Alex the Photo Blog

Spencer and I were buddies in college at Vanderbilt.  As luck would have it, he married a beautiful Columbian woman, moved to Atlanta, and had two adorable little boys.  We’ve kept in touch over the years and Catalina also works with me at the Wells, so it all just fell in place that I’d be photographing their kids.   We had a great Sunday afternoon taking photos at Berkeley Lake park and later topped it off at the Merrell household sharing lawn maintenance tips over a beer in their backyard.  All in all a really fun shoot.

Baby Lucas was so excited to play with his big brother. 

Yes, sadly it says “2009″ above.  I made the dumb mistake of passing up 2010 Masters practice round tickets because I couldn’t find anyone to drive out there with.  In retrospect, I should have made the drive by myself and met up with my parents who were livin’ it up in the IBM cottage with free food and drinks…  I know.  Dumb.

However, I do have some photos to show you.  Because I didn’t have the blog up and running this time last year, I figure I can share some of the photos I took from the 2009 Masters’ practice round.  As you may know, the practice rounds are the only days where they let anyone in with a camera (but still no cell phones).  There’s no real competition that happens other than a few side bets I’m sure, but all the players have a good time hanging out with each other and generally interact more with the crowd.

I guess the Masters crew is also a little more relaxed during the practice rounds as well… and as always- click on the pictures to expand them.

As part of the “crowd interaction” players often attempy to skip the ball across the water on #16.

“Do we really need to keep score during practice rounds?” 

I couldn’t tell if the make on this lawnmower said Gillette or Norelco:

Last weekend my friend Trevor and I headed down south to Savannah to visit David.  After a Friday night out until 5:30am (including late night sushi at 4am), we decided to spend all day Saturday hanging out at his house cooking, eating, and drinking.  I originally brought my camera for historic downtown Savannah shots, but it was much easier to just be lazy and take pictures around his place instead.  I intentionally brought only my 50mm f/1.4 and left my 15mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200 at home.  I figured it would force me to use my new fixed 50mm lens.  Photographers (myself included) get caught in the lazy trap of only shooting with zooms because they’re so convenient, even when prime lenses can capture some great shots (especially in low light).

Keri has been working her butt off lately, so a couple of weeks ago we both decided to take a day off and do Atlanta-y things.  The weather was perfect, so we rode bikes around Decatur, took a stroll through Oakland Cemetery (much more interesting and educational than it sounds), and ate at Sun in my Belly, Six Feet Under, and Caroll Street Cafe.  We also figured we’d go somewhere that we haven’t been since elementary school- the Zoo.

All in all a fun filled day that included french toast, graves, and pandas… very few days incorporate all of these things.

Keri and I experienced a very Hitchcock moment at the bird exhibit.  If you’ve ever been, you know all the bright colorful birds in the first few photos below are in a big netted and gated area that you can walk through.  We were with a bunch of other people for the first few minutes watching the birds and hearing all the cacophonous chirping.  However, as soon as the other people left Keri and I alone in there, all of the chirping stopped for about 10 seconds…. we thought were were about to be attacked.  Luckily the chirping started again as the birds knew they wouldn’t get away with it. 

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