I have a thing for the desert. The extremity, starkness, clarity, subdued colors, intense shadows, life amidst impossible conditions, quiet and stillness all combine to create a sublime experience only available in deserts.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen our fair share—Mojave, Death Valley, Negev, Wadi Rum, Arizona, New Mexico, etc.—and while they all share a familiar vibe, each brings its own spin on desert life, palettes, sights and smells.

This spontaneous drive out to Death Valley National Park was inspired by my torturous experience awaiting final word from my current employer about a possible nposition. Not wanting to be stuck inside alruminating over the possible outcomes, Ashley suggested we take a drive out to the desert to clear my head and have a classic desert experience.

This was not a hard invitation to accept. I promptly packed up my photo gear and we hit the road bright-and-early.

Our previous visit was during the rare ecological phenomenon known as the Superbloom that was accompanied by rare rainstorms in Death Valley, but this one was just another October day.

Here’s what we took.

Laguna Beach, California

With this project, I wanted to convey what a normal day in the life looks like for a family blessed by adoption. Thank you Tim and Niccole for opening your home and allowing me to document what it's like for you raising your two handsome boys. 

After hearing rave reviews from friends for months, the other night my wife and I finally got around to seeing the movie Lion and were blown away. (side note: Ashley literally cried throughout the entire movie. Literally.) For those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie, it tells the story of a seven year-old boy from rural India who gets separated from his family and finds himself nearly a thousand miles from home all alone in the big city. After a while of living on the streets, he is picked up in an orphanage before being adopted by an Australian couple who raises him as their own. Eventually, he tries to put together the puzzle of his past and find the family he left behind.

It's an absolute tear-jerker and a must-see. One thing I loved about it, though, was how effectively it portrays the context of his adoption. There's a long story both for him and his adopted parents that brought them together in that moment in history. The weaving together of their stories into one family history is something that moved me in ways I had not before considered. All parties involved were forever changed.

Inspired by the movie, I reached out to my friends Tim and Niccole Johnson--the proud parents of two awesome (and crazy adorable) adopted sons, Ollie and Thurston--to see if they would be willing to allow me to document a day in their life. My hope is that our neighbors here in Orange County, California can see first hand what the blessings of adoption mean to families like the Johnsons, right here in our neighborhood. 

For our "day in the life" session, the Johnsons went to the Laguna Niguel Skate Park, got dinner at their favorite spot at Whole Foods, stopped by their friend's skate shop before making their way home for the evening to read, put the kids to bed and wind down with some vinyl records. 

And no--they were not putting on a show here. They really are this cool. :)

Enjoy,

Danny

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Perhaps my favorite thing about photography is the opportunity to meet and interact with people I otherwise would never have met, learn about their lives and what they do, and then try to convey some aspect of that in the product I deliver. That's what keeps me coming back for more, and that's also what led me to say yes when I got a strange text message late Friday night...

Ashley's aunt Stephanie happened to see a Facebook post from her friend Toni who, in a panic, was trying to help her friend Keisha track down a photographer who could shoot her sunrise wedding the next morning. Apparently her photographer bailed/went MIA(??) at the last minute and left Keisha in a bad situation.

But luckily, through the magic of Facebook and strong social networks, she got my number and we were able to fill-in at the eleventh hour.

While weddings in general can be stressful and highly regimented, this one was neither. We arrived bright and early (actually, it was still pretty dark upon arrival...), found a little spot on the sand near the pier and all of a sudden, we were having a wedding.

And it was magical in every way. 

This experience was wild and was an awesome reminder that people are good and friends are everywhere. Do good. Be kind. Make a friend. Blessings will flow.

(scroll for photos!)

Three years in and going strong! You know when Ashley plans our anniversary because it's fun and beautiful and memorable. This year, we went to the Museum of Ice Cream in Los Angeles which I learned is a really, freaking cool place.

When I think of museum tours, I thought of old paintings or skeletal findings from archaeological digs or those audio tour sticks you hold up to your ear to figure out what's going on. Most museums are in large dark buildings with high ceilings and a general tenor of reverence and wonder.

Well the Museum of Ice Cream bucks those trends in every way. It's loud, bright, bold, fun, vivacious, playful and interactive. The staff dressed in their pale pink uniforms are without exception the type of people you want to hang out with.

