Break is over

Well my week long spring break is over and starting this Tuesday... will be my 3rd quarter into the delirious yet demented lifestyle of a full time school boy...............

What does Shelly like to do?

I'm really glad you asked that question. Let me tell you, that woman loves to put work into the house to make it inviting, cozy, comforting and relaxing and she has by far accomplished all of these. Neither one of us like the town Matthews all that well but once you get to our house, it's very relaxing. She even bought some outdoor rock speakers so we can listen to music while were out. You can lay in the hammock or chill out on the outdoor patio furniture while the birds chirp and the squirrels chase each other.

Who's hanging with the Bunns!!

Ok now... tell me everything you see in this photo. I see a red cardinal getting some shade and a squirrel trying to show off by jumping through the picture.

The squirrels have gone nuts here at our little safari... this one is playing peek-a-boo.
This squirrel has a little attitude... or a little gas. You have to admit... this is the first time you've seen a squirrels butt isn't it... mine too.
I took these a few days ago. Looks like they're getting lazy to me!

I've been seeing this little red head around the neighborhood here lately. Meet Woody the Woodpecker.

One thing is for sure, these dadgum birds are hard to shoot. They're quick.

This old truck

I seen this truck on the way to the Whitewater Center and wondered when the last time this thing was in running condition. I think what I like the best is the hub on the edge of the roof!!

Pics from the Whitewater Center

During the filming of our documentary video at the Whitewater Center, I thought I'd bring my trusty camera along to get a few shots of something different. I had a really good team to work with and we had a lot of fun filming. We spent every Saturday here for a month to make sure we had enough B-role footage and interviews. This place is really nice if you get the chance to make it out sometime. Enjoy the photos.
One of my team members thought we could get some great footage if we participated in the high ropes. That's me on the far left. We were 40ft up. A little scary for me since I'm afraid of heights.


The Whitewater Center is located just off interstate 85 on the west side of Charlotte. The Catawba river runs parallel to the center and you can get a guided tour to take you all over the river.





The Canadian Olympic team were Kayaking here on this day. It was cold too. I thought to myself... there is no way I would get in that water with the tempertures so low.





You almost think you are headed in the wrong direction when you're going down the road to get there. Once you pass by some old houses with goats in the yard, you're almost there.

Intro to Audio and Video

This class was by far my favorite class. For some reason I caught on everything much faster then the others. I have 3 videos to share with you in that class but for now you are gonna have to just hold your horses. The file size on these videos are big and my external hard drive is only formatted for Macs. When I return to school I will try to try to see what I can work out so you can see them. Out of my 3 videos, two were documentary style and the last was an independent video. On the first 2 projects, I had to be teamed up with 2 other classmates which made things a little more difficult.

On the first video I had to pick a school topic and then go around and interview students and faculty on our topic.

The second project was called the Charlotte project. My team had to come up with something in Charlotte and make a documentary video based on our choice. For this project we made our video based on the National Whitewater Center.

The last project was my favorite. Since motocross is my passion, I didn't have a hard time figuring out what to make my final video about.

Before I close this out, I have a little story about my motocross project. If you scroll down a few stories, you will find little comments I was making about my work load being so heavy and not knowing how I was gonna make it. Another story I said something like... hope you believe in miracles because I will have one to share with you... and here it is.....

I was having a hard time trying to figure out how I was going to get all my work done in all of my classes. I spent a huge amount of time at school during the weeknights and the weekends. I was having to leave school and go to work and then leave work and come back to school. To add to everything, I got sick during my second video project and that lasted almost 3 weeks. Then some issues started to happen at work. It got to the point to where I had so much on my shoulders that I was starting to break down mentally and physically.

Enter miracle: When we make videos, we have to check out cameras from the school. I had a camera checked out over a weekend and was gonna head out to Andrews motocross track to shoot footage for my final project. Well a huge storm that covered the entire east coast basically came though and closed down all the tracks that were open that day. I was starting to stress a little because the project was due the next week. You have to think, once I get the footage I then have to take it to school and digitize what I shoot and then edit. I had plan B in my mind but that got shot down around the end of the week. I had only 2 days to do everything. Weather was showing another huge rain storm moving in over the weekend and I was so stressed out about what in the world I was gonna do. With the weather not on my side I just believed that God would make a way for me to get what I needed. Saturday morning... it starts raining. Shelly came along with me to be the photographer and I was the videographer. On the way down the rain got even heavier. I pretty much thought, well I guess I will just skip the last project and hope I still pass... and of course pour my heart out to my instructor. We arrive at Andrews and by the time I got the video camera out.... the rain stopped... the sun came out and the clouds moved on. It was around 65 degrees and turned into a picture perfect day. Now do you believe in miracles! The sky stayed clear for almost 3 hours which was way more than enough time to get what I needed. Later that night I went to school and digitized my footage and Sunday I spent 12 hours editing. God is so awesome. It was a ton of work, but I made it. I can see why videographers make so much money. It takes a lot of time to make a good video. The video had to be longer than 3 minutes and no more than 10 minutes. Mine was 4 minutes exactly. Shelly made a comment that... if we were up in heaven, the only clear spot in the clouds would be at the track that day. As soon as we left, the clouds unloaded. It started raining so hard , you could barely see in front of you while driving. As I sit here thinking about everything I had to do for this project, it leads me to one thought. Even though the journey is long and hard and looks like all hope is gone- continue to stand, cause God will be with you until the end.

Image Manipulation

For this class I had 3 projects to do. The first two were photoshop and the last project was illustrator. The first project was an old military photo that was taken back in ten-buck-two. What I had to do was restore this photo to make it look as if it just came right out of the dark room... printer or whatever was used back then... you get the idea. You had to be careful though, we were told not to make it look like a picture you would see these days. You can still see a few scratches in the retouched photo but when I had it printed, the scratches were gone. I got a 96 on this project.

