Blocking the sun

Today I set out to replicate this shot I took in Hawaii. I entered and won the first contest my dad and I were doing in 2008. I picked the first category and it was called backlighting. I wasn't thinking too much of this at the time I took the shot, but realized once I saw the lighting it was going to be a perfect entry. The rest is history and I won the first contest of the year. In the shot you are looking at here on the blog I set out to accomplish the same type of shot but it was 35 degrees cooler and about 2000-ish miles west. (I am guessing the distance here). Katie did a great job of cooperating with me We played at the park, it was way too cold to be outside in the elements and the big toy equipment was what seemed to be 20 degrees colder.
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f/1.4 ~~4000sec~~ISO100~~50mm

2 parts golf ball

Getting ready for the Saturday theme and broke out the light. Strobist.com prides itself in one light shooting. I thought I would try my hand in it tonight. 2 parts golfball, 1 part air.

Speedlight camera left 45 degrees from camera.

click HERE to see the OFC shot.

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f/11~~1/160~~ISO100 50mm

24 hour Flu

My wife stayed home today with a temp and the flu. What sounded good to the tummy was 7-up and sleep. So far my daughter and I feel fine. I can count on one finger how many times I have put my daughter to bed, tonight was one of them. Cheers

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f/1.4~~1/13 ~~ISO100~~50mm

Shadows and Highlights

Shell was picked up in raratonga back in 1995. The trick was getting it back in one piece. Now it sits proudly on the bookshelf right next to the lamps and speaker.

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Practicing my Shadows and Highlights tonight. Speedlight at 1/8 power about 4 feet below subject.

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f/11~~1/80~~ISO 100~~

Happy Birthday Mom

My moms birthday is today. Thought I would take a picture of the candles in our living room. The candle sticks are new and my wife seems to like them. If you look close there is a whole in the side of the one on the right and it drips wax all over the glass coffee table. Time to replace the candle perhaps?
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f/1/8~~1.3 sec~~ISO 100~~50mm

Urban Skyrise

Heading down to seattle this afternoon-tonight,

Went down to see SDir Ken Robinson. If you have never seen him he is great. Look him up on Ted.com. And it was a great excuse to bring 2 buddies down and take night shots of seattle. More shots to come... check back tomorrow

Jack and Kevin

f/2.2 ~~1/3~~ISO100~~50mm

Men in the window

f/1/4~~1 sec~ISO 100~~50mm

skyline

f/3.5 1 sec ~~ISO ~~100 ~~10mm

Thank you Aunt Linda, and Camden

Called Aunt Linda last night and checked to see if Camden could get 2 extra tickets to the ball park. Great news, she could, so Katie and I packed up this morning and headed north. Met Uncle David and Payne and we ran the bases and Payne pitched into a radar gun, and he threw a wooping 20 MPH. David and the kids got lost (well I lost them) for what seemed like hours.

Enough about the Ball Park. I took this picture of the kids while in line to run the bases. It snowed like crazy on us, but not cold enough to stick. Kids loved it and saw Cousin Jeff, Mary and Lee.

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f/3.5~~1/40~~ISO 400~~28mm

Portrait B&W

Window lighting. She was a champ for me for this series of shots and I settled on this one. Eric picked the theme this week and a b&w portrait was the topic. I got Katie to hold still, actually she was very good as I told her I needed to send Grandma a picture of her. I was able to get half a doz decent shots and picked this one out of the group.

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f/5.6~~1/8 ~~ISO100 100mm

1 2 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock rock....

On the back porch watching the time widdle away. I was looking for something to shoot and wanted a tight crop shot, something that would not show the whole story but try to keep you guessing. I shot this about 4:40pm and took this subject from different angles but settled for this one. OLD WEATHERED & SLOW

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f5.6 ~~.3~~ISO 100 158mm

Room full of technology

Teaching an excited group of kids the new technology on the laptop computers also known as COWS (computers on Wheels). Teacher said it was the best form of classroom management she had ever seen from her students.
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f/4.5~~1/6~~ISO 100 17mm

Shadows and Highlights

Got home from a visit to the library and Katie got real hungry and wanted to watch Scooby and have a snack. After a full tummy and a few photos she was ready to play.

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f/4.5~~1/100~~ISO 100 10mm

A day in History

Kids watching History

f/1.4~~0.4~~ISO 800 50mm

Music A day late

Play those bones.

I had to shoot this at ISO 800 just to get enough light. I guess I could have used a flash.

f/5.6 1/5

Jan 18th Grandma, Katie, and My Aunt

Sunday in the South. Showing off her slippers to Grampa.

In the country

My Daughter playing on the big toy in my parents neighborhood. A

trailor that appears to have hauled hay at one time that has seen it's better days.

Miracle on the Hudson

A pumpkin Cup my mom made back in 1965. She gave it to me this week while visiting.

Grandma and Katie

Playing with her mermaid sticker book.

A combo of Poster edges and Photocopy Filters with a clipping group and drop shadow.

moon

short and sweet, I will tweak later

Glacier Water

Heading to work today I ran back in to fill up my new water bottle. My wife tells me drinking out of this one will make me healthy. So I filled 'er up and off I went. I am glad I remembered as I got real thirsty. When I got home and had a little left in the bottle. Finished the last drop and set the bottle down. I thought to myself, I had yet to take a photo today. Perfect timing as the drops of water from the bottle were still dripping down the side, and I thought to myself, again, hey the boys talked about rain on my car windsheild, what a coincidence there are drops on my water bottle ;) and so it goes...thats my story and I am sticking to it.

