Antelope Island

The film shoot came to a close yesterday so I thought I'd post a couple of my photos from White Rock Bay on Antelope Island where we were on location for the last week of our shoot. The location was gorgeous, but the bugs were awful. Also, if you haven't experienced floating in the Great Salt Lake, you should. It's pretty cool.

For Robbing The Dead

This past month I've been working as the Production Coordinator on the set of For Robbing The Dead. It's a western based on the true story of Jean Baptiste who robbed graves in the Salt Lake cemetery back in the 1860's. It's a beautiful, compassionate story that will be a fantastic film.

We've had some awesome locations, so I've brought my camera along to snap pictures when I'm not busy. Below are some pictures I took at our Utah Lake location: orange headed birds... green dancing bugs... and some panoramas...

I'm Getting Married!

I'm getting married to Becky Jones on June 12th in Salt Lake. Becky is amazing and I love her! She is also the reason I have failed to blog at all so far in 2010. The picture above is of us right after I proposed. We set the camera up on a tripod, set the timer and got this magical shot.

A Little Christmas Miracle

Christmas break is a wonderful time, made even more wonderful when it's actually a break. Although after sleeping in every day for a week straight I find myself feeling a little anxious to do something at least somewhat productive... so now I'm blogging.

Life has been busy so I kind of forgot to make a post about dancing in Christmas Around The World in the Marriot Center. It was a great concert and I was thrilled to be a part of it as a part of the Performing Arts Company this year. Really it's been a dream come true. The entire week before the performance was definitely crazy with all of the rehearsals, but luckily my biggest paper was due before all of the rehearsals got started that week. For the actual concert I got to dance in five of the numbers: Haj'd Povedi Veselo from Serbia, Hambone from the USA, Balle Balle from India, Betekintés Szatmárba from Hungary, and the Hopak from the Ukraine.

Last year I was in Christmas Around The World and did Tinikling from the Philippines. I remember being in the wings waiting to come on for the finale while PAC did Hopak. Each night I would watched Hopak and wish that I could perform it... someday... maybe if I was lucky. But I never really imagined that I'd actually make PAC and perform Hopak in Christmas Around The World. Folk dance is part of my heritage since my parents were both folk dancers, and something about that dance really has allowed me to connect with my heritage in a whole new way. So this year I've had a simple prayer answered that I prayed offstage and never imagined would actually come true. It was a tender mercy for me.

Below is a picture of my mom, Mary Bee (the founder of folk dance and director when my parents folk danced at BYU), and me in the Serbian costume.

Here is a picture of me, Ed Austin, and my mom. Ed is the director of the Performing Arts Company now, and he danced with my parents way back in the day.

After the concert I had finals to look forward to. Don't worry, I survived, and almost all of my finals went better than I was expecting them to. Okay, now I'm going to go back to relaxing and taking advantage of the break. Have a happy new year everyone!

Spam

If there's one thing that gets a little tiresome it's the students who miss use Blackboard e-mail privileges and send incessant mass e-mails to their fellow classmates clogging their inboxes with messages they really didn't want in the first place... (deep breath)

Well, I got ANOTHER one of these e-mails yesterday from someone who may hold the record for mass Blackboard e-mails. It was unique enough I thought I'd share it. Enjoy.

"I wasn't able to make it to class today. This was unfortunate and unavoidable, and I really regret it. You now have the ability to make me feel worse by refusing to share notes with me, or to make all of my wildest dreams come true . . . what kind of people are you? Before you answer you should be warned that, as a political science major, I'm conversant in the deadly art of comparing my enemies to Hitler. Thanks."

Hopefully there was some saint out there kinder than myself that responded to this spamers request. Right now, however, I am perfectly content letting this person compare me to Hitler.

Abundance

Abundance makes it easy to overlook our blessings.

Forced Perspective

This is an amazing picture I saw on the Digital Photography School blog...

The picture is of 18,000 men preparing for war in a training camp at Camp Dodge, in Iowa.

A few facts about the image:

Length from base to Shoulder: 150 feet
Right Arm: 340 feet
Length of Torch and flame: 1000 feet
Total Length: 1490 Feet
Number of men in body and head of figure: 2,000
Number of men in right arm: 1,200
Number of men in torch: 2,800
Number of men in the flame only: 12,000
Total men: 18,000