OH YA: Forgot Something

WOOOOHOOO!! It's that time of year again. Turkey season starts Friday May 1st. I'm sure I'll be going May 2nd. Time to switch the barrels on the ol' Remington from the deer slug barrel to my bird barrel, get 'er nice and clean, find and clean the ol' camo, and do the same with my turkey calls.

I can't freakin' wait. I love being out in the woods, and turkey hunting is tons of un.

Verbal Diarrhea

So it was quite a weekend. Quite warm. I had originally intended to help out at the winery all day Saturday and Sunday, but we made plans on Sunday, so I only ended up helping on Saturday. MAN, was it hot. It was only supposed to be 81 that day in Burdett, but it ended up being 90+. Lot of interesting people, mostly cool. Had a few really good conversations with people from behind the bar. There was a Cornell tour bus (they are the absolute fucking worst) we ended up turning away, just because they were being loud, and obnoxious, and were bitching. For a second there, I got a hard on, and my adrenaline started racing, because as I was standing behind my boss, prepared to back him up if things started getting rowdy, as he was turning them away, it actually looked like it was about to get physical. But I was disappointed again. They ended up leaving peacefully.

Sunday I got to wake up at 5:45 with Katie going downstairs with Hailey, as she had thrown up into the toilet, but in doing so, the strain made her shoot a diarrhea stream at the bathroom wall. GREAT! It was an awesome thing to wake up that early and start cleaning crap off the wall, when you still got crust in your eyes, and you don't even know who the fuck you are, or where the fuck you are. I guess her stomach bug came back because we thought she was all better and started feeding her normal food again..well I guess her stomach wasn't ready for it yet. So she was on bed rest all day, and we ended up having to cancel our dinner plans. GRRR...I coulda just worked, had I known this was how it was gonna end up. Oh well...it ended up with us having a lazy Sunday on the couch, and I can't complain about that.

Back to work tomorrow, and I'm already looking forward to the next weekend. Is that bad? LOL

New Equipment

For quite some time now I've been slowly realizing that I'm outgrowing my kit lens. I still love, and can't live without my 50mm f/1.8 prime lens, but the 15-55 f/3.5-5.6 kit lens that came with my Canon is getting more and more frustrating. I realized it the most too after I took a look at all the pictures I took yesterday of Hailey and my coworker's nephew Gabe, for "Take Your Child to Work Day", and most of them came back OOF (out of focus), or a little soft at least.

I have a couple of lenses and camera supplies that are on my wish list as well, but still a lack of money. C'MON PEOPLE! Buy my pictures!!! Help me raise money for new equipment LOL.

I've REALLY gotta get out more

I really have to go out and take more pictures. It's been hard the past couple of weeks, with the baby being sick and everything. I've been too tired to be motivated to do much of anything.

She's been slowly getting better though, this past weekend, so I'm hoping I can go out soon, and take some nice pictures. I haven't been able to just get lost in the woods and take pictures , in a long time. Soon, though hopefully.

This past weekend we went to the winery to visit our friends and my "other" boss Don. Some interesting conversations went on, about potential opportunities that might involve me becoming a brewmaster with a foot in winemaking sometime in the future. It's all too early to get into details, but the possibilities are exciting.

Soooo Full...

I'm so full, I fear I've gone retarded. I've been sitting here trying to figure out what to type for 5 min, and now my lunch is over. Dammit! Had to go get some coal for our coal stove and some formula for the baby, as well as a new fishing pole for Hailey, and stopped by Arby's on the way back. I think I may have to go home early due to "fat".

Bottle Shock: And on Wine in General...

So the wife and I pulled a movie marathon, all of Easter weekend, and one of the movies we happened to watch was "Bottle Shock". In essence, it was a movie based in the late 1970's when France was the mecca of the wine world, and California was just considered a collection of rednecks who happened to make crap wine. Well, (spoiler alert), in the end a blind taste test was done with a table of well respected people in the French wine world, and they chose a California Chardonnay as their #1 wine, much to the Frenchies' displeasure. The movie was great, but on the other side of the coin it showed a lot of wine snobbery that still exists today. Wine, and it's perception in the world is a sensitive spot for me. I loathe the wine snobs of the world. Those who think wine is a rich man's world, and harbor opinions spoon fed to them by critics, of what they should think is good, and what they should be drinking and approving of.

For anyone who has worked in this industry (I have put forth a full harvest season), we know that wine making is a fluff term granted to people by other people ignorant of the process. My boss and I would joke that all a winemaker is, is a glorified dishwasher. It's grunt work. It's filthy, it's messy, it's one of the most physically demanding things you could do. 90% of your day is spent washing one container or another, getting years old grape chunks on you, and in your mouth and various orifices. In the end the winemaker, stripped of such a title, and put forth in a room of wine lovers not knowing his profession, would be put down, and looked down upon by the people enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Yet this snobbery still exists, and in rampant proportions. People buy into the illusion and mystique of wine, because they want to. It makes them feel special, and knowledgeable. They drink up every word of the wine critics, not understanding that every person and every palette is different. No two people will experience the exact same wine in the exact same way. It is one of the few truly subjective things you can undertake in this world. So, I don't understand how people can damn a wine just because critic says it's not up to his standards. His crap wine could be someone else's lifelong favorite.