The Rooms

Each room booms with the stuff that makes life fun and together provide an experience that inevitably leads to smiles. The tour flowed as follows:

• Welcome Room
• Scream for Ice Cream Telephone Room
• Strawberry + Vine
• The Banana Room
• The Mint Chip Room
• The Sherbet Room
• The Popsicle Room
• The Gummy Bear Room
• The Charcoal Ice Cream Room
• The Indoor Sprinkle Pool
• The Breakfast Ice Cream Room
• Gift Shop

Favorites?

While I loved just about everything about this place, here are some of the highlights.

The Mint Chip Room

In the Mint Chip room you not only get to see real mint growing in real chocolate (well, cacao beans/chips) but you also get a sample of this mint chip mochi that is out of this world good. Thankfully the lady behind us didn't want hers so I got the hookup.

The Gummy Bear Room

For me, this is where the party turned up a notch. They blast the music in the Gummy Bear Room (but thankfully it's not that Gummy Bear song with a billion YouTube views...), give you a handful of gummies and make it a party. Plus, who doesn't love gummy bears?

The Sprinkle Pool

The Mike Trout of attractions at this place, the Sprinkle Pool simply can't be missed. It's weird, and bright, and just pure happiness. PSA: You will come home with sprinkles in places you didn't think the sprinkles could find. Just the other day I put on a pair of shoes that I didn't even wear to the MOIC, and found a green plastic sprinkle inside. Sorcery...

The Breakfast Pancake Ice Cream Sandwich

My feelings about this final treat on the tour can be summed up by this Homer Simpson GIF. I still have dreams about that sandwich.

PHOTOS!

It rarely rains in Southern California these days, but the clouds gathered just in time for our annual pumpkin carving and fall soup Family Home Evening session with the Hansens. Chrissy decked out the dining room table with a diverse array of pumpkins, a legitimately creepy candelabra and a halloween-themed spread. The dimmed lighting, stormy weather and killer halloween Kidz Bop playlist made it actually feel like halloween. 

There might be something to the idea that the way you carve/decorate your pumpkin is somehow a reflection of your personality. For instance:

I will write-in Mitt Romney in every election through the end of time in protest of the tragedy of 2012.

• Naomi was calm, deliberate and thorough as she methodically painted her pumpkin
• Grant vacillated between wildly splattering paint around his (and others') pumpkins and meticulously coloring his
• Gideon eagerly chose the most difficult carving pattern and handed off the tool to his dad to execute
• Luke, unsurprisingly, couldn't say no to Gideon
• Ashley helped everyone make theirs prettier and kept the peace
• Chrissy made the fanciest pumpkin and got the party started with the playlist
• Mack stabbed the pumpkins and got paint all over the room.

That tells you a lot about our family.

Of course, I didn't carve any pumpkins since I peaked back in Fall of 2014 when I carved my pièce de résistance: Mitt Forever (pictured). That, and my OCD acts up when the pumpkin slime hits my hands. But I'll take the photos.

One final note. I picked up my costume-that-shall-not-be-named in preparation for Monday, though you can catch a teaser at the bottom of the post...

1. The bathtub

Takes forever to fill up, but as soon as you pull the plug, it’s gone. And it leaves a nasty residue. Scrub, rinse, plug it up and turn it back on.

2. The balloon

One pin prick in the right spot and BOOM. Down it goes. Back to the pump again. The first breath is the hardest. From there it’s more about sustained effort. Once you get it ready to show off, avoid cacti or kids with safety pins.

3. The tire

Under-pressurize and you lose your grip; over-pressurize and the tire blows. Keep it chill in the sweet pressure level—don’t under do it, but don’t pump yourself up and be in danger of blowing out.

4. The souffle

The delicate dessert when done just right—when the conditions are optimized and in the hands of a master chef—is second to none. Miss one thing and POOF! It collapses.

5. The transmission

Shifting gears when going up hill isn’t easy, and if you’re in too high a gear as you approach one, you’re bound to flounder. Stay in a low gear while ascending, don’t let the extra time it takes to do it right get you down.

Donald the clownish, unserious candidate / foil to Jeb! = funny

Donald the GOP frontrunner = not funny

Donald the President-elect = buy fire insurance

For the sake of our future children, I hope it never comes to that because electing Donald Trump would make America—the greatest social endeavor in human history—into nothing more than a tawdry, tired joke.

