After two long years, I decided to give myself time off for vacation! A real vacation, not just the usual day off here and there. Sarah was spending a month in Minnesota and rather than simply fly out to pick her up, I decided to make it an adventure of sorts. My good  friend Mary Lou, her daughter Angela and Angela’s friend Amy were my travel companions.  Our itinerary included a trip to the beautiful state of Colorado, where I went whitewater rafting for the first time, soaked in Glenwood Canyon hot springs (heaven!), crashed a wedding (chech out the slideshow at www.photoartbymarie.com/sarahandbuck), stood on the Continental Divide (whoo-hoo!), actually began and finished reading a novel Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (fun summer read), and rode an Amtrak Train to Chicago…..sort of.  I had packed a library’s worth of books, thinking I would catch up on reading, something I love to do but seldom find the time to do it.  A 17-hour train ride should have been perfect for that, right? Well, overnight there was a tornado which had derailed a cargo train which in turn converted our train ride into a bus ride to the great city of Chicago. I don’t know the actual millage between Omaha, Nebraska and Chicago, but it must be a LOT because it took at least 12 hours to get there. Twelve hours! I can read on a train, in a car or bus, not so much, so I found myself playing “Go Fish” with the 10-year old sitting in front of me…..11 1/2 hrs to go. I’ve traveled throughout the Midwest, it is green and lush, serene, and the people who live there are truly the salt of the earth, but after about a half an hour, the scenery looks pretty much the same, especially if, like me, long bus rides are not your cup of tea (I am not used to sitting in one spot for hours and hours on end…I know, I’m whinning! ) In route, we traveled through Iowa, and though it had been at least a month since the floods, the water level remained increadibly high. Homes and farms remain under water, roadways washed away, telephone poles stuck out of what appeared to be a lake….it took your breath away, but for all the wrong reasons. Our thoughts and prayers continue to go out to those affected by the floods. Chicago was everything I expected and so much more. It was my first time there, and sadly, we had only 4 hours to cram as much sight-seeing (on foot) as possible–I enjoyed  every minute of it! From Chicago, we rented a car to take us to our final destination of Winona, MN, argualbly one of the most beautiful small towns on the Mississippi River. Really! There, I reunited with my beautiful daughter Sarah, and visited with as many friends and family as time would permit in a few short days…..Whew! Who knew vacations could be so fatiguing! I can’t wait for next year and do it all over again, although I think I’ll skip the train next time;)

I took a ton of photos but here are a few of my faves. There are more on the slideshow if you want to take a peek!

SLIDESHOW (double click here)

The Continental Divide. It’s called that because it separates the water sheds of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. So if it rains to my left, it ends up in the Pacific, to my right, the Atlantic. In the middle??  On my head!

Somewhere in Colorado…I shot this from a speeding red Jeep. No, I wasn’t driving though I have done that before….

I took this photo at the wedding I crashed. This cowboy informed us that the way to a woman’s heart was to make love to her four times a week……must be true because his wife sure looked happy!

I am somewhat afraid of horses, mostly because they are BIG: they have big eyes, big teeth, big hooves….but they sure are pretty. Maybe one day I will learn more about how to handle them so I won’t be so afraid.

These are Mrs. Beacon’s Grandchildren. Mrs. Beacon is a remarkable woman who makes quilts for people who have lost a loved one as a tribute to their memory. She asked me to take this photo for her, the day after Sarah and Buck’s wedding—for you, my dear lady, anything.

Amy practicing for a career on Broadway!

Denver, CO. Don’t you love the lighting right before a storm???!

We got off (detrained?) the Amtrak train early in the morning. Most passengers  were still too sleepy to say much, some complained loudly of their inconvenience and how they were never going to take a train again, etc. Amongst the commotion sat this woman, sitting tall, waiting patiently, without saying a word. Extraordinary.

I don’t have the words to describe how this photo makes me feel. It is in Iowa, near Burlington, I believe.

Chicago is an amazing city. If you haven’t been, go!  Say hi to Oprah for me!

Navy Pier, Chicago, Ill. Don’t you love old ladies!

Minnesota wild flower. They’re wild, they’re beautiful……I love them.

This is Fernando. He has always been there for me and I love him like a brother…..Wait! He is my brother! Thanks for taking care of Sarah while she was in MN!

My niece Olivia, who is not only adorable but reall, really funny. Can you tell?

