Yearly Archives: 2010
Happy Holidays (A Family Session)
Hi everyone,
Its been a while since I’ve posted anything but I guess that’s what the holidays can do to you. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We’ve had family in town visiting us which has been great but I wish I didn’t have to work this week. 
I wanted to share some Christmas pictures I took for a family a couple weeks ago. They were great to work with and I had a wonderful time. The boys were pretty motivated to behave during the session so they could get some gum once we were done.
The boys decided to show me where their tummies were.
Thanks to this wonderful family for allowing me to take and use their pictures.
Day’s End Before/After
Hey everyone,
Here is another before/after shot.
(Best viewed in Firefox. Other browsers might not render correctly)
For a little over a year I working in Carmel, Indiana which is about 2 1/2 hour drive from my home. I spent a lot of time on the same stretch of road driving to and from work. I’ll just say I utilized our public library quite often for their books on cds.
I would always take my camera gear with me on this drive since you never know when a photo opportunity might arise. I’d also find time to take stops throughout the drive when I came across anything I thought would make a good photo. Sometimes I’d vary my commute a little and take the smaller roads to find some of the hidden gems of Indiana.
This image was taken during one of those diversions from my normal commute. It was taken just outside of a small Indiana town called Lakeville. As I was driving home it had been storming and raining and was just breaking up as the sun set. The main part of the storm is just to the left of the image. As I passed the small lake in Lakeville I took some of the smaller roads around the back side of the lake. This was taken just off the road over the river that flows into the lake.
This image is also a HDR image where the final image is composed of three other images, each with a different exposure, to better capture the elements of the scene. One exposure will capture the colors in the sky but the foreground might be too dark to have any detail. But the next exposure will have the foreground detail but the sky will over exposed and too bright to get the colors. When you combine the images you can get a full range of exposures needed to render the scene.
I hope you like the before/after shots. Let me know if you have a image you would like to see done this way.
Thanks for visiting!
South Bend PUG
Hey everyone,
For the past few months I’ve been attending a local “PUG” or Pictage User Group that consists of other photographers from the area.
What is a PUG? Well, below is an except taken from the Pictage website.
The PUGs mission is to facilitate communication and education among professional photographers at a regional level around the nation in order to allow photographers to learn from each other and share experiences.
Pictage User Groups are a way for you to:
- Network and build valuable relationships with other photographers in your local community
- Share expertise with your peers
- Enhance your photography skills and marketing strategies in a learning environment
- Have fun!
So far it’s been great meeting and interacting with other local photographers. The meeting last month was dedicated to working with “Off Camera Flash” and was a blast. We broke off into groups that had 4-5 photographers, a leader who has had a lot experience with off camera flash, and a model to work with. We then all headed out around the town taking different shots and experimenting with the lighting.
The pictures here are of Bamber Marie who was the model who was assigned to our group. Bamber is an aspiring model who likes darker/grungier style of photos. I tried to process the images in a way she would enjoy them and be able to use them for her portfolio.
And one last one.
Thanks for looking. Feel free to check out the photos taken by some of the other photographers at this workshop.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=338300936217&v=photos&so=0
Photo Print Giveaway!
Hi All,
I need your help to make my Facebook photography page grow!
I recently hit 500 “Likes” on my Facebook Photography page. When I hit 600 “Likes” I will give away an 8″x12″ photo to 3 people who comment on this blog post.
How to win:
- Help me get to 600+ “Likes” on my Facebook page by suggesting the page to your friends.
- Leave a comment on this post. The comment can be anything like “pick me” or “I want to win”. Say whatever you want. (Please note any comments for some random medications will not be eligible.)
- I will randomly select 3 people from those who commented. They may choose any photo of mine as an 8″x12″ or smaller print to be shipped to them.
It’s that easy. If I only have one person comment they will get all 3 photos. I have no idea how long it will take to reach 600 but once I do I’ll post the winners.
Thanks!
(Above photo is of the Orlando skyline)
Before/After Oregon Coast
Hey all,
For this weeks post I’d like to show you a little before/after shot of one of the pictures I took while on the Oregon coast in August. You can use the slider bar in the middle of the photo to view the before and after versions of the photo.
(Best viewed in Firefox. Other browsers might not render correctly)
I’ll be the first to admit that my photos don’t always look the best and almost always need some further help in the post processing process. The final version of this image is actually made up from three different shots taken one after the other. The three images taken only differ in exposure which allows me to capture a larger range of light and detail than you could achieve with a single shot. The three images are then merged together to create a High Dynamic Range image also known as HDR. (I plan on creating a HDR tutorial at a future date)
After the images are merged together I open it up in Photoshop to make the final adjustments to blend and adjust it as needed.
