The Darkroom

More Vegas

2010-04-09T05:49:00.001-07:00

The strip at night.

Vegas

2010-03-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

This is from the conservatory at the Bellagio.

The Savannah River

2009-08-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

This is just off of the Augusta Canal towpath trail.

Savannah - Spanish Moss

2009-05-26T14:54:00.000-07:00

So we recently got back from a long weekend trip to Savannah. I go to dust off the old camera for a bit and shoot away. Here's a great example of the beautiful trees in this historic town.

Stair Tower at Biltmore House

2008-10-29T05:03:00.000-07:00

Now I'm off to take a test on neurological disorders. Yippee!

Another from Biltmore House

2008-10-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

Remember me?

2008-10-12T17:50:00.001-07:00

I haven't forgotten my blog. I've simply neglected it.

This is from the conservatory at the Biltmore house, Asheville, NC.

Paul & Kelly II

2008-06-04T11:59:00.000-07:00

Here's another. I should be able to finish this project (and other pending ones) after camp.

Paul & Kelly

2008-05-28T20:58:00.001-07:00

My friend Paul and his soon-to-be wife. I managed to do a shoot with them before they continued on their engagement trip to meet and greet family and friends. I haven't gone through all the shots yet but here's one of my favorites so far.

Cat Food Lottery

2008-05-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

It's dreadful but I've been too busy to shoot lately. On the other hand, it looks like somebody won the cat food lottery.

Note: Morgan actually took this picture. It just happened to be with my camera.

Missy and Lou III

2008-04-08T15:58:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple with sort of a vintage flair about them.

Missy and Lou II

2008-04-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

I always try to have a good time while on shoot.

Here we are at the playground.

Climbing trees.

Missy and Lou

2008-04-07T16:22:00.000-07:00

So it seems that a common theme in my life is to jump in and help people out with bridal/engagement/wedding pictures when they're in a pinch. Actually, I don't mind because this allows me the chance to play around with portrait photography without all the hassle of trying to make money at it.

Here's a few highlights from our 2 hours and over 450 shots.

Working With Layers

2008-03-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Here's some fun playing with images and layering.

Here's an image (I know, it's a flower) that hasn't been altered in any way (yet).

Brightness is also bumped up a little and a filter called "soft glow" is applied to the image.

Now, this step is complicated. The original image is taken and converted to gray scale (or black and white). The gray scale image is inverted to make a negative. Finally it is colorized to a monochromatic blue.

The blue image is layered over the first. Here I used a layer tool on the blue layer called "grain extract" and set the layer to 50% opacity. This brings out the shadows and sort of gives it a hard lighting effect.

Enjoy!

The View From the Top

2008-03-12T22:39:00.001-07:00

Here's a look down from the top (all 630 feet) of the St. Louis arch from our recent (this week) trip up there. More to come as time allows.

A Couple More...

2008-03-02T18:39:00.000-08:00

More of the same, enjoy!

The Joy of Being Close Up

2008-02-29T21:14:00.000-08:00

So I've been shooting flowers with the macro lens again. I stand by my previous statement that they make good subject matter as they do not move around too much like pets and small children.

Here's what my setup looked like from the outside for those of you playing the home game. I setup a pair of hot lights and (in this case) positioned them to provide hard directional light to add shadows and fine details.

After a little bit of processing and playing around with the images, here's one of the finished products.

Lunar Eclipse

2008-02-21T19:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't think I'd be able to get any decent shots since I live in town and am plagued by streetlights. However, at Morgan's request I gave it a shot. I think it turned out alright. This shot was taken at 10:04pm EST right after the total eclipse began.

More info on the eclipse here.

This shot was a 1/4 sec. exposure at f2.8 taken with my 90mm macro at 1600 ISO. I found that any exposures over about a second or so had some blur due to the movement of the moon. (my first couple of shots were 30 sec. exposure.

I am a lousy blogger

2008-01-31T20:01:00.001-08:00

Yep, it's been like two months. I'm falling down on the job.
However, in other news, I did get a new car recently.

I hope to get to take to time to shoot soon.
More on this exceptional car here.

PBC retreat (better late than never)

2007-11-30T20:41:00.000-08:00

It recently occurred to me that I hadn't posted any pictures from the PBC staff retreat. I didn't shoot very much but here's a good example of the fall colors.

November Sky

2007-11-12T16:15:00.000-08:00

So I missed shooting an October sky. I think this worked out just fine in the end.

Bike Race in Greenville

2007-10-15T22:57:00.001-07:00

So I just happened to be in downtown Greenville the other day and there was a bike race in my way.

So I took a picture.

Ack! Flowers again!

2007-10-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Really, this one is all about the lighting.

Macro Moment

2007-09-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

The great thing about macro photography is that your subject matter doesn't always have to be very interesting. You can make interesting shots by the way in which you frame your subject matter. It's about getting closer to something than your normally would. Sometimes it's all about the angle.

Since I started getting photography I wanted a macro lens. When I was in school I couldn't afford one. As I got older, I just had other things that I had to spend money on. Thanks to ebay, I finally got a macro lens. Here's a shot of my Yashica MAT-124 TLR camera with my new Sigma 90mm f2.8 macro lens.

This shot was made with existing light at f2.8 shutter 1/125 with an ISO of 1600. You might notice that the field of focus is very narrow in this shot. That's because of the f-stop of 2.8. A narrower f-stop (or aperture setting) would give a much wider field of focus and would make the foreground and background of the shot sharper. In this, you notice that where the lens says "3.5" that the "3" is the point of focus. The decimal and the "5" are right on the edge of sharp focus.

