Ron's Pic-A-Week Blog

Rocking the One Stars!

2012-01-21T17:46:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-15T16:43:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-07T14:25:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-05-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-05-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-01-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-07T18:57:00.000-08:00

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!

Impressive Wing Span!!

2010-01-05T20:12:00.001-08:00

So today, January 5th is denoted as both Bean Day and Bird Day. As I already shot a bean type picture on New Years Day I decided to use a bird picture. I shot some pictures of a pretty red cardinal a couple of days ago, but the images turned out pretty bad (shooting through a window screen). So I dug into my archive and found a picture I shot last August while atop a very tall observation tower in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I have no idea what this bird is (some kind of hawk or vulture) but it was immense! The image was kind of bland and so I decided to try some creative techniques to see if I could make something more interesting out of it. I applied a watercolor filter and then messed around with the contrast, brightness and such until I had what I liked.

Shot spex: Jpeg Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 200mm, f8, 1/350 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: See above.

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

One Ring To Rule Them All

2010-01-03T21:39:00.000-08:00

How could I possibly turn down creating an image to commemorate the fact that today, January 3rd, was J.R.R.Tolkein Day! What can I say? I'm a nerd, and I love the Lord of the Rings series written by Tolkein. In fact my buddy Donovan and I are such Tolkein nerds that we play the Lord of the Rings trading card game. I bought a replica of the sword named "Sting" for my son a few years back and the ring used in this shot is actually my wedding ring. The initial shot was of the entire sword, but I realized when editing that too much was not a good thing.

Shot spex: Jpeg Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 40mm, f4.5, 1/90 sec., flash with Omni-Bounce attached and aimed straight up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Cropped in really tight, adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Desaturated and applied a Sepia filter. Colorized ring.

Tunes listened to while editing: Owl City - Ocean Eyes.

Happy Mew Year!

2010-01-02T21:38:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, January 2nd is designated as "Happy Mew Years!". That time when felines, ever above mere humans in the great chain of being, have a day unto themselves to celebrate the “mewness” of a new time.

Well, I decided to shoot a picture of our cat, Bella. I thought this would be easy as she is almost always in the same place - right on the top of the sofa in the picture window. I thought a nice natural light shot of her would look great! But, as I should know by now having had cats for many years, they rarely cooperate. I could never get her to go to her favorite spot in the window, and even tried to move her there only to have her dash away in a flash! So I dug into the archives as I remember having shot a few pictures of her over the years and found this one. I did some cropping and applied a film grain to the image. I then desaturated everything and brought back the color for Bella's eyes and nose. I have never used type effects on a picture so this is a new skill I attempted as well. I think it turned out okay. Kinda cheesy but what do you expect on Happy Mew Years?

Shot spex: Jpeg Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 68mm, f5.6, 1/60 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Desaturated and colorized eyes and nose. Added Film Grain.

Tunes listened to while editing: Weezer - The Red Album. A permanent part of my top 25 albums.

A spoonful of good luck for 2010!

2010-01-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

I'm not actually that superstitious, but I've heard that eating Black Eyed Peas on News Year Day will bring you good luck. But you have to eat at least 365 of them, obviously 1 for each day of the year. According to Southern folklore this must be the first food you eat on New Year's Day for luck and prosperity throughout the year ahead. That would probably put a damper on those midnight kisses if we really followed the practice in this manner!

Anyway, this is the first image of what I hope to be many this year as I participate in my friend Jeff's photo challenge called "This Day In History - 2010". Enjoy and watch out for many more posts this year!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 200mm, f6.3, 1/90 sec., flash aimed at ceiling with diffuser attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Nothing tonight as I am in the process of rebuilding my iPod! Bleck!!!

Family Pictures (Tis' the season!)

2009-12-14T19:34:00.001-08:00

Today I had the privilege of shooting family pictures of our neighbors across the street with their grandsons. I thought it would be nice to post the best one from that shoot here. It is fun and challenging when little ones are involved. This shot is actually 3 images blended into one. Tip: when shooting group shots, use a tripod and shoot several on the same pose. Anyway, just a little reminder, I do this often and am very reasonable - and I have some camera gear I want to buy!

Enjoy!

Scenes from South Dakota

2009-12-05T22:21:00.000-08:00

I know it's been some time since I posted here, but that doesn't mean my camera is gathering dust. Far from it! Recently we had the great fortune to travel to South Dakota with a friend over Thanksgiving Weekend. We met some great people, and made new friends. It is some beautiful contry up there and I managed to shoot a ton of pictures while there. I will be posting some more of the scenic images and maybe some of the family shots I did in the next day or so, but right now I wanted to post up the imaged I gathered from the last day we were there. I literally shot from sunrise to sunset that day. Enjoy!

Picture #107 - Shooting In The Rain

2009-10-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

Well, as I said yesterday, we planned to do 2 family shoots today at Legler Barn in Lenexa. We knew there was a chance of rain, but decided to try for it anyways. We managed to get in Dionne's family despite the rain, but had to cancel our other shoot. I think in spite of the rain we still managed to get some good shots.

This shot is a location I have worked many times before, and I think all the past experience helped me to achieve more this time than in the past.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 68mm, f11, 1/90sec., flash dialed to 1/16th.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a little, adjusted Levels and Contrast just a little bit. The bridge is very green so I created a second layer and desaturated that layer and added a Sepia filter to it. Then I blended the color layer with it.

Tunes listened to while editing: This was a 2 album day! I listened to Anberlin - Lost Songs and Diffuser - Injury Loves Melody. Great picture editing music!

Picture #106 - A Walk In The Park

2009-10-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

I know it has been a couple weeks (or longer) since I last posted. To be quite honest, I never fully appreciated how hard it would be to shoot, edit and post a new picture every single day. I found myself doing all three aspects of this project at midnight most nights and this really was counter productive to the goal of the project. Well, enough of that. I will change the title to something else, and plan to post at minimum, several times a week, but doubt I will go back to a picture every day. Now to get on to what we did today.

I have been helping my Dad with a digital Photography class and next Saturday we have a field trip planned. We were planning to sit the fall leave just right. My Dad compared current conditions to last year and fears that the fall leaves may not be as good next weekend as they are right now. To that end, he sent out an e-mail to the class encouraging everyone to get out and do some shooting before next weekend (at least if they wanted nice fall leaves in their images). Well, I decided to heed his advice. Additionally we have two family shoots tomorrow (if the rain holds off) and I wanted to get some practice in while scouting the location. I felt pretty good about the end results enough that I wanted to share them. If you are on Facebook (I'm open to the entire world!), feel free to view my album for the entire shoot. Otherwise enjoy what I've shared above. Additionally, if you want to take full advantage of the beautiful fall color out there, go shooting tomorrow! Just don't get in my way! I got work to do!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 118mm, f11, 1/90sec., flash dialed to 1/16th.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a little, adjusted Levels and Contrast just a little bit.

Tunes listened to while editing: Dovetail Joint - E.P. for the Underclass. All 5 tracks. Great disc! Too bad they broke up!

Day #105 - I See You

2009-09-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

Today I played with my camera during soccer practice. As a continuation of my Filter project, I found a filter that has little cut out shapes you put over the lens. Some are heart shapes, some are key-holes and a few are binocular shaped. I decided to play with the binocular shaped one today. After a few boring shots I noticed that it was getting dark and I needed more exposure time. I decided it would be fun to do the "long-exposure-twist-the-zoom-lens" trick. I didn't know I caught a soccer ball in the right corner. I think it was not moving but the trick applied makes it look like it's moving. I thought it was a fun shot.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 55mm, f22, 0.7sec., no flash. Cokin Binocular Cut Out Filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a little, and adjusted Brightness (a lot to the negative side) and Contrast (a lot to the positive side). Desaturated a bit.

Tunes listened to while editing: Webb Wilder - Doo Dad. Tracks 2 - 8. Good ol' rockabilly/rock n' roll.

Day #104 - Seeing Green

2009-09-23T20:35:00.001-07:00

The Filter for the day is the "Green Spot" filter. Talk about a hard filter to find a use for. This effect can of course be done in PhotoShop, but I rarely (never) use the color green for it. This was kind of a lackluster shot, but it some small way it is growing on me.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 24mm, f4.0, 1/45 sec., flash aimed at ceiling. Cokin Cokin Green Spot Filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a little, and adjusted Brightness (a lot to the negative side) and Contrast (a lot to the positive side). Cropped a little bit.

Tunes listened to while editing: Snow Patrol - Open Eyes. The first 5 songs. I wonder if their new album is any good. Anyone know?

Day #103 - Super Star

2009-09-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

I decided to start my filter project with the "8 Point Star" Filter. I used my prime 50mm lens and lit some candles to use as the light source. I like how this turned out. I was going for something really subtle and think I pulled it off.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 50mm, f2.0, 1/125 sec., no flash, tripod used. Cokin 8 Point Star Filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a little, and adjusted Brightness/Contrast. I decided I liked this better as a sepia tone image so I applied that filter in PS.

Tunes listened to while editing: Weezer - The Red Album. The first 6 songs. Just felt like some Weezer today, what can I say?

Day #102 - Cameron and Chewey Post Op

2009-09-21T19:40:00.000-07:00

Today our little dog Chewey had a little procedure done. As Gary Larsen from the Far Side once said in a cartoon of his, "Chewey went to the vet to get tutored". The ol' Snip and Clip!

Anyway, as a result he has to wear the cone which of course meant a picture. Cameron has been trying to be really gentle with him and it's cute to see him that way.

I know I planned to do the filter project starting today, but I just had to get this shot first.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 130mm, f11, 1/90 sec., flash on Stroboframe, aimed straight at the subject (I tried to bounce off the ceiling but I was too far away).

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a little, and adjusted Brightness/Contrast. I then used the Golden Eye technique (on both Cameron and Chewey). I think I'm starting to get this little trick down.

Tunes listened to while editing: Eric Hurst - Goodbye, Welcome, Thank You. The first 6 songs. Track #6 (Kathleen) is really cool. I remember getting to see my buddy Donovan playing at Davey's Uptown with Eric Hurst years ago. It was awesome and Dono (who is an awesome guitarist) was playing the Keyboard parts on the guitar and it sounded freaking awesome! Then we played The Lord Of The Rings Trading Card Game over in the bar for a while. We got all kinds of people coming over asking what game we were playing. We've always been very confident in our geekiness!

Day #101 - Back In The Saddle Again - New Directions

2009-09-20T19:42:00.001-07:00

What a week! Sorry for the hiatus, but I spent the last week coming down with the Flu and then getting over the Flu. I am not quite 100% yet (probably more like 90%) but I'm ready to get back in the saddle.

