Fourth of July and First Friday - Hood River, Oregon

The town of Hood River takes 4th of July seriously. At 10AM there is a parade through the Heights that the whole town shows up to and/or participates in. Anyone can be in it... just hop on a bike, unicycle, car, rice rocket, truck, monster truck, harley davidson, dirtbike... or don't ride anything and walk... play an instrument, whatever... it's all good in the Hood. We enjoyed the last half of the parade with my folks (Bethany and I thought it started at noon so we were a bit late) and then had a pretty relaxing day. We finished moving into our new place, more on that later...

Anyway, 4th of July also happened to be First Friday of the month, another big Hood River event. So downtown was shut off to traffic and packed full of people. Lots going on. We actually didn't get to see all that much because we ran into so many friends we hadn't seen since before our big trip so we caught up with people and stuff. It was super fun.

When it started getting dark we headed down to the river to find our spot for the fireworks. It was a great show! I'm always surprised at how good the Hood River Fireworks show is for being such a small town.

I brought the camera to take some snaps, here are a few!

This band was from Lafayette, LA and was super good. Everyone was dancing and groovin out in the Horse & Hound British Pub parking lot. We got brats with banana peppers and sauerkraut from the hot dog stand that were super yummy.

Fireworks seen from the inlet area on the Columbia River. Hills in the background are White Salmon and Underwood, Washington.

A couple more fireworks shots...

Where the heck am I?

10 points to first person who guesses where the heck this picture was taken!

Congrats Igor you were right! It was taken just a few days ago at Niagara Falls from the USA side. It's called the "Skylon Tower" and it is on the Canada side. I knew people would guess the space needle because that is first thing that comes to mind... but, if you've been to Niagara Falls then you would recognize this no problem. 10 points to Igor!

Lots of new stuff for Blaine and Bethany Photography!

I'm super excited to finally announce lots of new stuff for Blaine and Bethany Photography!

1) Brand new website with all new updated images. http://www.blaineandbethany.com/

2) Brand new blog for Blaine and Bethany Photography. http://blaineandbethany.com/blog/

3) Facebook Page for Blaine and Bethany Photography. Check it out and become a fan! :)

4) Our new office in downtown Hood River, Oregon.

Check it all out at our first post on the new blog- http://blaineandbethany.com/blog/

Just an FYI- I'll most definitely keep posting to this blog often as possible for my own photography and random life stuff. The other blog will mainly be for our wedding & portrait photography. This blog has always been mainly focused on all my other photography rather than weddings & portraits.
I'm hoping to totally re-do my Blaine Franger Photography website within the next month or two as well. It's really bad that I have images on there that haven't been updated for 3 years!

The new blog and website still have some tweaking to do with colors and minor things... but please let me know if you have any positive or constructive feedback. Thanks!

quote of the day from my cousin Danielle

Yesterday at a family BBQ get-together in San Diego my 9 year-old cousin Danielle had us laughing soo hard.
The subject of Chuck E Cheese's came up, and she volunteered her strong opinion on the place.

"Eww, Chuck E Cheese's! You know what I call that place? Chuck E DISEASES. All the kids running around that place all have snot coming out their noses, it's gross. The balls and toys stink. And that person in the mouse costume.... you never know WHO is in that thing! My friend had her birthday party there. I left."

A pic of Danielle just seconds after she said this... while were all dying from laughter!

on empty

Anyone have a small fortune I can borrow, to fill my tank!? Holy cow... I can't believe what is happening with gas prices! Bethany and I flew to San Diego today, rented a car, and the first gas station we saw was $4.67 a gallon! I thought Oregon was bad at $4.15!

How much is the gas where you are???

US Open... Tiger Woods is insane!

I've always loved playing sports a lot more than watching them, but man, yesterdays golf US Open was intense! Tiger is incredible. Everyone thought the underdog was going to take the win but Tiger recovered with a ridiculously sweet putt on the 18th hole to tie it up!
So now they are playing it off on the 13th hole right now. I've got so much to do today because we are leaving tomorrow for a 2 week trip... but I can't resist watching the action live on the bottom corner of my screen... Go to http://www.usopen.com/en_US/index.html and you can watch it live!

**Edit**
18th hole is done... still tied!!! Sudden death starts now!!

**Edit again**
Tiger won. Surprise Surprise.

Back in time

If I want to remember something, I take a photo of it. It's just the way I think and function. Thats why I always carry digimon with me everywhere!
Sometimes for fun I pull out my old hard drives and check out back in time what I was doing, what I was shooting, and where I was in my timeline of life. I thought I'd blog a few pictures, and maybe do this more regularly on my blog...?

