In the morning, we hung out at the Louvre and the adjacent garden. Reagan took a ride on the carousel.

We sat by a fountain.

We saw Notre Dame

And a bunch of other stuff, but I’m kind of out of steam at the moment.

We arrived in France this morning. We actually flew into a small airport in the countryside. I was a bit annoyed, at first, about having to ride on a bus for another hour to actually get to Paris. We saw some beautiful countryside though. Actually, Reagan slept. Our hotel room here is pretty tiny. Reagan on our veranda-

And now for some very touristy shots–

The sky was awesome this evening. The light in the evening seemed a bit surreal. I had the wrong lens with me to shoot the tower. So, there might be some additional ones coming.

And here is one of my favs, Reagan about to fall asleep in her tea after a long day of wandering around.

Europe is 220v, so the above fire hazard is our current power situation. It seems to be working ok, so far. This place is so visually stimulating. One could spend weeks just taking in all of the minutia that a single block or alley has to offer.

We already have 1000 photos like the one below. I’m sure that we will have 1000 more before we head home.

Reagan and the Arc de Triomf–

Chillin on the veranda

From a parc up on the hill–

Las Ramblas-

This isn’t going to be the most exciting post in the world. But, I figured that I would take advantage and post a quick one while Reagan is napping. We flew Air Canada through Montreal (our layover, above). The Montreal airport was like a ghost town, which was nice because we were both able to take cat naps.

We arrived in Barcelona bright and early this morning. We did a bit of exploring and grabbed some brunch before Reagan declared siesta. Below is the view from our veranda.

Tonight: Gothic district, and Paris in the morning.

Reagan and I are both crossing the Atlantic ocean for the first time today. Seems a bit ridiculous, to have lived in NYC for nearly 10 years and still not have spent even a long weekend in Europe, I know. I have had a hard time being excited about it, because I get hung up on the logistics and stress plays a large role in my life. But, now that we are underway I’m really actually very excited about what adventures await us. Reagan is bouncing off  of the walls excited. It tends to be a bit infectious. We have some awesome friends who are now our neighbors, who have agreed to hold down the fort for us and even visit PJ. They are seriously the best.

I have queued up a few posts for when I’m away. But, hopefully I will have a minute to update from the EU while we are there. I just wish that we would have timed it a little bit better so that we could have hit the Moto GP race at Le Mans or Catalunya. We miss both of them only by a couple of days. Bob, we may be joining you to watch at the Brickyard instead.

So, hasta luigi, and happy upcoming Memorial Day weekend.

So, yeah. The photo of my torn up comp about sums up the state of things lately. One step forward… you know the rest. When Reagan was out of town, I decided to surprise her by installing a power outlet in the bathroom (this was partially self-dealing, since I was tired of her blowdrying her hair in the bedroom). Anyway, I had the power switched on and off about 20 times that night. One of the hard drives in my Linux tower (backup comp) did not like that. I broke down yesterday and decided to try to recover the data, since everything that I have shot this year was backed up on there. I was pretty stoked that when I hooked the drive (the one hanging out of the side of the case above) up to a windows machine all of the data showed up and was uncorrupted. As a safety precaution, I copied it all to an external HD. And blah blah blah. In the process I unhooked one of the other Hard Drives in my main Windows tower, and had to totally redo my itunes and lightroom when I reconnected it. It was a bit painful.

All of that energy sucking boring crap is just getting me primed for the craziness that the next several weeks entail. Tomorrow, one of Reagan’s friends is coming to stay with us through the weekend. The following week, Reagan’s parents, aunt and brother are coming out for Piper’s birthday. Three days later, we depart for Europe. Upon arriving back in NYC, I have 3 days to catch up on work before shoving off for a “man” trip out west (backpacking, shooting guns, fishing, riding quads, etc..). Then, wedding season.

I’m sure all of that will be some seriously good times. But, I’m not going to lie, my armpits got a little bit sweaty just typing it all out. I didn’t even mention the interspersed races and photo gigs. Deep breath and positive thoughts. Happy Wednesday.

It has been kind of a crazy string of days, since I last posted anything on JNB. First of all: credit where credit is due. Reagan snapped the above photo of me bowling. It is quite possibly one of my favorite photos that has ever been taken of me.