This picture is not exactly creative, but it is showing my plans for the next month or so on this project. Many years ago I bought a Pentax Super Program SLR from someone in Blue Springs and part of the package was a decent collection of Cokin Creative Filters. I got to thinking that it might be fun to try using these filters to see if any of them have uses beyond cluttering up a shelf in my closet. So for the most part I plan to use these filters in shots posted here for a while. This will force me to do some lens swapping. I have the smaller filters so they won't work with my 18-200mm Super Zoom. I will be using the lenses in the picture which are my 18-55mm Zoom and 50mm Prime lens. I think it will make for some good experiences and hopefully some interesting shots.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 40mm, f11, 1/60 sec., flash on Stroboframe, extended all the way up and aimed almost straight down at the subject.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a lot, and adjusted Brightness/Contrast. Then I Posterized the image and liked what I saw so I stopped there. Well I didn't really stop there - I kept trying other things but nothing else really looked good to me!

Tunes listened to while editing: Jughead - Jughead. The first 7 songs. Another band I had forgot about till a couple of days ago. Their 1st track is called Halfway Home To Elvis and it is a fun song. The rest of the album is really good too.

Day #100 - Happy Anniversary and Happy Grandparents Day!

2009-09-13T21:13:00.000-07:00

Hopefully you knew it was Grandparents Day today and did something special for the Grandparents in your life! We spent all day running around, but took a few minutes to visit with our parents and I took that opportunity to shoot a picture of the day. These are my parents, Ron and Vicki Morse and they are Super Grandparents to my son Cameron. Additionally they just celebrated their 43rd Wedding Anniversary this past Friday so I really wanted to honor them with a picture on my pic-a-day blog.

They are very happily married and have been great role models to my wife and I (as well as many others they interact with I'm sure). We are very blessed to have them in our lives! Here is to many more years together. Congratulations Mom and Dad! You deserve it!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 40mm, f11, 1/60 sec., flash aimed at ceiling with Catch-Light Card out.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a lot, adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Used the Golden Eye Technique as well as some other trickery in the eye area. Adjusted Saturation just a tad and applied a Warming Filter.

Tunes listened to while editing: Prime STH - Beautiful Awakening. The first 5 songs. I forget about these guys but they are a great band!

Day #99 - You Spin Me Round

2009-09-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the hiatus. I actually had some Internet difficulties Thursday and then I was just worn out so I took a little break.

Well, today I'm back and we spent the day at several locations that lended themselves to photographic opportunity. We went to Cameron's soccer game (they won! - yeah!!) and then we ended up at Old Settlers Day in Olathe.

I wanted to shoot something that conveyed motion, but that is hard to do when it is bright and sunny out as you can't slow down the shutter speed very easily. I had to crank down the ISO and really zoom in to the subject in order to get a very small aperture to allow for a longer shutter speed. Then there was the problem of a very boring white sky. So a little Replace Color work in PhotoShop and I changed the day to night. I bumped up the Hue to give the picture a more artistic look/feel too.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 68mm, f38, 1/4 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a lot, adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Replaced Color in sky areas, adjusted Hue/Saturation.

Tunes listened to while editing: Owl City - Ocean Eyes. The whole album. A new one I discovered from 96.5 The Buzz and actually purchased via iTunes. Pretty good album! Makes me feel artistic for some reason.

Day #98 - Breaking Bubbles

2009-09-09T18:47:00.000-07:00

So my wife was the lucky recipient of a Palm Pre recently. I say lucky because the Palm Pre is a pretty nice phone, but she hasn't been exactly thrilled about it. Apparently her Palm Treo Centro was the "Bee's Knee's" and could do everything she ever wanted it to do. I was browsing the Application Store and found something that definitely helped improve her opinion of the Pre. She always loved Bubble Breaker back when she had a Motorola Q9c. Well, now there is a game available for the Pre called "Bubbles!" and it is basically the same game as Bubble Breaker! I overheard Dionne lovingly say "$#%& You for putting this game on my Pre!". I think she might finally like her Pre now!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 68mm, f6.7, 1/30 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) a lot, adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Nothing tonight but the moaning and groaning of Cameron as he begged repeatedly for help building a new Pokemon deck. I win just ONE TIME and he decides his deck in no good anymore!

Day #97 - This Thread Is Useless Without Pictures!

2009-09-08T19:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many times I've been browsing an ad on Craigslist or one of the many Jeep Forums I frequent only to find something I really want to buy, but there aren't any pictures! I HATE THAT!!! If you want to sell something, take the time to post a few pictures.

I have a few items to sell, and got to thinking that I could kill two birds with one stone (sorry for the pun - it just slipped right out). A camera is certainly many things to many people. I use one for the obvious creative outlet, but I also use one frequently as a tool. I shoot many pictures of cell phone parts and defects at work. I shoot pictures of the various things I want to sell and post up on eBay and Craigslist. And of course I capture family moments with my camera.

By the way, the Birdcage is up for sale on Craigslist. The curious cat however is not for sale. She was just drawn to the smell of the birdcage. Hmm, I wonder why?

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 18mm, f11, 1/30 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped to remove useless background data.

Tunes listened to while editing: Anberlin - Cities. Truly one of the best albums ever!! If you've never listened to Anberlin you really owe it to yourself to try them out. If you want I'd be glad to give you a free listen.

Day #96 - Monkey Bizness

2009-09-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

When you have 3 kids all revved up and rearin' to go and need to let them burn off some energy, I suggest Monkey Bizness at the Olathe Great Mall. We had a couple of boys spending the day with us along with Cameron and decided a trip to Monkey Bizness is what they (and we) needed.

Shooting in there can be a real challenge. The ceilings are about 30 feet high and the lighting is all fluorescent. So using available light means high ISO's and a green tint to everything. To use flash means you have to use direct flash as bouncing off of such high ceilings is not gonna work. But then you want to tone down your flash so as to avoid blowing out detail.

So in the end I used direct flash, and finally got something I liked!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f11, 1/90 sec., flash aimed at subject but dialed to -1.0.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Then I applied the Golden Eye Sharpening Technique.

Tunes listened to while editing: The Ramones - Ramones Mania. A little trip down memory lane. The Ramones for me go back about 25 years. What a great band! They had some great tunes!

Day #95 - Breakfast...errr... Dinner of Champions

2009-09-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

Today we are watching a friends kids while she is out of town. I was trying to find a picture of the day (especially since I missed yesterday) and thankfully Rick here agreed to let me shoot some pictures of him. The first shot I took got him to giggling (not a good thing with a mouth full of milk and Lucky Charms!). Once he settled down I got a few nice shots of the little guy.

Shot spex (Top Shot): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 33mm, f8, 1/45 sec., flash aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex (Top Shot): Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped. Had to work some layer adjustment magic to get rid of my reflection in the window behind Rick, d'oh! Then I applied the Golden Eye Sharpening Technique.

Shot spex (Bottom Shot): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 78mm, f8, 1/90 sec., flash aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex (Bottom Shot): Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped. Then I applied the Golden Eye Sharpening Technique.

Tunes listened to while editing: Ivory Line - There Came A Lion. The first 8 tracks. I saw these guys live at Main Street Cafe last year. I'm thinking I need to go see them again the next time they are in town. They have a pretty good sound.

Day #94 - Would You Like Heartburn WIth Your Order?

2009-09-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

Taco Bell after Midnight is a whole different place from the daytime hours. First of all there is the clientele - mostly teenagers and college students, some drunk, others just hyper, all looking to find some cheap food to round out the evening. I found myself there this evening when I was driving home from work (went up to pick up my laptop and wrap up a few loose ends). My wife texted me with the words, "I'm thinking Taco Bell". I called her to get her order and then waited in line for quite a while to receive our order. Upon getting home we realized they messed it up (of course). Anyway, as I had procrastinated yet again on my pic-a-day project I proceeded to set up camera gear. My wife thinks I am totally wacko for shooting a picture of my Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco, but in reality we are both nut-jobs for eating this stuff this late. I better wrap this up and go take an antacid pill before bed!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 200mm, f6.3, 1/90 sec., flash aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Added a warming filter to make the food look slightly more attractive.

Tunes listened to while editing: Seven Glory - Atmosphere. The first 6 tracks. I didn't even know I had this group. I was talking to Donovan about the fact that I have music I've never even heard of on my iPod that he gave me. I'm assuming this is one of those bands. It's was actually pretty good. I'll have to give the rest of the album a listen.

Day #93 - This Old Tree

2009-09-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

Today was crazy! After leaving work at 5pm I had to race and pick up Cameron from school. Then we had to run home and grab his soccer gear and then race to practice, grabbing a quick dinner at Arby's on the way. In the meantime my wife had a bag full of errands to run and then she had to get to Cameron's school for "Meet the Teacher" night. Thankfully I remembered to grab my camera (and the memory card). Once we got to practice I was able to snarf down my food and then I managed to find some time to wander around shooting pictures. I came across this odd tree and shot it from mostly this perspective. At the base was a clump of mushrooms, and I shot several pictures of that as well, but those images turned out pretty bland (and I HATE mushrooms anyways!!).

I got to playing with this one and ended up with this "duo-tone" image (part BW, part color).

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 1600, 18mm, f4.5, 1/45 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. I then added a dupe layer and desaturated it. I erased out the leaves (making the color show back up) and then applied the Fresco Filter to the layer with the trunk.

Tunes listened to while editing: Waltham - Waltham. The first 10 tracks. I forgot about this band and just re-discovered them today. These guys really get your toe tapping! They are kinda like Rick Springfield on steroids. You gotta give them a shot sometime!

Day #92 - Old Toys And New Toys

2009-09-02T20:52:00.000-07:00

My friend Jeff gave me some new toys to play with today. They are are wireless flash triggers. I've not yet played with them and before I can put them to use I am going to have to either spend some money on expensive batteries (CR2-3V) or I have to spend less money but more time doing a mod that allows me to use AA batteries. So Donovan - if you are reading this keep an eye out for cheap CR2-3V batteries at the Largo! Otherwise I'll pull the solder gun out of Mothballs and get to it!

The old toys in the image are a couple of flashes I have had around for some time. I'm hoping to give them new life by using these triggers.

I kind of got off the reservation creatively speaking as a picture of equipment is pretty boring. So I decided to experiment. I used the Neon Filter in PhotoShop and also toned down the Saturation to almost BW.

Now I got to get to watching the Strobist DVD's Jeff loaned me too!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 28mm, f11, 1/45 sec., built-in flash (I know - sad!).

