30, 30, 30

I want to talk about weight loss again.  Now that football season is underway, this morning I dug out one of my team shirts and it didn’t fit.  Fuck.  Dug out another one, same result.  This happened six times.  OK, so it’s not the shirts, it’s me.  There’s no secret that I’ve put on some pounds.  I feel heavier, I look heavier and it’s really starting to affect my mindset.

After the first of the year I started going to the gym three times a week, starting slow, but I felt pretty good about what I was getting accomplished.  Then, as what happens to most people, I missed a day and before you know it, my routine was done.

I was getting discouraged too because I wasn’t seeing any change, I wasn’t feeling any change.  That didn’t help my motivation.  I had too many things I was trying to do so I was focusing on nothing.  Frustration was setting in bad.

I remember, years ago, my dad telling me how he would exercise using calisthenics and how he gained some good muscle mass by using nothing other than a door frame.  Remembering that, and thinking about setting smaller goals, I decided that I would develop my own plan.  Hopefully I’ll be able to start small and using measurable metrics, keep myself motivated and grow from there.

So this is my plan and I call it 3-30s.  Every morning when I get up I am going to do 30 pushups.  Three days a week I’m going to go to the gym over lunch and do 30 minutes on the treadmill and I’m going to do this for 30 days.  I know that doesn’t sound like much, but the problem that I’ve had in the past is I try to do just too damn much and I get discouraged.  So I’m going to start small and get back into it.  Anything above and beyond that base is just going to be icing on the cake.

I am going to have my lovely wife help me with getting measurements, starting weight and take photos for me.  I will post them here a couple times a week for a couple reasons, so you, if you so choose, can follow along with me.  But, also to help myself stay on track.

Hopefully by starting small and setting small goals, I will stay on track and keep myself motivated.  I will be starting this plan the first of October and will publish the result on November first.  Now, I’m not delusional, when I share my month long results I’m not expecting them to be life changing.  I don’t expect to loose a ton of weight and I don’t expect a super endurance boost.  What I do hope to accomplish is a new routine.  And then slowly adding to that routine, so over the month of October I will be looking to add one thing to this base that I can start in November.

Hopefully by starting slowly I will be able to see something change in the months to come.  Stay tuned and wish me luck!

Camera Naming

I’m big on naming things.  I find it difficult to have something without a name.  And with the recent acquisition of the Sony a6300, the naming process has begun.  I’ll keep you posted.

Mini Photo Shoot

Over the weekend, Jess and I had a few minutes before we headed out for the day.  I said, ‘hey, I want to get a few photos up here (in Hadley’s room), the light is great right now.  Don’t move!’ And I ran downstairs, put my camera together and ran back upstairs.  I took some photos and ended up with a few really good ones.  See below:

I’ve been digging my new Sony a6300 out a lot more and I must say, I totally love shooting with it.  Years ago I was looking for a nice hybrid body that would shoot both digital cinema footage and killer stills.  I have long been a Nikon guy and picked up a D3100, hoping that was going to be the silver bullet.  Nope.  I was just a little ahead of the technology curve for where my budget was at.  And now, with the a6300, I think we’re there.  I am VERY happy with the footage I’m shooting (I just set it up with saved profiles for 24p and 120p and I’m very excited to shoot a project where I can mix frame rates) and I’m more than happy with the quality of the stills.  What I’m not really in love with is my trusty old manual Nikon 50mm f1.4.  We have captured so many things together and after shooting Hadley, realized that having a fast autofocus lens is going to be a must.  I’m pretty good at following her, but am just no match for one of the fastest autofocus cameras on the market.  Sony makes an absolutely gorgeous 50mm f1.8 that I would like to pick up.  The speed difference from 1.4 to 1.8 isn’t going to be THAT much for what I’m going to be using it for, plus, it’s not like I’m going to get rid of my 1.4 so I’ll still have that when I need it.

I’m looking forward to producing content.  I think this is the beginning of my creative spark coming back to life.

Cheerios

Over the weekend my lovely bride had to head to the office for a little while.  So, Hadley and I hung out and I grabbed the camera for a little bit and was able to snag a couple shots of her.

Sony a6300; ISO 100; Nikon 50mm@f1.4, SS 1/125

Sunday Funday

My mom, brother and his wife and their daughter came over to the house on Sunday for a little grill out lunch since the weather has just been gorgeous.  After they took off, Jess and Hadley and were just chillin’.  Hadley was having a hard time taking a nap and she always falls asleep in the car, as most infants do.  So, living where we do, we are only roughly a half hour from LeMars, which is were Wells Blue Bunny is.  So, we packed up the baby and the dog and headed north!  Jess and I could get ice cream and hopefully Hadley would fall asleep.  Mission accomplished!  We did a little driving around and then headed home.  After a little over two hour nap.  We decided to take a little trip to the park down the street from our house.  And this happened:

Best Commuter Vehicle???

