barnezy.com » Personal Blogs

Matt and Aimee’s Wedding

The Grand Architect of this Website — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:02:32 +0000

This past weekend my wife and I shot a wedding of some friends from back home in Tulsa. They were married at the Findley’s Lakeside Resort on Fort Gibson Lake in Wagoner, OK. It was a bit of a mad dash trying to get there on time due to road construction but we made it on time . It was literally 105 degrees with 100% humidity so no one really wanted to take formal pics until after the ceremony. I gave my wife the Canon 7D with my 200mm f/2 IS lens and told her to have at it. She took some absolutely stunning shots this past weekend. I’m hoping that dragging her along to more of these shoots will get her excited about photography. Besides the heat, it was a beautiful ceremony and the reception was filled with good times with old friends. I had very little time to shoot formals given the situation so we focused very little on them. I hate to “run and gun” formals, but we didn’t get any of them done prior to the ceremony because of time constraints and the heat, so this was the reality of the situation. I did get a chance to take one shot I really wanted. It’s the first shot in this gallery and I think it turned out ok given the difficult angle I was to the gazebo and with all of the kids running around. It was a great time and I wish Matt and Aimee a beautiful life together. Here are a few shots from the day. Good times!!! -Barnezy-

Barnezy.com is 5 years old this month

The Grand Architect of this Website — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:16:09 +0000

(original barnezy.com homepage -Circa July 2005)

Barnezy.com was created in the summer of 2005 in response to several people asking me simply, “why don’t you have a website?” I have over 100 hours of video tape that I’ve shot throughout the years as well as thousand and thousands of images. I have made somewhere around 100 videos or short movies since I was a kid and there were several people who kept asking me why I had not created a site to chronicle these projects. With the help of a friend named Matt Eber, I purchased the domain name in 2004 from godaddy.com and began working on the site in the spring of 2004. I launched the website shortly after and it quickly became too busy for my godaddy server. In those days, YouTube was just getting started so the only places on the web for funny videos were places like www.ebaumsworld.com. I didn’t like the graphic nature of some of there content so I only hosted internet videos on my site that I thought were safe for young people to watch. In those early years it wasn’t uncommon to see over 1,000,000 hits on my website mainly due to the web videos I had featured on my site. When I got married and began chiropractic school in 2007, things got a little busy to update my website. It got to the point where I was updating one time per year just so people knew I was still alive. In 2009, I expressed to my wife how I missed keeping up my site and how I wanted to rebuild it from the ground up in a format that would be easy to update and more user-friendly to visitors. For Christmas, my mother -in-law and grandmother-in-law purchased me a ProPhoto blog membership and I began to put it together soon after. Since entering chiropractic school I’ve really gotten into digital photography and HD videography so I needed a site that would cater to those passions. This blog software is absolutely perfect for a guy like me. ProPhoto Blogs is powered by WordPress which makes it incredibly easy for me to update and manage my site. For years I dealt with HTML which made it very difficult to keep up my website, but because of ProPhoto Blogs I’ve been able to post over 50 blogs this year already as well as dozens of page updates. I have made some minor cosmetic changes this morning since the website has remained largely unchanged since a fresh upgrade in January 2010. As of now, my original website is still available in a limited capacity on this site. It will be removed when I graduate from chiropractic school and begin my career as a doctor. I will continue to use this site to host photo and video projects but the web videos and personal pages of the old site will be a thing of the past. I appreciate all of you who follow this site, and hope that in some way it keeps you smiling. This is something I enjoy doing and hope that I’ll always be able to keep up barnezy.com. Stay tuned for new photo and video projects coming soon. -Barnezy-

FCA Leadership Camp – Olathe, KS

The Grand Architect of this Website — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:10:58 +0000

