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?