We took a trip back to Montana (our 5th this year I think) to see Mariah’s new baby Berelle and visit everyone there. It was a super short trip, but as usual the kids had a great time on Grampa Russ and Gramma Lilly’s farm with the baby chicks. They could chase those things around for days on end, I’m sure…

Halloween saw some additional use of the standard costumes that’ve been passed down from kid to kid to kid… Welcome to the ladybug costume Mills! Worry not, you won’t be the last to wear it though. Mystery baby #4 due next month will probably take it for a spin in a couple years!

Also we’ve got a few of the girls on Chloe’s first day of Kindergarten, Lilla’s first day of 1st grade, and Mills first day of first days of Lilla/Chloe’s first day?

We took a trip at the end of August 2011 to Cannon Beach with the Morisseau clan. Had a pretty nice place right near Haystack Rock and got some decent shots of it. The house going up right across our street was JUST being built, so it’d knock out our nice view of the rock next year.

The hot tub was pretty nice. It got cold, but the kids thought it was a pretty great bath tub. We got a game (I think a full one?) of cornhole in with the boards Pete hauled over. We took a trip to the Tillamook Cheese Factory for Mills 2nd birthday. Man, there’s a lot of cheese there…

We roasted marshmallows one day at the beach, dug some pretty deep holes in the sand and found some sand-shrimp thanks to the tireless efforts of Derek, but it was pretty much filled-in by the next day.

All-in-all the kids had a really great time. The wind got blowing out on the coast, so they got a bit sandy, but a fun time nonetheless…

This photo here is a 180 degree shot from the house in front of us one night when the clouds were particularly poppy…

Mom brought up a handful of photos over Thanksgiving because I referenced the shot we took when at Disneyland last week, and she said she had a shot of me pulling the sword from the stone back in 1986 too. That one is here, along with a handful of other shots ranging from 1986-1993ish. It’s funny that it’s been almost 20 years with some of these, but good to have a copy of them digitally now, eh?
Check out the patches on Luke’s jeans. Nice work Mom!

Great Gramma Cross, Gramma Millie, Luke and Andy in a sweet patterned frame.

Gabbert Family circa 1958ish?

1992 Helena America All-Stars. I think this is the year we took 2nd at State maybe?

Me and Laura-Jean ready ourselves to brave Kindergarten!

Oh Lord, check out that hair I had! I’ll certainly be teased about this by my kids – feel free to take a jab or 2 yourself about them. (Andy and Ike 1992.)

Yea, our faces are really red there, eh? Scanner took a bad shot of it.

San Diego Zoo 1986

Universal studios 1986

Teacups 1986 a la 2010 with my girls.

Universal Studios again 1986

Pull the sword out in 1986 (How about a shot in 1999, or how about 2010?

Fishing with Luke, 1983. Not sure where this was taken, nor who’s dog that was cause Mom didn’t know, but…

I wish I had used this camera a bit more on the trip, but with 3 kids, it is just hard keeping them in some semblance of a group I can keep an eye on. We had a pretty good time. We couldn’t get the sword out of the stone. You’ll notice I tossed in a photo of me attempting to pull the sword from the stone back in 1998 after the updated fatter picture of me nowadays; 12 years goes by faster than you think…

I wish I had a few pictures of the story that happened when we flew in though. It was pretty interesting… We arrived at the Ontario airport and Mills was looking really lethargic and Heather thought she was warm so we decided it best to get to an Urgent Care as soon as we landed to try and see what was up. We landed, headed to the car rental where we were planning on a full-sized car. We got there and the lady let me know that Priceline had booked us a Toyota Yaris. Yea, that’s a really great car if it is me and 1 piece of luggage. But we have 3 kids, and an asston of luggage (yes, that’s a word).

I think I hit a soft spot with the lady to give us our 1 high note of the day, she triple-upgraded us to a Suburban after I gave her the sob story about Mills earache and the fact that Priceline told us we’d have a full-sized car.