5 years ago on June 6th, 2003: Me, Taylor, and Natalie took a backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevada mountains for our nature photo class at Brooks. That was good times. Taylor got his truck stuck in the sand so we tried for hours to get it out, to no avail. So we slept there overnight and this dude rescued us in the morning. I named him desert Jack, we never got his real name. He was quite the character!

4 years ago on June 9th, 2004: I shot this for fun while I was going to Brooks and I lived in Santa Barbara. I set my camera on the ground, opened the shutter, and then drove the car to streak the taillights through the image. Kinda fun.

3 years ago on June 9th, 2005: I photographed rapper "Common" at the San Diego HOB for Risen Magazine. I was living in San Diego at the time, and was just 9 days away from getting married to the woman of my dreams! :)

2 years ago on June 15th, 2006: I was in Michigan visiting Bethany's family, and we went to visit the wonderful Pouget family in Canada. I took some photos of their adorable kids, including this one of their baby Cole.

1 year ago on June 4th, 2007: I was moving from San Diego to Oregon and driving with Bethany and my Mom. They were in a separate car, and I stopped to take photos of this scene.

Recently I've been hanging out with my buddy Seth who is visiting from Japan! Yesterday we ate some Mexican food, then drove around and got some pics of Mt. Hood. This morning we got up at 5:30AM and rode dirtbikes in the hills, and took some photos and videos. Good times. But I haven't downloaded any of those yet, so no pics yet!

Awesome deals for photographers!

Hey photographers,
Just thought I'd post this real quick, because if you need some new Canon stuff, it's the time to buy it! Wish I would have bought my new 16-35mm lens a couple weeks later, I would have saved $100! But you never know when they are going to announce these specials, so there is no use waiting around for them unless you have the time to.

I buy 99% of my photo gear from B&H Photo in New York. Great prices, good service, good website, fast shipping...

Special 1: Canon Cash Back (Instant Rebates... no need to send a bunch of stuff in and get a check 2 months later!)

Special 2: Sandisk Memory Card rebates

I just ordered 3 Sandisk ExtremeIII 8gb cards from Amazon for a total of $275.85 including shipping. I'll get a $160 visa cash card back for the rebate. That means each card comes out to $38 each. Cheap! A friend and I were reminiscing today about how our first 1GB card cost $400! Techie talk....

Happy Monday!

For those of you who have a "case of the mondays" (line from Office Space, awesome movie) and are checking my blog at work... procrastinating from doing work, (you know who you are!) here are some more photos from my dirtbike ride Saturday evening in the east hills. To our family and friends around the US and the world... come visit us in Hood River! It's gorgeous here!

The yellow wildflowers grow everywhere in the surrounding hills, they are called "Balsam Root"

Mt. Hood at sunset

Mt. Rainier in Washington

It was basically dark when I shot this one. 30 second exposure, beautiful light!

out of the woods and into the light (cheesy title!)

I have a ton of catching up to do with blogging! Bethany and I have been working on a project that is getting close to being done. We're really excited about it and can't wait to show everyone. I don't like to talk about stuff before it's finished though... so more news on that later.

Today was another absolutely gorgeous day in Hood River! When the weather is nice here, you can't beat this place. It's so refreshing and just makes you feel so alive... and struck with guilt if your inside working on a computer. I tried to sit at the computer and edit photos but that lasted about 10 minutes, all I could think about was going outside and exploring on my dirtbike. So yes, I ditched work and went out and played... 3rd day in a row. I've been staying up till 4AM to make up for it though. Living like a bachelor till Bethany gets back from Santa Barbara, tomorrow!

I was riding in a kinda new area today, the east hills. It's a bit further from home (10 minutes instead of 5) so I ride here less often, but the trails seem to be a bit better and more challenging. Anyway I was cruising along a trail through these gorgeous fields of wildflowers that were all different colors, then the trail led deep into the forest. Like, really deep! The trees were huge and thick, not letting any light through. It was so dark that my headlight was actually lighting the way for me, and it wasn't even close to dark or even sunset yet. So cruising along, climbing some big hills in the trees, then I see a clearing coming up... well, quite the clearing it was! I came out of the trees and was at the top of a mountain (I think the Mt. bikers call it "Puke Point" because the hill climbs are so gnarley), greeted by this incredible view of Hood River Valley, Mt Hood, Mount Saint Helens, Mount Adams, Mount Defiance, and even Mount Rainier in the distance. INCREDIBLE!!!