More Greenville

2007-09-05T12:02:00.001-07:00

Behind the Peace Center in Greenville, SC.

I enjoy making pieces like these in which the subject matter is not so much the building but the shapes. I think that some would put this in the category of art-for-artists. However, developing that eye for graphics and shapes helps to develop oneself as a photographer (or other visual discipline for that matter) over all. Just my opinion though.

The Cancer Survivor Park, Greenville, SC

2007-09-04T16:04:00.000-07:00

While visiting the ol' homestead in Greenville over labor day weekend, we decided to go downtown and stroll around the park. Naturally I was packing the camera.

However, no one was packing an umbrella...

Back to school

2007-08-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, school is back in session and August is almost over.

Yikes!

Anyway, I've been slack in both shooting and posting. Today I ventured to the North Augusta living history park looking for interesting subject matter. This is from the garden next to the park.

Bixler @ PBC

2007-07-30T20:44:00.001-07:00

Well, I'm still here and finally got all my image files from First Week at Palmetto Bible Camp.
Here's one of my favorite shots from the Bixler concert on Sunday night.

More to come...

PBC Caption Contest Photo #2

2007-06-22T14:05:00.000-07:00

PBC Caption Contest Photo #1

2007-06-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

So camp is over (for those of you who are PBC staffers) for the year. I figure it's time for fun now. Thus, I propose we have the first annual PBC photo caption contest. Just put your caption for this lovely photo in the comments section. And of course, keep it clean (that means you too Michelle).

Go P-Murph Go

2007-06-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

You are an inspiration to us all.

From the archive

2007-06-07T23:40:00.001-07:00

Since I haven't been shooting much lately, I started looking through my image archive to see if there were any good shots I hadn't done anything with. This is a nice macro shot taken back in September of last year.

As you can see, I've been busy

2007-05-30T22:43:00.001-07:00

The view from the south facing side of our room's balcony. I guess I should get back to work now.

One Year

2007-05-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Sunday marked my first wedding anniversary. What better way to celebrate than to take photographs!

This is the actual bridal bouquet one year later along with her veil and headpiece. Here are some detail views:

BBL*

2007-05-19T08:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts. I've been:

1. Doing some consulting work
2. Trying to find a normal job
3. Doing a (non-paying) photo shoot along with custom editing
4. Finishing the required work to become an AHA CPR instructor

So I've been busy.

*Textspeak for Be Back Later

Faux Vintage Photography

2007-05-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

This was one of my early attempts at making my digital photographs look vintage. How did I do?

Trivia: If this were from film, what would cause that fuzzy dark line around the edge.

Paul: This is not the inside of my nose.

Lack of Material

2007-05-13T21:39:00.000-07:00

I'll have some new stuff up soon. In the meantime, this is my cat.

Back to Flowers

2007-05-10T12:30:00.000-07:00

Back to floral shots. I took this with my previous camera, a KM Dimage z5. It had a great macro mode which allowed for some interesting perspectives. For example, the flower petal in the upper left of the frame is actually touching the outside element of the lens.

The Capitol Building

2007-05-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

And there she is, the Capitol Building. Atop the nearly 9 Million pounds of iron that makes up the dome is the statue of Freedom. Now, Freedom was stuck up there in 1863. You history buffs out there may realize that the helicopter wasn't around back then. One has to imagine the conversation between the government agent and the contractor tasked with putting it up there.

Government agent: Ok, we want you to put this statue on top of the capitol dome.
Contractor: Sure thing, we'll just need a lot of rope, some pulleys and a couple dozen horses. How big is it?
Government agent: Uhmmm, yeah, it's kinda big but nothing you can't handle.
Contractor: Well, like how big?
Government agent: What if I said it was under 8 tons?
Contractor: Riiiight...

Korean War Memorial

2007-05-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

This is from the Korean War Memorial in Washington, DC. The National Park Service has more information about the memorial and the men and women who fought in the Korean war.

Here is a wider shot that includes more of the statues:

The WWII Memorial

2007-05-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

It took WWII vets 59 years to get a memorial. If you haven't seen it in person, check out more photos here.

Tomb of the Unkown Soldier

2007-05-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I promised a change in subject matter.

Washington DC is a place I think that everyone should visit at least once in their life. This is from October of 2006; my third trip to DC and first trip to Arlington cemetery. This photo was taken right after the changing of the guard. I think I like this shot because it seems to convey the seriousness with which the 3rd ID honor guard takes the task of guarding the tomb.

Back to Flowers

2007-05-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, so It may seem that I take a lot of pictures of flowers. Well, I do really. Thing is, they don't move around much and are easily found in my backyard. Here's a couple from the other day.

So then I fooled around with the color some to make it look like a hand tinted black and white photograph.

I promise we'll change subject matter soon.

Creek Near the Mill Part II

2007-05-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well, maybe this should be part one. This is the original photo with only slight color balancing to bring out the reds and blues.

Creek near Gilreath Mill

2007-05-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

This is a photo was taken near Gilreath Mill in Greer, South Carolina late last year. The mill is an early 19th century, water-powered, flour mill. I'll post more from that shoot later.

#591

2007-04-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

From the same shoot as 592. I have a love of film grain for some reason. Of course, this is all digital so the grain is rendered. There, I just gave away my secret.

#592

2007-04-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

This image doesn't have a title at this time. Currently it's just called #592

First Post

2007-04-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

I created this blog as a showcase of my photography. Maybe later I'll think about selling prints. Right now I'm just interested in showing off.