Rocking the One Stars!

I got a little extra creative today. I've always enjoyed mixing hobbies, for instance I love shooting concert pix (music and photography). As there was no concert to shoot I decided to use my own drums and play around a bit. The set up was tricky. See my Week In Review blog to see a picture from my cell phone showing how I set up the camera if you are interested in that sort of thing - here is the link to that blog.

I wanted to show action by having my right foot and the bass pedal kind of blurred. In a real concert the light is so low that it's easy to do this. In a basement under controlled light it's much harder to do. I tried, but the best I got was a faint blur. I will have to play with that some more in the future. Once I had the shot I wanted, I edited it like crazy in PhotoShop. Enjoy!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 27mm, f22, 8 sec., off camera flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, cropped, adjusted Contrast and Brightness, added some Neon Glow.

Tunes listened to while editing: Angels & Airwaves, Love Part II. (Awesome album!)

Feel free to visit my Week In Review blog using pictures I've taken with my cell phone. If you want to follow that here is the link.

Getting Back In The Flow

Well, week 2 is here and it took the whole week for me to figure out what to shoot. Hard to get back in the mindset of shooting again. I remember shooting this waterfall at about 103rd and Metcalf, but it was during the summer and I even commented in that post that I would need to revisit the waterfall in the winter. One reason I'd want to do that is in the winter it freezes up and the ice formations can be very nice. Today I decided to use this as my object. What I didn't account for was the fact that it was a bright and sunny day - therefore the image I wanted to create was much more difficult. To make the water kind of cottony or wispy you need a longer shutter exposure. To get that you need a pretty small aperture. Well to get a small aperture I had to move way back and zoom in so instead of shooting the whole waterfall I was forced to only select a portion of it. Well, as the Christmas decorations were still present this made more sense - less to edit out!

I think I liked the end result, but I look forward to Spring when outdoor shooting is more interesting.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 195mm, f45, 1/6 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, cropped, adjusted Contrast and Brightness, created a second layer for the water so I could adjust it to my liking without affecting the rest of the image.

Tunes listened to while editing: Blink 182 - Neighborhoods

In other news I've started a Week In Review blog using pictures I've taken with my cell phone. If you want to follow that here is the link.

A New Year - A New Project

I can't believe it's been well over a year since I last posted here! I guess I kinda got burned out on Photography for a while so I took a long break. I still shot pictures, but the self-inflicted grind of shooting, editing and posting something every single day took it's toll, and I only did it for 100 days straight (whereas some do a picture a day for a whole year)!

Well, this year I have decided to set some New Years Resolutions, and one of them was to start using the camera and PhotoShop again. In my wisdom as an older and hopefully wiser person I decided that with all the other things I am trying to accomplish this year I should restrict myself to a Picture A Week project. So once a week, I plan to post up an image that I shot that week, and edited with PhotoShop. I am hoping to sharpen my skills once again so I can be a better photographer and PhotoShop editor.

This week we had Cameron's first Basketball game of the season with Upward. Another thing different this time around is that I am not coaching. I get to enjoy the game as a parent and that gave me the opportunity to shoot pictures as well. Shooting in a gymnasium is very tricky and the images are very challenging. This was a nice shot I happened to catch just as Cameron put up a shot. I love that I caught him as his feet left the ground so he is in mid-air. Cameron's team won their first game and Cameron made one of the 8 baskets which was very cool!


Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 1600, 82mm, f4.5, 1/90 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, cropped, adjusted Contrast and Brightness.

Tunes listened to while editing: nothing today, unless you count listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows unabridged Book on "tape".

Listen to your wife!

One thing I've learned when shooting weddings especially is to listen to my wife.

When we were very quickly shooting these images (due to drizzle) this past weekend in front of the courthouse in Harrisonville, my wife called out to the groom of this couple to "dip your wife!". Well, that little dip provided a moment for the bride and groom to have some fun, and I think it gave me a great shot that showed something more than a posed shot would have. Often times on shoots Dionne will speak up that she wants to try something and people will even say that the pose she puts them in feels uncomfortable or unnatural, but inevitably later they will love the result of the pose.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 78mm, f5.6, 1/180 sec., fill flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, cropped, changed to B&W, colorized the flowers, added diffused glow filter. Adjusted Contrast and Brightness.