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped and tried to adjust color a bit. Then employed the Neon Filter as described above.

Tunes listened to while editing: Weezer - The Blue Album. The first 7 tracks. What the heck is the Sweater Song really about?!?!?!? Is there a deeper meaning that just some guys sweater coming apart? I'm usually pretty good at figuring out this stuff but this song baffles me.

Day #91 - Reflections

2009-09-01T19:16:00.001-07:00

I did something today that I've never done before. I went to a professional football stadium. I was in Dallas and my coworker really wanted to go tour the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium. I've never yet even been to a professional football game much less been to a professional stadium. Not that I haven't wanted to go, but tickets for free are hard to come by!

Anyway, we had a little time before we had to catch our flight back to Kansas City so we headed to the stadium to catch a tour. Let me tell you, this place is massive and incredible! The tour guide said that the stadium would hold 110,000 fans as full capacity and had 800 concession stands! I believe there were something like 6,000 toilets too.

This shot was taken in an area where you could stand and watch the game. I liked the concrete as it was smooth and looked like the surface of water. The reflections it cast intrigued me and I knew I could get a silhouette effect with the right settings on the camera.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 18mm, f11, 1/1500 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped and tried to adjust color a bit.

Tunes listened to while editing: Bleu - Redhead. The first 7 tracks.

Day #90 - X Marks The Spot....

2009-08-31T18:30:00.000-07:00

Today, I found myself in Dallas with a few hours to spare for some site seeing. One thing I wanted to see was the place where the Kennedy assassination took place. Not out of morbid curiosity but more because I have always had an interest in history. And with Teddy Kennedy's passing this week, it seemed fitting to see where one of his brothers passed many years before his time.

I found it interesting that there is an actual "X" right on the street where the second shot hit JFK. Actually there was a fainter one just up the street a few feet where the first shot made impact. It's kind of gruesome I guess, but we humans are drawn to things like this. So much so that there were street vendors hounding us to buy memorial guides and picture books and all kinds of other "souvenirs".

I had to wait for a break in traffic to hop into the street for this shot. It was kinda crazy and got my heart pumping pretty good. Of course this shot has more than the "X". In the background is the Texas School Book Depository Building. The window where Oswald shot from is the second one down from the top right of the building.

If you get a chance to see this site I recommend it, but beware the street vendors and other street people hustling the tourists for money. It can be overwhelming!

I decided to convert the image to BW to heighten the impact of the shot and to convey a sense of history.

Day #89 - Above The Clouds

2009-08-30T19:54:00.001-07:00

Today I jumped on a plane and headed for Dallas for a business trip. I brought along my DSLR, but it was pretty hard to get out of the bag as the flight was FULL!

So I grabbed my trusty PDA/Mobile Phone and set it to Flight Mode and then snapped a few shots. I love the look of the clouds from this perspective. Hopefully I'll get a chance tomorrow evening to use the DSLR for some shots.

Day #88 - Game On!

2009-08-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

Today was the first official soccer game of the season for us. Cameron has been practicing for the past month and the boys were ready to go this morning!

Joey is one of Cameron's best friends and this kid puts everything into his soccer playing! It was a fun day to shoot, and I foresee more soccer shots in the next 6 weeks. I need to brush up on sports shooting techniques. Anyway, I like this shot as it shows just how much energy Joey brings to the game.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 55mm, f11, 1/500 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Adjusted levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast quite a bit for a creative look. Cropped out some boring dead space.

Tunes listened to while editing: Nothing tonight. Just listened to Cameron as he watched the movie "The Santa Claus". Cameron's laugh is great and Tim Allen is awesome!

Day #87 - Putting It In Park

2009-08-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

Some days things just get crazy. This was one of those days. Don't worry, I'll be shooting tomorrow. Soccer season starts officially so I'll have something to shoot for sure.

Day #86 - Let's Skate!

2009-08-27T20:38:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the hiatus yesterday. As I stated the day before, I was in a slump. I'm hoping the slump is over for now. Thanks to a good conversation with Jeff during lunch today I got excited about getting back to shooting tonight. He's at day #239 of his project and I guess I needed to know that he has off days too. Thanks for the encouragement today Jeff.

In the meantime, I had ample items to shoot tonight. Cameron had a Skate Party after school and then there was soccer practice. To top it all off Cameron lost another tooth (see my Facebook page for that story and the picture of the note he left for the Tooth Fairy!).

I was shooting at the skate party which is a real challenge. My own self imposed rule on this project is that I must use Manual Control on my images for the Pic-a-day shot. This was really fun with the skating rink lighting. The lights are really low, and then they flash off and on a lot. My meter was going crazy. In the end I had to do a lot of guessing. Anyway, I've learned that images showing movement can be really interesting. The first image shows movement during a skating rink game. I threw in a second shot that I really liked. I wanted to shoot a picture of the disco ball and other colored lights. I realized that the shot I was getting of these items were really boring. That is when I switched to Manual Focus and intentionally shot out of focus. I loved the effect.

I decided to post up the original image from which the top image came from. I think it's kinda neat to show how much I worked this image over to get where I got to! Words sometimes just don't seem to cut it.

Shot spex (top picture): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 18mm, f3.5, 1.5 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex (top picture): Adjusted levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast. Adjusted the snot out of the Saturation and Hue. Applied the Poster Edges filter. Cropped out a ton of crap. In general I PhotoShopped the HECK out of this one!

Shot spex (bottom picture): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 130mm, f6.3, 1/8 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex (bottom picture): Adjusted levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast quite a bit for a creative look. Cropped out some boring dead space.

Tunes listened to while editing: The Rainmakers - The Good News And The Bad News. The whole album. This is a great album! Gotta love the Rainmakers!

Day #85 - Couch Potato

2009-08-25T20:58:00.000-07:00

I'm in a slump. I'll admit it. I need to do something to get out of it. I think tonight I was trying to get creative but I really don't think I got anything good.

Oh well. My idea was to capture a self portrait of myself watching TV. The problem was that I had to take a shot, then I had to get up and go look at the camera to see what adjustments I had to make. After about 10 times of this I just flat out got tired. I came up to the computer to see if I could make anything good out of my best exposure. So I guess I just have to get up tomorrow and try harder.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 33mm, f4.0, 0.3 sec., flash with diffuser attached and aimed up at ceiling (dialed in to -3.0).

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped and tried to adjust color a bit. Dropped Saturation a bit.

Tunes listened to while editing: The Afters - Never Going Back To OK. The first 6 tracks.

Day #84 - Polaroids Are Back!

2009-08-24T20:37:00.001-07:00

What a crazy day! Mom had her knee replaced so I was up at the hospital at 6:45 this morning (which is 15 minutes earlier than I even wake up on a normal work day!), then it was meetings, meetings, meetings at work, then when I went to leave to go home, my Jeep broke down, then after my lovely wife rescued me, we had to race to Cameron's soccer practice (we were late!). Then my brother and his family called wanting to stop by so we met at the house after soccer practice, and he gave me this cool little water rocket (maybe the object of a future Pic-of-the-day post) and then he proceeded to tear into my Jeep (which meant a trip to Advance Auto Parts for a special tool) and we think we figured out how to fix it (thanks Bro!).

Anyway, at soccer practice I was playing with my latest top secret cell phone and found this little application called FX Camera. It was really neat. It uses the camera built in to the phone and gives you some nice creative options (Toy Camera, Warholizer, Fisheye and Polaroid). I shot a ton of images but I really liked this one that I posted using the Polaroid filter. I love the retro look and color tint the filter uses. I of course did some tweaking in PhotoShop.

Shot spex: No details to provide.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Nothing tonight.

Day #83 - Lazy Day

2009-08-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

Today I was feeling lazy. It was actually more work to be lazy than it might have been to actually set up a shot! Anyway, we spent some time looking through pictures for a class project Cameron had to do, and I got to thinking I'd like to post something shot some time ago to compare to the current Cameron. I found this shot from a trip to a local skateboard park. It was a gray day, early in March of last year. Cameron had just started growing his hair out. Anyway, I converted the image to Black and White and bumped up the contrast.

Back to shooting pictures tomorrow!

Day #82 - Game Face

2009-08-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I know this is a day late, but I was exhausted last night and just didn't have it in me to sit at the computer last night. So I figure better late than never and I will still shoot and post an image before the day ends today.

We went to watch my nephew Joshua play in a football scrimmage. He only got to play for a few minutes, but I managed to get a few pictures anyway. I employed what I now call the "Golden Eye Sharpening Technique" and really cropped in tight to put emphasis on the eyes.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 33mm, f5.6, 1/1000 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Cropped tight.

Tunes listened to while editing: Weezer - Make Believe, The first 4 tracks. Can anyone confirm that the word to Beverly Hills in the chorus are "Gimme, Gimme"?

Day #81 - Memory Loss

2009-08-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

I will totally admit that this is a lazy shot.

My camera, without one of these is like a DeLorean Time Machine without Plutonium. It's just a hunk of metal, plastic and glass without one of these. My camera even has a clever little spot in the battery grip to store an extra one of these.

We had Cameron's "Back to School Bash" tonight so I figured it would be so easy to get a shot of the day. I grabbed my camera, leaving my camera bag behind, and headed to the school. I shot 3 or 4 pictures before I decided to check the histogram and that is when I realized I had no memory card inserted in the camera. Had I brought my camera bag I would have had about 20 more SD memory cards. So did I learn my lesson? Well, I did put a spare card in the special storage slot in the battery grip... I signed up to help with the school yearbook, so I better be more prepared at future school events!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/15 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: The Foo Fighters - Echo's, Silence, Patience & Grace. The first 6 tracks - again.

Day #80 - Jenga!

2009-08-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Today I caught my wife and son as they were playing the game Jenga! It was fun to watch Cameron as he carefully planned which piece he would remove from the tower. Then often he would help steady the tower when Dionne pulled out her piece as he did not want the game to end too quickly. At first I wanted to capture the tower as it was falling down, and I did get some of those images. But then I realized the better images were the ones showing Cameron's facial expressions.

I'm lucky to be alive as both Cameron and Dionne were getting really tired of the flash going off. I actually flashed myself at point blank range (not my brightest moment - stupid pun I know). Then I could only see a blue rectangle for about 5 minutes.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 48mm, f8, 1/60 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Also cropped to change orientation from landscape to portrait.

Tunes listened to while editing: Between The Trees - The Story And The Song. The first 6 tracks. Seems like it is consistently taking about 6 tracks to go through all the post-processing steps.

Day #79 - Busted!