My wife helped out at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes camp two weeks ago at Mid-America Nazarene University and I thought I would swing by to grab some pics/video at a few of the chapel meetings. The camp speaker for the week was Kennon Vaughn of Downline ministries in Memphis, Tennessee. The camp focus was on leadership and challenged middle-school and high school kids to take a leadership role in their communities by serving others, leading by example, and sharing the love of Christ with their peers. A few of the campers from this camp were at the Iowa FCA camp last week where two campers drowned. From talking to FCA staff, it appears that the two young campers accepted Christ the night they drowned. It’s an obvious tragedy, but hopefully lives will be impacted positively through this incident. My wife and I grew up in FCA in Oklahoma and ultimately met through the organization, so this tragedy has hit home with us. If you’re new to this website, you can see our Proposal video which took place at FCA camp in 2006 and is currently the #1 rated proposal on YouTube. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the two young men who passed away this past week. -Barnezy-

Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City

The Grand Architect of this Website — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:22:06 +0000

This past weekend my wife and I had a quiet weekend at home (for a change). She has been wanting to visit the Nelson-Atkins Museum for over a year so we decided to check it out! Because of the proximity of the Nelson-Atkins museum to the greatest barbecue restaurant in the world, we were forced out of practicality to eat at Oklahoma Joe’s. The Jumbo Chicken Z-Man may be the most amazing sandwich in the world. After perusing the long line and enjoying the most incredible barbecue known to man (Oklahoma Joe’s is considered the best Barbecue in the world by several food publications), we headed to the Nelson-Atkins Museum. We checked out the new Egyptian exhibit as well as most of the the museum. I absolutely fell in love with Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” and was blown away by the sheer magnitude of this painting. I’m told there is a Van Gogh on rotation here as well as some other incredible works of art. My favorite photo was easily Nat Fein’s pulitzer prized shot of Babe Ruth waving to the crowd as they retired his number. The new addition to the museum was remarkable and contained some incredible works of art that I was not allowed to photograph. The rest of the weekend was filled with crazy storms, rainbows, and sinkholes on I-470 overpasses, but overall it was a great time just getting to hang out with my wife for a change! I’ll post some photos from last week’s FCA leadership camp in the next day or so. -Barnezy-

2010 Tulsa Fleet Feet Firecracker 5K Run

The Grand Architect of this Website — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 13:46:34 +0000

On the 3rd of July, my dad and my wife participated in the Fleet Feet Firecracker 5K in the Blue Dome district in downtown Tulsa. Fleet Feet is preparing to open a new store in the Blue Dome District and they decided to host the annual 5K at their new location. There were a ton of people out this year for the run and it was about 20 degrees cooler than last year’s race. The weather was good for running…. not so good for photography. When you’re shooting at very high shutter speeds, you want a little bit more light then an overcast day. Because of this, I was forced to shoot most of my action images at f/2. This makes for beautifully blurred backgrounds but makes sharp focus very difficult! My wife and my dad ran great times and we had a great time fellowshipping with other runners. This was part of the massive “Shooting” weekend I had two weeks ago where I shot in excess of 4000 photos. Speaking of shooting photos, I’ve been shooting for Oklahoma Sports and Fitness Magazine since 2008. The magazine has recently come under new ownership and I’ve been given a great opportunity to participate in their publication. You can see photos from their current magazine at the end of the slideshow below. This past issue there were several of my photos included in the magazine including a large image on the table of contents page. You can visit their website and view current and older issues right on your computer. I’ll be shooting several races in 2010, so stay tuned for photos from those races. If you’d like to download full-resolution FREE photos or order prints from the Fleet Feet Firecracker 5K race or any of the other races I’ve covered in the past year or so, go to the “PHOTO” tab and select “BUY PRINTS.” I’ll be posting photos from the FCA Leadership camp in Olathe, KS this weekend. I hope you all are staying cool out there in the July heat. Enjoy your weekend! -Barnezy-

“Wisdom Walks” Book shoot

The Grand Architect of this Website — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:16:21 +0000

