January self portrait challenge

During the month of January, I participated in the January photochallenge to shoot myself (with my camera) once every day of the month. 31 self portraits in 31 days. I didn't quite keep up, but managed to take photos about 3/4 of the days (still a few in the camera that need to be downloaded).

I took a lot of photos and uploaded only the best to my flickr account (you can see more here self portrait set). Because I have begun shooting microstock I tried to go for images I thought might sell as stock (sometimes). Other times I went for what ever look I could think of off the top of my head. OK, enough blabbering, on with the photos...

First photo as a warm up to the photo challenge. Makes me think of those cheese heads only with chess not cheese.


Week 1 favorite, taken outside my home late at night.


Week 2 favorite (hard to pick on this week).


Week 3 favorite was an idea that didn't turn out how I intended but well you live and learn. It still turned out decent.


Week 4 was film noir (great fog that night). The photo was not exactly what I wanted (it looked soo much better in my head), but I got decent results. Probably the most popular photo from the entire series on flickr.


Later (next month) I plan on doing a little re-hash of the experience, what I picked up and the like. I also plan on sharing some of the setups with little tidbits about what worked and what didn't.

Boys will be boys

Do you need anything fixed? Clayton was given power tools for Christmas that haven't had a lot of use.

Can you hear me now?

It is getting closer, we have 5 weeks until Clayton's new baby sister will be here! Clayton knows that a baby sister is in mom's belly, and we tell him that he has a sister on the way. I just don't think he understands what that means. He has become used to being the one and only.



I know he will be a good big brother! I for one can't wait to see baby Vivian! Yup we have settled on a name for the new baby girl. Anji's great grandmother Vivian is the name sake. My mom will be name sake for the middle name (Elizabeth). Can't wait for the day for Vivian Elizabeth Marx to arrive!

New Year resolution was not blogging but maybe it should be

I can't believe how far behind I have gotten. Far enough I have been avoiding my blog...

Several things are in the works for the new year.

-We (the wife and I) need to figure out a name for our little girl who is due in about a month.

-Did I mention that we have a baby girl coming along? The baby room is just an empty room (We need to get cracking).

-There is a whole house full of projects that I need to get fixed (molding to install, the garbage disposal just went out, demo work that now needs the repair portion of the work etc). Did I mention we will be having a baby girl who will be keeping us up at night and will demand our time?

-Take a picture of myself every day of January (Already missed a bunch of days but you can see one up top). Yup, I am working on a photo challenge of self portraits (more to come in a later post).

-Build my microstock portfolio. Another Yup, I have started to build a microstock portfolio as added revenue to my meager photo earnings (check it out at Istock portfolio )

-Do better at blogging.

My tips, hints and thoughts on photography

This is where I will collect all of the how to articles created by me. These are my thoughts and things I wanted to share about photography. I've moved the incomplete list that was located at the sidebar, and replaced it with a single link. I will update the list as I continue to share.

Thinking about wedding photography? Here somethings I learned shooting with a Pro Wedding photographer: Second Shooter for Scott Jarvie

Want to get better looking skies? Here is what I do to get better looking skies: Better looking skies

This tip is a quick tool to help see how other people took their photos: Exif viewer

I get occasional e-mails about my gear, what I use and how I use it. Learn more about what I use here: My Gear and how I use it

A tutorial I wrote after a month of taking self portraits. Here is what I learned with some great looking photos of me: Better Self Portraits.

Cameras are getting better, but there are still times when the cameras built in meter will get it wrong. Watching a few of the built in tools of your camera can help get better exposure. This is the way I watch my exposure.

Short on money, well you’re not alone. Instead of buying a macro studio try out an old milk container. Macro studio on zero budget

This photo generated a lot of interest, and here I explain exactly what I did to get the star trails and share a short story of a camping adventure at the same time. Natures Independence Day show.

I missed the Utahphotowalking group in June. So I had a chance to explore a little. Plus I talk about a little about some light painting I did. Photowalking June at the Great Salt Lake.

A video clip from Dove about true beauty and how digital photography may have distorted our view of beauty. The drastic makeover

One way to quickly figure out how a portrait was lit. Reverse engineer light

A quick little discussion on my photographic state of mind and what I did to get over a photo rut I was going through.Creativity boost

Very basic explanation of soft versus hard light, and how to find the light. lighting quality

A very basic explanation of the things like shutter speed, aperture, ISO (sensitivity) and how it all works in setting exposure and the look of the photo. More about taking better pictures

Early example of me trying to create better portraits by simply changing my perspective. How to take better portraits