2009-08-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

This picture today is part of a set of images I need to create for a class I will be helping my Dad with next month. I will be trying to walk people through some ways to take better pictures of people. I know this picture hardly looks like a good picture of someone. That was actually the point today. I wanted to start off with a true "mugshot" and then show how someone could employ some tips to go from "mugshot" to something more appealing to the eye. So enjoy the first image in this series.

A little sidenote - the booking number I used in the shot is not a random number. Lunch to the first person who can tell me who's booking number I used!

BTW - I carried my camera to work today and was able to do this shot during my lunch break. It was a lot less stressful coming home, knowing my image for the day was already shot!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 33mm, f8, 1/45 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Also cropped to change orientation to square. Also used Replace Color technique to get rid of bland background color of dry erase board.

Tunes listened to while editing: Boys Like Girls - Boys Like Girls. The first 6 tracks. Another band I picked up some time back and had never listened to. I'm really liking it so far.

Day #78 - Late Night Fuel

2009-08-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

I obviously create most of these postings well after the rest of the house (and city for that matter) have gone to bed. I rely heavily on Diet Coke to get me through these late night photo shoots and today thought I would capture a picture of my late night fuel. It's kind of a lazy shot, I'll admit it. I had hoped to start carrying my camera daily to work (and everywhere else) and just have not started that habit. I will have my gear packed before bed tonight though and already have a shot for tomorrow planned. I need some pictures for a class I am helping my Dad with starting next month so I'll be putting in some time on that and it should give my project some "focus" (pun absolutely intended).

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 50mm, f3.5, 1/90 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Also cropped to change orientation from landscape to portrait format.

Tunes listened to while editing: Echobrain - Echobrain. The first 6 tracks. Some music I got from Dono months ago and had never listened to yet. Not bad, but my iPod kept "skipping" which I thought was weird.

Day #77 - Sunset (or was it?)

2009-08-17T19:13:00.001-07:00

I took Cameron to soccer practice tonight and knew I had 90 minutes of potential camera time on my hands. I shot about 50 pictures (everything from Cameron playing soccer, Chewey, shadows of the chain link fence and sky shots). As happens many times, I just knew the minute I pulled the trigger that I had the picture I wanted for the day in this shot. The shot pre-processing was actually pretty nice, but something came over me in PhotoShop and I decided to try to really dramatize the image. So I cranked up the contrast a ton (+48) and actually darkened it (-10). The shot was taken at almost 7:00pm so it wasn't really sunset yet. I think the tweaking I did made it look like that though. I'm pretty happy with it and I hope everyone else enjoys it!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 48mm, f13, 1/3000 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast (as outlined above). Also cropped a smidge to get rid of an annoying tree branch.

Tunes listened to while editing: Creeper Lagoon - I Become Small And Go. The first 6 tracks. Good tunes to listen to while I was working on this type of image. Kind of chillin' music.

Day #76 - Computer Screen Blues

2009-08-16T19:44:00.001-07:00

I know there are a few followers of this project and I apologize for the unannounced hiatus. I had every intention of continuing posting to this blog while vacationing with the family in Eureka Springs, Arkansas this weekend. We left right after work Thursday night and after we got to our hotel and got unpacked I set up my laptop (the one from work) to begin to edit some shots taken that day. That is when I saw the image I share with you today. Apparently the screen went belly up. I will be visiting the campus computer clinic in the morning to remedy the issue. It works when you use an external monitor, but I need my screen several times a week so I can't let it go to long. Anyway, I will post up some of the pictures from the trip and if you are interested feel free to wander over to my Facebook albums to check them out. In the meantime, I will get back on track in earnest this week. I think I will try to do as Jeff does and will start carrying my camera daily. It will be interesting to see what images I find during the day vs. waiting till 10pm every night!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 68mm, f5.6, 1/8 sec., flash aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Wavorly - Conquering The Fear Of Flight. The first 4 tracks.

Day #75 - Tangled

2009-08-12T20:34:00.000-07:00

Kind of getting off the reservation tonight. No great ideas of what to shoot so I grabbed my camera and started snapping whatever I saw through the eyepiece. I settled on this tangled mess of cords and cables. This is on my desk at home but those who know me can attest that this could just as likely have been my desk at work. In the mess of wires there is an old cell phone, a PSP USB cable, a couple of cell phone ear buds, some cell phone chargers and just some random books and magazines. TO make the image interesting I Photo Shopped the heck out of it.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/15 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Desaturated the image, then applied the Neon Glow filter and then the Watercolor Filter.

Tunes listened to while editing: Remedy Drive - Daylight Is Coming. The first 7 tracks. Great band I recently discovered.

Day #74 - Mae ( A Favorite Shot I Reworked)

2009-08-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today I did not get a chance to shoot a picture so I did the next best thing. I decided to play with a picture I shot some time ago (over a year ago) now that I've learned a few things.

This shot is of one of my favorite bands, Mae, taken while they played a show at The Bottleneck in Lawrence. I liked the shot before, but there were certain elements that I never bothered to fix before tonight.

Shooting concert pictures is really challenging. First off the lighting is usually very low so you are forced to either use a flash (which really makes the image look unnatural, and you loose the colored lighting that is usually present) or you have to bump up the ISO way high (which adds grain). I prefer to go for the grainy look in order to preserve the colors from the lighting. One way I have learned to enhance the grain is to use the Poster Edges filter.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 1600, 67mm, f4.5, 1/20 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Applied the Poster Edges filter. Fixed some blemishes in the image using the clone stamp and the healing brush.

Tunes listened to while editing: Mae - Singularity (Duh!). Songs 8 - 13. For whatever reason I tend to skip to track 8 and finish out the album a lot. Nothing wrong with tracks 1 - 7, but I like 8 - 13!

Day #73 - Got Milk? Can I Have Some?

2009-08-10T21:06:00.000-07:00

Today is an example how things don't always go as planned. I was on my way to the kitchen with the camera in hand looking to shoot a picture of the pot of boiling eggs on the stove (I Know - LAME!!). As I reached the top of the stairs I saw a great photo opportunity and I was actually ready for a change!

Cameron was enjoying his customary late night glass of milk, and his cat Bella was right there hoping for a taste.

I carefully and quietly slipped the lens cap off the camera, made a few quick adjustments, and snapped a few pictures. I shot one or two of Bella looking longingly at the glass of milk, then just as Cameron raised the glass to his mouth, right as I was pushing the shutter release, Bella reached right into his glass with her paw! It was a perfect photo moment!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 78mm, f8.0, 1/90 sec., built-in flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. Applied a warming filter and cropped to get rid of unwanted background elements.

Tunes listened to while editing: Michael W. Smith - The Big Picture. The first 6 songs. I loaded this on the iPod a while back and just got around to listening to it for the first time tonight. This one really brings back lots of fond memories. I think I saw MWS in concert at least 10 times back in the late 80's. My Mom and I went to many of the shows and we always had fun. She was (and still is) a cool Mom and she definitely fostered my love of music. She has always shared a love of music even if our tastes have drifted apart over the years. We went to a lot of Christian Rock Concerts together (MWS, Amy Grant, DC Talk and Geoff Moore to name a few). I wonder if I can talk her into going with me to see We Shot The Moon and Hollis at the Main Street Cafe in October? More on that show in the near future!

Day #72 - Here's Looking At Me (Again!)

2009-08-09T20:17:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned yesterday, we went to a church carnival. I spent quite a bit of time there trying to do a self portrait using chrome car parts. I used some hub caps, bumpers and finally an air cleaner cover. I ended up liking the air cleaner cover the best and so I am sharing it with you today.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 90mm, f6.7, 1/250 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: The Fold - Secrets Keep You Sick. The first 5 songs. Great album and a great band that really puts everything they have into putting on a great show!

Day #71 - Giddy Up!

2009-08-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Today we went to an outdoor carnival at the Olathe Bible Church. What a great place for picture shooting! They had horse rides, a car show, a military helicopter, several police and fire vehicles and an exotic bird show. I shot quite a few pictures (at least until my camera batteries pooped out!). The one I chose to edit and post today, is of my true dream car. Some guys crave Corvettes, or Hot Rods or some other exotic sports car. I've always craved a cherry, old school (1966-1977) Ford Bronco. This one even happened to be the right color as blue is my favorite color.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 28mm, f5.6, 1/750 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. I then decided to desaturate the background to minimize the impact of the people in the background. I also added the Lens Flare as there was a hot spot on the left side of the windshield.

Tunes listened to while editing: We The Kings - We The Kings. The entire album.

Day #70 - Another Self Portrait

2009-08-07T23:04:00.000-07:00

I decided to give the old self portrait another shot today. I have a few other self portrait ideas but today I wanted to show me using a camera. As I have a few photo's of me using my DSLR, I thought it might be neat to be holding something more vintage. Thankfully my Mom and Dad and a friend (Jen) have donated several vintage camera's to my collection over the years. I liked the idea of the image being more about the camera than myself. I like to be behind the camera and in so many ways I tend to hide behind it. I thought, "why fight it"? If that's what I do, it will look strained to show more of me than the camera.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 90mm, f6.7, 1/90 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. I then decided to desaturate the image to create a BW image and then I bumped up the Contrast even more. (Basically the same steps as yesterday!)

Tunes listened to while editing: A - Hi-Fi Serious. The first 6 tracks. Yes, the groups name is "A". Great rockin' tunes!

Day #69 - My Pod

2009-08-06T20:04:00.000-07:00

One of the items that you can always find within arms reach of me is my iPod. The other thing is my Skull Candy headphones. For those who have not yet discovered the awesomeness of Skull Candy, these things ROCK!!! When I am forced to listen to my iPod with normal ear buds, I get really frustrated. Anyway, as most people who really know me will attest, music is a big part of my life. Obviously I started listing the music I listen to as I edit images because music is important to me. I get inspiration and motivation from the wide variety of music I listen to. Thankfully I have a friend who pulled me out of the rut I was in listening to the same 3 bands over and over. Now my collection is so big I have no idea how many groups I listen to!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/30 sec., flash aimed at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. I then decided to desaturate the image to create a BW image and then I bumped up the Contrast even more.

Tunes listened to while editing: Story Side: B - Everything And More. The first 5 tracks. This is a group I forget about a lot and then when I remember them I really wonder why I keep forgetting about them.

Day #68 - "Napoleon, give me some of your tots."

2009-08-05T20:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so today I was really grasping for an idea. I saw these tator tots left over from our dinner and decided to stack them in the same way that Pedro had his stacked in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Then I thought, "Why not shoot these as my picture of the day"? My wife thought (and still thinks) I was nuts, but she's always thought that.

