Joshua Tree Under the Milky Way from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.

I can’t remember where I found out about Henry Jun Wah Lee’s incredibly time lapse photography, but ever since I’ve been mesmerized viewing the videos. The video above of the Perseid meteor shower and the Milky Way as seen from Joshua Tree. When we were in New Hampshire we were able to see the Milky Way from the Kancamagus Highway like I hadn’t seen it in a very long time. Everyone should have the opportunity to see the Milky Way like that.

The other video/time lapse I fell in love with is the Time Lapse Tour of Yosemite National Park. A place I would love to visit and hopefully will someday with my camera.

Craig’s cousin Bryan graduated from college this past May. They combined his party with the 4th of July and I brought my camera. It was a lot of fun visiting with everyone and catching the moments on “film”.

Bryan and his dog Anna

Val and Autumn

Fun with cameras

Unbeknownst to us the spare bedroom at our rental had a taxidermied bear under it. Craig and I had been in the room several times before my sister in law arrived and didn’t notice it. Then when she arrived and we went to make the bed, there was silence, a gasp and a scream. Of course this was all happening at night and thus making the “not what you expected” factor rise a lot more.

Before we left Craig and Kerry took some fun pics. Kerry has been vegan since the start of the year, so it seemed perfect to have her reading her book, “Simply Vegan”.

My mother in-law has a beautiful Azalea bush at their home. An idea of how much “warmer” it is this year, two years ago when I took photos of this in bloom it was Mother’s Day. This year it is mid-to-end of April.

I took this photo around 6pm with the sun setting behind the hill and backlighting the flowers. I shot it with the Canon 50mm 1.8/f lense which I love for it’s wonderful depth of field.

When going through old photos last weekend, I came across this one of my mother. I had said to her when I saw it, “my god Mom your hair looks phenomenal”. Her response was “yah but it was too hard to keep up”. It turns out this was from a family wedding in the summer of 1972, in Darien, Connecticut. Long before my parents were thinking of me.

My grandmother is on the left, and I believe my mom’s cousin is on the right. The original photo had faded quite a bit and I used levels, curves and contrast in Photoshop to bring back the depth of the photo. I also did some burning in of areas that had faded more than the rest of the photo.

Absolutely beautiful. I’m looking forward to watching the Olympics there in a few days. Vancouver has been on my list of places to visit for a while. Someday we’ll make it out there.

Craig’s cousin Steven and his wife Val had twins back in December. We had a chance to visit them today. They were very tiny and cute. I love watching their eyes take in the world and process everything.

Liam and Kathy

Catching Autumn crack a smile

This picture and those vines feel like a metaphor for my life currently, well the past 9 years or so. We (Craig and I) had such clear dreams and plans for our lives back in 1998-1999. Then starting in 1999 it got chipped away at slowly and sometimes fast, over the next 10 years. Craig literally dealt with having his spine twisted at one point. Our efforts to keep the plan going seemed to get more and more complicated and frustrating. Here we are 10 years later and feeling like we’ve almost broken free from the vines and twists that tried to take over.

People reflected on the last 10 years with sadness of the financial crisis, housing crisis, political crisis. I looked back and said, “holy shit I survived it”. I really didn’t think I’d live to see 30. Between all the stresses over the past 10 years and then just my own health which I had put on a back burner it seemed inevitable this was going to be coming to an end. I don’t mean to sound doom and gloom, just felt like, really what else could be thrown at me.

Shot with the 50mm lense outside my work in the afternoon on lunch break.