David & Meagan's Wedding 8/15/08

So this past weekend was my brother Dave's wedding. Dave & Meagan were married on August 15th and the wedding turned out beautiful! I was a little worried about shooting the wedding since I was in the wedding, and I am so glad Meagan ended up hiring a photographer for at least the ceremony portion. There was no way I could have gotten it all. I am still editing all the pictures I took, but in the mean time here is a slide show of a few favorites.

Car Show

On Friday our ward hosted a car show. I am a huge fan of classic cars, so for me this was a real treat! Here are some of my favorite shots that evening. I have to say I loved all the cars but the 66' Corvette Stingray was absolutely stunning!





I adore this mustang... Cherry red is the perfect color for it too!



Here is the wonderful Miss Erin Basso who put this all together!

Aunt Kristi's Birthday - 7/27/08

So for Kristi's birthday we went to the Del Mar Race Tracks. "Where the turf meets the surf, down at old Del Mar... Take a train, take a plane, take a car..." Yeah, I pretty much had that song stuck in my head all week. But the horse races were a lot of fun and the weather was amazing! I think it was about 70 to 75 degrees there, perfect!

So I am not a person who understands horse racing, but I enjoyed watching it and taking pictures. "It is a place to see and be seen," as the quote goes. There is also so much history here. Here is a website about the Del Mar Race Tracks in case you are interested:

http://ezinearticles.com/?History-of-Del-Mar-Race-Track&id=1276278

That song I quoted earlier was written by Bing Crosby himself, who was co-founder to the race track. Here is a painting of the original owners:



The painting of the original owners can be found in this area. On the right side of the corridor there are paintings on the wall of the Del Mar fair and on the left side are paintings of the Del Mar Race Tracks. The people walking in this picture are Jon, Gina, and Mike. I think Don is behind me...



When you first walk into the race tracks there is a long line of palm trees and flags. It is kind of cool.



Below is where the horses are contained until the gates open and they run, and do they run! Very fast and powerful horses.





Here is a picture of the crowd behind us. When the horses got close to the finish line, the crowd went wild! The excitement in the air was electric.



Here is where we watched the race. The horses were not more than 10 feet away from us. Each race we would line up on that fence and watch. Those horses ran by fast! I was glad my camera had a fast shutter speed to catch it all. Six frames per second, go camera go!



I don't even think Frank noticed Don doing that! I guess he will when he looks at this picture.



And here is a picture of the birthday girl. Aunt Kristi is on the left and her daughter Kelly is on the right.



And last but not least, Don... If you click on the picture it will zoom in a little closer on the picture. Look at the reflection in Don's glasses, it is me! That was not on purpose, but I thought it was cool. I never get to be in pictures because I am usually the one taking the pictures. So I finally got to be in one!

Don's Birthday - 7/26/08

For Don's birthday we went to Fuddruckers. Man do I love their burgers! Thanks to all the friends and family who came to help celebrate Don's birthday. I know Don had a blast!



Here are some funny pictures I was able to catch of various people. The first two are of my niece Kaylie, the 3rd one is my brother in law Mike and the last one is my sister Marza and Grandma Krafft.









Here is my Father in law and brother in law playing with their iPhones. We have become quite the techno geek family.



I think Don is getting in trouble here with his Grandma!!! Just kidding. :o)

Jon's Birthday - 7/20/08

Here are some pictures of my brother in law's birthday. We went to Seau's Restaurant and ate some great food.



This is Jon and his best friend Nicole. She has been pretty much adopted into the family. We love her!



Here is the whole table:



Here is another funny pictures of Jon. I can always count on him to make a funny picture!

Baby Madeline

Our friends Jessa and Ben Smith just had their beautiful baby girl on 7/11/08. We were so excited to see her and of course I was excited to take pictures of her too. I instantly fell in love with this little girl.

Jessa's sister Jamie was also in town this weekend. We went to her open house on Saturday night and I was so bummed I forgot my camera. So unfortunately I did not get any pictures of baby Isabelle. She is also a wonderful baby that I adore. It was so fun seeing the two babies who are not more than a couple of weeks old, meet for the first time. Here are some of my favorite pictures that I took of little Maddie last night.

The iPhone 3G Cult

Yes, we joined the ever rising i-phone cult yesterday. We decided it would be best to put some of our tax stimulus check to a good cause, to boost our economy. Or something like that... Hehehe, what ever helps to justify it right?

We were told that the Apple Store had an 8 hour line just to get into the store. CRAZY!!!! We did not want to mess with that so we went to our AT&T store in Santee and they said they were sold out of i-phones after being open for 3 hours earlier that day. So we just ordered them and they should be here in 7-10 days!!!!! I can't wait. It is so pretty and full of yummy technology! I can't wait to play with it. I bought the black one and Don bought the white one. Yah, we had to be different. I thought about getting the white one so I could match my Macbook computer, but than I thought, 8 Gigs is just enough for me. I don't need 16 Gigs... Here are the specs on the phone. I have resorted to reading about it until it is in my hands!

Warrant for my arrest, or something like that...

So this morning on my way to work I am driving through Santee minding my own business & a cop starts to trail me. Just as my luck would have it, he pulls me over. I was wondering why he pulled me over since I wasn't speeding & my registration is all up to date. So I roll down my window & the cop asked "do you get pulled over a lot?" I thought that was a weird question. I haven't been pulled over by a cop in over 6 years. He proceeds to tell me that in the State of California you have to have a license plate in the front and back of the car. Which on my car I am missing the license plate in the front.

So he takes all my info and goes back to his car. He took forever and in my head I am thinking he must have pulled me over for something else. Finally he comes back & said he was letting me off with out a ticket, but the real reason he pulled me over was because someone stole a silver Jeep earlier that morning & my Jeep looked kind of silverish. Depending on the light it changes colors. So needless to say I was late to work because some jerk decided to steal a Jeep this morning. If I was a criminal I would have picked a better car to steal. They could have had mine & the outrageous gas bill that goes along with it!

Shoes, Glorious Shoes!

Here is my latest little project. It also made me realize that I want to buy more shoes to take pictures of. That can be dangerous...

4th of July Fireworks

For 4th of July Don and I went to his Mom's house in Santee. She lives next to a huge field where they shoot off the fire works. The day before 4th of July I woke up thinking "Sweet I have a high end camera now and I can take some pretty sweet shots of fireworks this year." So I spent Thursday evening researching what I needed to do to obtain the perfect firework shot. Which by the way for those of you who are interested in how to do it visit my photo workshop blog and it will explain every thing. Feel free to visit or subscribe to that blog if you guys are interested in photography. I started a photo group at church and each week I will try to post something up to further everyone's knowledge in photography and in the future I will be including tutorials for Photoshop as well. Here is the link:

http://mhornphoto.blogspot.com/

Anyways, I had a lot of difficulty at first. You have to do this all on manual mode so there is a lot of thought process that is involved with it. After I figured it all out, it was easy... of course! My brother in law Mike was so nice to accompany me while I did this. We had to walk up a steep hill in our sandals (I wouldn't recommend that.) There was brush and weeds everywhere so lucky us, our ankles and feet were eaten alive by bugs! Hey the sacrifices you make for a good shot. My husband punk'd out on me and decided to stay down on the side walk where it was safe. Thanks Don! What happened with for better or worse!?!?! :o) Hey at least Mike toughed it out with me. You rock Mike! Looking at this slide show makes me feel like I am watching the fire work show all over again! Now we just need music to add to it. I wasn't able to figure that out... oh well. You guys can listen to your own music while watching it.