What started out as an easy shot, quickly became a learning opportunity! I've noticed a few shots I've done lately change in color quality when I use the "Save for Web" option in PhotoShop. This image was one of those ones that really turned flat when I did that tonight. No one would think these tots looked very tasty had I left them the flat color they turned using that option. So I set out to figure out the solution to my problem. It turns out that I don't need to use the "Save for Web" option at all. So I learned something from this simple "Tot Shot"!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/30 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. I then created a duplicate layer and applied the Smudge Stick filter. I then erased the are where the tots were to bring back the sharpness there. The Smudge Stick filter was really used to make the pan look better.

Tunes listened to while editing: Diffuser- Injury Loves Melody. The first 8 tracks.

Day #67 - Soccer Season Starts Again!

2009-08-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

It seems like just yesterday that Soccer season ended. In fact it was 67 days ago! I started this project the same day that we went to the end of season soccer picnic. Wow!! Time flies right by! One minute summer has barely started, and the next, summer is almost over!

Anyway, tonight we had the first practice this season and I decided to shoot a picture to celebrate that moment.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 90mm, f8, 1/500 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and Brightness/Contrast. I then applied the Poster Edges filter.

Tunes listened to while editing: Bleu - Redhead. The first 4 tracks. Great feel good album!

Day #66 - The Shadow Proves The Sunshine

2009-08-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

Maybe a lazy shot today. I was pondering using an image I shot yesterday, and was idly gazing around my office when a cross that my Dad made for me years ago caught my eye. I've always cherished it and try to leave it hanging somewhere visible. The shadow it was casting really intrigued me. I was able to shoot it with no additional light and then did some layer trickery to get the effect I wanted. I actually made a duplicate layer, then I applied the Cutout Filter to one layer and erased the cross area to bring back the actual wood of the original exposure.

The title of today's post comes from the Switchfoot album, Nothing Is Sound. The song by the same title is a great one if you ever get the chance, give it a listen. It's track #4 on that album.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/30 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and cropped to my liking. I made a duplicate layer, then I applied the Cutout Filter to one layer and erased the cross area to bring back the actual wood of the original exposure.

Tunes listened to while editing: Acceptance - Phantoms. The first 9 tracks. Great disk!

Day #65 - Speedy Gonzales!

2009-08-02T21:09:00.000-07:00

We decided to take a walk up to Brookridge Elementary School (where Cameron starts 3rd grade in 2 weeks!) for a walk today. It is one place where we can let Chewey off the leash so he can get a good run in. The walk was pretty nice. I still can't believe that it's August and the weather is still so nice and cool! Chewey got a good run in and I was hoping to catch a good action shot of him. I think I got it here. He is one super fast dog!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 200mm, f6.3, 1/180 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and cropped to my liking.

Tunes listened to while editing: Van Halen - The Best of Album. It was nice to revisit some old faves.

Day #64 - Home Grown

2009-08-01T22:25:00.001-07:00

I love home grown tomato's! I finally decided to plant some this year so I could quit mooching off others for home grown tomato's and while my regular tomato plant is doing okay, it's my cherry tomato plants that are doing really good. I've finally reached a point where I am getting several ripe ones each day. I have enough to fill a small bowl now and decided they would make a nice still life photo for today. Then I ate about 5 of them!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/10 sec., flash with diffuser aimed directly at subject.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and adjusted Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Mae - The Everglow. First 5 songs. Probably my favorite album of all time. If you've never heard it, do yourself a favor and go get it and listen to it from beginning to end. You'll thank me! Oh and to the person who introduced it to me, "Thanks Donovan"!

Day #63 - Mmmmmmm, Siki Thomas Rolls!

2009-07-31T20:37:00.000-07:00

A lazy shot today. Time got away from me and I'm super tired so I am posting a picture I shot with my new Top Secret Sprint phone with a built-in 5MP Camera at dinner tonight. We went to my absolutely favorite restaurant, Siki, in Lee's Summit. They are a Japanese Sushi Bar with all the grilled stuff too (including Dionne and Cameron's favorite ingredient - yellow sauce). Anyway, I go there for the Thomas Roll (shown here) which is flippin' awesome! They also have a great Spicy Crab Salad! Give them a try sometime!

Shot spex: JPEG Image, Top Secret Sprint Phone being Beta tested, no other details available.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and adjusted Brightness/Contrast, added a cooling filter to get rid of the yellow cast.

Tunes listened to while editing: U2 - Achtung Baby Album. First 4 songs. Forgot how good this one was!

Day #62 - The North London Mill

2009-07-30T21:23:00.000-07:00

I am exhausted! We have been in the midst of a move at work and I am so tired of packing and moving boxes. It's almost as bad as moving to a new house. Anyway, as a result of all this moving I've either been working pretty late, or I am super tired when I get home and haven't felt like pulling the camera out of the bag. Tonight I plan to make this my last night of editing a Colorado trip image for a while and plan to start shooting again tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is the North London Mill. It was an impressive structure in its day and still a decent amount of it stands. Cameron loved it and wanted to stay there for quite a while. Several smaller cabins still remain around it as well.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 18mm, f4.5, 1/125 sec., no flash, circular polarizer filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and adjusted Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Nothing tonight. Was too tired to get up and get my iPod.

Day #61 - Shop WIndow In St. Elmo

2009-07-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

While my son spent several hours feeding chipmunks in St. Elmo I wandered around the old buildings in the town. The old General Store across the street (which is currently an active tourist store) had some neat collections of old bottles in the front window. I shot a few pictures before I realized that I was catching a ton of reflections. I then put on my trusty Circular Polarizer Filter and a twist and the reflections were gone.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 90mm, f5.6, 1/180 sec., no flash, circular polarizer filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels and adjusted Brightness/Contrast.

Tunes listened to while editing: Anberlin - Cities (the first 5 songs)

Day #60 - Buena Vista (Literally)

2009-07-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

For a couple of days while in Colorado, we stayed in a town called Buena Vista (which translates to "Good View" from Spanish to English). The town itself although quaint in its own small town way has a different "good view". From there you look all around you and see the Rocky Mountains. This "good view" is from the top of Mt. Antero (or almost the top). I believe we were at about 13,900 feet above sea level. Anyway, somewhere out there was the town of Buena Vista and we were treated to a view that was even better than "good". What's the Spanish word for "absafreakingcredible"?.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 18mm, f22, 1/750 sec., no flash, circular polarizer filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, created about 4 separate layers to adjust the levels and brightness of varying area's in the photo in different ways, adjusted Brightness/Contrast and cropped to adjust for the tilt I had from shooting very quickly so I could get back in the Jeep to avoid the cold and lightning bolts.

Tunes listened to while editing: Weezer - The Red Album (the first 7 songs)

Day #59 - Old WIndow In Como, Colorado

2009-07-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

A few more days of posting pictures from my recent Colorado trip and then I will get back to shooting a new shot each day. I shot so many pictures and if I don't post some here, I'm afraid they will go unused for years on my hard drive!

Anyway, we happened to be in Como, Colorado last week and it's a very neat little mountain town. There is a small population of people that live there year round and some of the cabin's are well taken care of despite the years they've been there. Other cabins look like total dumps. I spotted this window on one of the nicer cabins in town and loved the combination of the red/white paint, the lace curtains and the bottles on the sill.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 200mm, f6.3, 1/125 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast and cropped to my liking.

Day #58 - Quite A Collection Of Old Plates

2009-07-26T19:08:00.000-07:00

If you make it to Colorado you should try to plan to visit the old town of St. Elmo. It was a lot to offer, from tons of antiques for sale, lots of old buildings, a neat old general store with drinks and trinkets for sale and you can feed chipmunks right from your bare hands.

One of the items I found in St. Elmo last week was this huge collection of old license plates attached to the wall of an old building. I thought it was even more appealing that some old wheels/tires were arranged below the plates along the wall. I couldn't have staged a better shot had I tried.

It was quite a large collection!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 18mm, f22, 1/45 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, made multiple layers so I could adjust Brightness/Contrast for the plates and everything else separately, desaturated the image a bit.

Day #57 - The London Mine

2009-07-25T22:27:00.000-07:00

This is a shot from the top of the London Mine. I saw this from below and knew I had to get on top to get a picture. I really loved the view from up here and am happy to share it with everyone. I felt like it was truly a breath-taking view (especially as I was quite winded after walking up to the top of the mine in the high altitude!).

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 24mm, f19, 1/125 sec., no flash, Circular Polarizer Filter used.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) and adjusted Levels.

Day #56 - The Setting Sun

2009-07-24T19:47:00.001-07:00

I shot this on the first day of my trip to Colorado last week. I was so disappointed when I couldn't open the files so that I could share this one last week. I knew it looked pretty good from the camera LCD but WOW was I happy with it once I opened it tonight!

I shot 40 pictures that night of the setting sun and actually had several I liked, but this one just stood out.

My inspiration for this image came from one of my all time favorite songs called "The Setting Sun", which happens to be by one of my favorite artists. Anyone know what the name of the artist is? Bonus points to the first correct guess. Like in the show "Whose Line It It Anyway" the points are useless, except you can brag about winning.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 78mm, f9.5, 1/500 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always) and adjusted Levels.

Day #55 - Back In Kansas!

2009-07-23T20:02:00.001-07:00

Today was a day full of driving. I didn't think anyone wanted to see a boring shot of Kansas farmland taken from my PDA phone so I am posting something I finally got to edit now that I am back home working on my wonderful computer! I hate editing pictures on my laptop! I also shot about 350 pictures on my trip and so I might give myself some freedom over the next week or so to edit and post images from the trip to share here. I hate to let these images go to waste.

We were exploring an old boarding house right below the Mary Murphy Mine and I noticed this hinge and just really liked the possibilities it offered photographically. So enjoy!

BTW - If you'd like to view what I thought were some of my better shots from the trip feel free to check them out. These are the unedited images so they might show some roughness, but some might want to look at them anyways. Here is the link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/album.php?aid=2027360&id=1463117912&ref=mf

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/60 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, and adjusted Brightness/Contrast.

Day #54 - Cascade Falls

2009-07-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day in the mountains. We had passed these falls on the way to and from St. Elmo each day and today decided to stop for some shots. I had to use tripod of course as I was doing a longer exposure to blur the water. In order to force the camera to allow me to do a long exposure I had to crank the f-stop up as high as possible and crank the ISO as low as possible.

BTW - I got things working again so at least I could do a little editing tonight! Tomorrow back to my normal workspace.

Shot spex: JPEG Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 110mm, f38, 1/8 sec., tripod.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always).

