There’s been some amazing clouds lately and the weather has been really cool, in the mid 60’s. Such a treat, and quite a change from the almost 100 degree temps we had just less than a week ago. The Sierra actually got a decent amount of snow over the last few days, which has been pretty wild, and closed the Tioga pass just a day or to after it opened for the year. It was kind of a bummer because I really wanted to go to Yosemite over the weekend and catch up with an old friend, but at the same time it was awesome to see the Sierras getting hammered in almost June. I love the unpredictability of the mountains and how anything can happen at any time. Just thought I’d share a few images from the last few days.

Hope you’re well,

This rock detail is kinda cool. I just got a new 85 1.8 lens and I wanted to see how well it would throw the background out of focus. Works great! It allows for a very narrow depth of field which I really enjoy playing around with.

Home is such a special place. A place to be able to put love and energy into and hopefully enjoy being at, for most people spend a fair amount of time at home. Home is especially important for someone like me who works at home, for it to be a nice environment to keep me motivated and feeling good.

I absolutely Love where I live and am so thankful everyday that this is where I call Home! It’s this amazing Oasis in the desert created by the runoff from the mountains, and it just blows my mind that this neighborhood is so lush, and yet as soon as you get outside of the neighborhood, its pretty much a barren, sage brush, lunar style, desert landscape.

Crazy that we’re completely surrounded by open desert, and yet in our Oasis there’s a pond out front with lots of other ponds in the neighborhood, with almost every property having a creek or two, and just a general greenness and lushness not normally associated with the desert.

This is the front of my quant little cottage that I rent. There’s 7 other cabin/cottages that are all in this area thats a park like setting, and we’re all friends and share common interests so its super cool.

A few weeks ago my next door neighbors and good friends Eric, Caroline, and I decided to completely overhaul our backyards and make one open shared beautiful lawn for us to enjoy. I wish I would of taken some before pictures because it wasn’t pretty, but a completely weed infested and overgrown jungle of gnarliness. But many hours of hard work and camaraderie yielded a gorgeous shared lawn that we’re so excited about!!

And yes that is a trampoline over there, and yes it does lead to hours of fun!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’re well,

I’m so excited to announce that ShawnReeder Radio is now here! This is going to be great because now you can check out new music easily while you’re working! No need to hit play for every song you want to check out. All you have to do is Search For Music or Browse By Style from anywhere on Shawn Reeder Music.com and the results will come up in a list with the option to “Listen to these songs on the ShawnReeder Radio”.

This will pop up a little radio player that you can listen to while you get back to work editing photos, working on a video, building a website, or whatever you may doing. When a song comes on that you like, just hit the View Song Details button and you can easily purchase that song. Its never been so easy to find great music for your professional creative needs!

I’m also really excited to announce we now have ShowIt Web music and timing templates available! The templates have been carefully orchestrated with beautiful songs and timing and camera moves that fit perfectly.

This is super exciting because having the combination of music and images in sync is so powerful, and its not always so easy. But it sure is easy when you have a pre-done template! These templates include the original music in a Wav and Mp3 format, plus the tpl template file thats really easy to install into ShowIt Web. You can check them out HERE.

Check out a new song “Oasis” below that my friend Jim and I recorded a few days ago. This is also a ShowIt Template thats coming soon!

Hope you’re well.

Shawn Reeder Music.com is back up with some great new features! I’m gonna wait a few days before I write about them because we’ve got one more big surprise, but I will say, definitely check out the ShawnReeder Radio! Its so cool and will be great to listen to while you work. And if you look around you’ll notice some nice changes and additions. I’ll talk more about then and more soon.

Thought I’d share a few pics I took today playing with a self timer to get some shots for the new artists bios. I found out that if you want to get a good shot of yourself at f1.6, you’ve got to be really careful with the focus and where you stand. So I put the camera on a tripod, and got where I wanted to stand, and then took a measuring tape and extended it to the lens so I could know exactly how far from my eye to the lens. I set the focus manually to 6 ft like the tape measure said, and the shots came out in perfect focus. Pretty cool! Hope you enjoy, and check out the new music site!

Hope you’re well,

My dear friend Eduardo came over today and we got a couple pictures of him for the music site. We’ve been playing music a lot together over the last few years, and he’s been the main person I’ve been working with recording for my own music.

Its really cool, we both play acoustic and electric guitar, bass, and know how to work the drums, and we just work so well together with each of us playing lots of different instruments throughout all our songs. Some songs he’ll do the bass and drums, and I’ll do the guitars, or he’ll be on acoustic with me on electric, or me on bass and him on guitar, you get the picture. It’s really fun and lets us keep things fresh by playing different instruments.

The two of us.

Not only is Eduardo an amazing musician, he’s a world class climber. He grew up in Brazil, and came here to the US, and in particular Bishop here, because of the world class climbing everywhere. He is amazing to watch climb; just unbelievable how smoothly and with such power that he moves over stone.

So in his couple of times visiting and he met and fell in love with a dear friend of mine Kelley, and now they have a beautiful family with their baby Mateos, and Kelley’s kids Naya and Cody.

Just wanted to share some shots I got today that will be up on the music site in the artist’s bios soon. Since I was at it I figured I also share some other shots I have of Eduardo since he’s just an all around amazing person.

We’re almost ready to re launch Shawn Reeder Music.com with lots of new features and a little surprise to, so check back tomorrow!

Hope you’re well.