This is a pic of the forest, not the super thick part, so light was getting through here and it made a good photo.

This is me, dirtbike, and Mount Hood on top of Puke Point. I look huge and awkward because I wear a chest protector under my shirt.

This is Mt. Saint Helens at sunset... beautiful.

Lots more pics to share later, but it's 2:30AM and I have a really busy day tomorrow!

Lake Pukaki, New Zealand

Bethany is out of town for a week visiting some of her good friends in Santa Barbara... so I've had quite a bit of time to get work done these past few days, and ride my dirtbike of course too.
I've also been looking through some of our trip photos... and wow... I have forgotten some of the places we went and things we saw!
Check out these 2 photos of Lake Pukaki (near Mount Cook) on the South Island of New Zealand. Can you say amazing???

Where the heck am I?

Here is another where the heck am I. Not sure if this will be really hard or really easy, guess it depends if you've been there or not.

10 points to the first person to guess correctly!

PS- My comments are now moderated... so maybe people have already guessed or maybe they haven't... take a shot and guess!

_____
Guess this one was pretty easy... within an hour 3 people guessed it! Uluru in Australia is the right answer... Congrats Chad you have 10 points!

hello

Mt Hood & Mt. Adams

These are the two beautiful mountains you can see from just about anywhere in Hood River. First is Mt. Hood, looking directly South. Second is Mt. Adams in Washington, looking directly North.
I rode my dirtbike for about 4 hours today and saw some amazing views of Mt. Saint Helens, no pics though!
Both of these pics were taken 2 days ago at sunset, standing in my parents backyard/sideyard. Canon 40D with 70-200mm lens @ 200 mm (320mm with 1.6X conversion factor)

a spider in nepal

I just spent 8.5 hours setting up my G5 computer with my 24" screen and everything. Setting it up was the easy part... updating everything to be current was not! I clean installed (wiped the hard drive) OSX Leopard, Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, and many other little applications I use often. Installing and updating them takes forever!
So it was a productive day, but not all that fun.

When all the installing was finally finished, I couldn't resist looking at a few of my recent travel photos... this one of a spider in Nepal kinda stood out to me, so I worked on it for a minute, and here it is! I shot it at sunrise, it was such a gorgeous morning on the Annapurna trek!

I cannot wait to start editing though all our travel photos!!!

Where the heck am I?

We are back in Oregon now, it's good to be back because the weather is absolutely gorgeous! Warm, no wind, snow on the mountains, crisp clean air... I could go on and on!

I used to do a series called "What the heck is it?" on my other blog, and I'm going to start it up again, and also do a "Where the heck am I?" series. I'm going to think up a way of accumulating points and have a prize for the winners! :)

So, 10 points to the first person to guess where the heck I was standing when I took this photo yesterday!

___
Lisa page was the first to guess correctly, the answer is IKEA! Congrats Lisa, you have 10 points! I'm not quite sure yet how many more points you need to get the prize, and I'm not sure what the prize is yet... but you're ahead of everyone else! :)
Also Munk guessed Portland IKEA, and that is the exact location, so 5 bonus points for you Munk! (is it Joe or James??)

morning alms

I just came across this image I shot in Myanmar. If you get up at sunrise, you'll see hundreds (thousands in certain areas) of Buddhist Monks walking the streets collecting their morning alms from people of the community. It's usually always rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner! With a couple other sides if they are lucky. We talked to some of the monks and most said they love rice and never get sick of it, but one said he couldn't wait to be done being a monk so he could eat whatever he wants, and go out drinking with his friends. At least he was honest! :)

a flower in the frontyard

new toys... i mean, uh, tools!

During our travels we lost two 77mm lens caps. One is somewhere in the Australian outback, and the other is in Beijing China. I know exactly where it is (on a friends coffee table) but it would probably cost more to send it back than to buy a new one.

Our 16-35mm lens is un-useable, and Canon's estimate to fix it was almost as much as buying a brand new one. So we plunkered down the cash and bought the version 2 of this lens. It's supposed to be a huge improvement on sharpness.
Also bought the 50mm f/1.4. This lens will be great for low light portraits when we don't need so much focal length as our 85mm f1.2. It's also so small and light, so that is a bonus.

Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar

The news of Cyclone Nargis is unbelievable, we were just there in Yangon 3 months ago! 22,000 confirmed fatalities, but it will probably rise to 50,000 or more because there are 41,000 still missing.

We loved that country so much, and it was the people who made it so amazing. Please keep them in your prayers as they deal with this catastrophe.

