how I spent my Christmas break

photo courtesy of Nathan Gray.



Snowboarding 15" of new snow at Grand Targhee in Alta, WY. Woo hoo!!!

Followed by a gigantic meal with our roommate and his new fiancee and my good friend Jon. A very good day, all in all.

computer problems

My computer has inexplicably broken. It gets as far as the login screen and shuts itself off. What this means for the blog is that there probably won't be many posts until I get Roger back from MacDocs in Salt Lake as I now don't have any way to process my photos. Thank goodness I got the website and my ad done before he decided to take a powder.

Speaking of powder...7" in the last 24 hours - I'm on my way out to snowboard!

from my recent jackson series:

updated website

I just wanted to thank everyone for all of your input and suggestions on my website overhaul - I've made a few final tweaks and I think I'm done. For now. Check it out at www.katygray.com and let me know what you think!

A portrait I re-discovered while updating the site:




I've found quite a few images from this session that I'm interested in re-processing - it's like finding buried treasure!

jackson, wy

I spent the afternoon wandering around Jackson, documenting the old signs and buildings that are probably not going to be around much longer for whatever reasons. The full set is here, but here are some of my favorites -

prague again

A few more shots from my re-processing of Prague pictures. These are from the Charles Bridge area.

sunday afternoon

We took a field trip out to our lot today. I've been trying to take a few pictures every week or so - I think it will make an interesting record of the whole building process. They put in our road a few weeks ago and just poured the sidewalks last week. A few of my favorites from today:



my two favorite guys:







and the poor little trailer across the street:

prague revisited

Today I downloaded the trial version of Adobe Lightroom and have been happily tinkering away for the better part of the afternoon. I've gone back and looked at my pictures from Prague and have re-processed a few of them - mostly images I overlooked the first time through. Here are a few of my favorites from this afternoon (more to come, I'm sure).















and the newlyweds -

restorations

I've finally finished the restorations that I've had since MAY (shame shame shame on me) and will be sending them off soon. Matting multiple images into one mat has always been a bit of a challenge for me; the first one did NOT come out with the right size windows so I had to start over. But I perservered and they look great; I think Janet (hi!) will be happy with them.

original:



restored:



She wanted to keep a sepia-y tone to them so after touching them up I converted to true b/w and added a browny-yellow layer in overlay mode and adjusted to opacity until I thought it looked right. I used the same color/opacity for the other images in the series so they would hang well together and not be all over the map.

afton, wy

Recently Nate & I took a drive with his parents down through Star Valley and into Afton, WY. I can definitely see more trips down there in my future; Afton is super-funky and there is a lot of interesting stuff going on between here and there. Some shots:




And a self-portrait:

idaho falls

I love Idaho Falls. It is such a gold mine for a photographer...I usually have to have Nate drive because I can't concentrate on the road once we get to town. Here are some of my favorites from my last trip there:

*whew*

Photo submissions sent, ad uploaded. Now I can't wait to see it it print! I decided to go with a variation of #1; added a bit of color to it and toned down the contact info to a light gray instead of bright white. Thanks to everyone for the feedback!


Now it's on to some restorations that I should have done months ago (sorry Janet!) and a website overhaul. No rest for the wicked, I suppose.

adverts (I'm British today!)

I'm just putting the finishing touches on my ad for A Grand Wedding magazine and thought I would post what I came up with here...it's down to three and I have to decide by Friday.

#1:

#2:


#3:


Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

I'm also currently FTP'ing about 350 Mb worth of images for consideration for publication, so I had better stop clogging up the intertubes with my blogging! Heh, clogging with blogging.

finally done!

Yup, that's right, I've finally finished editing all of my weddings for the summer. The last few proof packets should be coming in tomorrow and the boxes the next day, so pretty soon I'll be able to turn my full obsessiveness to my ad design and layout.

The full set from Emily's wedding is here and I'm so pleased with how everything turned out. I had so much fun shooting and feel like I got some really nice images.

I took a quick trip to Idaho Falls this weekend to do some shooting and shopping...it ended up being more shopping than shooting but hey, sometimes you just gotta shop. Here's one of my favorite shots from an earlier trip to IF:



I'll add the new ones to my IF Flickr set once they get processed. They'll probably sit on the back burner for a bit though - my ad is due to "A Grand Wedding" by the 26th, so I'd better get on it!

costa rica wedding set

I have put the finishing touches on the wedding in Costa Rica and it can be viewed in its entirety here. I'm pretty excited about it, and I love my new slideshow software (thanks to Jonathan for telling me about it!). You can all look forward to a slightly re-designed website once I get some time at home...possibly this weekend but I'm not holding my breath.

I'm still in the midst of working on Andy & Emily's wedding from 9/8 and am very excited with how things are looking so far. It was a gorgeous day and being able to spend the whole day recording the events was wonderful and really gives the photos a good flow.




It was my first chance to shoot a wedding day from beginning to end and I feel like it has made a big difference in how I spent the day and also in how I shot the day. I was able to get more precise but also more relaxed...I'm not explaining myself well but I'll content myself with saying it helped to solidify the fact that I want to do this as a career.

....and we're back!

It's been a whirlwind! We returned from Costa Rica on the 28th and immediately set about moving out of our house. Thank goodness our landlord cut us a break and let us take the weekend to finish up or we never would have gotten out in time.



Costa Rica was wonderful, the wedding was beautiful albeit a bit wet and we had a fantastic time. My full Flickr set is here and I should have the wedding photos up soon!

I also have attended two weddings in September, one as a photographer/guest and the other strictly as a guest. Still processing the one I shot professionally but I managed to get the one I attended as a guest online - it's a good thing the battery on my point and shoot died when it did or I would have had some very compromising pictures of my co-worker!




Things are starting to settle down so with any luck I should be able to start posting more regularly soon. I've just gotten the internet at the new house and almost have the office unpacked...just a few more boxes and it'll feel like home!