My good friend Jean and her husband John. They are newlyweds, once again proving that it is possible to find love after 45! Congratulations you two lovebirds;)

This beautiful path is part of Lake Winona. I have put in a lot of miles running here, the city keeps it groomed even in the winter. It never fails to renew my spirit.

Sunrise over Lake Winona. Ahhhh.

I belong to a networking group of photographers, known as the LA PUG  (Pictage Users Group), led by Jules Bianchi. It is a fun bunch of folks, all photographers of some sort or another. Some famous, most not, but all willing to share trick of the trade with one another. Usually, our monthly meetings are a little bit more formal, someone showcases their studio and shares whatever info will help others in their business. During our last meeting, we paired up and shot one another. It’s a bit odd being in front of the camera instead of behind it! My team mate was Nick Collins (the tall guy in the black shirt– Thanks for the great shots Nick! ) I hadn’t been to a meeting for a couple of months and it was a lot of fun to catch up with old friends (great to see you Marianne–you are sooohhh much fun to hang out with!)  Adam  (Happy Birthday!) and Matt  (thanks for carpooling with me), and make some new ones (great shirt, Ty!).  See you all next month!

Last Spring, I shared with you my love/hate relationship with running, why I run, and what it does for me, and that aside from my family and a handful of friends, it has been a constant in my life for a very long time (see “Run, Run as Fast as You Can“) . It occurred to me recently that I have been running longer than not running, which is amusing because I never set out to become a runner, it just sort of happened. It started off as a huge challenge (my first mile almost killed me), then two miles was about right, now anything less than four seems like a waste of time. I am not a natural runner, and years of pounding the pavement have taken a toll on my knees, ankles, back, and toenails. Most of my friends are not runners and they complain of the same things so maybe it’s just age. Oh dear!

Yesterday, I competed in the third and final leg of the Triple Crown. The Triple Crown is a set of three half marathons, the Carlsbad Half Marathon, the La Jolla Half Marathon, and Americas Finest City Half Marathon, all in the San Diego area, which take place about 3 months apart. Run all three and get an extra medal at the end. Whoo–hooo! I usually only run the Carlbad Half Marathon but this year decided to do all three just for fun, plus I wanted that extra medal:) I average anywhere from 2hrs 15 min to 2hrs 30 min, pretty standard for women runners my age, so the real story is has little to do with running at all. Mostly, it’s a about a girl who likes to run because it keeps her mind and body healthy and makes her feel like she can climb Mt. Whitney some day. It’s a good thing. Tell me about what you like to do to challenge yourself. I’d love to hear about it!

This is me wearing my four medals. It took a lot of effort to get here but it was a lot of fun too so am grateful I did it!

Completing this race meant so much to me that I had my nails manicured the day before plus bought a skirt to run in (an actual running skirt, not something from my closet–that would be a sight!)

Sarah gets dragged to these races with me and she does a good job at pretending she is having a good time although she doesn’t get why people run in the first place and pay money to do it…….out of the mouths of babes!

This is my sister Liz and her boyfriend Greg. Without them, I could not do what I do or at least it would not be as fun! They feed me, give me a place to sleep, offer me wine even though I’m not supposed to have any the night before a race….. they take good care of me. Did I mention Greg has a jacuzzi in his backyard overlooking a golf course? Nice! It’s good to be loved:)

These two guys and some 5,000 others just like them ran the race with me. The guy on the right is Tom, the guy on the left is Ted. (I thought his name was Jerry but Tom straightened me out). Thank you for running with me, Tom:) Ted left us in the dust!

My next race will be the Long Beach Half Marathon in October. See you there!

When I was in the Air Force, part of our training involved classroom instruction on what and how people are motivated. This course of study was intended to make us better officers and leaders. For whatever reason, I remember the term Significant Emotional Experience, defined as those experiences that change and defines us as individuals making us who we are. As my son prepares to graduate from high school in a short 11 days, I feel I am experiencing some of those significant emotional experiences! Like most parents, I have been fully aware that Peter was graduating this year (my checkbook keeps reminding me that something very important is going on!), but I don’t think that it really hit me until I saw my usually scruffy son turn into a debonair young man in a tuxedo, as he prepared to take his drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend, Shelby, on the Hornblower Dinner Cruise in Newport Beach. We were a little behind schedule so we rushed to take the following photos before the kids were left for the evening.

