MillCreek Canyon in the Fall

We took a quick trip up MillCreek Canyon today, just a short walk along the snowy road with Grace. It was nice to get out of the valley. and Grace really needed some time out of the house. Anyway I thought I would post some photos we took on our last trip up MillCreak. Grace was with us that trip as well but she's not featured in any of the photos.

Here is me with my Halo.

I liked this little curve of the road so we stopped on the way down and took this shot. It was a beautiful fall day.

Here is a little waterfall in the creak by where we stopped for the above photo. I usually end up hating the photos I take of water but I like this one. Mainly because of the leaves that I am shooting through. I also used our new telephoto lens to get this shot.

Here's Cara sitting on the fence. I like the scenery behind her. I messed with the colors a bit in Photoshop to brighten them up, let me know if I went overboard.

Pixar Display in Warnock Engineering

So I was out taking so photos for work the other day and I ran across a Pixar display setup in the lobby of our Engineering building on campus. I'm not exactly sure what computer animation has to do with Engineering, All the other displays in the lobby made sense except this one. Anyway it was really interesting so I took a couple shots of it.


Here's the display. This side was all about Wall-E the top row of drawings shows the progression from pencil drawing to final product.

Here is the cool little Wall-E figurine


This is the other side of the display, more general Pixar stuff.
The Mac was running a little movie of Eve.

And here is Woody and Buzz from Toy Story.

Vacant Lot

Here are some photos I took while I was out looking over a vacant lot for a class project. I took Grace with me since I thought she would enjoy the walk. I also managed to find a few little quirky things to take photos of.


Here's a cute dog wondering why we are stopping to take a photo when there are many more places with interesting smells that need smelling.

These are a couple of photos that I took of the crushed mailbox that you can see in the background of the photo with Grace. The little orange thing on the mailbox just begging to have it's photo taken.

Here are some quick photos from christmas at my parents.


Here's Grace fresh from her trip to the motherland. She looks cute in the rusian style hat my Mom gave me.

Here's me in the same hat, with pedophile santa in the background. Seriously doesn't that santa just have a creepy look in his eye. It's really kinda creepy in person.

Night photos

Night time is perhaps my best time for inspiration, photography wise. Some of my best times out taking photographs happened at night. They don't always turn out to be the best photos I've taken, in fact that's rare. But something about being out at night in the quiet solitude, just inspires me to grab my camera and start snapping away. I love to just walk around on a nice quiet night and see what turns up. The photos below are from a recent trip to visit my Father in Law (Craig) down in his home in Redmond Utah for Christmas. The nights down there are wonderful. It's quiet and it's dark so the night sky is actually visible. This particular night everyone had already gone to sleep for the night. Except Craig who was doing his best to try and stay up until dawn watching TV. I went out alone in the darkness. I wasn't up for a long walk, maybe some other trip down when it's warmer. I took all of these just around the house.


Here's Orion, one of my favorite constellations since he's so easy to find. This was taken by placing my camera on the ground and holding the shutter open for about 30 seconds, or so. I never really time it I just guess and use trial and error until I get the shot I'm looking for.

This was across the street, I liked the way the inflatable snowman looked illuminated in the darkness.

This one's down the street a little. I just liked the way the snow glistened on the road.

Happy Birthday Grandpa

My grandpa, Robert Malecker, would have been 84 on January 16th, so I thought I'd post a little tribute to him. The above photo was taken during WWII when he worked for Pan Am in San Francisco. He was a photographer in his soul and could never say no to a good photo-op.

Above is the Malecker family in 1970. I'd be willing to guess that this photo was taken because my grandpa got a new tri-pod or something along those lines and he just couldn't wait for the curlers to come out to try it out on the family. L-R: My dad, Craig, Grandma Carm (a.k.a. Sketti Grandma), Grandpa, Uncle Mark (Dad's twin brother), Aunt Shelly.

My grandpa was exceedingly proud of the family he created and all that he had worked for in his life that was centered around his family. Some of my last conversations with him were about just that. In this picture most of us were enjoying fun and very little elbow room at the family cabin my grandparents spent 7 years building in Flaming Gorge.

My granparents on the side steps of our cabin. They started building in 1970, so this must have been taken about the time the majority of the work was finished. They drove up every weekend there wasn't too much snow on the ground for 7 years to make this dream come true. I can't even imagine the amount of love and dedication that took and can only hope to do my share to keep the place in good condition so that my kids can enjoy it, just as Grandpa intended.

Here's the cabin last summer- it looks a little disheveled, but all that lattice has since been fixed.

Grandpa bustin' a move. He just burst out of the cabin one afternoon and started up a game of frisbee. My dad had been hounding him to 'get relaxed' translation: get out of your work clothes and put on something more comfortable. We thought he had, until we realized what the white thing you see hanging out the back of his sweatshist was- he had put sweats on over his work clothes to try to make us think he was relaxing. Nice try Grandpa!

This is one of the last good photos I have of him. He took a lot of pictures at my wedding. I like many of his better than the ones done by the pros. we hired.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa. I still miss you everyday.