I will try and post while gone for the next few days but if not I will catch up when I get back.

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50mm~~f/1.4~~1/25~~ISO 200

Now where was that turn?

.....I think I missed it @#%$$#@!


ok lit the heck out of the subject (that would be me) speedlight pen540 riding shotgun set at 1/8 power about 2 feet away from me. AB400 camera right about 10 feet and 1/8 power. 50mm at f/1.4~~.5~~ISO 100
~~edit~~
Oh and manual focus as well, I set a box that our heat dish came in that was about 3 feet tall. I set it in the seat so I could grab a focus. Used my handy dandy remote as well.

Photoshop class tomorrow

I am teaching my monthly Photoshop class tomorrow to beginning users. I try and throw something a bit different in each time I teach just in case I get any repeaters. So my goal was to get a shot of something and show how Camera Raw will fix your image in 5 seconds. I then take them through the sharpening phase and Kelbys 7 point system, but this photo only needed a slight exposure adjust and sharpen. I stress the fact that you want to get as much RIGHT in the camera as possible but there is always room for PS-``or I would be out of a job (sense of humor is always good for teachers at the end of the day)

Here is the final result.

50mm prime~~f/1.4~~1/13~~ISO 100

If I can get my shots at ISO 100 I will attempt to do that every time, just in case I want to postersize my shot.

Bowling and Apples with a side of Bokeh

What goes better with bowling, apples of course. I fed my daughter an apple and water for a snack and loaded her in the car for a line of bowling. She lasted about 3 frames then her buddy Riley took over. She shot a 74 and he shot a 91. She really only rolled 3 frames or there abouts and with bumpers of course.

bowling shot Pentax 50mm~~f/1.4~~1/13th~~ISO 100

Apple Pentax 50mm ~~f/1.4~~1/125th~~ISO 100

Oklahoma Losses National TItle

Pizza and the paper for dinner. I didn't watch any of the sooner loss in fact I forgot it was on and heard they lost on the radio along with the possibility that the Seattle PI might shut its doors as soon as tomrrow? I grew up with that paper.

Tamron 28mm f/10~~1.3 sec~~ISO 100 Tripod used

A river runs through it

OK my hope was the get a shot of the cresting Puyallup River. Here is the best I could do, and boy was it high. For all the rain we got it was a dry day. Our roof leaked and the rain has stopped.

Tamron 28-300~~f/ 4.0~~1/1600 sec~~ISO 400

36 right...24 left...

The old railroad perspective effect, vanishing point, or also known as one point perspective.

taken with my 28-300 tameron no flash hand held.

focal length 28mm f3.5--1/4 sec--ISO 100--

Apple vs Pentax

I got rather hungry tonight and decided to slice open an apple, here are the results.

tamron 28-300 taken at 85mm --f/7.1 --1/160 sec--ISO 100

Lighting

AB400 at 3 1/2 ft camera right and pentax 540 speedlight at 4 feet camera left .

Both at a 45 degree angle to subject. Both set at 1/4 power. both reflective umbrella image of setup seen here.

comments welcome.

New Middle school opens its doors today

I was there bright and early to capture the event on film. I wanted to capture excitment and motion as felt by the staff and students in anticipation of the doors opening.

My attempt to keep the shutter open to show movement and at the same time have the building as in focus as possible. I was standing on the staircase and the students were walking behind me and the shake in the floor was unbelievable. My working associate Kevin made the comment as to how it felt like an earthquate as the kids climbed the stairs. He was doing the video taping right next to me.

f3.5 --1/4sec-- ISO 400-- taken with my tamron 28-300 at 28mm

Self Portrait of sorts

An experiment with my speedlight, umbrella and using my pocket wizards. This photo was taken with my 28-300 tamron

28mm --f/3.5--exposure 1/5--ISO 400

Speedlight was dialed down to 1/32

3rd generation back 'atcha

The camera that Grandma and Grampa bought her.

Her shot was taken with a fisherprice 1.2 meg camera:

f-stop, shutter speed, and ISO unknown.

My shot was taken with my 28 year old 28mm wideangle lens f/2.8 1/10 sec ISO 100. ( lot of 28 in there) I don't put this lens on very often but every time I do I love it. I walked around today and took about 30 shots with it and am still impressed at how clear the shots turn out. Until tomorrow.

Dancing Jan 2nd....this is gonna be a long 365 days

I took this one of my daughter and she was getting ready to go shopping for her new bathroom decor. She was very excited for sure, and what color would a 4 year old girl pick.....PINK of course.

I promise I will not live in Photoshop for the next 363 shots but I had to do it this time. I took this with with my 50mm prime and as they say, no time to swap out lens or you will miss the shot entirely. I figured I would take 2 shots and piece together later.

My daughter is not one to have her picture taken by her dad so I could not zoom out with my feet or she would have turned her back on me. I am sure you photographers know what I mean. Get it in the moment or its gone. Hopefully she will get better in the next 363 days. (although I hope to bring variety to the year)

Both shots taken with my 50mm prime f/2.5, 1/80 sec, 400 ISO with the head shot taken first.

first shot

Here is my first shot of the new year. My goal is to add a shot a day, mostly of people but things will be in here as well. This one is of my daughter and her interest in computers and art as she found lazytown.com as one of her favorite sites.

Taken with my 50mm prime at f/1.4, 1/80 sec, ISO 400 Manual exposure