Rocking the One Stars!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Back In The Flow

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

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

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

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

Tunes listened to while editing: Blink 182 - Neighborhoods

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

A New Year - A New Project

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

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

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


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

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

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

Listen to your wife!

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

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

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

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

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

Still alive and shooting!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where's The Beef - This Day In History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calling London - London Calling

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

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

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

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

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

Impressive Wing Span!!

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

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!

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!

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!)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.