The BLB Family Continues to Grow

News from remote Alaska...The Mad Fischicist and Belle Etoile welcome their second child, a beautiful daughter Jolie. Mom and baby are doing great. Head over to Belle Etoile's blog for the specs and pictures.

Portrait Philosophy

I'm a big believer that a portrait photo should capture something significant about its subject. One of the rules that a photography teacher of mine had for portraits was that no matter what the subject's hands needed to be in the photo. I've never been a concrete rule type of guy when it comes to photography, but his words rattle through my head whenever I shoot a portrait.

While this portrait of The Mad Fishicist doesn't prominently show his face, it does portray his fishing face. Like an athlete has a game face, Bolokai has a fishing face.

This shot of Noveau Riche (sic) was, as a lot of my pics from yesterday were, from 30-40 yards away through a zoom (so smiles aren't staged, but merely side effects of a great morning of fishing). I'm not particularly happy with the composition on this photo because of the subject being centered. Cropping could fix that faux pas, but the reason I like this photo so much is because of the blur of the ferns as a backdrop. The colors in Alaska are vibrant this time of year. It's not very often that I get my picture taken with a fish. Generally I'm the one behind the lens. Yesterday Noveau Riche made an extra effort to grab my camera out of my pack, switch out the lens, and shoot a proud me and a proud Rainbow. Incidentally, it wasn't raining as you might deduct based on The Mad Fishicist and Riche wearing raincoats...the hoods work with the polarized glasses in tandem to help see the fish.

Some of My Favorite People

I've got some great friends! Over the last couple of days I've gotten a chance to spend a little time with a few of my favorite people and it's given me a good boost to my morale.
I got to spend a few hours today with The Mad Fishicist. He was laid over in Anchorage on his way back from a mad fishing experiment in the desert of California and we had lunch and some great conversation. We even made an impromptu wake-up call for Riche.
I got to spend a few hours Saturday night...really Sunday morning living a bit of a ReckenRoll lifestyle. I got to learn a little more about her outside of the blogging world; a little more about her job; and I learned that Bernie's isn't the mellow late night venue it was a few years ago.
Good times.