Alina the Flutist

Or Alina the Flautist, if you prefer. Apparently there's quite a debate about which term is best. I prefer flutist, personally... flautist just sounds way to close to flatus, in my opinion....

If you haven't figured it out, this post is the sequel to Tara the Dancer. In my continuing mission to practice portrait photography for my brother-in-law's wedding, I did another photo shoot, this time with Alina, a graduate student in music here at CU. Here are some of the best shots... or click here for a glorious full-screen slideshow, courtesy of Picasa!

Adventures in So-Col

Last weekend we took a three-and-a-half day road trip to Southern Colorado, and checked out a bunch of awesome stuff down there. I've recently discovered the awesomeness of the new full-screen slideshow option in Picasa web albums... click HERE for all the best photos, complete with witty commentary! Or, scroll on down for a few of the best shots....

First -- Mesa Verde National Park. Home of the 800-year-old cliff dwellings of the "ancestral Pueblo people" (the artists formerly known as the Anasazi).

Cliff Palace -- the largest cliff dwelling in North America

Square Tower House

Inside a reconstructed kiva

Back at the campsite, enjoying a gourmet PB&J dinner...

...and some card-game action.

After Mesa Verde, we stopped at the Four Corners monument, where you can put a different limb in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah:

It's also a fantastic spot for what I dubbed Four Corners Twister. "Left hand... Colorado! Right foot... Utah!"

Our last stop was at Great Sand Dunes National Park... a randomly misplaced sea of sand in the middle of Colorado. It actually has the tallest dunes in North America, at 750 feet.

We hike to the top of "High Dune," 650 feet tall, giving us a 360 degree panorama of sand.

19,000 acres of dunes

(For size perspective, notice the hikers in the lower center.)

Tara the Dancer

This July, my dad and I are going to be the photographers at my brother-in-law Tyler's wedding. To get in some practice photographing people in a "photo shoot" setting, I put the word out that I would do portrait sessions with people for free (that's the "project" I mentioned I was working on in the last post). I had plenty of responses... "free" gets people's attention. :)

My first shoot was with Tara, a graduate student studying dance here at CU. It was a great warm-up session for me... she brought a ton of props, dance routines, and ideas for the shoot, so I didn't have to worry too much about thinking up creative poses or anything for her -- I just got to focus on the "camera-technique" side of things. Here are some of my favorite shots from the session....  bigger versions here, and the full album is on Picasa here. (Notice that Picasa now has a full-screen/slideshow option. Sweet!)