This is my brother Mark. I had thought about making him wear “nice” clothes (i.e a white shirt and dark jeans) but instead decided to shoot him in his motocross gear. It’s him. A clean white shirt is not. =P I lured him into letting me practice on him with the promise of action shots later.

He gets so much air. It shocks me how high he can get on that thing. =)

Hope you had a great weekend!

It’s almost mine, a….

Canon Rebel Xsi!

If you could hear smiles mine would be screaming.

Isn’t it beautiful??!?!

I’m loading my Shopping Cart on Amazon full of lens filters, hoods, memory cards, rechargeable batteries and lens covers.

*Happy Contented Sighs*

This week for my portrait class we were required to photograph a portrait using window light.  My friend Bridgette modeled for me and here are the best images from the shoot!

Click here to view the slideshow!

I had a fun shoot this weekend for my school’s newspaper, The Muleskinner.  The music department hosted an alumni event on campus featuring the babershop quartet, Special Touch and a big band dance.  Here’s some photos from  the night!  Click here to see how it appears in the paper.

Swing!

Saxophone Player

Special Touch

I attended UCM’s first football game of the year today against Southwest Baptist University.  We won!  I checked out the Get the Red Out street fair before the game, and took a few photos!

Hey, everyone!  I’m back at UCM once again for my junior year!

This year has started off great! It’s a new year with a new room, new classes, and best of all NEW PHOTOS to take!  I’ve got a full load this semester with portrait, black and white film, and digital imaging classes in my photography major, plus a couple of business classes.  I’m also the new Webmaster officer for UCM Photo Society, so I get to update the blog and Facebook page for our organization, plus a ton of other random duties throughout the year.

It is also another year of shooting for our school’s newpaper, The Muleskinner!  I had my first assignment this week, photographing the new Todd Dining Hall on campus.  Here’s the photo that appeared in this week’s paper:

Amy Ryekhof (Left) Photography major, and Sam Schreiner, nursing major eat lunch at the new Todd Dining Hall Tuesday afternooon.

My mom works as a teacher at Daniel Boone Elementary, and also works as the webmaster for the school’s website.  I helped her photograph some parts of the school, and now they are up on the internet!  They are all up in the top right-hand corner, they do look a little distorted on the website, however.  Click the link below to see!

http://www.warrencor3.org/vnews/display.v/SEC/Daniel%20Boone%20Elementary

My Dad shares an airplane with a bunch of other people, and we took it flying last week!  It is always really fun, and I got some great aerial shots out of it.

The Missouri River

The EOS Kiss X2 (called EOS Rebel XSi in North America and EOS 450D elsewhere is a 12.2-megapixel digital single-lens reflex camera that is part of the Canon EOS line of cameras. It is the successor to the EOS 400D/Digital Rebel XTi.

It was announced January 23, 2008 and released in March 2008 and April 2008 in North America. It was succeeded by the Canon EOS 500D (Rebel T1i in North America) which was announced on March 25, 2009. Like its predecessors, it takes EF and EF-S lenses.

Type	Digital single-lens reflex camera
Sensor	CMOS APS-C 22.2 × 14.8 mm (1.6× conversion factor)
Maximum resolution	12.2 effective megapixels, 4,272 × 2,848
Lens type	Canon EF lens mount, Canon EF-S lens mount
Shutter	focal-plane , vertical travel, mechanical
Shutter speedrange	1/4000 to 30 sec, 1/200 s X-sync
Exposure metering	Full aperture TTL, 35-zone SPC
Exposure modes	Automatic shiftable program, shutter-priority, aperture-priority, auto depth-of-field, full auto, programmed modes, manual, E-TTL II autoflash program AE
Metering modes	Spot, evaluative, partial (approx. 9% at center of viewfinder), center-weighted average
Focusareas	9 AF points
Focusmodes	One-shot, predictive AI servo, automatic switching autofocus; manual focus
Continuous shooting	3.5 frame/s for 53 JPEG frames or 6 RAW frames
Viewfinder	Eye-level pentamirror SLR, 95% coverage, 0.87× magnification
ASA/ISO range	ISO 100 to 1600
Flash	E-TTL II automatic built-in pop-up, 13 m ISO 100 guide number, 27 mm (equivalent in 135 format) lens focal length coverage; compatible with Canon EX Series Speedlite external hotshoe-mount flashes
Custom WB	Auto, daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten light, white fluorescent light, flash, manual, user-set
WB bracketing	±3 stops in 1-stop increments;
Rear LCD monitor	3.0 in (76 mm) color TFT LCD, 230,000 pixels
Storage	Secure Digital card Secure Digital High Capacity
Battery	LP-E5 battery pack
Weight	475 g (body only), 128.8 × 97.5 × 61.9 mm (W × H × D)
Made In	Japan

Rating (out of 10)
Build quality 8.0//Ergonomics & handling 8.0//Features 8.5//Image quality 9.0//Performance (speed) 8.5//Value 8.5

Having fun on the drive home… at first. Then I got cranky. Gotta love PMS!

So today is my 30th birthday.  I think all through your latter 20’s you sort of dread it–some openly and some will brush it off but go home and bite their nails.  I won’t lie.  I am not like super happy at getting older.  I don’t like plucking those pesky white hairs from my dark blond locks.   But such is life.  One will never be happy if all you dream of are things you cannot have–like your youth back.

So my goal is to post an image a day, to memorialize my first year of my 30’s.  Because, aside from the number associated with this bday (not that I feel old!!) I have come a looooong way since turning 20.  I think it would be fun to see what each day brings.  So anyway, if you are reading this, check back tomorrow.  And give me shit if I don’t post and pray for me that my photog skills become better over the coming year!

today’s photography challenge was to take a picture of your “subject” with no natural lighting and no strobe or professional lighting.  so here is pickles, sacked out on a chicken toy about 10 feet from a 60 watt bulb.

she looks tired….but really….this is a look of quiet resentment for not playing fetch with her mini tennis ball any longer.  what i like about this picture…you can see how dirty she is!  weekly baths aren’t cutting it.  she’s like pig pen from the charlie brown show!

sorry pickles!

(pickles is sporting a chicken toy, viewed at iso 1600, f4.0, w/ a 1/8 exp.  pretty pickles!)

i met buster on saturday and he was sweet enough to let me snap hundreds of shots of his beautiful and squishy muzzle.

at first he was all, “what ever. cuddle me.  love me.”  but at one point he started looking at me like, “what’s all the fuss about?”

why all the cuddling?  why all the “here buster do this, here buster stand by me.”

but he rolled with it…and you know what…he knew he was loved.

I’ve started the long long long long walk down my career path, and I’m psyched.

HOWEVER, I need to start investing in some tools to aid me on this long walk. Like a “Rascal,” metaphorically speaking of course.

Tools I Already Have:

-Final Cut — Very useful, very helpful… excellent

-MacBook —  The older generation and already very VERY full (I can’t even load any new software on it) But I love it none the less

-Canon Rebel XSi — Fabulous.

-Skill — Well, duh.

Tools I’m trying to invest in:

- New iMac — with the hard drive and processor tweaks I’m looking for, $1,307.00

-Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium — combined with an Educational Discount and the new iMac, $349.95

Roughly Totaling $1657.00 Not too bad considering everything I’d be getting.

Here’s the problem though… I’m a starving College Student. I’ve got college loans up the wazoo, (haha, look that up in your dictionary).

AND, that’s just for starters…. but I am a starter.. so that’s okay for now.

I need some ideas! Input! Whatever you’ve got!

HELP!