It's no surprise that this has been a rough year for most people. But even in the midst of all the insane news stories, emergence and persistence of a worldwide pandemic, and toxic vitriol some people have turned into primary personality traits, sometimes beautiful things happened too. Melina and I were able to make a trip to Colorado (Aspen and Snowmass to be specific) to surprise our friend Lauren when Joe popped the question. Joe had let us in on the plan weeks in advance, so we had plenty of time to safely plan a trip to make some magic happen. The four of us have collectively been friends for near a decade. I've known Melina for over 10 years, and she introduced me to her best friend Lauren after they met in college. What a surprise it was when Lauren then introduced her boyfriend Joe 7 years ago, when it turns out he was my old childhood friend that I hadn't seen in years. So of course when we learned that Joe was going to propose, we knew we had to be there.

We ended up driving 40 hours over 3 days for this surprise, which ended up being worth every minute. Melina and I ended up getting an Airbnb in Snowmass, Colorado, which is about 15 minutes away from Aspen. We thought this would be a good option, as it would reduce our chances of being seen by Lauren, but was still close enough to not have to drive too far to get to Weller Lake trail where Joe had planned the big moment.

We had basically just enough time the day of to take in a walk down to the mall to find a breakfast spot and recharge before heading out for the hike.

Lauren and Joe had been going on weekend trips, so it wasn't too overtly suspicious when Joe took Lauren to Aspen from Fort Collins for the weekend. Ever since they moved to Colorado they have been taking advantage of all the beautiful hiking opportunities available as well, and at this time of year the aspen trees change color and make for amazing scenery.

Despite the brief nature of the trip, it was really refreshing to get out for just a little bit and enjoy ourselves. We did have a bit of a hard time with the hike however since we weren't yet acclimated to the altitude, but we did just barely manage to get up the trail to the lake before Lauren and Joe. But I mean, really, just barely. They actually almost walked up on us as I was talking to another couple at the top of the trail!

And just like that, it started happening!

After enough time had passed for Lauren to say yes, we popped out from behind the rock we were hiding behind (literally) and shouted SURPRISE! The trip was officially a success and we were able to capture some amazing pictures of the moment. Thankfully, Lauren had no idea we were coming, and was very impressed with her new fiance's ability to put this all together.

Of course Melina is set to be the Maid of Honor, and Joe asked me to be one of his groomsmen, which I am thrilled about. We were so excited to be able to be part of this special day, and of course celebrated with pizza afterwards. The wedding is set in 2022 after Lauren finishes vet school, so keep an eye out in the future for more updates!

Images in this post taken with a mix of cameras. I used my Canon 5D III, Fuji X100F, and Galaxy S20+

Honestly I was pretty surprised I was able to pick up the domain seanedmunds.com, but I'm pretty glad I did. I haven't been using my Squarespace site, and the domain associated with it, halfaperture.com. I've been doing less paid photography work and it just doesn't make sense to keep it around any more. That being said, I still like photography quite a lot, and wanted to keep a place where I could showcase my work, other than social media. This new site is what comes of that need. I set it up using a self hosted solution called Koken. It allows the use of templates, similarly to Squarespace, which makes for easy edits so I don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about updating HTML, CSS, or any other code to keep a good looking site. From here on out, halfaperture.com will be directed here as I make this my new home for photography.

Keeping that in mind, this new change corresponds with my good friend Melina releasing her newly published book Paper Cups. We did some promo shots which I have happily displayed on the new site, both on the home page and in the portraits album with her name on it. As always, we got some really great shots, and her new house has some really amazing natural light to shoot in. You can get her new book in paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon now.

I, personally, have been spending a lot more time working on personal projects at home related to IT and my job, practicing systems administration. This site happens to be a product of this practice as well. Full disclosure, the rest of this will be a little on the nerdy side.

A while ago when Toys R Us was going out of business, I was able to buy one of their Dell servers for just $400. This allowed me to start getting practice with virtual server environments at home, specifically VMWare ESXi. Most of the servers I'm running are Linux - Ubuntu 18.04 to be exact. I migrated a lot of the stuff that was previously running on a Windows desktop to different virtual servers and ended up learning a lot. I started running my web server and reverse proxy using NGINX. The free version of their web server software lets you host any number of websites assuming you have the domains and hardware for it, and allows for what's called a reverse proxy, as I mentioned before. This means that I can have as many sites and services behind ports 80/443 as I need without having to open up more ports and risk my network security. NGINX allows for what are called server blocks, which lets you point web requests to certain sites based on domain names. This is how I can service seanedmunds.com and halfaperture.com at the same location as I host other, not publicly accessible pages. I also setup Let's Encrypt auto renewing SSL certificates to keep the site safe for people browsing and for myself in administration. I also currently have the sites configured to redirect unsecured HTTP traffic to the HTTPS version with valid certificates. All in all, this means that I can eliminate the need for Squarespace, although I am sacrificing some reliability, as I do not have any real server infrastructure or business class internet. I did however learn some good job related skills and will end up saving around $20-30 a month in various fees.

I hope to keep updates coming here for both interesting personal projects and more photography stuff. I have plenty of film that needs to get developed and scanned, and may feature the process or the cameras I shoot with. Keep an eye out here for more.

-Sean