We entered “Urgent Care” in the GPS and it took us to a strip mall area of Ontario, CA. Fortunately we got there at about 5:45pm and they closed at 6, so that was a good thing. There were only 2 or 3 other people in there but it took us about 30 minutes after that to get seen by the doctor.

Once Heather got in there the Doc razzed her about why she was flying with a baby that had an ear ache. She didn’t know Mills *had* an ear ache at that point, but the guy gave her the 3rd degree anyway. We got the prescription and asked where the nearest pharmacy was. They told us there was one right down the road @ Target. We got to Target at about 7:08. Yea, too bad the pharmacy closed at 7, and they were on time about it. We picked up some shoes and sweatshirts as it was a bit colder than anticipated.

We again typed in “pharmacy 24 hour” to the GPS and it told us of a Rite-Aid about 5 miles away that was open till 10. Off to that spot. We get there and the lady takes the prescription and stares at it like I’m forging it. Fortunately Heather has our insurance card, expired by a month, but still has it. The lady grills me on it and I tell her she’s welcome to call them up to verify and that I just don’t have the updated card.

5 minutes later she comes back and says that she verified I was a member and again picks up the prescription. This time though she realizes she can’t read the doctors handwriting. Time to call the doctors office! But remember, they closed at 6 and we got there right at closing time. No answer. She calls the “on call” number on the paperwork I went back to the car for, disconnected. This goes on for about 15 mins while they try to find out who this guy is. They call their network and see if he’s in there, no. I start to think if we got bamboozled there by this mysterious guy.

I tell the lady that it’s for an ear infection and she deciphers what it is. Amoxicillin with some other magic stuff to fight off bacteria. Great, so hurry up and fill it lady, I’ve been here for about 40 mins now trying to decipher this. She seems confident they have and sure enough they do. I’m excited. I shouldn’t have been. Mr. SketchyDoc didn’t put an amount on it. Back to the phone with someone that may or may not be able to help us.

15 mins after THAT the lady tells us she’ll just give us a 10 day prescription. SWEET! All I have to do is wait 20 mins now for them to fill it out. Tick tick tick… Back in 20 minutes I find that they called up my insurance again to find that my company won’t cover the “added bacteria killers” in the Amoxicillin. Super. So my only option is paying full price. That’s fine by me, just let me out of here. They’re cool with it, but just tell me it needs to be refrigerated. Good thing I have that fridge in my car; oh wait, I don’t. But they said it could be out for an hour or 2. I only have 90 miles to go so I figure that’ll work.

Finally, at about 10 we’re finally on the road to Racho Mirage (where Jay/Katie had a very nice wedding to attend). About 10 miles into it we hit road work, which slims 3 lanes down to 1. That kills about 45 mins right there, and without a TV in our car (sure, call us bad parents) the 2 older girls are not interested in the books/crayons we got them and thought fighting was better. That didn’t make it any easier of a ride.

Fortunately, they fell asleep right after the construction and it was quasi-smooth sailing the rest of the way until we got to the hotel and found no fridge there either. They did have an ice machine though, that was our makeshift fridge for the next 5 days.

Needless to say, the bed felt pretty good that night.

A couple captions on the photos, you’ll see Mills stuffing her face with cotton candy that she wouldn’t let anyone else get at, and had some sticky paws. You’ll see Chloe crying her eyes out after riding Mr. Toads Wild Ride where she was with me and in the “drivers” side. She was so scared because she said, “Dad, I don’t know how to drive!” Also you’ll see Chloe crying about not being able to pull the sword from the stone. Yea, Chloe, you and 982 million other kids that have tried.

