Happy Thanksgiving

I'm fat.

Thanksgiving is always a great time. I have the best family anyone could ask for. But our Turkey Day is always spent feeding our faces and watching football (and napping during). Well this day was no different.
Except this year the Oklahoma City Turkey Trot was added to the mix. A nice little 8k run with thousands of other families hoping to make themselves feel a little bit better about the meat, dressing, and pumpkin pie soon to be consumed throughout the day.
I decided the run was not for me and instead decided to watch, with coffee in hand, as my sister in law, brother in law, sister, and nephew got after it on the trail.

I hope all had a stellar day with family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving!


Me and Mom at the finish line




My two beautiful nieces, Corey and Karli


My niece Karli in a sprint for the finish line


Chas and Charlie celebrating the finish


The Runners

One for Two

50% is pretty good when you are batting in baseball but not so hot in grade school.

I was unable to knock off a deer this past weekend, nor was I even able to see one for that matter. I think I might have been too busy text messaging my brother Jon to see if he had seen anything. Regardless, it was a great time of family fellowship. The weather was cold, windy and flurried the entire time. Perfect. Jon got a fat 8-pointer and my dad snagged a trim and fit 6 pointer that actually looked like the better eating. So I'm putting in on the processing costs so I'll have some meat for the year.

Saturday night Nicki and I took off for Tulsa. I was wasted tired so we decided to stop at the McDonalds over the Will Rogers Turnpike to crash in the car for the evening. Up early Sunday morning to finish the trip into T-Town where we met up with some great friends, one of whom was running in the marathon as well. The good news is I killed the marathon in 3:49:42. I had purposefully not ran in a month for a little experiment to see if I could even finish. I know, very foolish. But it worked and I live to tell another story.

This really ended up being more of a trip report, so I'll go ahead and post pics.... Thanks to Nicki for snapping a good deal of these shots.


The Farm


Grandpa and I


In my stand




Dad with the kill


Trusty farm truck transportation

Tulsa Marathon

Kill things, then run.

I leave this afternoon for a long weekend trip up to Missouri. Every year in November the "fellas" in the family convene at the 500 acre Chasteen farm in southwest Missouri, just east of Springfield. Gramp's place is beautiful rolling hills with thick wooded countryside; and filled with DEER. It's a blasty blast of a time with Grandpa, Dad, Uncle Bobby and my brother. Early morning coffee, brisk country air, and the thrill of the hunt. The problem is, I can't shoot to save my life. My four shots unloaded last year yielded zero deer carcasses. I'd say my chances for 2008 aren't much better.


The Tulsa Marathon happens on Sunday at 8 am sharp. Following the deer massacre (lighten up, they are overpopulated anyway), I'll be jetting to Tulsa on Saturday evening in hopes of finding a spot close to the starting line to squat for the evening. I haven't ran even one mile in approximately a month so I'm wondering what my chances are of finishing???

Wish me luck.

I hate Lucas Marshall

It's a play on words. You know the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall? It had the advertisements "www.ihatesarahmarshall.com"? Forget it.

Ok, I don't hate Lucas. I actually consider him a great friend. But I do hold insecurities and self doubt in my relationship with him. You see, I also consider him a dynamite photographer and artist. Photographers are constantly measuring themselves and their work to others. We scour the internet viewing websites of "competitors" with awe, envy and blatant jealousy! I do. Ask anyone who considers themselves a photographer and they'll vehemently deny it, in essence making it very true. Just trust me on this.

So with the weirdest introduction ever, I present to you the genius work of my friend Lucas Marshall. See much, much more of him at www.lucasmarshall.com.

Epic at Thunder/Celtics Game!

Last night I was the fortunate recipient of an invite to dine in a suite at the Oklahoma City Thunder/Boston Celtics game. Luckily I live about 2 blocks from the Ford Center so Nicki and I walked over through the post-storm wet streets of downtown. If you read my last post you know that I have an addictive personality and you also know that I'm stuck on tilt-shift photography. In the spirit of both, I decided to sneak my D300 and Fisheye lens into the game to try and get some shots of the court......to tilt-shift. Go figure. I buried the gear as deep into Nicki's purse as possible and we successfully made it through the gates (I felt like I had just gotten away with stealing!).

We get into the suite and I start taking photos trying to get the right angle, lighting and formations of the players on the court. Suddenly a security guard comes through the door asking what I'm doing. I freeze! Time stands still and then converts into slow motion like in the movies. I'm at a loss. So I do the first thing that comes to my mind. I run. I get past him and out into the hall, down the stairs, out the Ford Center and into the streets. I don't stop till I'm home with my camera safe in it's F-Stop bag. All the while Nicki has been calling me trying to find out where I've gone. She is stuck in the suite with a bunch of strangers and is ready to leave. I make my way back over to the Ford Center but I can't get in so she has to come out to meet me.

So needless to say I screwed up a beautiful night in a corporate suite at an NBA game so I could feed my tilt-shift fetish.
The photos didn't even turn out....



Ok, the second part of the story was a lie. I had no good, exciting material and I wanted to post this crappy photo.

Tilt and then Shift

I have an addictive personality. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I tend to overdo whatever I'm doing. At times. Sometimes. It's a good thing I don't smoke crack...
So I've have been stuck on a photography technique called Tilt Shift which uses a special lens to create a very shallow depth of field. Basically, there are two different types of movement in it: rotation of the lens, called tilt, and movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, called shift.
Well, I don't have an expensive tilt shift lens nor will I probably ever buy one but I've been working on different techniques to achieve the same effect, essentially "miniature faking" to make the photo look like a miniature model of the real thing.

Have a look.


Tony Mayse on Lost My Religion 12b, Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

<
Jer Collins on Ra 11d, Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge


Downtown Oklahoma City on a stormy fall evening, 2008


Aaron Gibson on his chipped 120 ft route Xodus on the southwest corner of Rocktown Gym, Oklahoma City