Day #53 - A First Time For Everything

2009-07-21T20:20:00.000-07:00

My laptop charger went belly up on the trip so believe it or not I'm doing this posting via my PDA phone from Sprint. The bummer is I cannot do any post processing, but at least I can post something. So here goes nothing!

Day #52 - Up The Mountain

2009-07-20T21:22:00.000-07:00

First off, I am beat. Today we did the drive up to Mt. Antero which is one rough son-of-a-gun! It was 4+ hours of non-stop bumpiness. Well, we made it to the top (almost 14,000 feet) and the view was breathtaking so I'd say the effort was well worth it.

Day #51 - I Heart Everything Harry Potter

2009-07-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

As mentioned yesterday, we (my Dad, Cameron and myself) are in Colorado. Today we left Golden and headed into the mountains. Our goal was to go over Mosquito Pass to reach Leadville. The signs all said the pass was closed, but we wanted to go as far as we could as there were some structures (the London Mine and Mill) that we wanted to try to see. Well, we were doubly blessed (at least) as we not only made it to the mine and mill, but we also were able to go over the pass to reach Leadville. This was great on so many levels as the alternative would have meant a very long ride around the long way to Leadville.

In the meantime, Cameron has taken to watching every Harry Potter movie we had while traveling and then of course there is the Harry Potter game he has for the PSP... So when I picked his clothes out this morning I decided the Harry Potter shirt was perfect.

We had a good time. Cameron loved looking around the old buildings and collecting rocks. He was getting a little tired of the bouncy ride by the end. He kept saying that the Mountains were following him.

A few times he was a good sport and posed for me. I thought this one turned out the best.

Enjoy!

Day #50 - On The Road Again

2009-07-18T20:06:00.001-07:00

Today we drove from Kansas City to Denver. It was an uneventful drive (thankfully) and we made it safely. Things were crazy yesterday and I had anticipated having some down time tonight to shoot and post some pictures. I did get to shoot some nice sunset shots, and when I came back to the hotel room to edit them, I realized that the one thing I forgot to pack (or do before I came) was to load software on my laptop that would allow me to view Pentax Raw files. Oooooops!!!

So after looking for on-line downloads for a while I gave up and have taken to using a picture I shot with my PDA Cell Phone.

Starting tomorrow I will be shooting RAW+JPEG!

P.S. - if anyone knows of a free downloadable utility that will allow me to view and open Pentax RAW files in PhotoShop CS2, please let me know!

Day #49 - Don't Forget To Look Up!

2009-07-17T20:36:00.000-07:00

Today I am rushing around like crazy, packing for my trip, and wrapping up a lot of loose ends. I actually have totally packed all my camera gear so I felt like I needed to take a pass on shooting today. I plan to more than make up for it over the next week on my trip.

In the meantime, I shot this earlier this year when we went to Florida. I often forget that there are other perspectives that can be interesting. In this case I happened to look up and saw this shot and had to take it. I hope to remember to look for other unique perspectives in the next week or so.

Day #48 - Happy Birthday Surprise

2009-07-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Today is going to be crazy so I am going to post up a few pictures of the surprise that awaited me as I came in to work this morning.

Last night my wife and brother-in-law came up to work and decorated my cube for my 41st birthday (which happens to be tomorrow). Man, they did a good job. If it's at all possible, my cube is even messier than it was before!

Oh, well. I feel very loved.

Thanks for making me feel special on my (day before) birthday!

I love you guys!

Day #47 - Lazy Day

2009-07-15T21:51:00.000-07:00

Today was crazy and lazy. This evening we had a birthday party to attend and Cameron and I had tickets for the latest Harry Potter movie so I just did a quick snap of sorts. Enjoy!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 68mm, f11, 1/90 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), used the Smudge Stick filter (kinda liked it!) and adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I cropped until I found something I liked.

Day #46 - My Creative Workspace

2009-07-14T21:31:00.001-07:00

My friend Jeff who inspired me to start this project did something kinda like this shot a while back. Here is the link to that post: http://jeffgoldenphoto.com/2009/05/day-145-of-365-feeling-flickry.html (you can copy/paste the link to your address bar - I can't figure out how to make this link clickable)

Anyway, in my shot I wanted to capture the essence of my workspace that I am in every evening. I like to edit in the dark in order to see the images better.

This shot is actually two exposures layered together. First I created the exposure for the computer monitor. I wanted it to be clear and not too bright. Then I jumped in the image and posed (the exposure of myself had to be a bit longer, 1 second). I then adjusted each image in PhotoShop to reach the effects I wanted. Then I blended them taking the best effects from each image. I had a blast doing this one!

BTW - Jeff's Link is to the right side. If you want to see more great "Picture A Day" shots, check his out too! Also my Dads' link is up there. He's been at this forever and has great shots!

Shot spex: 2 RAW Images, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 33mm, f4, one exposure 1/6 sec. and one exposure at 1 sec., no flash, tripod for sure!

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I cropped until I found something I liked.

Day #45 - Cam And His New Bam

2009-07-13T21:36:00.000-07:00

Having a birthday 3 days after Christmas can be really hard. I'm lucky as my birthday is in July and of course Christmas being when it is means every 6 months or so I get some gifts. On the other hand, Cameron's birthday is on December 28th and in the last few years we've taken to the practice of letting him spend some of his birthday money (about 1/2 of it) in the summer on something special so it makes the long wait easier. Well, he's been wanting a new skateboard. He of course loves Bam (some modern pro-skater) and so today we went shopping for a new board. Specifically it had to be an Element brand board and the double bonus would be if it was a Bam board. Thank the Lord that the skate shop only had one Element board and it was a Bam model! Decision making never was easier! His new board is really cool with an electric guitar design on it.

So we came home and put it all together (using some of the parts of his older board) and now he's a happy camper. Of course that meant he owed me a picture or two!

My wife had the bright idea of using the golden light, which turned out great! She requested that I somehow convert everything to Black and White (because of Cameron's mis-matched colors), and I tried that but then I lost the golden effect so I had to go back to color. I figure this way I've captured Cameron as he is. He's an 8 year old who has his own sense of style. Soon enough he'll have to worry about matching colors and all the crud that goes along with looking the way everyone else wants him to look. I did some extra PS trickery including blurring the background layer more than it was and toning down the saturation there too.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 48mm, f4.5, 1/60 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I cropped until I found something I liked.

Day #44 - A Rainbow Of Feet

2009-07-12T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today was great! I didn't wake up wondering where in the world I was going to shoot my picture of the day. Not that this is becoming a chore; far from it. I truly look forward to my pic-a-day project every single day. I think it is truly refining my skills and fine-tuning my photographic style in ways I didn't really expect. But sometimes it can be a challenge to find something that I think is really "photo" worthy. Well, today I knew that I was going to shoot family pictures for my buddy Donovan and his wife Brandi's side of the family. I was like 90% sure that my picture today would come from that shoot. It was a great shoot and everyone was great to work with. All of the family members coordinated nicely with white tops and dresses. There were 7 kids total and I was amazed at how easy they all were to work with. I have mentioned before the fun of trying to get kids to pose for pictures, but I didn't experience those problems today. Any way, the kids were all allowed to wear whatever they wanted to on their feet and the variety was really fun. Somewhere around the end of the shoot someone suggested a picture of the kids' feet and so we set it up. Enjoy this rainbow of feet!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 24mm, f8, 1/90 sec., flash with LumiQuest Softbox attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I cropped until I found something I liked.

Day #43 - A Dog And His Boys

2009-07-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

Boys and dogs are an incredible combination.

Anymore it seems that the boys don't want me to take their pictures anymore, but if you throw a dog in the mix, they suddenly WANT to have a million pictures taken!

I saw Cameron and JJ sitting on our bench in the front yard a little bit ago and they were holding Chewey and I suddenly realized that they were being still and knew I could get a few pictures. I panicked though when I went outside and my lens fogged over. I was worried that they wouldn't stay still for much longer, but thankfully they played along and my lens cleared.

I shot a bunch of pictures, but things looked forced until I just encouraged them to go back to playing with Chewey. Then I had the natural pose I wanted!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 68mm, f8, 1/90 sec., flash with LumiQuest Softbox attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I cropped until I found something I liked.

Day #42 - Something Cymbolic

2009-07-10T20:03:00.001-07:00

I started off just shooting this because I really didn't know what else to shoot, but then I got to thinking about cymbals and symbolism. Maybe this picture is symbolic for the way I think I am cracking up? Maybe not, but it sounded clever to change the spelling of "symbolic" to "cymbolic", right? Anyway, these 20 year old cymbals have seen better days as they are definitely cracking up!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 28mm, f8, 1/8 sec., flash with LumiQuest Softbox attached and aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I cropped until I found something I liked. I had a lot of yellow in the picture so I adjusted the color to tone that down a bit and then I applied a Cooling Filter for the same reason.

Day #41 - Take That Katrina!

2009-07-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

I found out that my boss Katrina deprived me of cookies from Blue Chip Cookie Company today! I know she meant well, me being a diabetic and all, but we are talking about Blue Chip Cookies here! So in honor of the wonderful thing we call the cookie, I decided to treat myself to a few Oreo's with milk.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 40mm, f4.5, 1/15 sec., flash with LumiQuest Softbox attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I adjusted Hue and saturation a little bit. Oh yeah, I then ate 3 of the Oreo's (I put the other one's back - I promise!) which means 160 calories consumed along with 25 carbs!!

Day #40 - Moon Shots! Part Deux

2009-07-08T21:09:00.000-07:00

Tonight I decided to revisit the moon. But this time I decided to not focus so much on the moon but the surrounding elements in the image. I did get a few nice shots of the moon showing the craters, but it seemed kinda boring. That's when I decided to try a different approach.

I had to do some PhotoShop trickery to get rid of a power line, and of course had to do something about the super white oval that showed up where the moon was supposed to be (long exposure = oval moon instead of round moon).

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 200mm, f13, 30 sec., no flash, on tripod.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I desaturated the image a little bit and applied a Movie Prime Lens Flare Filter.

Day #39 - Just Say No...

2009-07-07T21:36:00.000-07:00

Today I was really stumped as to what to shoot a picture of. Thanks to a simple suggestion from my buddy Donovan, that problem was solved. (Thanks Dono!)

I recently had to start a round of Prednisone to aid in the treatment of Poison Oak. I know some of you have taken this stuff, and you will know what an awful experience taking this stuff is. To the rest of you, avoid the need for this stuff at all costs! It tastes terrible, it makes you all jittery and moody, and it gives you a nasty case of insomnia. Last night I didn't fall asleep... till this morning at 5am!