The Photo itself was taken just outside of Pacific City. This Haystack rock is just outside of Cape Kiwanda as is sometimes referred to as “the other Haystack Rock”. (As opposed to the popular tourist destination on Cannon Beach.) This Haystack rock is one of the largest standing at 327 feet tall and is the world’s fourth largest sea stack or off-shore sea monolith in the world. (taken from Wikipedia)
The picture was taken on a overcast and gloomy morning after I had gotten up very early in hopes to capture a sunrise that never happened. It’s always hard to get Mother Nature to cooperate so you’ve got to take what you can get.
I plan to do more of these before/after type of post in the future with some of my other shots as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and if your interested in more posts like this.
Year’s First Snow Fall
We had our first snow of the season a little over a week ago. I’m not a huge fan of winter/snow/cold but it can make for some unique pictures. A lot of times if you’re willing to brave the elements and get out to take shots you’ll end up with unique pictures that others aren’t willing to work to get.
I took these photos as my wife and I walked our dog. I didn’t want to have to carry all my camera gear for this little outing so I just grabbed my camera (Canon 7D) on one lens (Canon 100mm f2.8 IS Macro) and went out. This can be a challenge as your not able to switch to a different lens as you see different shots. It forces you to work within the limits of the single lens you have.
This can be a fun challenge to try and can get you to look at things in a new way. For example a lot of my shots are wide angle landscape shots. I tend to look at the big picture of a scene and by having only a macro lens I’m forced to observe the details of it. It opens up a whole new world of photography to dive into.
Another version of this challenge is to give yourself topics or themes for a photo outing. For example you can use themes like “Leaves”, “Reflections”, “Water”, or “Happiness”. As you’re out shooting try to incorporate the theme of the outing with all of the pictures you take. This type of challenge is great and you don’t need to have a fancy camera or gear to do it. It can be done with a cell phone camera if you’d like.
Granted these pictures I took probably aren’t all keepers. If you have made it this far and you’re still reading this post I’d like to know what pictures you like. I hope to use the blog section of my site to not only post things I’m working on but also to find out what everyone likes. Please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you think and if you have any questions about my pictures, techniques, or post processing.
Thanks for looking and till next time… ta ta
Good To Go… For Now.
Ugh.. What a pain I’ve had “Upgrading” to this new site. It seems like I’ve had problem after problem so far and as a result I haven’t been able to do my weekly blog posts as I’ve wanted to. Also I haven’t been able to start any type of promoting as I didn’t want to tell people to check out the site only to find it not working.
Some of the problems I’ve had have been things like clients unable to access their photo galleries though their links and the slideshow on the main page wouldn’t scroll from one picture to the next. I think I’ve been able to resolve the main problems for now and can start moving forward with my weekly blog postings. I still have a few minor issues to resolve but should have those cleared up in a week or so.
If you happen to come across anything that’s broken please let me know.
I can’t have a blog posting without an image so I’ve attached a picture I took while out driving around during my lunch break a few weeks ago. It was a pretty time of year with all the leaves changing but Its sad to see them fall to the ground. Winter is just around the corner and while it won’t stop me from taking pictures it sure does make it hard to hold the camera without my fingers going numb.
I’ll have a new posting later today. Thanks for visiting!
Dog Agility Fail
Every now and then I take pictures for a dog training school called Top Hat & Tails Canine Training School. When a class has their graduation I go in and take pictures of the dogs running the course and wearing their little graduation hats. While this can be a challenging thing at times it’s always fun to get pictures of dogs in action.
A couple weeks ago I captured a series of shots that turned out to make a pretty funny gif. It happened towards the end of class as the dogs were getter pretty tired from all the running around. Please note the dog was perfectly fine and went on his happy way. He made many more successful jumps after this slip up.
Here is a link to the training school for those of you who are interested.
http://unleashtheirpotential.com/
Welcome To My New Site
Hey everyone,
Welcome to my new site. I plan on using this site to display my portfolio work as well as providing various blog entries of my photographic adventures. Please bookmark me and check back often.
In my blog posts I plan on having a wide range of posts that include photography tips, tutorials, and projects that I’m currently working on. If there is anything you would like me to talk about let me know.
The site is still a work in progress so it will probably change and have things added to it over the next few weeks/months.