The stunning Miss Shelby. I don’t remember looking like this when I was 18!

The young couple. Shelby’s grandparents, her mother, and Peter’s younger sister Sarah are standing behind me as I take this “romantic” image. Hopefully, the though of all of us watching them would accompany them the rest of the evening!! LOL

Peter said the tux made him feel like James Bond. Perhaps the clothes do make the man:) Maybe we can borrow his barber……

Attending workshops is a luxury that I don’t often get to do but when my good friend and fellow photographer Tammie Kim asked me if I was interested in spending a couple of days in Solvang, CA , I said “Whoo-hoo!” (that meant yes). The workshop was hosted by the brilliant Jose Villa and his team, the stunning Shelbie and Geraldo, and the drop-dead gorgeous Lacie. Aside from out classroom instruction, Jose took us on location to a couple of awesome places for our photo shoot. If any of you reading this are hopeless romantics, then you must come to Ventura county—I guarantee that you will fall head over heels over all the natural beauty. Here’s a couple of my favorite images…..

The lovely Miss Lacie. She is Jose’s assistant and is a photography student at the Brooks Institute.

I must have a hundred images of Lacie and I have to say that she is one of the most photogenic people I have ever had the pleasure to photograph. And she is soooh nice! Thank you, Lacie:)

This classic beauty is Shelbie. This brave girl has the daunting task of acting natural while 25 photographers took turns shooting her and her companion Gerardo.

The tall, dark and handsome, Gerardo.

This is how the camera sees it…..

This is the reality. Yikes!

One of Jose’s favorite poses. I love that even though they are looking away from each other, their body language says we are together.

Wow, what a face.

There were probably 10-15 photographers standing behind me, so I ducked to get out of the way. I’m glad I did!

This is Tammie, she is Korean and one of the funniest, kindest, most knowledgeable people I know. Thank you Tammie for bringing out the goofy in me, I still smile at all the fun we had!

It was a great surprise to learn that my buddy Rowena was also attending the workshop! She was in charge of setting up the room for us, her only request was that no one snore! I fell asleep first, so am not sure if anybody did or not….;)

I ran 4 miles this morning; it is something I love to do, and although I have been running for the past 27 years, I still don’t consider myself a “runner”. Runners, to me, are those amazing gazelle like creatures whose feet don’t seem to hit the ground and who finish a race long before the rest of us have hit the first water station. Do they even break a sweat? My first experience with running was a painful one. Remember the Presidential Fitness Awards in middle school where you were required to run ONE WHOLE MILE? I do. I thought I was going to die! I could barely walk the next day, every muscle in my body ached. I hated it. I think I met whatever requirements were necessary but I made a promise to myself that I was going to do better the next year—-and I did. By the time I was in high school, I had worked up to TWO miles every once in a while. Our tennis coach didn’t require a whole lot of running from us, just some sprints here and there. We were a good team, but far from great. In college, I was running five miles on a regular basis and it was not long before I ran my first half marathon. I must have been 21 or 22 at the time. I figure if I just ran really slow, I could probably finish and not die. Despite my best intentions to run a marathon by the time I was 30, it actually took me another 10 years to complete that goal. So what does any of this have to do with photography? Indirectly, quite a bit. Here are some reasons why I run:

1. BECAUSE I CAN. I am not built for speed, my legs are much too short but they work. My goal is to run the Carlsbad Half Marathon as long as I can for the rest of my life. It always takes place around my birthday, it is my present to myself.

2. IT’S CHEAPER THAN DRUGS, ALCOHOL, AND THERAPY. I don’t know if I have ever experienced a “runner’s high” but I know that 9 times out of 10, I feel much better than I did before I started. Plus it keeps me from eating/drinking too much the night before.

3. ALL YOU NEED IS SHOES. That’s it. Run in whatever clothes you want. If you run at the beach, you don’t even need shoes. If you run at a nudist beach…..

4. PARTY OF ONE TO TEN THOUSAND. You can run by yourself, which I usually do, or you can run with 10,000 other enthusiasts. It is something to witness, a sea of heads bobbing up and down for miles and miles.

