Hey fellow photographers out there!  One of my fave Photographer-friends has just announced that she will be hosting an amazing Two-Day workshop at her home in Arizona.  The one-and-only Melissa Jill! 
I finally got to meet her last year at the PhotoGirl retreat, and will see her again this March.  She is super talented, and a truly amazing person to spend time with.  If you want to expand your business and your skills, sign up!

Click the image for more information!

Yes — we are all slowly but surely reaching the big 3-0 — and this party is definitely going down as one of the best in history.  As you know we are avid Bluegrass/Folk music fans. We go camping for MANY days just to listen to bands from all over the country play on tiny stages in the campgrounds at Winfield.  One of our absolute favorites is Truckstop Honeymoon — and Mark’s g-friend Lauren thought it would be the most AMAZING surprise to hire them to play in his basement.  Well folks, she was right!  We had about 100 or more people in the basement all quiet until he walked down the stairs…Truckstop started playing his FAVORITE song (”Strawberry”).  I think that is about when he went into shock.

Want to see how I lit the images?  I mounted my flash to a support-pillar, aimed at the white ceiling to bounce the light onto the performers.  I put an arrow to my flash and pocket-wizard so you could see it!

This one I slowed the shutter WAY down to around 1/10th to pull in a LOT of ambient light…

At Winfield this past year, we were introduced to a new band, Free State Revival (we had actually seen them here in town before as well) and we were instant fans.  Call us groupies if you will, but these guys have an amazing energy and talent to melt your face off.  So of course we invited them to the party (being they are fans of Truckstop as well) and they offered to play too!  Does it get any better folks??? 

Umm…no.

It was an amazing night — check out BOTH BANDS.  It will change your life I swear…

But that doesn’t mean I stop shooting COMPLETELY.  I am just shooting a lot of things for FUN!  So the other day I decided I wanted to do some off-camera flash work in the bright sun.  This is a bit harder since your flash has to work extra hard to over-power the sun.  And who is always my subject during the day?  That’s right…Mr. Mosby himself…

Flash at 1/2 power on Manual (shooting through a white umbrella to soften the light a bit), ISO 100, 1/160 shutter speed, f11 aperture.  The goal was to make it look like natural light, even though the sun was not the source of light.
(In this first shot, you can see the flash reflected in the woodwork a bit behind him)

Next up — I will be posting images from our friend Mark’s surprise 30th birthday party.  I brought along the good gear for that shindig thanks to the biggest SURPRISE part of the night!

WARNING:  Major internet Geek post ahead!

If you ask my girlfriends — they will tell you I am way too INTO the internet.  And for a lot of people all of these social networking sites can be a bit overwhelming.  Why would I want to update my status for Facebook, and Twitter, and G-mail’s chat application!?!  So many places, and so little time.  WELL…I have helped a handful of people get some things setup that link everything together for them…so I thought that I would share it here too. 

1.  GMAIL:  I use Gmail for my personal e-mail account — I love it for it’s ease of use, built-in chat application, and label/archiving capability.  Not to mention all of the OTHER amazing Google apps that are all for free use, but that is for another time (hello all you girls I converted to Google Reader)!

2.  FACEBOOK:  Wow…who knew what a huge thing Facebook would become once it was opened up to the public (not just students)?  It connects people, transfers information FAST, and has a viral quality about it that shares images statuses and groups quickly.  I encourage ALL to join…and if you want be my friend do so right here!

3.  TWITTER:  Another way to communicate with your audience, that can easily be linked to blogs, websites, etc for instant sharing of status and pictures.  You follow your friends (or now, even companies) and get notifications of what they are up to.  You can follow me HERE.

Now that we made it through all of that stuff…there has to be an easy way to link it all together right?  I am sure you are visiting your e-mail Inbox on a regular basis.  Why not have a little Gadget that let’s you update your Facebook status AND Twitter status at the same time from Gmail?  Enter TwitterGadget!

Instructions for how to install it are AT THIS LINK.  It will make it SUPER easy to update what you are doing…multiple places…from a spot you go to anyways.  Now there is no excuse not to join the social networking world out there.  It is certainly not going away…so jump on in!

I know this is a LITTLE out of the ordinary for a photo-blog — but I am just fascinated by this stuff and the way we stay in contact these days.  Enjoy!

I am not sure if any of you caught much of the Winter X-Games — but WOW were they amazing as always.  Even though I snowboard, I love seeing all of the athletes doing tricks and spins that I cannot even imagine doing just using my feet in the living room.  And they are around packed snow and ice!  With our first trip of the season coming up next weekend (in Copper) and then in March Whistler…I cannot help but be more excited than usual.  I also wish that I could be one of those lucky photographers standing on the side of the half-pipe getting some amazing mid-air images:

I have tried a kiddy-version of a half-pipe, and couldn’t do it…so I have much respect to the guys and girls that make it look easy.  Especially the most decorated X-Games athlete in history Mr. Shaun White.

And you gotta love this trick by Simon Dumont

With the UBER-cold weather we are having, I am not shooting much…but I AM working on some pretty cool new things/changes for Peters Photography!  I cannot wait to share, but I am keeping it all a secret until reveal day…and this weekend I will even be stepping in front of the camera for a shoot.  Coming soon!