I Heart Andrew Wyeth

My favorite artist, Andrew Wyeth died January 16th in his sleep at age 91. If you haven't heard of this artist or are not very familiar with him I suggest that you read the Wikipedia site about him or visit his official website. I fell in love with his work several years ago when I was just a young art student. I think he has remained my favorite artist for so long because I discovered him on my own. I was not lectured to about him in art history, shown examples of his work in any of my studio classes, or told how great he is or isn't by some higher art authority. In fact, I cannot even remember any of my art professors mentioning him or his work even once. I have always felt a sort of kinship with him since we share a birthday, but that is where any similarities between he and I end. I just love his work, his process, and that he lived his life exactly how he wanted to- he didn't take crap from anyone. With that in mind, enjoy a few of my favorites:
"Pennsylvania Landscape", 1941. I have this print and am just waiting for my darling husband to hang it up. It is almost impossible to really enjoy this painting without seeing it, or a print of it, large and up close. In this small picture it looks like just another landscape, but it is incredibly detailed and much more bleak that your typical landscape, but in a really beautiful, unique way. It is also painted with egg tempera, a really difficult, precise medium that has almost died out.
Above is "Ides of March", not sure about the year. If you know me at all you'll know that I included this because it's a painting of a dog. Like the image above, seeing it small on a computer screen does it absolutely no justice.


"Winter", 1946. This is one of Wyeth's first egg tempera paintings outside of the bright, splashy watercolor style he started his career with. Bleak, haunting, and you have to love the boy's shadow- brilliant.



I couldn't pay real tribute to Mr. Wyeth without including a painting from the "Helga Series". The above painting is titled "Letting Her Hair Down", 1972. Andrew Wyeth painted Helga Testorf in secret for 14 years before showing the extensive collection of drawings and paintings to his wife, and then the world. Sorry Ian, I don't care if you have an art degree, no making art of naked women behind my back.

Farewell, Mr. Wyeth. I'll be enjoying your work and spreading the word about your brilliance whenever I can.

Editor's Note, Cara posted this message without realizing she was signed in as me. So despite saying posted by Ian this was posted by Cara.

Skiing trip

I went skiing with my friends Brad and Jessica up at the Canyons last weekend. Jessica took some photos and some videos of my skiing. The wind was blowing hard and the air was full of icy sleet. It was a bit uncomfortable until it warmed up and sun came out after lunch. But it was still skiing and it was fun. Here's some photos and a video of me going off a little lip of a jump. Not much of jump but it you should have seen my first run at it. I didn't see the lip coming up until it was too late I tried to turn to avoid it and ended up doing a 360 spin on my shoulder. So of course I had to take another run at it once I knew it was there. I'm out with a sore throat this weekend so I won't be hitting the slopes but hopefully next weekend I can get out there. The way this winter is going we might not have snow for too much longer.

Making Maps

Here's a quick post from work. It's a map of the University Campus, that I made. It's not that impressive most of the work's already done. I just put it together. See if you can find my building #350

Our Yard Panoramics

Here's the Panoramic photo I took of our back yard as promised in the earlier post. I told you it's not that good. I did it really quickly. Maybe someday I'll find time to make a better one. It does a decent job of showing how small it is back there.

Here's the original of composite of the photos before I cropped it. I like this one because it shows the neighbors giant tree that dominates the backyard, and it shows the porch off to the right. It also shows our cute dog who thinks I'm out there to play with her. Lucy's in this photo as well, You have click the photo to enlarge and look close, she's a small dog.

Here's the panoramic of our front yard. as you can see it's better quality but I missed a couple of spots for the bottom corners. But we still got a cute dog in there. I think she's trying to figure out if she can make a break for it.

This is from the same photo set It was later that day when we took Grace for a walk. I did this series for a project about my home and neighborhood. Taking Grace for walks in the nearby park is part of my neighborhood so I included it.

Blood Guts and Gore

I bet you've never seen anyone so happy to have multiple wounds before. This was taken in November when fellow teacher Lisa Morey and I taught an exploratory class in stage makeup; specifically the gory kind. In reality Lisa did most of the teaching since my only experience in applying makeup is putting a little foundation and eye shadow on my own face. It was fun watching the kids transform themselves into broken and beaten shells of their former selves. They were of course all smiles whenever I tried to take a picture.


Okay, so they didn't all do a realistic job, but they had fun and that is what is important.

Ian came to help and did an awesome job making his knuckles look pretty disgusting. From the lack of facial injury I'd have to assume that he was the one who won the bar fight- way to go babe!

Lisa's daughter Annie also came to help us out. She was a pro at applying latex to make the kids wounds look more realistic. Take note of the bloody wrist in the bottom left- somebody should have told him that you cut up, not across. On that disturbing note, I'll end this post.

Panoramic

I'm at work and I have a headache so enjoy this Panoramic photo I took of the campus just south of the Library.
You'll have to click on it to see it in full glory.

Instruction Manual

There is a message in this video somewhere maybe I'll figure it out someday. :)

Tribute to Summer

With winter raging outside I felt the urge to post a tribute to summer with some pictures of my favorite place on the planet- Flaming Gorge. Okay, so I haven't traveled much, but ask my husband and he will tell you how much I like comfort, familiarity and not trying new things. The above picture was taken at Mustang Ridge, a beautiful place to go swimming that is accessible by car. This particular day there were only two other people and their two dogs. Beauty and solitude.

Here's Grace in what my grandpa liked to call the "babbling brook" that runs through our property. She's a water dog for sure.

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A family portrait at Red Canyon after a day of hiking.

And finally, ye old family homestead. The Malecker Family castle. Oh summer, how I miss you and long for your return . . .