5. IT KEEPS ME YOUNG. When I first started running, I remember seeing the “older women” of 40-something who ran and thinking to myself, that I wanted to be like them someday, old and still be able to run! Sheesh. I can honestly say that I can run farther and have more energy than many younger women…

6. I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO. Every year I keep thinking I should take up some other form of exercise but I never do. Any suggestions?

Lately, I am training for the La Jolla Half Marathon which takes place at the end of April. It starts off in Del Mar and finishes in La Jolla. Should be amazing. After that, my last (scheduled) half marathon for the year is in August, America’s Finest City Half Marathon, which starts at Point Loma and ends up in Balboa Park. At the end of that race, I will receive an additional medal for having completed the Tripple Crown (everyone who completes the race in the alloted time gets a medal). It is the best part of running a race, that little piece of shinny metal. Silly, but it’s true. You also get a shirt. And a banana. Really.

My first (and last?) marathon. It takes a lot of time to train for a marathon! Been there, done that.

My best friends. We have a date every weekend and a couple of times during the week, if possible. They, or their brethren have seen me though good times, bad times, and a whole lot of in-between times, through rain, snow, sleet, hail…. actually, I love the rain but I don’t like getting wet (it makes me cold) so I am mostly a fair weather runner but I have ran in single digit temps in MN. I couldn’t breathe but so it goes!

These are my running medals, mostly from the Calsbad Half Marathon. I usually only do one half marathon a year and just run 4-8 miles for fun on the weekends and whenever.

This is where my medals live, on my messy desk. The small photo is of me completing the LA Marathon. My family was there to greet me at the finish line—it was great!!

The gorgeous man in the photo is Jim Bunke. I will write more about him one day… but not today.

…..ends up on my blog! Sort of. Last week I attended WPPI in Las Vegas, along with 10,000 other photographers. That’s a lot of photogs! For the second year in a row, I was joined by my fellow crazies, Patrice and Jo, and newbies Mary, Ruth, Jennifer, Gina, and Matt WPPI is a huge event and it’s hard to do/see everything but we tried anyway. We left for Vegas on Sunday and it was snowing in the pass which was awesome! I haven’t seen it snow like that since I left Minnesota 5 years ago…This was the first time I have ever seen snow on Joshua trees- we were trying to get to Vegas early so there was no time to stop for photo ops but I tried to take some anyway. Check out the blurry pics taken from Jo’s killer mommy mini-van. You can also view a slideshow of our trip (click on the word slideshow and hopefully wonderful things will happen….if not, click your heels three times)

As much would have loved to remain outdoors, WPPI takes place inside the Bally and Paris hotels, where time is warped, and it is alway “night” in the casinos. I love all the visual stimulation (and there is a LOT) though every so often found myself in need to reconnect with the “world” outside, even if it is was Vegas version of reality! But I came to WPPI to be inspired and learn as much as I could squeeze into my mommy brain so I back inside I went. It never ceases to amaze me how brilliantly talented some photographers are and just when I thought the bar was high enough, some genius goes and raises the bar even higher for me. Every once in a while, someone in the group would say, “my stuff is better than that,” and it is, which is awesome. We joke about which one of us will be presenting/winning an award next year….as speaker after speaker said, “Dream BIG, Baby!” (they didn’t actually say “baby“, I added that, this being Vegas an all;-) So here are some more of my favorite pics:

Gina, Mary, Patrice, Jo, Matt, Me and I forgot her name…..oops! But she’s really nice!

The Belagio front desk. No we didn’t stay there, maybe next year:-)

Hotel Paris

Jo’s sister hooked her up with this room! It had three badrooms, a pool table, 4 flatscreen tvs (none of them worked!) and one bed. LOL This is Vegas, after all!

Our room at the Paris hotel…

Me Ra Koh, Pepper Nix and Jules Bianchi, our LA PUG leader. Way to go Jules!

The Tiffany that nobody broke…..

The brilliant Mathew Jordan Smith who makes it look so easy.

Ever watch the Bilagio water show at dusk while listening to Frank Sinatra sing “Fly Me to the Moon”? Magic, pure magic.

Me and David Jay, the nicest guy in the world. I stalk him at every convention and he is kind enough to act like he knows me!

Robert Evans and David Jay. Robert is the rockstar that shot Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wedding. Like David, he is very kind and generous with his time and talent, and he does know my name:-)

View from the Planet Hollywood room…not too shabby.

When in Vegas….if only I had remembered to pack my red Wonder Woman boots. Rats!