Arizona State university who we tailgate with before each Arizona State Football game. Meeting my uncle Mike and the rest of the family before the games is always fun, unfortunately the SunDevils didn’t have a great season this year and we lost to our in state rival the University Of Arizona this past weekend. This week I have received a non stop reminder from UofA fans that we lost, I can’t wait until next year when we play again.

I also had the opportunity to take some pictures of my aunt Maribeth and this is by far my favorite from those shots. This was also taken with my 85mm.

They also had some live music at the Farm at the cafe right next to the entrance to the area. I asked if I could take a few pictures and he graciously agreed.

I have a few more photographs to share and I will post them by the end of this weekend. Our last day of classes for the year is December 20th and I will have at least another post this month to hit my goal of new photographs here every two weeks. I hope you enjoyed these!