These are a few of my photos from our first day in Yangon, Myanmar (aka Burma).

photoshop cs3

I have finally upgraded to Photoshop CS3. While we were in Thailand, one of our Canon 5D's completely stopped working, and I took it to a Canon repair center in Bangkok. They ended up fixing it but it took like 2 weeks to order the parts, so we had to buy a Canon 40D to use in the meantime while we traveling in South Thailand. We haven't been able to look at our 40D photos this whole time because they aren't compatible with CS2, so we have a lot to catch up on!
Last night I popped in the CS3 DVD assuming it would be a nice and quick upgrade, but between the DVD and the internet download updates, it took more than 2 hours!

Anyway it's all installed now and good to go, so here is my first photo to go through CS3. Bethany's families house in Michigan is right on Lake Saint Clair so I looked out the window today after a storm passed through, and saw this beautiful rainbow over the water.

I also purchased Adobe Lightroom and it's supposed to arrive on Monday. I've tried it out before but didn't use it for long enough to have a real opinion... do any of you blog readers use it?

thoughts and snapshots

I decided to bring my other blog back from the dead. I use it for random stuff, and I don't care if it makes sense or not.

Check it out if you want. click ->>> "Blaine's Thoughts and Snapshots"

Here is a preview of some of the wonderfulness you can find over there-

stuff, and stuff (i hate blog titles)

We had a pretty chill resting week in Hood River, Oregon. Adapting to the time change and recovering from the craziness of the trip has been interesting. It's impossible to fall asleep at a decent hour, and impossible to get up at a decent hour, so regular bed hours for me were typically bed at 3AM (fall asleep around 4AM) and get out of bed around 10 or 11AM. It's starting to get more normal though...

Tomorrow (today actually) we fly to Michigan where we'll be for 15 days. We'll visit with Bethany's family and also photograph our first 2 weddings of the year, so that is exciting.

A lot of people have been asking about our trip photos... Well truth is, we haven't even looked at half of them! There are thousands upon thousands of RAW files (about 600GB total) sitting on many hard drives, and even just thinking about starting this project is overwhelming. It will be fun though. We are looking into leasing an office in downtown Hood River so that we can have all our computers, hard drives, cameras, etc etc etc away from home and into a workspace. I would love that. I'll keep you posted.

The plan for our trip photos is to make a huge very involved slideshow with awesome local music from each country, and maybe even some voice narration. It is a big project, and will probably take 4-6 months to finish. Also we want to make fine art prints, and have a gallery show in Hood River, and possibly another in San Diego. I'll be updating as things progress. Patience is a virtue! :)

These are a few photos from our last day of traveling, flying from Beijing China to Portland Oregon.

Terminal 3, Beijing China

Goodbye Asia!

Check out those weird first class seats! I think they actually fold down flat so it can be a bed too.

Clouds and smog over Beijing.

Welcome to USA, but not really... This was actually in Vancouver, Canada. We went through USA customs there. Strange.

I have never been more tired in my whole life. We had stayed up for sooo many hours, and my eyes hurt so bad just trying to keep them open.

Just after we landed in Portland.

First time stepping on US soil (or pavement more like) in 6 months!

Blaine's plan for weight loss: Travel and eat a ton of food for 6 months

"Blaine's plan for weight loss: Travel and eat a ton of food for 6 months"
Sounds like a spam email you'd get along with the Viagra and OEM software emails that litter everyones inbox.

Its strange though, Bethany kept saying I was losing weight during our trip... I didn't think much about it until I weighed myself yesterday. 162 pounds! When we left for our trip I was around 185. Thats 23 pounds!

All I did on this trip was eat lots of food, especially in Thailand and India! Honestly, I think I just have a big worm inside me thats eating all my food because I've had this weird stomach ache recently.

Ok I'm hungry, time to go feed my worm.

time change

Safe and sound in Hood River, Oregon now! Adjusting to the time change has been interesting. Like I said in the last post, we watched movies the whole time back on the plane. And Bethany informed me she actually watched 5 movies in a row, not 4!
The first night we back we went to bed at 10PM and got up 4:30PM the next! Thats 18.5 hours of solid sleep, a record for both of us!
But last night I didn't fall asleep until 4AM, then I was wide awake at 7AM... so strange.
We've been loving the home cooked food and I've been taking photos of it all (I'll send soon Mike, haha)

Here is a photo I took at the great wall a couple days ago!

