Missing Link

Autumn is one of my favorite times of year.   The leaves start changing colors, providing a wonderful palate of color, and there’s a sense of peace and calm as winter approaches.  It also provides a few remaining evenings and weekends outside – capturing the inherent seasonal beauty with my camera – and spending much appreciated quality time with Ann.

Don’t get me wrong – I love spring and summer too.   I’m not a HUGE fan of winter, but that’s mostly because I don’t really appreciate driving in snow and ice.  Or being cold.   Autumn is just special for some reason.   (continue reading…)

I love weekends!  They’re wonderful, fun, relaxing and really offer a break from the big ball of stress called work.  While I love lazy weekends around the house doing nothing, there is certainly something to be said for going out and spending time with others, whether it be friends or family – getting out and hanging out can be just as, if not more, rewarding than staying in and relaxing.

This Saturday Ann and I spent the majority of the day being completely and utterly lazy.  We watched some TV (finishing off Leverage season 1) and lounged around the house.  Late saturday afternoon, however, we got cleaned up and went down to our friends house in Greenwood.  These same friends were the awesome photographers who shot our wedding.

We had a wonderful time hanging out with friends  - they are currently on a very short list of “married friends” – grilling ribs, drinking beer, and enjoying a gorgeous saturday evening.

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Most days I come home from work, cook/eat dinner and then retire to my office to play games, read or surf the internet while Ann retreats into her office to study for school.   Sometimes she comes out of her office and pokes and prods me with her new medical instruments – which she’s getting much better at using – to practice her new skills.  While I generally moan and groan about this, in reality I don’t mind in the slightest.

Some nights, though,  we eschew the normal routine and do something a little different – and tonight was one of those nights.  While trying to decide what to make for dinner (rifling through our pantry trying to figure out what we even HAD to make), Ann made an offhanded comment about our neighbors bbq-ing. That in turn made me want to grill,  so we decided to go to the store and get some hamburgers to grill (and pick up a few other things we needed anyway).  So – off to the store we went.

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Back in high school I hated having my picture taken. In fact – most of the way through college I felt the same way. I’m not sure what my reasoning was for not wanting photographic record of my existence, but I do remember a turning point in college where I realized that I’d had some great times….. and no photo’s of them to remember them by.

After college, while I was working on building up Proxito, I decided to take the plunge and get a digital camera.  Being new to photography, and much closer to being broke than I’d like to ever admit ( I co-founded a startup – I did NOT have money at this point in my life), I bought a fairly cheap point and shoot from Sony. It got the job done, and in the process awoke something in me that I didn’t know was there before, my inner-photographer.

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Once again I’ve gone off for a somewhat lengthy period of time without providing any content for those who check here every so often. My apologies, but I promise I have a very good reason for my lengthy delay, and it mostly has nothing to do with laziness.

On May 30th, a few short weeks ago, I got married to a wonderful, amazing, beautiful woman – Ann. The wedding ceremony was beautiful, and the reception was everything I hoped it could/would be. The ceremony was at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in downtown Indianapolis, and was followed by a reception in the back yard at my parents house. The weather forecast called for rain most of the day, and that morning I prayed for the weather to hold out until AFTER the reception. I believe my exact words were something along the lines of “just please let the rain hold off until after the reception, then you can unleash whatever hell you want to”. Interestingly enough, about 5 minutes after the reception ended the severe weather sirens went off and we spotted a funnel cloud with a tornado starting to come down. It was, thankfully, moving away from us.

Ann and I followed our wedding with a week in Florida, which provided a nice and relaxing start to our marriage. You just can’t beat floating around in a pool, relaxing on the beach, and getting splashed by a 12,000 pound killer whale. We also saw dolphins, both in captivity and in the wild (feeding them in captivity, and having one swim up and past us slowly in the wild, we believe to say hello). We spent several evenings in a pool-side spa drinking wine and watching the sunset. We ate some really great food (including an absolutely amazing peanut butter chocolate truffle pie) and generally had the time of our lives.

Then we came home and opened wedding presents. It was like Christmas. We got a lot of great and amazing stuff. We also had a huge volume of trash from boxes, wrapping paper, etc. I think the trash collectors hate coming to our house now. Ann says he looked especially pissed off this week.

Things are starting to settle down, now, and Ann and I are relaxing into our lives together. I couldn’t be happier than I am now, waking up next to the love of my life every single day.   

Now, you’re probably thinking “so, if you got married on the 30th, and only took a week for the honeymoon, why have you not written anything about it until now?!”

The answer is fairly simple – it’s a matter of time. I’m back to work full time doing information security work for an amazing one to one marketing company. On top of that I’m helping some friends at the Open InfoSec Foundation by performing some contract work at night and in free time.

This coming Saturday I’m getting my feet wet with Motor Sports photography, as I’ve landed some credentials to shoot at the Mid-Ohio grand-am race. We’re leaving at 3am to make it to the track in time to get setup and start shooting when the drivers and cars come out, and the actual race is at 5pm, meaning it’s going to be a VERY long day. It should be fun, though, and having access is always nice.