Jenny's Conquest of Asia

Today, Jenny started off on something pretty amazing. For the next 22 days, she'll be jetting around southeast Asia and Australia — something I'd pretty much give the entire left side of my body to do. (And that's saying a lot, since I'm freakin' left handed!)



Starting in Singapore, and trekking around Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok, she's basically going to have the time of her life, and what's really killer is that she's basically going to do it on her own. I mean, there's other people WITH her (there's an elaborate Buddy System in place) but nobody she knows. No friends, no family... and no me.

And while I'm already having wife withdrawals (we don't spend much time away from each other), I absolutely, totally, completely could not be any more proud of her for doing this — or more excited for her to have the experience.

Jenny, even though you're currently either taxiing down a runway in New York or floating somewhere over the Atlantic on freakin' Singapore Airlines (free booze!), and I'm not entirely sure of how to run this place without you, I'm so happy that you have this opportunity. I really hope you get to make the most of it, that you make some great new friends, and have the kind of experience most people only talk about. I ( totally freakin') love you.

-JFace


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Arthur Hatton - Live in Lexington, KY

Last week, my good buddy Arthur — whose rad wedding I shot up last March — came out of self-imposed exile and played as the opening act at Lance Whalen's CD release party in Lexington.

And, being the rad guy I am, went to see the show and take some photos. And now I'll share them with you.



















I started messing around with the multiple exposure settings on my camera, and caught a few cool images along the way.






















For those who understand these sorta things, these shots were all taken at f/2 or f/2.8, between 1/60 and 1/150th, at 3200 ISO, and hand-held. I see a little grain creeping in.





(Except this one, shot at f/22 for 5 seconds.)











It really was a great show, and great to see Arthur shake off the dust and have an excellent performance. Lance's new CD has a lot of great tunes on it, too — you can find him on MySpace (if anyone actually still uses MySpace) or on his website, which is linked above.



Full exposure. On Twitter, @jrvanandel.

Madman in the Dark

Last night as Photoshop was busy batch processing a few thousand files (and therefore controlling my computer for about an hour or so) I went outside to play around with some lights and my new cable release. I'm – someday – hoping to incorporate a little bit of this into the wedding and portrait side of things, but for now it's just a side project until I actually figure out what I'm doing.

Enjoy the weirdness! (And click for larger images!)




















Full exposure. On Twitter, @jrvanandel.

A Little Chicago Love

Last weekend Jenny and I headed up to Chicago with Emily+Brad for a few days away. We had been planning the trip for a while when we finally figured out that it was the weekend of the St. Patrick's Day parade and the day that they turned the river green.

We got excited. Here's the fun:



Emily's drinking socks.

Brad, snapping some pics on the empty El train

She doesn't seem thrilled about this.

My super-hot wife.

The super-lame river being dyed. Seriously - a speedboat with some oil behind it. It was over and done in ten seconds. (That's what she said.)

This dude was awesome; he ran around the block a few times and creeped people out. Most people didn't even notice he was there. Except for this chick.

We were fascinated with the LepriCANs outside Harry Caray's.

Heading back down to the train.

Me, being TOTALLY not creepy.

Gotta say: I'm really happy with this image (obviously). I couldn't decide how I wanted to edit it in post so I just ran it a bunch of different ways. Click on the image to see them in full-er size.

Los Tres Amigos

Baby, it's COLD outside!

33˚ wind chill, and I'm meeting up with Tim+Ashley at Monument Circle in just a couple hours. I hope they're going to be okay with me whining about the cold all afternoon.

It's the semi-official kickoff for the 2009 wedding season (Tim+Ashley are my first 09 clients!) and I couldn't be more excited. 2008 ROCKED, and even though I don't think I'll ever top the people I met along the way in 08, I'm SO pumped about the weddings we have lined up so far!

And because no photoblog is right without an actual photo... here are two for your random enjoyment:

This one is me with my beautiful wife Jenny (hi, Jenny!), who keeps my brain together through everything. This was taken on our honeymoon, back when we were tan and I was about a dozen pounds lighter – I've gotta say, too, our wedding and honeymoon were probably the greatest time in my entire life. (Just wait for the one-year blog.)



And this one (MUCH less exciting) is the new photo for my JVP Facebook Page.