North America

We just landed in Vancouver from Beijing for a quick layover before we fly to Portland in a little bit. Bethany and I are totally delirious... it hurts to keep my eyes open right now! Both of us didn't get a wink of sleep during the whole 12 hour overnight flight because they had so many choices of movies to watch, so we both watched movies the entire time, haha. I watched 3 in a row... first was "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" and it was realllly depressing and sad, but entertaining. Second was an old movie called "A Perfect Murder" which was a little cheesy, but overall pretty decent for being made 10 years ago. Third was "There Will Be Blood" which was about Americas oil boom in the 1920's. Very slow movie, not too much happens, but it makes you think a lot about greed and it's repercussions.
Bethany watched 4 totally different movies, I think they were all lame chick flicks! :)

great wall was great

Well, it's crazy that today was the last day of our 6 month long trip! I'm really excited to be heading back home, but really not excited at the same time. It's a strange feeling. I won't go into all of it right now because it's 2:30AM in Beijing and I need to go to bed. Maybe one of these days I'll write a general conclusion of my experiences and some things I've learned... but then again, maybe not! If you've followed my blog for any amount of time, you know I much prefer photos over words.

But anyway, what a way to finish it with a 10km 4 hour hike on the Great Wall of China today! Mike, Andrea, Bethany and I all got up early (thanks Andrea!) and took a series of buses and taxis to an area of the wall that is a bit further, but much less touristy than the most popular place where everyone goes. Apparently at the touristy place, it's impossible to get a photo of the wall without several other people in your photo... so that didn't sound ideal for us.
We had quite the opposite experience and only saw a total of about 10 other people during our 4 hours of hiking!

We finished up with an awesome Chinese dinner, yum.

USA here we come!

PS- Bethany got some incredible photos and wrote all about our recent Annapurna Circuit Trek, check it out!

First Day in Beijing, China

The smog here is the worst I've seen anywhere!

The airport is SOO huge. You can actually see the atmosphere and smog inside the building!

Sweet hair!

There are Olympic countdown signs everywhere

Tienanmen Square

Easy access!

How bout that photographer pose?

Off to China we go

for the last 4 days of this insane trip! Next post will be from Beijing!
PS- I added took this snapshot because we seem to ALWAYS the last people on the plane. Bethany always says I wait for my "personal invitation" onto the plane. Why not though? Who wants to be inside that big stuffy hunk of flying metal any longer than you absolutely have to?

a few portraits from Nepal

I had a chance to quickly browse through the photos from our Annapurna Circuit Trek, and wow, there is a lot of them! For now, I just picked a few portraits to post that stood out. The people and culture on the trek were fascinating. They live such simple lives up in the mountains and it's so fun to get a glimpse of it. Unfortunately when you do a trek like this, you're just passing by and you don't get to spend much time and get to know them.

Nepal has been one of our favorite countries yet, and we'll definitely be back here in the future, hopefully many more times.

Bethany and I have a few more days here in Kathmandu, then we're off to Beijing to see the sights and visit a few friends, then we're back to the states on April 22nd. Very soon!

Now for a few portraits-

back to civilization

For those concerned (Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad) we are safely back from our trek and having a nice relaxing time eating lots of good food in Pokhara, Nepal.

The trek was absolutely beautiful, and such a great experience all around. I took about 50 gigabytes worth of photos, so I have a ton to edit through. Hopefully my portable little "photo downloader" thing works ok and all the photos are actually on there, like it says they are....!?

We'll be back in Kathmandu tomorrow evening (where our computer is) so I'll try and post up a few images and reply to lots of emails too.

Gone Trekkin....

This will be my last post for about 3 weeks because we're gone trekkin...

Our plans for the final month (coming home in exactly a month!) of our trip have totally changed because of the violence and unrest in Tibet right now. Our plan was to travel from Kathmandu, Nepal to Lhasa, Tibet overland, but Tibet is basically closed off right now to tourism. I'm sure you've heard about it on the news.

So, we've decided to once again join our awesome friends the Katzes and their friend Chad to go trekking in Nepal! We're all doing (planning to at least) the famous Annapurna Circuit Trek, which is about 200 kilometers long, takes about 18 days, and reaches altitudes just shy of 18,000 feet. It also is known for it's spectacular mountain views, and incredible diversity of culture, climates, and landscape.

We've done tons of research this past week on what to expect, and we've bought tons of new gear (especially warm stuff) for this trek. I can't wait! Actually, it's 5AM here now and our bus to the village where the trail starts leaves at 6:30AM, so I better run!

Hope to return with some great photos! :)

I don't have any recent ones to share right now... but here are a few photos that have absolutely nothing in common except that they are all really old, taken at least 4 years ago!

PS- I won't be responding to emails or voicemails until around April 16th too!