Blueye Photography

In all of my traveling over the past 2 weeks I neglected to make a Christmas post on the 25th (oops!). Here’s a make-up post to cover Christmas and New Year.

I hope that you and your family had a wonderful Christmas full of warmth, love, and surprises and that you found some time to just lay back and look at the lights. Best wishes that 2010 proves to be even better than 2009 for you and yours!

Warning: this post is sappy… I can’t help it…
There are few events in a man’s life that can move him to tears just by thinking of them:

• The day he got his first car
• The moment his wife agreed to marry him
• The day he said I do
• The day his grandmother passed away
• The day his child was born

On 8/28 I had the pleasure of being witness to the birth of my son and I am forever changed. The strength that my wife has is immeasurable and our love has deepened over the experience of creating a new life and we’re blessed to be able to go through this wonderful journey. A post wouldn’t be a post without photos so here are a few to commemorate the event.

I think Ferris Bueller said it best: “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Things in the Schneider house have been going full steam ahead. Our little one is expected in the next few weeks so Melanie and I have been working on the house… last minute preparations… and working on choosing a pediatrician and childcare/pre-school. It’s much more daunting than we thought, but the best we can do is make an informed decision and see how it goes. We can always change if something doesn’t feel right.

Due to the imminent arrival of our son I’ve also been trying to fulfill any open orders and close up my open albums so if you are a client and want something printed in the next 3 months you should really try to get your order in now.

Speaking of photos Melanie and I had a session with the awesome Wiebners (Joel and Rita) while in Lancaster in June. Here’s a sample from the session and if you click on it you’ll link to their blog where you can see more of us.

Also, if you are interested in seeing a couple of the maternity photos that Michele at Pinkle Toes Photography took of Melanie check out this post on her blog (hint: she’s the beautiful one in the bright green dress). Michele is awesome and will be doing our newborn session once the Peanut arrives. You can bet we will be sharing all of the wonderful photos from that session along with the many, many, many (did I say many?) photos that I will be taking once he’s here.

That’s all for now. I’ll post some photos of the nursery once we get it all finalized… it still needs a few more things (couple of wall shelves and curtains)

In years past Melanie and I would have spent today bouncing from party to party having a great time visiting with friends and ending the day watching a dazzling fireworks display light up the sky. This year, however, we opted to go more low key and spend the holiday at home. She’s 7 months pregnant and I have a ton of things to do around the house to get ready for the baby so it felt better for us to be home bodies. We’ve cleaned, painted, repaired, washed, and folded, but we’ve still found time to grill up some food and watch a couple of movies. Now if I could just manage to get to bed before 1am… sigh.

Happy 4th everyone!

A post without a photo just isn’t right so here’s a couple of photos of the nursery in mid-paint-state. Hopefully I can get the painting finished up tomorrow and we can start decorating next week.

A couple of posts back I let y’all know that I was looking for a new car and about a week ago I picked it up… a 2009 Toyota Venza. I was able to negotiate a decent deal with the local dealership and so far I’m very happy. The car has plenty of features, lots of space, a great engine, and stylin’ 20 inch wheels. The color I got is called Sunset Bronze Mica… which I love… it looks more brown when it’s cloudy outside and more bronze when it’s sunny.

Well, that’s not entirely true, but Blueye Photography will be closed until Monday 4/27. If you contact us while we’re out rest assured we will reply when we get back.

(click the image to go to the site)

I received my new Canon 5D mk II this afternoon and I think I’m in love

(the above photo was shot with my 1dMkIII)

I’ve only shot a few frames with the 5D (it was a busy day), but the ISO performance is phenomenal. The two photos below were shot at ISO 1600 and are pretty much straight out of the camera (I adjusted the white balance in Lightroom). Wow!

And the most impressive thing about this new camera? HD video! Check out this quick little movie I shot with the 85 f/1.2 @ ISO 1600. I converted the video to black and white, added transitions, and added the music in Apple’s iMovie.

Tiny little test movie from Troy Schneider on Vimeo.

Oh how the years have flown by. My Mom told me I was born during a blizzard… fittingly Lancaster is getting snow today and we just had ice in Austin. I snagged these photos from our wedding DVD (we had the videographer put a slideshow at the beginning of the disk of photos we gave him).

My parents look so young… and I look so innocent

I’ve been a bad blogger lately and really it’s not because of a lack of motivation. Really it’s due to a lack of follow through. I have these thoughts for blog posts and then I look at the clock and it’s midnight and I need to get to bed (those who know me know that I don’t get nearly enough sleep) and then the post doesn’t happen the next day and a cycle begins. So today I’ve vowed to be in bed by 11:30pm so I have about 15 minutes to get this post done and published (check the published time to see if I succeeded).

Today’s post is just going to seemingly random hodgepodge of things… news bits and goings on in my life recently… and at the end of the post I’ll point out a few new features recently added to the blog.

The weather here in Austin was amazing today… 80 degrees! Hard to believe, but even worse to experience when you are stuck in an office building all day… booo
——————-
I have been going to the gym about 5 times a week for the past 3 months in an effort to get fit. I’d like to shed some fat and just feel better overall (I was noticing a lot of aches and pains from doing normal things that I thought were premature). I’m happy to report that I’ve lost about 7 pounds, all of my clothes are fitting better, and I am definitely getting stronger (leg pressing 350 pounds, bench pressing 185 pounds, and able to go 4 miles on the elliptical machine in 45 minutes). The only real place that you can visibly see that I’m stronger is my arms. Maybe I’ll post a photo sometime… maybe not (I’m not that vain).
——————-
Watching the inauguration this past Tuesday was amazing. I was blown away by the sea of humanity that the Mall in DC turned into for the event. Truly awe inspiring. And I love the fact that the new administration is complaining about the lack of technology in the White House. It’s about time that government got a technology jolt (and not from the military).
——————-
This past weekend I updated the theme on the blog and introduced some new features that should help with the usability of my site. Here’s a quick overview of the new features. Leave me a comment to let me know if they are useful.

1. New navigation… easier to find, read, and use. The about me section is now hidden by default and can be expanded by clicking on the About Me link. There is a built in contact form that will send me an email. And the nav is hooked into my Twitter feed (sweet!)

2. The comments section on each post has been updated to be easier to read… much easier to read.

3. There is a new ShareThis link at the bottom of every post. This will make it easier for you to share any particular post with your social network.

4. At the bottom of the page there is a section that taps into my LifeStream. This is a summary of my social networking life… tying together Facebook updates, Last.fm songs listened to, and YouTube video posts.