This past week I had the opportunity to eat some great chicken and do my first “book shoot.” I first met Dan Britton and his family on Easter Sunday 2008 when some friends invited us to come along to their home for an Easter lunch. Shortly after that time, Dan and I began spending time together where he consistently sewed seeds of wisdom in my life. He’s one of my favorite people in the world and has been like a father to me during my time in Kansas City. “Wisdom Walks”, co-authored by long-time friend Jimmy Page, is Dan’s first publication. I have not read the book yet as it’s not available in stores till August, but if it’s anything like Dan’s life, it will be an amazing read! We chose Dan’s desk for the setting for his book. Dan told me the desk was 100 years old and belonged to both his father and grandfather. These men were great mentors in Dan’s life and I thought how fitting it would be to capture a book about mentoring in this setting. I used my Canon 5D Mark II with a Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro lens mounted to my Gitzo Explorer tripod to accomplish this shot. I used three Canon 580EX II flashes with colored gels and PocketWizards to handle the lighting scenario. The coffee mug was added to create the mood for reading a good book. My wife suggested two mugs given the books content. It took about a half-hour to get the shots we needed and I’m very happy with how they turned out. Hopefully these images will be used for a long time in the promotion of this book. I plan on ordering one from Amazon in the next few weeks. I wander if I can get the authors to sign my copy. On another note, I’ll be posting photos from the Olathe FCA Leadership camp my wife worked last week sometime in the next few days. The Tulsa Firecracker 5K photos are still probably a week away. I hope everyone is enjoying their day, well maybe except Mel Gibson. -Barnezy-

The Peterson-Myers Wedding

The Grand Architect of this Website — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:45:54 +0000

Two weekends ago my wife and I shot the Peterson-Myers wedding in Sapulpa, OK. This wedding was filled with some serious challenges. First off, it rained, rained, rained all weekend and this outdoor wedding was pushed inside a tent due to the muddy mess left by the storms. All of the parking was outside of the Myers’ ranch so there was quite a hike just to get to the ceremony. The humidity was about 186% which meant that my lens was continuously fogging up. It rained through most of the evening so water spots on my lens were a constant occurrence. Despite all of these challenges, the wedding was great and the photos (for the most part) came out pretty well. It’s my first wedding of 2010 so there was definitely a little rust to knock off, but with the help of my lovely wife we were able to get some great shots. I’m posting a few now and the rest will be available for download by the end of the week. On another note, I just had my first “book shoot” for a friend where I took some cozy photos of his book for promotional materials. I’ll post photos of his new book later this week. I’m still working on photos from the Fleet Feet Firecracker 5K and the FCA leadership camp from this past week. I’ll do my best to post by the end of the week. -Barnezy-

Clay and Tasha’s E-Session

The Grand Architect of this Website — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:57:46 +0000

Last Sunday morning I had the opportunity to shoot some engagement photos with an old friend and his fiance. I’ve known Clay since the inter-school rivalry of our 7th grade football teams. I met his fiance Tasha Sunday morning for the first time. The couple met us in Tulsa’s “blue dome district” for a quick 4th of July photo shoot. We walked around the blue-dome district for some nice pics and ultimately drove to a few different spot in downtown Tulsa. At one point, Ali and I were shooting some photos of Clay and Tasha when a few rednecks drove up in a Dodge Ram pickup and yelled out “happy 4th of July” and then threw an M-60 at my wife’s feet. Luckily she has the reflexes of a cat and was able to jump out of the way before the firecracker exploded. This was quite a ridiculous moment, but was quickly forgotten (by me at least) and we continued shooting. The sun couldn’t make up its mind so we tried to shoot in the shade as much as possible. For as much as we were moving around I opted to shoot everything on camera and I think they came out ok. We shot everything inside an hour and a half and I was able to get home to be with my family for my birthday. Overall, I think it was a great session and I think that their October 7th wedding might be a lot of fun to shoot. I’m in the middle of shooting videos at FCA Camp at Mid-America Nazarene University this week so things have been incredibly busy. I’ve seen a few outpatients this week in our Overland Park clinic so things are starting to “snow ball” a little now. I’m still processing wedding photos and Fleet Feet Firecracker 5K photos so hopefully I’ll get those up inside the next week. Hope you guys enjoy the rest of your week. -Barnezy-

Happy 4th of July (and Birthday to me!!)