12 years earlier with less fatness, and far fewer kids:

My sister Mariah took a trip down the Grand Canyon earlier this month and got some pretty amazing shots. This compilation is 4 separate shots pieced together. People seem to like the explaining of the process so:

1. Took all the photos into Photoshop and used the File>Automate>Photomerge>Auto

2. The process adds a bit of bulge to the shot so it looks like a balloon with white space on all the sides. Photoshop has a sweet Content-Aware option that’ll fill in the white space with actual pixels that fit from the shot.

3. Went into Image>Adjustment>Exposure and made the print a bit darker to bring out the background (more in step 4). Bumped down the Gamma and evened out the Levels. Saved a 2nd copy.

4. Pulled both the 2nd copy and original into Photomatix and with the dark image pulled out the detail from the mountains in the back and contrasted it with the light already in the picture.

5. Finally off to Lightroom with a couple of my favorite filters that really pull out (or take out) the color in certain areas.

This one is again at the i84/hwy 97 interchange between Oregon and Washington. I’ve always really liked how infrared photography has worked (example 1, 2, 3) but I’ve never taken the time to actually hammer one out. This is certainly not by the book, but does a very good job of capturing the moment.

This shot really made me mad – Photomatix has been letting me down lately as I’ll edit the photo how I want it, and when the process comes in, the shot is very dark. I’ve tried to compensate by brightening the photo before I process it, but I’m just not as happy with the program lately – another sign I spend too much time trying to perfect it. So it is…

I hadn’t taken a lot of shots lately, been busy with other things; but the family and I took a long weekend to the Toivola cabin 8/14-15 which was almost precisely HERE.  It was a great time, had some good food, good friends, and mediocrely behaved dogs.  All in all, a great weekend.  The girls learned how to swim with lifejackets on, they also learned how NOT to swim with one off – they sunk like a ton of bricks when they tried to swim without them.  Thanks Ayla for teaching them to swim on Wednesdays, they clearly like it a lot!

Anyway, with the photo itself, it was a unique one in that it was a perfectly clear morning, no texture in the sky and very little on the water.  I loved the composition of the shot so I wanted to bring it out.  A lot of people ask the process, well for this one it was:

1. It was a .jpg file so I pulled it up in Photoshop and sharpened the image.
2.  I then went to the “exposure” dropdown and pulled the gamma down so it’d be darker in the bright spots (better contrast).
3.  Opened Photomatix and used the darkened image and the original image to put a light HDR feel to it.  Fiddle with the settings here, to each their own.
4.  Saved that photo and pulled back into Photoshop, dug into my standard background texture file and pulled out 2 I liked.  Created separate layers for them, set the opacity down on them, and set the first one (scratches) to a soft ‘overlay’ and about 35% opacity and the 2nd one (brown mesh frame) to ‘screen’ and opacity to 20%.
5.  Saved and popped it into Adobe Lightroom and tossed in a ‘general punch’, and ‘basic bam’.
6.  Back to Photoshop to clean up the edges and edit out a few watermarks that showed on my poorly cleaned 10-24mm Tamaron lens.

That’s the long and the short of it, but I do like doing these projects that are a bit off the norm of shooting though.  It was a good weekend had by all!

This is another stitched shot right above the Columbia River on the Washington side. We pulled off and I walked back from the road and took 30 or 40 shots of things but when I came back to the car, the lighting and cloud cover was a perfect setup, so I snapped a few more:
BONUS SHOT!
I took another about 210 degree shot of the river with my macro lens just before I left too – if you look at the FULL SIZED image (60MB) you’ll see people on the bridge and across the water – stitching it up makes it look way too small, but a neat concept.

This one actually is a set of about 10 shots that I pivoted on each step to take. The full size version is HERE, it’s 33MB, but it makes for a pretty sweet background!
There is a turnout right as you go up the hill after Biggs, OR on the Washington side of the bridge over the Columbia that had a nice cloud cover that day that I wanted to capture.
Additionally, I wanted to test out the photo stitching capability of Photoshop CS5, and I must say that seems pretty similar to CS4. Not a bad thing, but does eat up a lot of memory in completing.