Day 12 - Elvis has left the building

We started our day by sleeping in slightly till about 6:30AM, and then eating breakfast at the hotel. Graceland doesn’t open till 9:00 AM so we had a little bit of time before we had to leave the hotel and make the drive over to the mansion.

We got to Graceland a little before 9:00 AM, which allowed us to park and pick up our tickets from Will Call. Our tour wasn’t scheduled till 9:45 AM, which was the earliest I could get, so that allowed us to visit the Elvis Museum. Graceland is not just the mansion now, it is a whole museum and shop concept devoted to Elvis. The museum, gift shops, dinners, ticketing, and parking is all across the street from the original mansion, which you are bussed over to at your designated tour time. The museum was good, with a lot of memorabilia, life story, gold records, and of course the jump suites on display in all their rhinestone glory. The museum also has on display all of his cars, including pink and purple Cadillacs.

Jump suits one of of 4 walls of them

Jumpsuit the second full wall of them

The wall of gold record recognitions (not the full wall)

The tour of the mansion was good. The tour starts with a 10 minute video giving a brief outline of Elvis’s life and all the stats from records, #1s, ticket sales, concerts, ect.; Then they file everyone outside to get on the bus, but not before a photo opp and giving you Ipads loaded with an audio tour and additional information. Our tour level only covered the lower level of the house, the grounds, the office, and the graves. I was not going to pay for the Elvis VIP experience to see the upper levels, Elvis is great and all but I’m no supper fan. Yes, you can take photos inside the mansion, no flash. (I'll be posting those photos later since they are on my big camera and I didn't do a lot of cell photos.)

Part of the Graceland Mansion kitchen

After visiting Graceland it was time to trade in our blue suede shoes and head towards Knoxville, Tennessee. We originally planned to stay the night in Knoxville, but Jim asked if it was ok if we just drove on through to home. Since he was the one driving I was ok with it, if he was. This put us home at 3:00 AM on 9 June and brought our little cross country road trip to an end.

I’ll be doing a full trip wrap up later in the week. So stay tuned.

Comments

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode. I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs. I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work. But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated. While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing. I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year. I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023. I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations. I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience. For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions. I used ISO 100 and 400. My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot . I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos. I started with a fashion grey seam...

The Munchkin's Notebook

Search This Blog