To my eldest-younger sister (having two younger sisters makes labeling somewhat difficult), who is still under 30 but really pushing it . . . ;)

Hope you had a good one. :)

Labels: birthdays, linde

No particular post on this. I just liked this picture. I think it turned out well, with their names and the "together" at the bottom.

Labels: linde, photography

Photos from Linde and Justin's wedding are finally up. Enjoy.

The wedding itself went well. The rehearsal was, literally, 20 minutes long (we had no music, so there were many instances of "okay, at this point song 'X' will play for 3 minutes"). The rehearsal dinner (a term that has always confused me, since it seems to me that it should be the "after-rehearsal dinner," unless you're rehearsing to eat the wedding reception dinner) was very low key, punctuated only by Linde and Justin unwrapping their early wedding presents (boxer shorts and lingerie for the honeymoon).

Wedding day was very cold. The bride's family and her half of the party arrived early to start pictures (and were very patient while I retook a *lot* of photos). Due to some non-wedding pictures that were sprung on me (one of which included finding and arranging all 13 grandkids from my mother's side of the family), I was still doing photos when the guests started to arrive and missed most of the "getting the bride ready" candids that the photographer is supposed to catch. I suppose one advantage to having family do the photography is the option to "sneak in" non-wedding photos when the extended family all happens to be there.

The ceremony itself went off without a hitch (or with one hitch, I guess, although it was planned). It was the first time I'd seen my father in a tuxedo, which was interesting. I shot the entire ceremony itself without a flash using my fastest lens set to maximum ISO, so the pictures aren't blurry, but they're horribly grainy at full size. I think they're still decent for smaller prints, but I wouldn't be making 20x30 posters from them. All told, I took just shy of 400 photos at the church. The couple did in fact get married, and everyone thought it was a nice ceremony.

Between the church and the reception the bridesmaids "kidnapped" the groom; I was informed beforehand solely for the purpose of catching this shot as they exited the vehicle at the reception. Following the dinner was my slide show (I'll have a video version up eventually); it was well-received, especially my Photoshopped version of "American Gothic." I also decided to forgo the Sharpie revenge I had proposed as punishment for Haley's earlier coin assault on me, and instead added one extra photo to the slide show, a photo that earned me a laugh from 300 people and a yelled threat from Haley halfway across the auditorium (I later proposed that we were even, terms Haley initially rejected in favor of "it's so on now!", although she later relented, possibly after realizing how many other photos of her I have . . .).

The dance went well and Linde had a very good time. The only points of note were Haley's discovery that dancing with a wine glass in your hand can lead to fairly nasty cuts when someone crashes into you (necessitating assistance from her father and/or brothers to clean and rebandage the inch-long gash several times a day for the next four days) and the rather unfortunate arrival of one far-from-sober aunt who managed to fire off expletives at a variety of family members for only a few minutes before my brother and one of my uncles more or less carried her out of the auditorium and escorted her home.

The bride and groom braved icy roads on Christmas Day in return for cheap airfare to Las Vegas for the honeymoon (where "The Nutcracker" was on the agenda, although I haven't heard from them since I returned to Omaha, so I no information on how the honeymoon went).

All in all the wedding went surprisingly smoothly, and everyone enjoyed it. Congratulations, Linde and Justin. :)

Labels: family, holiday, linde, photography, western nebraska

For those I forgot to tell, I'm on vacation. Or a vacation of sorts, anyway, involving a moderate amount of stress and a considerable amount of work. To wit, my sister is embracing the grand concept of matrimony on Saturday, and, in addition to various menial tasks (decorating, moving heavy boxes from point A to point B, etc.), I have been tasked, as the photography/technology proponent of the family, as the photographer and the slide show creator. As I have never photographed a wedding before, I think a certain degree of trepidation is warranted, although the test shots today were decent (not stunning or fantastic, but passable). I have decided to shoot the wedding in RAW format (my first exposure to it), which supposedly has the advantage of being far more malleable in the processing stage but has the drawbacks of taking up roughly 3 times as much space (my 4gb card will now hold only 350 pictures instead of 1,100) and not being friendly on any computer without a RAW converter (including my parents'). Wish me luck.

The proceedings to this point have been remarkably light, with no major catastrophes and no frayed nerves. The rehearsal was very short, the rehearsal dinner was light-hearted and the preparations have been on schedule. An example of the light-heartedness is the sequence of acronyms that my father and siblings have decided, by committee, to apply to our immediate family:

My sister: "the B" (the bride)
My father: "the FOB" (father of the bride)
My mother: "the MOB" (mother of the bride)
Me: "the BOOB" (the brother, older, of the bride) (thanks guys)
My brother: "the BYOB" (the brother, younger, of the bride)
My other sister: "the SOB" (sister of the bride)
My sister-in-law: "the SLOB" (the sister, in law, of the bride)

In a less-creative (and far more cruel) vein, I was awakened this morning not by gunfire (as was visited upon me during my brother's wedding), but by Haley hitting me in the side of the head with a quarter. :P I've already warned her that she goes to bed before I do, and I have a Sharpie. My mother has qualified that there is to be no marking before the wedding photos (technically she said "no marking," but I'm pretty sure that had an unspoken footnote). Sunday, though, is a whole new story . . .

Labels: family, linde, western nebraska

I wasn't actually in the room during the bouquet toss, and thus I was accepting events as relayed to me. Further information supplied by Linde suggests that "fair and square," as I claimed before, involved Linde stepping 15 feet away from the group at the last moment and waiting for Shandra to throw the bouquet in her direction alone . . .

Despite such dastardly tricks, it apparently worked anyway. I talked to Linde today to confirm that her favorite birthday present was, by far, the engagement ring she received from her boyfriend. Congratulations. :)

Labels: congratulations, linde

To Linde, my dearest older-younger sister, who turns 28 today. The number 28 turns out to be happy, so hopefully her birthday will be happy, too. (It's also a perfect number, so here's hoping it's a perfect birthday, as well.) :)

Labels: birthdays, linde

Congratulations to Linde for accepting a teaching position today (7th-9th Math). :) Best wishes in a new field.

Labels: family, linde

Linde is beat up and understandably upset, but doing well. I'm sure she'd appreciate hearing from people.

Graphic photos warning.

Photos taken right after she was discharged (showing the results of the airbags).

Labels: family, linde

The recent 60- and 70-degree weather in Omaha has apparently left me oblivious to the fact that my place of origin has been experiencing ice, snow and tornadoes for the last few weeks. I learned of it today when Linde e-mailed me to say she'd slid off the road into a guard rail and had just been discharged from the emergency room. I got her voicemail when I called, but I called around and finally found my father, who was preparing to run a spare vehicle up to her. He confirmed she's fine; she has some burns on her face and stomach from the airbags and a cut from the seatbelt and an assortment of bruises, but nothing more serious than that. The vehicle lost its windshield and deployed both airbags, but apparently its repairable. She's already out and back to work, shook up but okay (which is the only really important factor).

My dad said he passed two multiple car (or in this case semi-truck) pileups on his way home from Wyoming yesterday, one of which left them stranded on the Interstate for about 2 hours. And apparently they had a half-mile wide tornado a few days ago. Wow.

Labels: family, linde