vegas, baby.

the view of mandalay bay from our room. mandalay bay somehow connected to our hotel. clay tells me there is an awesome aquarium there.


hooters hotel. somehow we never ended up going there. coury the tour guide said it wasn't necessary.


our hotel is the pyramid looking thing on the left. complete with a "save big" sign. ballers gotta ball.


best hair ever.


outside of new york, new york. it's a busy busy place.


lots of walking to be had in vegas.


taking advantage of the nice light in the room window.

i cut off her foot!

bloggins from a state tourney, or, an early exit.

the cows are coming home.

i have a thing for branches in my frame. who knew?

art for sale.

hey dedicated readers.

to combat debt i'm having an art sale. the price is right but only for a limited time.

to view the gallery of prints and perhaps order, check out this
link.

cute. but inappropriate for newsprint.

the girl on the left ruins it. that's okay. it's still good for a laugh.

the weather has been nasty

dude, where's my wall?

sorry, it's the only title i could think of.

our coverage area did not escape the wrath of last night's string of tornadoes and high winds. the lady that lives on the top floor was home when this happened, hiding in the closet.

200th post

thanks for watching. don't touch that dial.

this won't hurt a bit.

i want to reshoot this. i'll probably never get lucky enough to find someone covering their eyes though.

any suggestions?

i'm scared of heights

i found out about 3 years ago that i was scared of heights. i had to shoot pictures from the outstretched ladder of a fire truck while i was an intern at the paper i'm working at now. it wasn't really that high up, just scary for some reason.

today i came full circle. i shot pictures from the roof of the hospital of this guy fixing their sign. just stepping out onto the roof gave me shaky legs. i was terrified to peer over the side, as you can see.

and it really shouldn't have been a big deal. i know i was pretty well protected. i wasn't going to fall off the building. my body just freaks out now.

i used to jump off 30 ft. bridges into rivers. i used to jump out of trees into water. i used to get too close to the edge when we went to cliffs at state parks.

but i can't do it anymore. my body just can't handle it. it kind of ticks me off.




p.s. - amy winehouse shares a birthday with me. she is one year younger. she looks really old.

takin' it to the streets

main street, harrodsburg

something different

william george and i set out to do something different with his senior portraits. i think we accomplished our mission.

which one?

humor me.

mlk and more

tiny man

doing all the things a tiny man can.

i got a little heavy handed with the burn tool. it's my blog. i'll do what i want.

saturday

on the prowl

for a new apartment.

oh deer.

i saw this on the way home from the UK basketball game.

my camera was still on motor drive and the deer ran off after i fired a 10 frame burst. natural instincts probably told them to run from anything that sounded like a gun.

tomfoolery

this is a picture of me from last week...err...maybe 20 years ago. i'm the one with the puppy. our current house is in the backgroud. i'm in the yard of our old house. i loooove this picture. notice my neighbor, sara, hiding behind the clothes line.



younder cousins playing in front of my older cousin's tree house at my grandmother's.



matt, my first puppy and i found a wormhole in the galaxy and transported our younger selves into the future. i wish.

this is matt's christmas gift. hopefully he won't see this before christmas!

farewell florida, hello danville

as most of you know i left florida for the last time last week en route to my new job in danville, ky. i took secondary roads out of florida to milk the most out of the 80 degree weather.

here's the boardwalk to the public beach at Cocoa Beach, Florida. this town is the home of the ron jon surf shop and is considered the east coast surf capital.



the water was a bit chilly for swimming but i had to stick my toe in one last time just to say i was in the ocean in december.



in or around the jacksonville area, before i finally hopped on the intersate. with my truck loaded on top, inside and on the back my dad said i looked like one of those vagabonds you see on the road with all their earthly belongings. i guess that would be me.

mojo

creative freedom makes all the difference in the world.

though the rain may be coming down and the temperature is dropping, i am where i need to be.

i'm breaking up with a supermodel, but only because she's bat shit crazy.

friends, romans, countrymen, lend me your ear.

i have quit my job in florida.

some of you know the reason for my current state of unhappiness, some of you don't.

for those of you who don't know, the answer is easy. i'm not going to broadcast that reason over the loud speaker but i'll be happy to lay it out for you over email or the telephone.

this is a purely professional move. i have a backup plan. i'll reveal it when the details are hammered out and things are set in stone. until then, trust me.

this is a really, really, REALLY tough decision for me. moving to florida has always been the dream. the weather is perfect, the people are friendly and fun, the friends are one of a kind. should i go on? i live on a lake in a great house with low rent, i'm close to almost any beach and there are a million things to see.