Well on to the picture. It started off pretty boring and I was about to scrap the picture and edit something previously shot. Then I remembered that I had found this neat tool in PhotoShop called the CutOut Filter. I desaturated the image (converted it to BW) and then applied the filter and am actually really happy with the end result.

Enjoy the picture while I go off and find something to do; since sleeping is unlikely for a couple of hours!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 103mm, f5.6, 1/15 sec., flash with LumiQuest Softbox attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Brightness/Contrast, then I desaturated the image and applied the CutOut Filter.

Day #38 - Late Bloomer

2009-07-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

Today a break from people and pet images. I was outside watching these ominous clouds rolling in and was pondering how I might be able to make a nice shot with them. The problem with my house is that I am surrounded by huge trees so except for occasional glimpses of sky through the branches of trees, I can't get a nice sunset shot unless I drive somewhere. So I was walking around the yard when I noticed this plant of Dee Dee's with one lone open flower amongst the many closed buds. I thought it looked odd and so picture worthy all at once. I could have cropped in tighter but I really wanted to show all the buds that were closed.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 40mm, f5.6, 1/8 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Exposure, adjusted Brightness/Contrast and tweaked the colors just a bit.

Day #37 - Our Little Firecracker

2009-07-05T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today Cameron and I were supposed to be at Bear Camp, but instead I managed to somehow get into Poison Ivy and I'm now covered all over with this stuff! So no camp for us so I opted to shoot pictures of Chewey. We bought this t-shirt for Chewey, but he was boarded over the weekend so I didn't get the chance to shoot him in his little t-shirt till today.

Pets have to be even harder than kids to pose and shoot pictures of. Chewey never stops moving!!! I shot about 30 pictures trying to get one where you could read the text "Little Firecracker" on the t-shirt and also see his face.

At one point we had two shots back to back where it looks like Chewey is going from looking at the camera to winking at the camera. I set these two images up in a Slide show below just for giggles.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 24mm, f4.5, 1/30 sec., flash aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), adjusted Levels, adjusted Exposure, adjusted Brightness/Contrast just a bit and applied a Warming Filter.

Day #36 - Happy Birthday America

2009-07-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

I have to imagine that most people doing picture-a-day projects had to be shooting fireworks pictures tonight. Sorry to be so trite and follow suit, but it's not everyday that you have a surefire pre-planned photo opportunity so I had to take it.

Fireworks pictures are fun to do. It takes a few shots to dial in the exposure and then once you have it you fire away. Typically the exposures are long giving you time for several bursts to fill the frame.

So happy birthday America!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 78mm, f11, 10 sec., no flash, tripod was a must!

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Hue a smidge and the Saturation a bit more than normal for the effect.

Day #35 - Family Fun In The Phonebooth

2009-07-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

Today I am posting from a remote location. The fun part is I am using a laptop vs. my desktop so everything is different. So forgive me if things just don't look as good today.

Our family is staying up at a hotel near Zona Rosa and so after dinner we decided to walk around. The weather really was nice for an evening stroll. I can't believe this is July. The temperature is so nice!

Anyway, this phone booth looks a lot like the one used in the Harry Potter movie and so Cameron wanted his picture taken in it. Next thing I know I have more photo models than I know what to do with!

So I got to shooting and I think what I got turned out pretty good.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 48mm, f13, 1/30 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Brightness and Contrast just a tad bit, I had a nice glare on the glass pane above everyone so I had to use some clone stamp work to remove the glare.

Day #34 - Ron Morse, Version 1.0

2009-07-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Today was nice. I spent quite a bit of time shooting pictures this evening with my Dad. He of course started me on this hobby many years ago and it's always fun spending time with him shooting pictures, or talking shop (PhotoShop that is), or looking at pictures, or discussing the latest in the photography world. I know my wife marvels at how we can just talk and talk and talk about photography. I liken it to the way that my wife and I can talk and talk and talk about our son, Cameron. She and I share Cameron as our primary common denominator, Dad and I share photography, and my buddy Donovan and I share music. The commonalities between us is the glue that bonds our friendships.

Anyway, we started off at Shawnee Mission Park looking for deer to shoot pictures of. And we found plenty of them. Then we drove around for a while. I shot several pictures of Dad while he was shooting pictures of the deer. I shot a few self-portraits of myself via the side rear view mirror (see the second picture). We shot sailboats and flowers. If you ever need a guide for Shawnee Mission Park my dad is your man. We went back to the house and Dad asked me to shoot some pictures of him working on some models he's been working on for his train layout.

Upon looking at the results of all this photography today, I chose to use one from the pictures shot while Dad was working on the model. I was going to crop in tighter during post processing, but realized that so much of what was in the picture helped to describe my dad. He is such an artist and I wanted to include the models in the upper left of the image to show some of his completed work. He is so articulate and has a tool for every thing so I wanted to make sure all of the tools and bottles of glue and paint were shown as well. And of course his attention to detail as he was carefully working on his model was important to me as a primary element of the image.

BTW - I am a Junior so Dad is Ron Morse Version 1.0.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 200, 18mm, f4, 1/30 sec., flash aimed at ceiling with LumiQuest Softbox attached.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Brightness and Contrast just a tad bit.

Day #33 - Self Portrait Attempt #1

2009-07-01T21:58:00.000-07:00

Today I am putting myself out there - literally.

My plan is to do as many shots of people this month as I can. There is a method to my madness. My Dad and I are co-teaching a photo class at his church this fall and I will have a session to lead that will deal with shooting pictures of people. I guess I have some background in this as I have shot quite a few weddings in recent years as well as doing several family sittings. Probably about 10 years ago I got the bug for shooting "people" pictures and found that I have a love for this type of photography. So as part of the effort to prepare myself for this session (including shooting images for PowerPoint presentations) I am "focusing" (pun intended) on shooting people pictures. I know I will get tired of shooting pictures of myself (as everyone else will tire of looking at them) so if you have a desire or need for a few individual or group portraits, please let me know. I am looking for models this month.

So on to this shot of myself. I hate being in pictures. It's probably one of the reasons I shoot pictures - if I'm the one behind the camera, then I'm less likely to be captured in a picture. I'd probably say that the self portrait is probably one of the greatest challenges I face in portraits. If I can create an image I like of myself then that will be something special. Did I accomplish that today? Not in my mind. This is a place to start. I can see a lot of room for improvement and I hope to finish the month of July with another self portrait. We'll see if I think I've learned anything.

Please feel free to comment and offer all positive, negative and constructive feedback. I really want to learn from this process and need the feedback that only others can offer. I've got fairly thick skin and can handle it! I think critique is probably one of the most valuable ways to grow in photography (or any other skill).

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 130mm, f11, 1/30 sec., flash set at -2.0, tripod (of course).

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast barely, converted to BW (to mask the goofy red t-shirt I was wearing), adjusted the Shadow and Highlights a bit to bring in detail on my hair.

Day #32 - Best Place To See A Sunset

2009-06-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

Well, this is one of the places to see a great sunset.

At work there is a dry erase board with the question, "Best place to see a sunset". I was asked to add my thoughts to the question and I answered, Siesta Key, Florida.

Today I never pulled the camera out of the bag. Just too tired to do it, and we had dinner over at my in-laws house to welcome home my brother-in-law Matt who lives near Siesta Key, Florida. In fact, over Spring Break we flew out to hang out with Matt for a week and this picture was shot on the first night there. We still long to be there especially on hectic days. We start a 6 day "Staycation" and won't see anything so nice as this location, but hopefully the feeling of being there on that beach at sunset will somehow filter into our plans this week.

Shot spex: JPEG Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 24mm, f6.7, 1/500 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast and Saturation just a little bit. Cropped a tad bit.

Day #31 - Moon Over Easy

2009-06-29T20:32:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has ever shot a picture of the moon will know that it's not as easy as one might think. It took me a while to dial in the right exposure as I was leaning toward a long exposure (started at 20 seconds) and in reality, the exposure time was quite short (1/4 second). This is kind of a lazy shot, but I wanted to see how well my camera did on this type of shot with my limited range (18-200mm lens). I've been noticing the moon the past few nights and decided I'd give it a go tonight (in part because I waited too long to start shooting and couldn't think of anything indoors that sounded interesting).

Gotta get to shooting before night fall tomorrow!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 200mm, f22, 1/4 sec., no flash, tripod (of course).

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast barely.

Day #30 - He Keeps Her Shiny, Shiny

2009-06-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

The other day I was out in the front yard with all my camera gear set up and was trying to do a self portrait of me with my Jeep. I hated the pictures and ended up using something else that day. My neighbor across the street must have seen me because she asked me today if I was selling my Jeep. I of course blurted out, "no way"! I then asked her why. She mentioned she had seen me shooting pictures of the Jeep and thought that I was shooting images to use for the ad. I explained my project and then she proceeded to ask if I would mind shooting pictures of her husbands car that he wanted to sell. I remember seeing this beautiful car a few times as Ed (my neighbor's husband) would take it out for a spin. I was excited to see it up close! So today after the chores were done I grabbed all of my gear and Ed pulled his 1958 Austin-Healey out of the garage.

I shot about 30 pictures for his ad and of course worked in a few creative ones for my pic-a-day project. This car is really sweet! Wish I had the $$$ to buy it! Watch Craigs List soon for it!

BTW - the title of today's post is a reference to a song by one of my favorite bands, The Rainmakers.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 400, 33mm, f11, 1/60 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex: Adjusted Levels just a little, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast up +39 for the effect, added a layer and used it to blur the upper right corner to get rid of unwanted elements, then decided to BW that portion of the picture. Added some lens flare effects for fun.

Day #29 - Dog Days Of Summer

2009-06-27T17:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know when the Dog Days of Summer officially start, but we started celebrating today - by staying indoors in the AC while being very lazy.

I saw Chewey finally settling down and was wishing I had my camera handy for a few shots. Dionne said she thought he'd stay calm as long as I carefully left the room to get the camera. So I walked very quietly to my office and grabbed the camera and flash.

I made it back to the living room where Chewey was still being very calm and quiet. I was able to snap these without rousing him too much.

Shot spex (top picture): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 200mm, f6.3, 1/30 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex (top picture): Cropped to a square, adjusted Levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast a tiny bit.

Shot spex (bottom picture): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 90mm, f5.6, 1/45 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex (bottom picture): Cropped to a square, adjusted Levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast a tiny bit.

Day #28 - Oh to be a kid again...