The Grand Architect of this Website — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:23:30 +0000

It was another rememberable 4th of July weekend in Oklahoma. Since the 4th is my birthday, my wife and I always travel home to be with family. I was able to get out of school for Friday and Monday which made this an awesome 4-day weekend. On Saturday morning I photographed the Fleet Feet Tulsa Firecracker 5K run which my wife and dad participated in. On Saturday night I photographed my first wedding of the season. The wedding was for the son of my chiropractor; Nathan Peterson and his new bride Meredith. On Sunday morning (my birthday) my wife and I got up early and shot an engagement session with an old friend from Union and his lovely fiance. We spent the afternoon with my parents and Ali’s parents. Both our brothers were also there which made things even more sweet! Dad fired up the Hasty Bake grill and made some incredible burgers and brats. To top all of this off I somehow fortunate enough through a breakdown in communication to receive two birthday cakes! My wife made an angel food cake and my mother ordered me a chocolate/vanilla American flag cake. They were both amazing and I ate way more than I should have. To work off some of this amazing cake goodness my dad and I had an epic ping pong battle in the garage! The weather stations predicted storms throughout the evening which threatened to put a damper on my quest for shooting the Tulsa skyline with fireworks. I scouting out possible areas to photograph downtown fireworks the last several times I’ve visited Tulsa. I found a really nice spot along the Arkansas River that was “accessible” for my family. We brought folding chairs, bug spray, and the typical 20lb tripod you need for a long range fireworks photo. I must have looked pretty ridiculous shooting on a professional Manfrotto video tripod dug in the sand with a Canon 200mm f2.0 IS and a 5D Mark II mounted atop. The rain came, but my family was able to sit under a tree and I stayed out in the rain in an attempt to nab the perfect fireworks photo. Because of various factors I was unable to nab the “perfect” photo but I did have some good ones turn out even with the rain, wind, and smoke blowing across downtown. I think I’ll blow up a nice 12×24 for my office since I may not have another chance to shoot this setting anytime soon. On Monday morning, my wife and I shot a few more equine photos at KJM Stables and then we prepared for the long hike back to Kansas City. We fueled up at the greatest Quick Trip in the world (it’s right across the street from the corporate headquarters in Tulsa). Because highway 169 has a 30 mile detour, we opted for highway 69. I never mind this route because I get to drive through Miami, OK where I played two years of Junior College football. If you’re unfamiliar with this part of the state there is also a little abandoned town named Picher. The town is famous for several reasons including the massive “chat” piles that can be seen from space. I’ve always wanted to climb one so I took the initiative and ran to the top of one of the piles and took a few photos. What a great weekend!!! I’m currently busy processing images from all of these events so I’ll post them later this week or next. I hope you all had a safe and fun weekend! -Barnezy-

“Ellie” a hunter-jumper from KJM Stables

The Grand Architect of this Website — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:19:26 +0000

This past week I had to drive to Tulsa to see my Oral Surgeon for a 2 month post -op check up. My jaw is healing nicely and now all there is to do is to have the orthodontist put his finishing touches on my teeth. My surgeon suggested having my teeth resurfaced because of the amount of erosion that took place this past decade whilst my teeth were jamming against each other trying to keep my bite functional. We took an x-ray so I got to look at all of the hardware. There were 22 screws and 4 plates total. No wonder I swelled up so much!

As soon as I was finished with my oral surgeon, I drove a few miles over to KJM stables where a lady had asked me to photograph and take video of a hunter-jumper horse she was looking to sell. I’ve never in my life really taken photos of a horse, so I’m not sure what exactly they wanted but I gave it the college try. The most fun came when we hit the arena and I was able to snag a few photos of the horse jumping a few of the obstacles. Megan, the trainer, was more than helpful and even ran over the course again just so I could nab a few shots from a different angle. I swear it was 100 degrees but it was still a lot of fun. I look forward to possibly taking photos of more horses for sale from KJM stables in the future. I’m going home for my birthday this weekend! It’s going to be a fun-filled weekend as I am shooting a wedding, engagement pics, and trying to nab a photo of downtown Tulsa with fireworks in the foreground. I’ll let you know how that one works out! I’ll also be posting photos of my new RedRock Micro video rig as well as the new Oklahoma Sports and Fitness magazine that has several of my photos! Have a great and safe weekend everyone! -Barnezy