The next photo was something I had to create from scratch. This was called our visual essay. I had to pick a song and identify keywords of the song and put them into a picture. My song: 18 and Life by Skid Row. Another 96 for this project.

Next and last was my illustrator project. I was given a letter of the alphabet and I had to illustrate that letter in whatever way I thought would be artistic. My letter was S so I chose S is for Snoopy. I had a hard time with this project because we only worked with illustrator for 3 weeks. What do ya know, I got a 96 on this project. A word of advise for those who are planning on going back to school- sleeping is not an option.

Although I wasn't to happy with the way everything went in this class, I passed with flying colors.

Our new toy

Last week Shelly and I added a new toy to our designsbybunn.com network. For the longest time I've been wanting to have one of these and we finally came across a deal good enough to jump on. To go along with our new friend, we decided to go wireless. How bout that... as a matter of fact, I'm sitting out back right now. In a few weeks we are hoping to invest in a iMac computer to go along with our setup. Watch-out... the Bunns are moving on up.

What happened?

I was thinking about going into a deep discussion about how this past quarter went for me but then again... why should I...It was hard... really hard. There would be times during class when I would think... my gosh you have got to be kidding me... we were flying through some of the programs and we only scraped the surface. It was really tough trying to work on my projects and do my homework because I needed the computers at school to do almost everything I had to do. Around mid quarter I had a serious load of work to do and didn't know how I was going to make it. I thought it was going to smooth over but it pretty much tripled. I was leaving my classes and going straight to work or either leaving work going straight to school. It was just to much. For my next quarter, I am cutting back a little. I am taking 2 classes a week instead of 3. To put this into lamen terms, I pretty much had my rear-end handed to me. Well... I never said I was perfect. All I can do is try my best at everything I do. I believe my efforts are starting to shine though. I do know this, I have fell in love with the video classes. Unfortunately, I only a few more to take and I will be done. The rest will be web classes. Maybe a huge sum of money will fall into my lap and then I can go back for the filming classes they have opened!

Just a thought!

MySpace

You are not going to believe this....... you ready...... drum roll.... Shelly made herself a MySpace account. I know... I'm shocked too. She has a blog site but hasn't posted anything in almost a year. Oh well it doesn't matter. For some reason I think she will like MySpace better. Go check it out at www.myspace.com/bunnshoney

I have to say that MySpace is pretty neat. Since I have reopened my account, I have been in contact with almost all my friends that I use to see on a regular basis. It's free... why not!

Live in the moment

Before I get caught up with everything that's happened here lately, there is something else I want to express. You know, memories are something that nobody can take away from you. You keep them until your time on earth is up. They are the best. There is nothing like thinking back on something that brings a smile to your face and making you say... those were the times... we had such a blast... or those were the good ole days. It's like medicine for your soul. We all have our different lifestyles and what makes me happy is boring to another and so on, but that doesn't matter.

This weekend Shelly and I went to see my mother and while we were there my cousin Sean called and before you know it, Sean and his wife were at the house and we were able to catch up for a little while. So many times I think about how it seems so unfair that we don't have the opportunities to hang out like we use to but I am thankful for what little time we do have. The older you get the more life changes... or at least it sure seems that way to me. Before Sean and his wife left, I mention something about the days when we would hike to the big rock behind his grandparents or either ride our bikes down the trail that will always be known as burn-out alley. Those were the good ole days in deed. To top it off, my good friend Clint was back home for a couple of weeks. I tried to call that rascal but he was in Florida at Disney world. What he was doing was enjoying his moment. On the way home, I was telling Shelly about some of the good times I've had with my friends. What I am trying to say is this. Live every moment of your life... like it couldn't be any better. Take pictures until you run out of places to put them... listen to songs that brings back good memories... do things that will make you laugh. Later on in life when you look back, it will make you smile. So live in that moment... whatever your moment may be. You may not ever get another chance for a moment like the one that is before you.

A familier view

Every time I look at this picture, I can't help but to think about all the memories that crosses my mind. There use to be a small pond to the far right of this picture and some where deep down in the ground are all kinds of toys and other junk I threw in to watch sink. To me photography is not all about getting the shot that a magazine would want to publish. It's about a shot that moves you emotionally.

Easter

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend. I know I did. It was an all around good weekend for me. This weekend was also the kickoff of my so called spring break....which is just one week but hey... if you only knew what I went through this quarter... any break is fine with me.

I got my bike out and fired it up for the first time in who knows how long and then Saturday I loaded up and headed to my favorite track for some riding and then Sunday we headed down to Lilesville to spend some time with mom. It doesn't get much better than that.

I'm back

Hey there... who is this... what is this... oh yea that's right... it's me. It's been so long since I've been able to write that I almost had to think about how to do all of this. Wow... I have so much to tell you, I also have a lot to show you. Man... this was a very hard quarter. I made it though. Don't ask me how, just know that I made it. I had to put the brakes on just about everything I was doing and commit every ounce of time and energy I had towards school. I only have a week off and then it's back to school again.

I remember in another story I wrote while I was out of school for Christmas break saying something like ... I can't wait to get back to school , my brain needs more data... Well lets just say I got my brain full of data, a little more than I can handle at one time I'd say. Like I said, I have a lot to share with you. I am gonna post some of the work I have been doing and try to post my videos I had to make. Hopefully I can get back to writing stories like I was before but I won't know for sure until next week. Once I get back into the routine and see what kind of projects I am going to have to come up with, then I will know. Until then, stay tuned. The bunny show is back... at least for this week.