Tunes listened to while editing: Angels & Airwaves - I-Empire. I'm on a huge Angels and Airwaves kick right now. You need to check them out if you haven't. They are a really great "supergroup"!

Still alive and shooting!

Yes, I am still alive and shooting pictures. 24 hours ago I didn't feel very much alive, but after a nights rest I am feeling better. Yesterday my lovely wife and I traveled down to Harrisonville to shoot our first wedding in 2 years. Now we both remember why we stopped chasing this kind of work. It is a tough way to make money.

Anyway, despite the rainy conditions we managed to squeeze in a few shots outdoors. The groom managed to secure the use of this 1937 Chevy (I think) and really wanted a few pictures using it. Dionne and I saw this neat court house and as it was only a few blocks away from the church we knew we had to swing by between the ceremony and reception.

As the day was kind of gray, I decided in this version to go with Black and White. Plus I kind of wanted the "old time" look as we had the old car and the old courthouse.

As I'll be editing over the next week or so, I hope to post more frequently again here. I hope you enjoy seeing images from me again.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 18mm, f4.5, 1/180 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, cropped to exclude sky, changed to B&W. Adjusted Contrast and Brightness.

Tunes listened to while editing: well today I've listened to 5 disks while working on images. The one that I listened to while working on this image was Angels & Airwaves - Love.

Where's The Beef - This Day In History

On this day (January 9th) in history in 1984, Clara Peller was first seen by TV viewers in the "Where's the Beef?" commercial campaign for Wendy's.

Peller's "Where's the beef" line became an instant catch phrase across the United States. The diminutive octogenarian actress made the three-word phrase a cultural phenomenon, and herself a cult star. At Wendy's, sales jumped 31% to $945 million in 1985 worldwide. Wendy's senior vice president for communications, Denny Lynch, stated at the time that "with Clara we accomplished as much in five weeks as we did in 14½ years." Former Vice-President Walter Mondale also used the line to effectively demolish rival Senator Gary Hart in a bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1984 presidential campaign (Mondale eventually lost in a landslide to President Ronald Reagan).

While hugely popular, the advertising campaign proved to be short-lived, at least for Wendy's. Peller had made actor scale wages - $317.40 per day - for the initial Wendy's TV commercial of the campaign in January 1984.

At least all this made for a good excuse to run to Wendy's for a late night snack! And for what it's worth, even though this was one of Wendy's Value Menu Triple Stack burgers, it was very beefy!

Shot spex: Jpeg Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 130mm, f19, 1/90 sec., flash aimed directly behind me with an Omni-Bounce attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, Went to Channels and adjusted each channel individually to make the burger look more appealing. Adjusted Contrast and Brightness.

Tunes listened to while editing: Lovetap - There's This Girl. Great album - kind of a modern approach to classic 50's rock (IMHO).

Calling London - London Calling

On this day in history in 1927 the first transatlantic telephone call was made – from New York City to London. The first thing I thought of when I read this was of how far telecommunications has come. The second thing I thought of was the Clash album, London Calling. The third thing I thought of was, "hey, I could pull up a picture of that album in less than 60 seconds with my HTC Hero"!

This image was tricky. I played with all kinds of lighting tricks and just couldn't create a 100% color image I liked of it. Then I decided that a blend of Black and White and Color was exactly the right way to portray the idea of a phone that could simply make a transatlantic telephone call (B&W) and a phone that houses a portable computer capable of amazing things like communicating transatlantic color images (Color).

Shot spex: Jpeg Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, prime 50mm, f2, 1/20 sec., flash aimed directly behind me on a sync cable with an Omni-Bounce attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, Layered and Desaturated. Adjusted Contrast and Brightness on each layer to my liking.

Tunes listened to while editing: Again nothing - too lazy to trek upstairs to get my iPod!