So last year I posted here about the trip that Jessica and I took to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In usual Jebb Graff form, I mentioned how I would post photos soon. Well, I just recently realized I never got around to posting any. Here are some from the trip. I did have around 150, but then thought better of it and decided to post a “handful” of faves. Maybe I’ll make a slideshow with the rest. So here they are with captions and all…ooooooo, ahhhh!

Did I mention that George & Lauren drove up too? They didn’t stay the whole tim, but just long enough for George to show off his hovering skills.

Jessica and I take a self pic on the chair lift.

Insert cliched postcard photo here.

The clouds were doing some funky business on the neighboring mountains and I thought it was photo worthy.

The majority of the week we were there was spent looking at the bears at Ober Gatlinburg. We were also fortunate enough to see some bears in the wild. That was pretty much the coolest.

Dang ole flaming fountain man.

The trees in the park were so tall. It was pretty rainy and muggy for October, but the hike was really nice and quite pretty.

Insert cliche waterfall photo here.

Yup…we like bears alright…we’ll gladly watch you sleep if you happen to be one.

Slope Sans Snow -or- Green Grass Gulch

We climbed in that little blender and took a flight around the mountains. Pretty much the coolest.

Again with the cool. I think helicopters have to be the best machines ever built. My friend Ben agrees and says he will name his child “Laser Helicopter”.

Jessica in her flight mode. She turns into a silhouette in every aircraft. It’s a gift…don’t judge.

Here we are taking another self-shot on a chair lift. Little did she know I had a diamond or two in my pocket.

Following the diamond discovery and proposal it was time or another self pic at a bar where we celebrated our engagement with a cup of coffee.

We got up way too early to go up the parkway to watch the sunrise. While it was pitch black I played with the moon, my tripod and a pen light. It was pretty damn cold out.

Sun is finally starting to light up Gatlinburg with a gorgeous cobalt ceiling.

Yay for tripods and remotes.

Yay for sunrise and Jessicas after pancakes. Yeah…we went up so early for the sunrise that we ended up leaving to go get breakfast and then coming back. It turns out that sunrise in Charleston is a different time than sunrise in the mountains several states away. I’m not always the brightest…sue me.

That’ll do for now.

-JG

A couple of weeks ago I posted a teaser here about a wedding I photographed with Leigh that was done in two parts. In the morning was an Indian ceremony and the afternoon was a Christian ceremony. Both ceremonies were stunning. Here are some of my favorites from the day. Warning…there are quite a few more than normal considering there were two ceremonies, so give them a little time to load. :)

-JG

I’ll start by saying it isn’t my style to talk politics and I especially don’t make any habits of debating them. I did want to share this though. A photographer from one of the photography forums I frequent is from Abkhazia and the conflict in Georgia has a real impact on him. Sometimes when I’m listening to NPR or watching the news it’s easy for me to forget that the stories impact real people. Yes, I’m outing myself for having a narrow view sometimes, but it’s the truth. Gray buildings, gray skies, gray streets, gray earth and people in gray clothes that live in a somewhat geographically gray area are hard for me to relate to. Now here’s a guy from a forum that I might otherwise be reading about f-stops or last Saturday’s wedding from, helping me to realize that when countries are attacked…people are attacked. I’m not an idiot. I know people are hurt in wars. It’s just easy to overlook the humanity when it’s often served as something else.

Here’s an excerpt from his post…

I hope everyone has heard about the war in South Ossetia and Georgia. You probably are convinced by what the media reports, in particular that “Russia is the aggressor against innocent Georgia”. Our government is backing Georgia and also telling us about Russia’s aggression. But that is a lie. I have always made fun of the conspiracy theory people, but I find myself in the same position–criticizing the government and sounding crazy. But I cannot keep quite when such an injustice is going on; so please do not take my words as that of a crazy man who hates America–on the contrary, this country has given me many blessings for which I am endlessly thankful; I care about it and am deeply saddened by how effectively the media has fed us propaganda over the last week. Please read the following short account of my story:

He has offered some insight to the other side of the story we haven’t been getting a lot of lately. I’m not saying you have to believe him or the videos, but it seems like it’s worth thinking about. I’m not the first person to beat the dead horse of the “Evil Media”, but some of the things I’ve read and seen lately sure don’t help make a cleaner image.

I’ve turned comments off for this post because, this is just meant to be a “hey look at this” and not a “believe this or you’re dumb” kind of post. Like I said, I don’t argue politics…everyone is free to have their own opinion in this country and I doubt there is anything I can say to make you change your mind. You like tomatoes or you don’t and that’s fine by me. Even if I do think you’re wrong for liking them. :)

-JG

There’s nothing better than embarrassing yourself on the internet for the whole world to see right? Right! Yesterday I was emailing with a friend of mine about photos from the past (distant or recent) that made you feel like “who was that person?”. So I thought I would maybe share one of those once in a while around here on my blog. This first one is from a very fun time in my life when I was going out and having a lot of fun with my friends in Columbia almost on a nightly basis it seemed. It should also give you one reason I keep a beard…I really don’t like the mush-face look and it’s even more embarrassing when you’re all sunburned.

-JG

Yeah…I’ve been pretty slow with updates lately. That usually means one of two things. Either I’m going through one of those blogging dry spells everyone gets or I’m incredibly busy. This time has been the latter.

Over the past several months I have been busier than I have ever been before. I like it for the most part, but I am feeling the need for a real vacation. It will have to wait though until my honeymoon in November. I’ll make it. I’ve been photographing a lot of different things, working like mad at my 9-5er, studying business practices, culling some more gear and as of late, trying to figure out how I want to use my iPhone with my emails and calendars and stuff.

I’m a Google fan. I’ve been using GMail since Mynx first sent me an invitation several years ago. I love their calendar, reader, chat, search (of course) you name it. The other day I decided to try and make use of Google Apps with my jebbgraff.com domain name. So here I am all set up with that…my old gmail address is forwarded to my new jebbgraff.com mail account that’s using the gmail interface blah blah blah… Then it happens. I go to the new Apple store on King Street and purchase a new iPhone 3G. I’m sold on the concept of MobileMe. Flawless syncing of my calendar, contacts & mail sounds great. Except that there is no way in hell I’m changing my email address for it. So after much debate I decided that I would stick with Google Apps and only sync my contacts and calendar to the MobileMe cloud. Today has been day 1 and so far so good. It’s great that the iPhone works so well with Gmail through IMAP…so does my MacMail.  The only problem so far is that MacMail doesn’t “know” when I’ve opened a message on my iPhone. No big deal, but full on sync like MobileMe would have been nice. Soon enough I’m sure there will be an easy cure to that. Hell there probably is a cure now, but I’m just a few rungs below total geek to know what to do. If you’re a true geek and want to let me know how to set it all up please feel free, just check your “company computer guy” ego at the door please.

Photos soon.

-JG