there's only one thing missing, the thing i came here for: my job. i've been tempted to stick around and try to get a random job just to pay the bills. but i can't do it. photography has taken me all over the south and midwest and i feel like i owe it to her to stick by her side. she is the reason i get off my air mattress every morning.

and this is why i feel like i'm a common man dumping a crazy supermodel. i just have to remind myself that yes, she is beautiful to look at and to show off but she is absolutely crazy and will derail everything i've worked for. and that, right now, is a hard pill to swallow.

so to anyone that feels screwed over by this decision, i'm sorry. i'm doing what i can. this is not a decision i enjoyed having to make.

that is all.

sock her

the last one ran. all of them are copyright of Highlands Today.

sunset 27

noel has produced a rather random rainy pattern in the last few days. one minute sunshine, ten minutes monsoon. go figure.

this was during a rainshower on US 27, en route to assignment.

rainbows and rain showers

i just wanted to share this experience, albeit no pictures, from today.

i had a long list of errands to run today but on the way home from the office the weather was absolutely perfect. not too hot and absolutely stunning light.

dropping everything, i loaded up my bike. exercise and beauty. sounds like a winner to me.

about 10 minutes into my ride around lake jackson, the largest lake in sebring, (although not in highlands county) a rainbow started to form over the water. first one end appeared, then the other end. the middle came around eventually to produce the single most impressive and complete rainbow i'd ever seen. end to end perfection. i could even see where one half of it ended, although it was over the water and my scuba gear is out on repair so i wasn't able to go searching for the pot 'o gold. sad, i know.

just behind the rainbow were dark gray streaks: rain dumping out on the other side of the lake. it seemed to be heading away from me for a minute. then there were more gray streaks and much closer.

then there was ten minutes of absolute rain fury. actually, it was pretty mild, but the story is better if absolute rain fury.

so, like i said, absolute rain fury and i'm stuck on my bike, pedaling alongside six lanes of traffic. drivers snickered, trucks sloshed water, rain pelted me senseless.

not really. the rain did sting my eyes a little and i'm sure more than one person noticed the moron riding around in the rain but it felt more like a nike commercial than anything.

it was a quick shower. it soaked my shirt and my hair but both were fairly dry by the time my hour ride was over. the rain felt nice. cleansing. now i can partially understand why oregon is so appealing to people.

that is all. i normally don't give a crap about rainbows, but this was the supermodel of all rainbows. therefore deserving documentation. sorry about no pictures. it probably would have ruined it anyway.

good night.

lounge lizard

the lounge lizard is a pretty normal nightly occurence at club lotela (the nickname for our lake house, for those not in the know). during mayfly season, the lounge lizard brought all of his friends over for a feast.

tonight the mayflys are gone and the moonlight makes a nice spotlight for our little buddy.

while my brother is getting frost and 30 degree weather in iowa and my girlfriend is turning on her heat for the first time, i'm lounging on my porch in my shorts and only feel the slightest hint of a chill that seems 900 miles away...

though confusing to the mind, late october in florida is amazing.

another lotela sunrise

last week i worked the early shift while kathy was vacationing. lucky for me, the sunrise over lake lotela is pretty nice in the a.m.

today, i mowed the beach

today marked the first time i mowed our yard here in florida.

initially, i was really excited about this. i'm a sucker for a well kept yard. the bad news is this yard presents many challenges. here they are, in particular order:

1. no one has really kept the yard here for two years or more.

2. our yard is more like our beach. florida is in a crazy drought right now (though it rains nearly every day) and grass just isn't growing unless you irrigate. thus our yard is 3 parts sand, 1 part grass.

3. the lawn mower that traveled with us from kentucky doesn't have a mulching attachment, thus blowing sand everywhere like an iraqi sand storm. i think sand will be coming out of my eyes for weeks to come.

4. there are probably 20 fire ant mounds in our sand box. i am not exaggerating. and they hate lawn mowers.

5. the water level on the lake is really low, thus leaving 20 to 30 feet of former beach front with grass growing on it. thus making it even more difficult to mow than the rest of the sand box. so i literally mowed the beach. it was awesome and confusing.

below you will find self-deprecating pictures of myself to illustrate the problem of mowing the sand. note the blue bandana. i finally succumbed to florida redneck culture after only one month.



the water level used to be about where i stand in the picture. you can't see the sand as much on my skin as you can below.


that's what i'm talking about. next time i'm wearing jeans and a parka when i mow to keep the sand off.

florida sky