A Bitchen Time

Ok, so I got back from my two-week vacation to Germany Saturday night. Jill and I went over and spent two weeks with my old German buddy Alex and his girlfriend Stefanie... it was two weeks of awesome food, beer and wine. One of the biggest highlights was the professional soccer game we went to watch... I just thought us Americans got wound up about our football here in the states.... that was a crazy good time and I am not even into soccer.

Anyway we saw a whole lot including my old home town of five years and the old base where I went to school. It was really good to get back there after sixteen years... that place has so much to do with who I am today. I really credit me being where I am today profession-wise to my five years living over there. Germany is where my love for photography was really born and encouraged due to a coworker of my father's (thank's again Don Farra) while there and all the traveling my parents and I did.

One of the first photography lessons I remember getting was thru Don.... a lesson I never truly appreciated or understood until I got into photography on a professional level. I got my first SLR along with a 2.8 28mm and 2.8 100mm prime lens as well as a dedicated flash for Christmas from my parents while there in fourth grade. Don gave it all to them and told them to give it to me due to him seeing my interest and ability in photography at the time. After a while of shooting with these two prime lenses I got the itch for a zoom lens... something that would give the exact composition I wanted. I started asking my parents for one, only to have Don shoot down the idea right in front of me when he told them I did not need one. When I ask why, he replied by telling me that working with prime lenses would give me greater composition skills in the long run... forcing me to create a good composition with the focal lengths I had available to me. As I remember... at the time all this response did was tick me off. Today I am so glad he did this... I believe it did make me better and think of this all the time when I don't have exactly what I WANT, not NEED, for a job.

The photo of me that I have posted here was taken in a very old town called Bernkastel-Kues under a sign on the wall that read "Bitchen", which is a reference to huge beer in the area called Bitburger -- or Bit -- for short. The "chen" means small in a cute way in German. I am not sure if they realized the American surfer slang use of the exact same word... but I saw a good opportunity for a good shot, so I set my camera up for it and explained how I wanted it composed then handed it to Jill.
Got out under it and here ya have it... a portrait of me... Bitchen.