2009-06-26T22:18:00.000-07:00

What a life it is to be a kid. Playing outside all day long at summer camp, then coming home and wanting to play outside some more - in 100 degree weather! Then you and a friend pull all kinds of top grade building supplies out of your dad's garage - like card tables, card board, tarps, folding chairs and masking tape. You proceed to build a killer fort where the temperature inside is a nice steamy 120 degrees and you sit inside it blowing out sweet melodies on your trusty harmonica.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? All I want to do it go inside and stay there. I can't remember when I ever really wanted to be outside that much. It was probably back when I was 8 years old - like a certain boy I happen to know and love.

I decided to post two pictures today. I just really liked them both and couldn't pass up the opportunity to share.

Enjoy!

Shot spex (top picture): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 24mm, f8, 1/45 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex (top picture): Adjusted levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast quite a bit for a creative look.

Shot spex (bottom picture): RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 40mm, f8, 1/45 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex (bottom picture): Cropped way in to just get the feet, Adjusted levels, Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast quite a bit for a creative look, Desaturated (not completely to BW) enough to create a unique look, added Fresco filter.

Day #27 - Music For All Time

2009-06-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

So what a day! The King of Pop, Michael Jackson passes away at the way too young age of 50. I don't know if this inspired me to listen to a LOT of music tonight, but it might have had some subconscious affect.

I went over to my buddy Donovan's house tonight and we ended up just listening to tons of songs while loading up my iPod and trying to figure out the name of a specific Led Zeppelin song. It was kind of a nice time of tunes and chilling out. Upon reflection I thought it was kind of cool how we were listening to music fairly current and then spent a fair amount of time listening to music that was almost 40 years old. Good music really doesn't ever become irrelevant.

So I got home and was pondering what to shoot while fighting with my computer. I had to re-boot about 3 times, got a blue screen of death, and was just about to give up when it came back to life. I decided to set up a shot of some Cd's from my collection. To go a step further I made sure one of the disks that was showing was fairly current (anberlin - Blueprints For The Black Market) and one was more of a classic (The Police - Synchronicity). The I shot a few with flash and realized that unless I got real creative, the flash was just going to cause severe reflections off the jewel cases. I then went to long shutter speeds and worked until I had a good histogram.

Then I listened to one of my top 10 favorite albums while I edited away! Any guesses? Probably only Donovan and Dionne would know. Bonus points to anyone who can post up the answer! Not sure what the points are good for but...

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 33mm, f13, 2 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Adjusted levels, and darkened up the mid-tones a bit more than normal. Smart Sharpened (as always), and adjusted the Contrast quite a bit for a creative look.

Day #26 - Spare Some Change?

2009-06-24T19:20:00.001-07:00

Well, I had planned to be somewhere to capture a nice sunset tonight, but Mother Nature had other plans! So I had to look to the indoors to find a subject.

I have this jar of change on the desk that I had this lofty goal of filling to the brim before we cashed it in. Sadly, it gets raided quite often and so it never has more than an inch of coins in the bottom. I decided to see what I could make of it.

I placed the jar on the floor and aimed the camera directly down into the mouth of the jar. I then proceeded to take some pictures and quickly realized that unless I had a ring light flash, I was going to get a hard shadow to one side of the jar. It was then that I decided to put the flash on my cord and I laid it on the ground next to the jar and shot through the side of it. I liked what I saw and after tweaking the exposure just a little bit I had a workable image.

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 50mm (prime lens), f2.0, 1/90 sec., flash used as outlined above.

PhotoShop spex: In PS I decided to get rid of the office carpet by creating a duplicate layer which I proceeded to apply a radial blur to. A little eraser work to bring out the part of the image I wanted back in focus and I was done. I Smart Sharpened (as always), and slightly adjusted the Contrast.

Day #25 - Cameron's To Do List

2009-06-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

My wife was telling me the other day about something that Cameron did that really tickled her. I guess she was talking to Cameron and JJ (my nephew) in the car while on the way to the swimming pool and was maybe telling them some rules of behavior at the pool. Somewhere the conversation went off track (as they often do with Cameron and JJ) and they ended up talking about money and bills and things of that nature. At some point in the conversation she mentioned how dangerous credit cards can be. I guess the point was made as later she found a "What To Do List" that Cameron had compiled. In case you can't read the list in the picture, it reads as follows:

What To Do List

- Not do the diving board for JJ (Cam can be a stinker)
- Poosh JJ to the side on the water slide (more proof of Cam's stinkerness)
- Jump on the Tramplen (trampoline)

- Don't get a credit card

When I was pondering what to shoot, Dionne showed me the list and I liked it so much I had to use it.

I wanted a very natural light so I used one of our lamps on an end table with a nice wood color. I didn't want to use a flash for fear of blowing out the words on the list. I made several exposures checking the Histogram to ensure a nice even exposure. I opted for an aperture of f13 to allow for good depth of field on the list, allowing focus to fall off at the top of the list. I really like the end result - I think it has a very natural feel to it. Of course I grabbed one of Cameron's many pencils from an earlier shot to help build the scene. About the only thing I forgot to do was drop the ISO down from 800 to something with less grain, but in the end I think the effect looks great.

Maybe I should share this story and picture with Dave Ramsey!!

Shot spex: RAW Image, Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 50mm (prime lens), f13, 1/6 sec., no flash.

PhotoShop spex: I really didn't have to do much on this one. I left the white balance alone as I like it. I Smart Sharpened (as always), slightly adjusted the Contrast and slightly adjusted the yellow out of the image.

Day #24 - The Falls

2009-06-22T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've been driving by this waterfall everyday for at least the last 2 years. It's at about 103rd and Metcalf and I've seen it in all kinds of seasons. It's really neat during winter when it's frozen solid. I'll be sure to shoot a picture this winter of that. In the meantime, as I drove by it today I thought I should shoot it once the day cooled off a bit. I headed back to shoot this picture at about 8:45pm. I forgot that taking a camera out that has been sitting in the air-conditioning all day is not the best thing to do. At the very least I had to sit for about 5-7 minutes while I waited for the "condensation" (Donovan might get this reference) to clear off the optics.

I played with a variety of exposures, knowing that I wanted the type of water that would result from a long exposure. I used my flash as well to give the rocks some more detail as it was starting to get a bit dark.

When I edited the image I started with a portrait shot that showed a bit more sky. As the sky was very boring and had almost no color I went to a shot I fired at the very end where I cocked the camera off kilter to crop out the boring sky. In this case I think it worked.

Shot spex: Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 24mm, f27, 3 sec., flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, adjusted contrast and levels.

Day #23 - The Apple Of My Eye

2009-06-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

So today was Fathers Day! I hope all my fellow fathers had a great one. We certainly did via a full celebration schedule.

I woke up to a wonderful note from Dionne and cards from Cameron and our pets along with one of Cameron's infamous present bags (a variety of toys and trinket's from all over the house).

Then we had lunch at my parents house with our favorite pizza from Minsky's. Then the kids had a fun time getting silly for us in the living room (my 20 month old nephew Wyatt was wresting with my son Cameron). It was cute to see Wyatt trying (successfully) to pull Cameron to the ground, and it was cute to see Cameron trying to be so careful with Wyatt while also helping him have fun. Then I majorly carb loaded with two pieces of pie (Strawberry and French Silk from Tippin's - mmmmmmmmm!). Then my dad helped me with creating my signature that you will now see on the pictures I post. Aren't dad's great? I know mine is! Thanks Pop!

Thennnnnn, we had my wife's family over to our house for burgers and brats off the grill with all the trimmings. We had a fun time visiting and watching the kids play on the trampoline as well as filling the living room with Nerf darts. Then I carb loaded again with frosted sugar cookies and brownies!

It was a fun day and thanks to everyone who made me feel so special!

I thought it would be appropriate to have a picture today of Cameron - the apple of my eye and the one who has blessed me with the privilege of being a father. It is such a wild and fulfilling experience and I am so thankful God blessed me with this responsibility. I hope I don't let Cameron down (although I know we will have our moments). I hope he and I will be lucky enough to be as close as I am with my dad. I just want to enjoy the ride and hopefully help him get ready for the time in his life when he too will become a father (and me a grandfather!).

Shot spex: Pentax K10D, ISO 800, 55mm, f8, 1/60 sec., flash aimed up at ceiling.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, adjusted contrast and levels, I didn't really like the background so I made a dupe layer and then tried this cool trick with the Extrude filter on the background layer. I think it turned out kinda cool. I then flattened the image and added the signature.

Day #22 - Another One From Colorado

2009-06-20T21:54:00.000-07:00

I felt like putting up another one today from that same trip a couple of years ago. It's crazy. I must have just gotten my K10D before that trip because I was bracketing like crazy. Way too many versions of the same image. I guess the upside is that now that I'm getting around to looking at these, there is always a pretty good one of each image to start from.

I really liked this stone wall and really tried to enhance the picture in such a way as to really make the detail of the wall pop. I did some work to the sky to make it more visually enjoyable as well.

With tomorrow being fathers day, I'm fairly certain I will be shooting pictures again so look for a return to current images. In the meantime I hope those who follow this project have enjoyed some fresh scenery. Now in a few weeks I will be in Colorado and will be shooting and posting things from that trip daily. I can't wait!

Shot spex: Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 48mm, f11, 1/125 sec., Exposure Compensation -1(I was bracketing), no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, adjusted contrast and levels, some layer enhancements to bring up the wall and sky.

Day #21 - Getting Around To Images Shot 2 Years Ago

2009-06-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well, today I decided to pull out something I shot like 2 years ago that I never got around to doing anything with. I figure once in a while I might not feel like shooting a picture on a certain day, and that's a perfect time to work on something I've neglected.

About 2 years ago, we went to Colorado to shoot a wedding for a family friend. Since we were going to our favorite place on earth, we managed to head up to the mountains for some 4-wheeling and photography. Right after shooting pictures in the mountains, we shot 2,500 wedding related pictures. I was up to my ear-lobes in wedding picture editing for 9 months and therefore never got around to doing anything with all my pictures shot in the mountains.

This was a really neat door knob on an old cabin we came across. While nowadays we can spend some serious money on door hardware, I'd submit that the new stuff lacks the class and character of some of the items used back in the old days. Sometimes attention to detail on the small things can really be the sign of a craftsman. Kinda like the work photographers do to their images. The average Joe has no idea how much craft is involved in creating a special image. We don't generally make money on these types of shots. We do it for the love of the art. Enjoy the photograph and I will probably pull a few more of these out of mothballs from time to time in the course of this project.

Shot spex: Pentax K10D, ISO 100, 130mm, f11, 1/30 sec., Exposure Compensation -1(I was bracketing), no flash.

PhotoShop spex: Smart Sharpened, adjusted contrast and levels, adjusted the red to bring the wood color up to where I liked it.