Hello Friend

My photographer friend Megan Owens and her husband Rodd are on vacation for a few weeks. (I shamelessly heisted their photo off of her blog so you can see who I'm talking about - yeah, two photographers and not a damned picture taken between us last night) They live in northern Idaho, and they drove out through the Dakotas and down through Iowa and Moberly/Macon Missouri, where she has relatives. And they stopped by here and took us to dinner at Murry's (thanks guys, we really didn't expect you to pay!!!) and we spent several hours talking. They were off toward the Lake of the Ozarks today, and then out to ... mmmmm, Colorado. They should be there for some nice aspenglow.

Megan and I met on the innertubewebs. She'd been searching for pictures of the Maroon Bells and found my blog entries from September (probably posted in October) 2006 when Vicki, Sam and I were out there.

It turns out Megan and Rodd had been out there the same week we had. Megan and i share a passion for photography and wide-open spaces with interesting landscapes... yeah, Mountains, too ... and so we've had quite a bit to talk about the past couple of years over the internet. We were emailing back and forth so much to begin with that Vicki started jokingly calling her my "internet girlfriend".

They were every bit as nice and decent, down-to-earth people as they seemed from her emails. We have an awful lot in common.

Megan is an excellent photographer who would probably only need a little luck to make it professionally. Her work quality is all there. She knows what she's doing. She has a real eye and a knack. Grew up in her dad's dark room doing film. She works in digital now and can do some amazing stuff. You should check her site out. I send people who think I'm good out to her site to see what someone who really knows what they're doing can do. If she's not making a living doing it, my chances of making it at my dream job are less than slim :-)

We traded stories and routes to travel, places to stop in the Colorado mountains, and of course I'm expecting to see some pictures when they get back to Idaho.

'Course, that'll probably be after I see Sarah's from their trip out west. Hear that, Sarah? ;-)

Oh, for you photography freaks out there -- or even if you just take a lot of pictures of your family ... you should really check out this site she introduced me to in the last couple of years. Ken Rockwell has some great advice for anybody with a camera. He is the anti-elitist, honest-to-goodness professional photographer who knows what's going on between your ears is actually far more important that your camera equipment.