Friend of the bride and the groom

I had the chance to take pictures of my friends Joe and Alaina a week or so ago. They will be getting married later this month and I thought it would be fun to capture some engagement photos before the big day. I was really happy that they agreed to allow me to take some images of them. The shots that we took were against a simple white seamless backdrop (next time I will be more organized and we will do an outdoor shoot). Joe and Alaina were great models and they had a lot of great ideas about poses and composition. Perhaps because the love between them is so real the photos have a authenticity about them that was unique for me to capture. All in all a fun shoot.

Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam

I was at the grocery store the other night and picked up a copy of Arizona Highways magazine. This month the entire edition is dedicated to Lake Powell and Glen Canyon Dam. I have enjoyed this magazine for most of the 30 years that I have lived in Arizona, and have subscribed to it from time to time. The photography is remarkable almost too good from issue to issue. I also enjoy the "hike of the month" and "back road adventure" each month. My biggest compliant about Arizona Highways is the consistently poor writing in the magazine. The articles always seem so mundane and pedestrian. This month, however, there is an excellent article written by Larry Cheek a Seattle based journalist. who writes a very balanced article from the environmentalist point of view regarding Lake Powell. I would have linked to it but there is no online access to the article that I can find.

In any event, this month's issue reminded me of a trip that I had taken with my friends Tim and Joey during the New Year's of 2001. We hung out in Flagstaff for the celebrations and took a side trip to the Lake Powell area. I found some pictures from back then, not very good but fun to look at because they are starting to get to that age when photos become valuable even if the exposure wasn't just right. There is a picture of Tim standing on an overlook to Glen Canyon dam. There is also a photo of the Hamblin Moutain range which is on U.S. Route 89 just south of the Lake Powell area.

Some Suggested Music

A few years ago, my friend Joey and I were having a beer at the Alcatraz Brewing Company. It was a microbrewery that was at the The Mills mall in Tempe. We got talking about music and I ask Joey to list out some CDs (this was before the iPod) he thought that I should have in my music collection. He grabbed a coaster from the bar and started listing the albums he thought important enough to have in a music library. I recently came across that coaster and thought that I would post his recommendations, just for fun. I only have two of the listed albums, the Beach Boys and Bob Dylan but I plan on referring to the list from time to time as I look for new music to download for my iPod.

Clearly this was a quick list off the top of his head (for example he doesn't list any Beattles album) and it was really geared towards 60s and 70s rock and roll (so therefore doesn't have any jazz, folk or blues), but I thought it was an interesting enough list to share.

By the way, the complete list is:

The Doors
Eric Clapton - From the Cradle
Van Morrison - Moondance
Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
The Who - Who's Next
Genesis - Three Sides Live
Bob Marley - Legend
Led Zepplin - 1
Bad Company
Beach Boys - Endless Summer
Roxy Music - Avalon