The Doings of Hidden Valley

When beers are all in one place, and when that place is Oklahoma, we tend to try to go live the high life out at the land.

Although sometimes that comes after a little bit of lounging on the couch at 1:30am on Christmas and short dusky walks at the Bluff Creek mountain bike trails.

While living the high life out at the land, dogs ride on top of cars, grown men are featured in senior pictures redux redux redux, girls hold dogs lovingly, brothers lose themselves in thought, mothers split 24-inch diameter logs into veritable kindlings (yes, kindlings!), fathers provide mothers with such logs, brothers provide mother-providing fathers with such logs, and beers stand in between me and the sun, at which point i shoot them (often after unintentionally taking cover in the long grass, myself).









































'Basic research is not typically driven by the possibility of applications. Although looking for results that will be useful in the short term might be the best strategy for someone seeking personal fortune, it wouldn't be the best strategy for a society looking for long-term benefit from the scientific research it supports. Basic scientific investigation has proven over the centuries to have long-term payoffs, even when the applications were not evident at the time the research was carried out...we don't believe there is any need for linguistic research to be justified on the basis of its foreseeable uses.'
--Sag et al (2003) (shortly before explaining some foreseeable uses of linguistic research)

The People of Hidden Valley

The Beer family spent the middle of a fine November day at my aunt's beautiful land. As it was midday, the lighting was rather subpar, but i took some nice portraits and a few detail shots that i rather liked, in spite of my general distaste for photographing forests.

Here, people who are members of my family (and/or their dogs) do things outside. And i shoot them.

Year in Review: people in places

2011 is freshly over, so in the spirit of Scott Strazzante, i have decided to throw together a few blog posts in which i review 2011 and the photography that it held.

i have now come to the portrait portion of the series. While taking planned/posed portraits is not my preferred style of photography, i have started taking more and more impromptu portraits, and rather enjoy taking them when i do.

Some of the impromptu portraits that i take are fundamentally portraits--the frame is predominantly filled by a face, and the immediate environment is of marginal significance, if identifiable at all. Perhaps my favorites, though, are those pictures that represent a balance between portrait and landscape. That is what this post consists of.

At the very beginning of 2011, i hiked in a blizzard with Amber McKinney. Curt Sharp made a quick trip up to Boulder while visiting a seminary in Denver. i had a few hours between classes during which we charged most of the way up Bear Peak. We turned around a short distance from the summit because i had to get back to Phonological Theory. i was late, of course. Amber McKinney spent many dark hours in my living room. Steve Duman, unawares, was captured looking like an academic (which he is) in his office. Art DeBruyn presented the Lord's supper to Crestview Church. i threatened to fight a tree on Mount Sanitas. Nick and i got caught in a small June snowstorm in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. My father, my sister, my mother (not pictured), and my sister's dog Paxton summited Bear Peak with me. A crowd of strangers and i watched fireworks from Red Rocks just west of Boulder on the fourth of July (i threw my telephoto lens off a cliff in a rit of fealous jage). i tubed down Boulder Creek with Cody Piersall, Kirsten Lackey, and John Stewart. i hiked up Pawnee Peak with (a soon to explode) Cody Piersall. i climbed Kelso Ridge on Torreys Peak with Casey High and Kris Doubleday. i lurked in the flowers at George Miksch Sutton Wilderness Park with Brent Hodge (and Colin Stringer and Caleb Montgomery). i played in the forest with Ayelen Brown. i went hiking with Maggie Leslie and Amber McKinney a short distance up Boulder Canyon. i went hiking with the other beers on my aunt's land--spotting my brother as he walked through a field of tall grass and my mother and sister playing on a hay bale. i saw Pippen Padfoot sniff Colin Stringer's corpse's finger. i watched a total stranger walk into the trees above NCAR. i lounged in the living room with my brother at 1:30am on Christmas Eve. And i took beer family pictures in a nice backlit field.