Are any of the other candidates any better? Yes, in at least one sense: each of them holds at least some modicum of dignity for the Office and reverence for what America ought to stand for in the world. Donald has none of that. He has an ego the size of Jupiter and proven track record of brutal abuses of the "little guy" he claims to be championing. At the very least, all of the other candidates would bring a degree of soberness to what ought to be the most serious of responsibilities. The American Presidency is better than Donald Trump. But if we can't see that, the joke's on us.

Donald fans who persist are the political equivalent of the guy who always takes the joke too far, who lacks the tact to know that there's a line that for the good of everyone around just shouldn't be crossed. 

It's time for the joke to end. Don't be that guy.

Still unsure? Read this from the not hyperbolic Charles C. W. Cooke:  

How, one wonders, will future generations look back at this behavior [of conservatives allowing Trump to hijack conservatism]? How will they comprehend that at the end of February 2016 under 10 percent of all super PAC spending had been trained on Donald Trump? How will they see John Kasich’s admission that he doesn’t know if he should even be president, or process that Ben Carson put the construction of his own political shopping network above the country he supposedly loved? And what will they make of the fact that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio wasted so much time pretending that they meaningfully disagreed with each other? Now is the time to throw everything at Trump, and to stop this disaster in its tracks. Will our children wonder why we were so reluctant?

Tomorrow night, as they stand on either side of Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz must find their resolve and all-but-machine-gun the man to the floor. Incidentally, when I say “everything,” I really do mean everything. Tomorrow night, as they stand on either side of Trump, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz must find their resolve and all-but-machine-gun the man to the floor. Without breaks for water or silence for applause, they must explain that Trump is an entitled mess whose business record is so questionable that he managed to bankrupt a casino; that he is an unashamed fraud who didn’t even wait to be elected president before folding on Planned Parenthood and Obamacare, exactly like the “feckless” Congress he is running against; that he is feigning religiosity to appeal to people he believes are rubes; and, above all, that whatever he may be pretending now, he has spent a lifetime screwing the little guy. They must repeat verbatim his previous words on amnesty; they must outline in detail how his policies will make life worse for everyone; and they must point out that a Trump nomination designed to “mix things up” will result, eventually, in more of the same.

"All I want is the chance to do something great." - Chicken Little

I've been afraid of this blog for a long time. 

The idea of actually putting my thoughts out into the universe is downright terrifying.

When said out-loud, the reasons are silly. I'm afraid people will confront me argumentatively. I'm afraid I will not be able to give a satisfactory answer to someone who disagrees with my take. I'm afraid that people will hate on my writing and thus delegitimize my English degree or my three years as a writing tutor at BYU. 

Maybe most of all, I'm afraid to fail again. To have this blog fall into disrepair and someone down the road will stumble upon it, laugh and point out to me how--once again--another one of Danny's crazy ideas flopped before it could even take-off.

People can be cruel, but none is more cruel than I am to myself (a truth that my wife, my therapist and those closest to me are kindly helping me to overcome). It's amazing, actually, how ruthlessly I can tear apart anything that I do as worthless and a complete failure, and in the same breath genuinely laud even the most meager accomplishments of others. I'm hoping that somewhere in this writing exercise, I can develop a little more self-love in an attempt to manage that voice.

That said, I'm not naive. Trolls are gonna troll, especially on controversial (i.e. interesting) material. But I know that they don't matter, even if they are fomenting the caustic inner voice tearing apart my insides. I still believe that the goodness of fellow humans always wins out and that in all likelihood, there will be people who actually enjoy reading what I have to say and share here-and-there.

Of one thing I am sure: if I never put myself out there, I am guaranteed to lose. By doing nothing, I will guarantee the very fate I most fear: failure. 

So this is my attempt to connect--to be heard and to listen, to put myself out there in ways that make my little palms sweat and cause my stomach to sink in terror. 

I'm not sure what you can expect from this blog. I have no idea how regularly I'll be posting, nor can I say for sure what the content will be. There is a good chance it is filled with everything from rants about my quasi-abusive relationship with the Angels (Mike Trout, excepted of course) to my reactions to the latest political happenings to ruminations on eternity and The Bachelorette.

I guess we'll find out.