Now, rewind to Wednesday night.  Reagan and I ordered sushi from the same place that we always do (2-3 nights per week). It took a lot longer to arrive than normal, and it was all disheveled.  The rolls were falling apart in the chopsticks, etc.. I don’t know if that even had anything to do with anything. But Thursday morning, I felt like I was dying a slow death. And I’m guessing that it was something from the sushi that was doing the killing. Reagan had a bit of an upset stomach, too. But hers appeared to be a bit more manageable.

I wasted most of the day in bed trying to recover. We were planning on leaving that night to visit my sister  and her family in VA. Because of various items that came up and committed me to being in NYC on Friday morning, we ended up not leaving until around Noon on Friday. I was loading the car right as a blizzard was reaching it’s crux over the island of Manhattan. Luckily, once we were over the GW, the accumulation was minimal.

We arrived at the home of my B-I-L’s father early Friday evening, and spent the rest of the weekend having one blast after another. I wanted to get some fun portraits of my sister’s family. Unfortunately, in my haste to get out the door, I left two of  my favorite lenses at home. Also, let’s be real, I’m not much of a portrait photographer. We still shot a ton of photos, though.

Here is a shot of my little nieces having a jumping contest:

Then of course, Reagan played salon with the girls.

My nieces took turns playing assistant and client.

Let’s not forget the shoot that we did in the library, where Reagan directed (inspired by several 80′s era wedding announcements, and other awesome stuff). All of the images looked totally natural, and not contrived, at all. An example:

We rounded off the visit with a trip to Broadview Lanes. It was the first time that both of my little nieces had ever bowled. They clearly take after their second-cousin Ted Swenson, in the sense that they were total naturals.

To finish off this never-ending post: a shot of Reagan, lining up a strike.

Let’s start with the part about being over the hump.  It is Wednesday (a.k.a. humpday). But this week, today is the equivalent of Thursday, since we are driving to VA on Friday instead of going to work. My sister and her family are on the east coast visiting my sister’s father-in-law and family. Since they live in Alaska (my sister’s fam), we can’t pass up an opportunity to visit them when they are within driving distance. I’m all kinds of excited about seeing them.

Next: Last night I shot some kind of stuff for a fun little editorial that I’m working on for SoJones. It is more stuff from our same designer friend who made the dress in Reagan’s bodega photos. Our friends (the Adams) were kind enough to be my go-to models again. It is especially important to mention what good sports they were about standing out in the cold while I fought with finicky strobes (notice the inconsistent lighting in the photos). Hopefully it will be the last time I have to deal with Canon’s line-of-sight IR triggers. I think that I’m going to use some “Christmas money” to buy a new pocket wizard setup before we go to VA.

And… one more

We had such a great weekend with Reagan’s family. Sometimes family get-togethers can really fizzle by the time it is winding down. You know it is a good one, when that doesn’t happen. We woke up Monday morning and it was pouring rain. It was appropriate weather for our mood, because we were truly sad to be saying goodbye to everyone. It is really great to have a group of people that you enjoy being around so much that you can have fun doing anything, or even nothing.

I shot about 700 frames during our trip. At some point I’ll distill them down and put them in an album on our breinholts.com page, under the “our family” section. Until then, here are a couple more of my favs. Top: Reagan and a pack of Llamas that we encountered on our Sunday Hike.

We had a little fauxt0 (get it?) shoot on the back porch of the cabin on Sunday. A few of the images that we got really came out well, but these are a couple of my favorite goofing off shots. Above: Reagan posing with guitar. Below: Reagan’s brother Nathan wearing hillbilly teeth staring at his wife’s cleavage.

Below: Reagan’s sister Erin, and niece Kate, making werewolf cupcakes.

After having such an awesome trip, I’m having a tough time adjusting back to reality. At least it is already Tuesday. Hahahah

Thursday, Reagan and I spent most of the day in Knoxville, checking out the city.

We checked out the University of Tennessee campus.

I loved all of the old buildings in the downtown section.

In case there weren’t enough photos in the post that consists mostly of photos, here are a few more.