Cheridy and I just got back from a trip to Florida. We had some Delta Airlines travel vouchers (from when they lost our luggage for 5 days in Italy last year) that we had to use before they expired so we took a long weekend, flew down to Miami and then drove to the Keys. It was very relaxing and enjoyable with fantastic weather. However, I can say that the Florida Keys were definitely one of the most uninteresting places I’ve ever been. Usually when we go places to do some travel photography, there is an abundance of stuff to take pictures of, but we were really stretching on this trip. Maybe my imagination was just resting…I don’t know, but I can definitely say that we will not be going back there. However, having nothing to take photos of made for a very relaxing trip which was nice for a change!
The one thing we tried was Snuba diving and this was the biggest waste of money we’ve ever had. Basically it’s snorkelling except instead of a snorkel you have a 20′ oxygen line to breath through. This provides you the flexibility to dive without running out of air and without having to get licensed. The problem was that we couldn’t help but float…we had weight belts, but they weren’t heavy enough to help us get lower under the water. I struggled a few times to get under but once you get down you have to equilize your ears by holding your nose and blowing out…but…whenever I did that, I took in a breath of air first and the air in my lungs floated me to the top. It was very frustrating. It was windy that day and the water was very wavey and churned up the sand on the bottom so visibility was poor. We literally saw NOTHING and to top it off, Cheridy got a bit sea sick on the way back. When I was in Australia many years ago, I was able to go scuba diving in the great barrier reef and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I had heard such great things about diving in the keys that we figured we would give it a try but it was definitely a waste of time and money.
We did take a lot of pics in Miami on our last day. One memory that we’ll never forget was watching a guy troll south beach trying to pick up women. He was wearing a speedo and was constantly trying to stand and walk in flexing poses and just going from one group of women to the next. It was very entertaining. Needless to say, he left alone. The funniest part was that the same guy was on our flight home!

This is of the old train bridge that used to serve the keys. It’s obviously no longer operative.

I loved looking at all the high-rises in Miami. Everything was clean and new and well kept up.

Sunrise on South Beach

Tonight was the Detroit Auto Dealers Assocation Dinner. We were there to shoot some detail pictures of the event setup.
The rest of the images can be seen by clicking here.

The last two weeks we’ve been doing a lot of house hunting and today we put in an offer on a house and it was accepted!!
There will be more to follow over the next few weeks once we get pictures, etc.

UPDATE:
Here’s a link for the virtual tour:
http://www.arisingimages.com/miscellaneous/house.exe

This morning we got to do a fantastic shoot…it was a shoot of an engagement proposal. I met with Frank last week and he told me the whole plan and it sounded like a lot of fun. Everything went off without a hitch and it was a great morning other than the cold and wind!! Katie was shocked with joy when Frank went down on one knee with the ring. Getting to participate in stuff like this is what makes me love this job.
Click here to see all the pictures

Tonight we did some event shooting…we went down to Cobo Hall in Detroit and shot the NBC Charity Preview Party. We were there mostly to shoot some of the setup and details.
Here’s a link for all the pics:
http://www.arisingimages.com/event/20060113_channel4/index.html

Lynda was hilarious to work with! We had a really good time shooting with her. Hard to imaging that she’s a mother of 5. She said that she gets mistaken as the babysitter instead of the mom.
All the pics can be seen here.

This last week Cheridy and I have been house hunting. We’re trying to find a place that we can grow into as we have kids and we need something that can serve our family and our business which is very difficult. We’ve found so many great houses but there are some specific things we’re looking for. The internet is a great resource for finding info but yet for house hunting it’s still very inconvenient. One website has a TON of information about each house but they don’t provide an address or a map. Another site has the address but barely any information. So we have to work off of both those websites along with some software to map everything and an excel spreadsheet to keep track of what we saw and what we still want to see. It’s been exciting but yet…a pain at the same time!

I’ve spent the last couple of days doing some website upgrades…adding FAQ lists for the different type of photo shoots that we do in our never ending quest to provide as much info as possibe to our clients through the web.

To help dress up the website a little bit, I spent some time making some musical slideshows which help highlight some of our work. Here are links for just a few of them:

Fine Art
Wedding Slideshow
Portrait