More Vegas

The strip at night.

Vegas

This is from the conservatory at the Bellagio.

The Savannah River

This is just off of the Augusta Canal towpath trail.

Savannah - Spanish Moss

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

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

Another from Biltmore House

Remember me?

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

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

Paul & Kelly

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

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

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

Missy and Lou II

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

Here we are at the playground.

Climbing trees.

Missy and Lou

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

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

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...

More of the same, enjoy!

The Joy of Being Close Up

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

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

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)

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.