Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Many photo's on the way

It has been a busy couple of weeks at Hayward Photography...there, now that I've got the understatement of the day finished I can tell you what's been going on.

Last Monday, approximately 200 women were bussed up from battered women's shelters around the state and given the royal treatment. Pastor Judy Hoff and hundreds of volunteers rolled out the red carpet (literally) and treated these extraordinary women to a 5 course meal, new hair styles, a makeover, massage, foot bath, waxing....the works. I was there all day to document the event and let me say that it was great to be a part of again.

The week before at the Woodland Park Zoo I was allowed inside the Grizzly Bear Habitat to photograph an awesome event. Zookeepers set up a campsight inside of the habitat and left food lying around to demonstrate what happens if you don't store your food properly while camping in Bear country. Wait until you see the pictures...they trashed the place! It was awesome. I was given access to the roof of the bear habitat for an unobstructed view. Talk about fun.

Speaking of the Zoo, if you happen to be in the area, stop by and walk along the Savannah Trail, there are tons of my photo's up along the trail, especially near and in the Lion habitat. Most all of the lion photo's are mine and many others as well. I absolutely love to see my work being used. It really gave me that warm fuzzy feeling. The Zoo has opened a new Maasai adventure. Children are able to hand feed giraffes, there are tons of other things involved with it, but the Giraffes are the main event. Sunday was the Grand opening of the event and to kick it off they printed off thousands of posters to give to zoo visitors. What was on the poster? I thought you would never ask...a head shot of a giraffe shot by yours truly. The zoo is great about putting photo credits on everything so my name is right there on the corner. It is so cool to know that so many people were given a poster with my photo on it.

On Saturday I spent nearly 15 hours with Michael and Maya Pham on their wedding day. It was such a great experience. The day began with a formal tea ceremony with Indonesian tradition, that was followed by another Tea Ceremony with Vietnamese traditions. They had a beautiful traditional Catholic wedding ceremony and a great wedding reception in Marysville to cap the day. It was such an honor to be there for the entire day. I shot wayyyy too many pictures, but it's so hard to refrain from firing the shutter when there are such captivating people and events right there for me to photograph. It was culturally enlightening. I really enjoyed it and I'll be sure to post pictures asap.

Getting home late Saturday night, I immediately went through my post wedding tradition of uploading the images to my computer and then backing them up onto DVD's. With so many images this took quite a while, I looked at the clock on my computer and it read 12:30....OK, I thought to myself. I've got another long day ahead of me, better hit the sack. I spent another 20 minutes getting organized and when I went upstairs the microwave read 1:50! What the heck! My computers clock never was able to figure out the weird Daylight Savings Time this year I think so I was an hour behind. I woke up at 7 the next morning and drove down to Portland for a birthday party for Savannah and Sophie with our families from Oregon. We went to Jump Planet which features large inflatable objects for everyone to jump on...man, I am in seriously sad shape. It was great to see the family. I think we all had a good time. I'll be sure to post those pics when they are ready too.

After the party was done, we packed up and headed back up north...yowza, I was tired! We made a pit stop at my Dad's house on the Lake in Olympia to check on the status of the construction. They appear to be pretty behind, my Dad is such a pushover I'm afraid that the contractors are putting his job off for more demanding people. I'm going to try to get down there again next week. If they haven't gotten anything else done I'm going to wrestle their contact information from my Dad and raise heck with them to hopefully light a fire under their butt. I was hoping we could have a 60th birthday party for the old man there, but the "4 week job" has already taken about 12 weeks and they aren't even close to being done.

That's about it for now. Again, I'll be sure to post some pics asap.

Have a good one!

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