Let me first begin with at present, this is NOT the best commuter vehicle for me.  I have a 60 mile one-way commute, so this is not an option.  HOWEVER, if the day comes and I have a short commute, this is definitely what I’m picking up!  And if you have a short commute, or live in a big city, take a peek at this, the Boosted Board.

This is not a product endorsement.  I do not have one of these (though I would love one) and have never been on one.

It’s been a while since I’ve been on a board.  I used to skateboard as a way to get around (why this is perfect) and never really got into ‘skating’.  I have had a few long boards and those are clearly my favorite.  My current long board I haven’t been on in quite some time.  Now that the weather is going to start getting nicer and I’m going to be spending more time outside, it might just be time to break that baby out again!

I’m pretty excited about the Boosted Board as a product for a lot of people.  You can travel up to 14 miles on one charge with the extended range battery and 7 miles with the standard battery.  The cool thing too is that it will power up hills up to a 25% grade!  That’s awesome!!!

With multiple ride options, it won’t take long for you to get the hang of this thing.  Again, I don’t have on and have never been on one, but from what I’ve read and seen on YouTube, it seems fairly easy.  And, it’s a sick form of transportation!

Do any of you have one?  Love it?  Hate it?  What are your experiences?

Oh, Boosted Boards, if you see this and want to send me one to test out, I would love that.  Thanks.

The Darkness of Home

So I’ve been wanting to do a photo series for a while now and I knew that I wanted there to be a theme to it.  But, I wasn’t quite sure what that theme was going to be.  Until now.

More often than not, people will always describe their hometown with the good points, the bright shiny things that would make people want to come to their town.  I tend to lean slightly more roughed up, more fucked up macabre than I probably should.  So, as the title of this series introduction has already let the cat out of the bag, I am going to be sharing a series of my town, Sioux City, in the dark.  I want to shoot some areas that are those bright, shiny places that draw people to our fair town, but put a little different, a little darker slant on them.  You’ll see what I mean as we go along and I hope you enjoy feeling them as much as I will creating them.

Challenge 2017

Turns out I began writing a post a while back, saved it and then never came back to it.  So, I’m coming back to it!  It’s as follows:

As 2016 comes to a close, I took the last couple of weeks and reflected on what happened this year, how it changed me for better or worse and then adopt the challenge platform for next year, rather than a bunch of resolutions.

A big one, and most decidedly my most proud moment, was meeting my first child, Hadley Grace, in June.  The love and joy that I feel every time I look in her eyes simply cannot be put into words.  Or, if it can, I simply do not possess the elevated language need to adequately convey those emotions.  Another thing great this year was celebrating my first wedding anniversary.  I have enjoy collecting memories with my wife, Jessica, thus far and am really looking forward to the ones we make as a trio moving forward.

Something else that really affected me significantly more than I had anticipated was celebrating my daughter’s first Christmas.  It was an amazing feeling sharing those moments with my family and my wife’s family (all my family).  However, not to get too down, what affected me was celebrating this Christmas without my dad.  My dad has been gone for four years now and I’ve done plenty of accepting and living and moving forward, but what really caused pause was that he would have loved sharing in these experiences too much, the love that he would have felt and poured over Hadley, and my niece Claire, would have been so great that, combined with ours, no other love would be able to fit in that room.  So, I am just going to continue to be the best dad I can be, because I learned from the best.

Moving on to 2017, I have rediscovered my love of photography.  I first dipped my toe into motion pictures years ago with a strong base in film photography.  After a career in film and video for so many years now, the last part of 2016 reignited my desire to create fine art photography.

So I have decided that I am going to challenge myself in 2017 to do four things, change my habits to live a more healthy lifestyle; especially with our new daughter and the time she needs, continue to build and grow our marriage; assemble a book of photography; and finish this book that I have been writing for the last three years.

I am going to be looking at my life and really figuring out how I can change and change the things around me that are creating chaos and negativity in my life, which are hindering the successful completion of my challenge.

Ice Storm

A couple weeks ago we had an ice storm and everything was shut down.  My wife and I were home from work for the day and early afternoon I defied the news saying ‘stay off the streets’ and went and took a few photos downtown.  I must give the City of Sioux City credit, the roads were in fantastic shape!  I didn’t slip or slide at all.  And these are a few resulting images.

Following that ice storm, we had a snow storm a handful of days following.  That’s when I snapped that one of the truck.

Creative Goals

As 2017 kicks off, I’m getting creatively excited to see where the year goes.  I am excited to get back into still photography and I’m going to be hitting still and motion photography pretty hard this year.  I have a couple self generated weekly and monthly guides that I’m going to be adhering to and I will be posting those results here on the blog as well as on my Instagram.  I can tell you right now, there are going to be a lot of pictures and videos of my wife, Jessica, and our daughter, Hadley as I hone and evolve.  So get ready.  Here goes.