Wine is a beverage! Nothing more...nothing less. Sure it has complex traits that you can write and dream about for generations upon generations, but in the end it is just something you put in your mouth, enjoy, and swallow. Every wine has it's place, and every wine deserves its shot to grace your mouth. No matter if you think it's crap, someone out there slaved and toiled over each and every bottle of wine, and one should let their own senses experience and judge a wine...not trust in someone else's opinion. There are people who look down on boxed wine. My question is..why? I myself am not rich, and can't afford a 15.00 bottle every night with dinner. Sure, the quality is not the same as any well aged wine in a bottle, but for what it is, and it's price and value, you really can't beat it, if you're just talking about a simple wine to have with dinner every night. Box wine, just like bottled wine have different tiers of enjoyability. Just because it is in a box, does not mean it automatically sucks...taste and sample them just like any other wine. There's something to be said about a 3 liter box of wine for 25.00 that may last you a couple weeks, due to how its packaged, keeping it from turning as quick.

I love wine, and have moved my family across the country to make it my life and to pursue it as a living. I LOVE wine, but c'mon people, let's put it in perspective. I guess I just went on a rant, but the snobbery that I saw in Bottle Shocked, that still exists today in various levels and degrees really irritates me as a person of the industry. SO many great wines in this world are left unappreciated, and untasted, because some pompous asshole deemed it subpar, and so many people are willing to believe it without tasting it. And so many subpar wines experience a following due to the same reason. There are a lot of people who only drink CA wines, just because they read praises about it...well honestly a lot of wines coming from CA are massed produced, overly oaked messes, nowadays. But people still love it, because they believe thats how they SHOULD feel.

All I'm saying is, experience wine for yourselves...judge it only after you've breathed it in, looked at it in the light, and have put it to your lips and tongue. Every wine deserves a shot.

Twilight: I just don't get it

Honestly I don't get the big deal about this movie. I understand the books may be good to a lot of readers, but coming to this as someone who's never read the books, sort of forced to watch it with the wife after dealing with all the hype...I just don't get it.

I guess I should say, I understand WHY women love this movie and the books. It's in every way geared directly at them. At it's very root, it's a teenage love story. Edward is the embodiment of what the vampire image has become over the recent years: beautiful, graceful, and blessed with supernatural powers. There's none of the bad things about being a vampire in him. To the point that, walking around in daytime doesn't affect him, and the only thing he fears from direct sunlight is revealing the fact that when bathed in it, he glitters like he rolled around a diamond pile, and had enough glitter on his face to land a gig as the main attraction at a drag show. He also has a fascination with having women ride on his back as he climbs up trees like he's an extra on the set of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

My wife came in the other day, practically ready to flick her bean to Edward after having watched it with our landlord LOL. And even Edward as a man, I don't get it. This movie is supposedly supposed to be "sexy" and Edward comes off as "uber sexy" according to most women, but I don't see how so. He dresses in tight clothes, has a Morrissey haircut, is pale as shit, walks around depressed and emo looking, looks like he's going to cry everytime he speaks, and take away his vampire powers, he'd be the type of guy jocks would beat on daily. AND HE GLITTER GLOWS IN SUNLIGHT!! Don't forget that little piece of info. Looks wise? there are plenty of men in Hollywood that would be better looking than him. And if sexy is having your girl ride your back like a baby chimp for half the movie while you climb various trees like Tarzan, well, that's just rediculous.

Women are so full of crap. Take away his vampire powers, and the allure of living forever, and just take him as a man, and as much as he is the nice, romantic, doe eye inspiring person women take him to be...he'd also be the type of guy women would drop at a seconds notice, to have sex with the prick that treats them like crap and knows nothing of romance. SO, seeing as women are the majority of the fans of this story...women are so full of crap. LOL

Time to stock up

Fam is getting ready to go to the supermarket. Hailey is way too excited about going. I guess it's because she loves going to the "daycare" center in the store, and playing all the games. We do our shopping once every two weeks so as you can imagine, we leave the store with a VERY full cart. Been thinking for a while now to making it weekly, instead, but I'm not quite sure yet if that would work.

Good thing I didn't miss that moment.

I just got done processing the pictures I took from that foggy morning scene that I spoke about earlier, and I am so happy I didn't let that moment slip by, as I am really pleased with the outcome. I created a panorama with all the sequential pictures I took. I hope you like it as much as I do.

I'll get it next time...

That is something I always find myself telling myself, when I'm too lazy to take a picture at the moment. It's something that I'm always struggling with.

This morning while I was getting ready to leave the house I looked out into the backyard, and saw this amazing scene before me. There was lots of moisture from steady drizzle the past few days, so this morning there was a lot of fog. It wasn't just that thick fog that blankets everything either...it was that dramatic type of fog that you always see in the best pictures. The rolling fog that affects light in a way that only it can. So, as I said, I looked out my slider doors into the backyard, and witnessed this awesome scene of the fog rolling across the mountains in the back, and wrapping around these old tankers from a long abandoned railroad line, and I found myself saying aloud "Eh, I'll get it next time...". And I actually stopped and mentally reprimanded myself because there IS no next time, there never is.

In photography, and in any other art form actually, the moments you capture are one of a kind. This world is constantly changing, moving, evolving, devolving...So even if all factors come together again in the future, so be almost the same in your eyes as the original moment, it never is EXACTLY the same...something is always different. In my case, the fog will never be exactly as it was, the light will never be exactly as it was, and other factors within the scene may never be as it was. So I had to remind myself that as a photographer it was my obligation to capture these moments as I see them, to truly capture the feeling and the vision I had at that time. Not tomorrow, not next week, or when I so happen to notice something similar again...but, NOW.

It all ties in with what I was talking about earlier, how photography is more than just taking pictures for me, it's a tool to help myself become a better person as well, and this is one of those instances. Just like in this scenario, it is important for everyone to capture their figurative "scene" now, instead of pushing it back. Go after the things that make us happy now, not later, because later may never be. We owe it to ourselves to live out "carpe diem".