Arrival in Atlanta in one piece (but no sanity left) and United Way Photo Shoot

Madelyn and I had a whirlwind day, and I finished up a whirlwind couple of weeks in photography land.

I came home last Friday after a shoot and was checking my email only to discover an email from the Space Camp program in Huntsville, AL offering a full scholarship and travel stipend for Madelyn to attend...the only catch was that she had to attend the week of August 24th. So, after a bunch of web surfing and crossing my fingers on Priceline, we were able to finagle a great deal on airfare and car rental and make it down here. Luckily my sister lives in Atlanta so I have a place to crash after I take her there on Sunday, and thanks to my new laptop, I can work the day job from here as well. Hopefully I'll get to do a little hanging out at the photo district, too. Atlanta is a hotbed for photography and I can't wait to soak it all in, especially in this funky urban landscape.

Our flight down here was NUTS! We were delayed in Missoula for the first leg of the flight to Chicago. Made it with 15 minutes to get to our connecting flight, sprinted across two terminals (and since I won't check my camera equipment on the plane I had my mongo backpack full of lenses smacking my spine the entire "jog")....only to get to the gate ONE MINUTE LATE. Looked at the stern gate agent standing at the now-locked door and he shrugged his shoulders and just said, "nope". So much for mid-west hospitality! We hung out at the airport for another three hours before we could get on the next flight, which was then also delayed. I've never been so happy to see my sister's house as I was tonight!

The camping trip was great! We went to the Twin Lakes just above Wisdom, MT. At 8,000 feet. It was gorgeous and the canoe is officially broken in. I took a bunch of landscape photos (all my photography friends, you can exhale your big *gasp* now...YES, I even LIKED taking the landscape photos!), which I'll try to download and post while I'm down here.

I can't wait to go hang out around the photo district here and I've been blog stalking a couple photographers in this area so I'm going to try to set up some meetings/visits with them just to check out their studios...some day I'm going to build my own studio space...it's all there in my head!

This week was completely insane and busy, and I loved every minute of it (well, maybe not the staying up all night last night editing down proofs part, but other than that I loved it). I finished shooting the images for the Missoula County United Way workforce capital campaign on Thursday. I just want to share how many cool people traipsed through my studio and I so enjoyed meeting each and every one of this cast of characters (and trust me, they WERE characters!). It makes me proud to live in this wonderful city of ours.

I need to get some sleep! Have a good weekend! If you're in Missoula, check out the River City Roots Festival going on tomorrow downtown. I'm so bummed I'm missing it, but I can't wait to take Madelyn to camp. She's applied for scholarships for the past couple year and now that it's come to fruition we just can't seem to believe it's actually going to happen! Will keep you updated on our trip!