yep - not coming back...

I have decided to stay with my WordPress blog and quit giving all my SEO love (what little there was) to Google.

http://www.jrbechthold.com

Baby Time in Utah!

No one makes babies quite like the inhabitants of my beautiful state of Utah, and the Hogle Zoo is no exception! Elephant, Tigers, Snow Leopard, Siamese Crocs, and more Meerkats than you can count... we had a marvelous time.

Zuri, the baby elephant

Zuri was by far the headliner of the newcomer lineup. It was the first baby elephant at Hogle Zoo - and it will be fun watching her grow up. They won't separate Zuri from her mother like they will some of the other animals, so she will be at the zoo for a long time to come.



It was fun watching her getting used to her legs and walking around...









That is one pooped baby elephant!



Zuri loves playing with the balls in her enclosure.



Hmmm... now I know where George Lucas got the idea of the piano player in Empire Strikes Back.

She isn't quite as stable as her mom just yet.

The Asian Highlands

Snow Leopard

My personal fave was the new Snow Leopard cub, and not because of Apple's newest version of Mac OS either. I love the grace and beauty of the Snow Leopard and this little kitty was a joy to watch. When we first passed by their enclosure, she was snuggled up with mom taking an afternoon siesta, but when we checked back later in the day she was out playing and seemingly having a great time.

You looking at me?



Smile!



Mom seemed a bit agitated at something, but it sure made for some nice photos.

Amur Tiger

Right across from the Snow Leopard was the Amur Tiger enclosure and a proud mom to 3 new baby boys. I was only able to get photos of one little guy trying to decide whether or not to cool off in the water.

For the birds...

We also stopped in for the afternoon bird show and it was fabulous; beautiful birds from all over the world on display.

am I back?

***UPDATE***

So thanks to Trent filling me in about MarsEdit I am heading back to my jrbechthold.com wordpress blog - I will be doing a series of tests there and here to decide ultimately which blogging platform I choose to go with, but for now I prefer to stay with my self-hosted domain.

OK - so I am way swamped at work and to be honest - WordPress is just too hard to maintain. I am not in love with the posting options afforded by my current theme, and as a result, I don't update nearly as often as I should. I am thinking of switching back to the good old reliable, clean and easy interface that is blogger.

I have a ton of photos from my recent trip to Europe and I will probably doa city highlight post for each - but to start out here is a photo I took in Prague of the castle.

So stay tuned... I may be moving this blog over to my domain, or I may just bag the domain thing altogether - but either way - I will be posting more here.

Thanks!

Cold Turkey

So I think it is time to switch. If I don't ever cut the cord and move completely over to my new website I will have fragmented followers and content and to be honest, it will be way too hard to keep both blogs going with anything worth looking at and reading.

I have tried to drag things out in the past - mainly with old girlfriends and bad habits (wait - aren't they the same thing?) and I have found quitting cold turkey is the best choice for me.

So there it is... Go over to JRBECHTHOLD.COM and go visit my blog. I am making the comment section easy cheesy japonesey - pretty much your name and an email - no need to register, but you are more than welcome to if you choose to do so.

I appreciate everyone that has left wonderful comments over that last few years and has linked to this blog - please update your blogroll to my new site - and I promise to return the favor.

Thanks again!

And so it goes...

www.jrbechthold.com

My new photography website is up and live. Feel free to go have a look! There are still some minor tweaks in store, mainly to my portfolio and photo pages, but I am pretty happy with things so far. This project has been an exercise in patience and humilty. I have come to the realization that I am not as smart as my mother thinks I am. :-) I hate .php and CSS is driving me nutz... but I am excited to learn more because I can see what a powerful tool it is.

Anyway, I will still be using this blog for everyday things etc - but the majority of my photography related posts etc will be moved over to www.jrbechthold.com and so it goes...

Game Canceled

Due to snow.
Woke up this morning to 6-8 inches of new snow. Bogey loved it... and while I love snow - I want some warm weather!

it is official

We got written acceptance from the bank today and sent over our timeframe addendum... we are so excited! An inspection, appraisal, and we are moving! We locked in our rate with our loan guy and are very happy to finally get this whole "short sale" (yea, right!) process over with and get into our new house!

(Crazy that is snowed so much today too... )

Spring Break?

And so it goes...

Lightroom, Camera... Action!

One of the nicest and most talented wedding photographers in Utah, Scott Jarvie (@jarvie), taught a free Lightroom workshop at East Bay Studios last night and I had the pleasure of attending.

I have known Scott through the wonderful photographer community here in Utah for just under a year, and I am amazed not just at his incredible knowledge and ability with the camera, but his willingness to teach and mentor other photographers - Pro and Amateur alike.

Last night's event was just one of many free workshops that Scott does for his "Tweeps", Facebook Friends, and pretty much anyone that hears about or knows him through the myriad of websites and blogs that mention this great photographer.



We had just under 50 people at the event, which was organized in under 2 weeks. Thanks to our gracious host, East Bay Studios, (of Provo Area Digital Photography Meetup and PhotoCamp UT fame) we had a great location very conducive to learning and exploring the wonderful tool that is Adobe Lightroom.

This class was targeted at beginning Lightroom users - and we actually had a few people download the trial version right at the event. Scott briefly discussed the overall setup of Lightroom, explaining the 5 modules, but mainly focusing on the Library and the Develop modules. In addition to teaching everyone his individual tricks and tips, he posted over 50 very useful presets on his website for everyone that attended the event to download - again for free.



After downloading the presets and walking through the installation process we were able to see first hand, on our own photos, Scott's great technique.

Everyone that attended, in addition to a hearty helping of Lightroom and Scott's (sometimes cheesy) humor, chipped in for pizza and rootbeer floats for dinner.

I have completely switched over to Lightroom now, after using Photoshop, iPhoto and Aperture. I am sold on Lightroom and I love its ease of use and editing capabilities. I am just getting into using presets though, and the increase in worklfow "speed" is significant.

If you are looking for some great presets to give you ideas and get you started there are a bunch of very talented photogs and companies out there with available Lightroom presets for download... one in particular I have used and like is @exequals ( Website ) go check out his website - it is a great Lightroom resource.

Scott is teaching the second installment for intermediate Lightroom users at East Bay tomorrow night, Thursday, at 7:00. Go to his website to see if any more spots are available.

Thanks again to Scott for teaching this class, and to East bay Studios for letting us crash their space. See you on Thursday!

Glory