Scattered Thoughts . . .

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend and today is the first time I've had a chance to share some photos and video. The first thing I want to share is a video that I shot while we watched a Christmas concert on the colorfully and brightly decorated Canadian Pacific Holiday Train. Our holiday weekend began with entertaining friends at our house on Thanksgiving Day... I'll write more on that and share some photos another time.  Then, on Friday morning, we headed to the rugged Adirondack Mountains to spend the rest of our long holiday weekend in beautiful Saratoga Springs. I haven't been to Saratoga in a few decades so it was nice to get back there and spend some time! Our primary purpose of visiting Saratoga Springs was to see Canadian Pacific's Holiday Train as it pulled into the station. If you've never had an opportunity to see this brightly lit and colorful train, you should! Once the train pulled into Saratoga's surprisingly nice train station... ami

Today was sunny and near 70 degrees so we took advantage of the beautiful, unseasonable weather to get our outdoor Christmas decorating out of the way. It felt great to have a very productive day... first time in months! I'm usually outdoors putting up Christmas decorations in mid-December... in weather in the 30s... raining... soaked and freezing so badly that my fingers will no longer move. This year we got lucky! They say we have about a foot of snow arriving tomorrow but I'll believe it when I see it. Regardless, the outside of the house is ready for the holidays. We even managed to get a head start on indoors. We don't plan to get all of the indoor stuff done this weekend but we will be close! We even put about 1400 lights on that tall, neatly trimmed tree in the background...   We've been on a roll with decorating and needed to pull out all the storage bins since they weren't labeled by "indoor decorations" and "outdoor decoratio

On the rare occasions when I am asked by friends to shoot some studio photographs, Sheila becomes my default assistant. We often will need to reschedule these few shoots due to my health and then try to find a 'good' day in between bouts of poor health so scheduling a shoot is always a bit of a nightmare. I enjoy studio work though and wish I had better health to do this more often. (Actually, if I were healthy, I would probably own a photography studio... among a few other things... I've even sketched my own studio designs!)   Just a quick photo shoot requires a lot of prep work such as testing all gear, recharging batteries, creating a shooting plan, moving gear, setting up gear, etc.  The easiest part of a photo shoot is the actual shooting time with the model/client  but don't confuse this with being "easy" because a lot of things can go wrong, a lot of things can be done incorrectly and shooting photos requires technical, creative and artistic sk