this is a combination post i originally started this a month ago

Today i find myself still in a bit of a slump,I went down to Washington oaks, the mosquito's are out of control! One of them asked me if  I could help him score some deet, he just flew off all giggly. One of the things that I've been doing is working on my designer side, so I'm  hanging out in illustrator, making 3d stuff and trying to remember where the shear tool is. Went out today with the intention of playing around with reflectors and flash on flowers, did i mention the Mosquito's? I did get some sunset stuff that looks pretty good. Got some new biz cards, I have been printing them myself on 65 pound matte photo paper, this time i had them printed by vista print, 100 pound gloss using that eagle pic. It's good stuff, those are the folks that advertise 250 for free or 1.00 or something like that, but if ya get the good stuff it's more expensive.Everything has a fee, my favorite part was "shipping" no circling the point here, the economy class is called SLOW ha!. The product is good, my photo, my type setting. Did i mention the mosquito's?

OK so fast forward a little, It's September, i went back to my favorite job, Leonard's studios, worked there for 2 weeks then had to leave to take a full time job outside the world of creatives and art. Still shooting for fun and profit but my time is limited a little, and , of course the way you stay sharp is to practice, yesterday i went thinking the rain would break, it never did so i put the katta on the camera and rain gear on me and shot in the rain. see the pics below for those images. and of course the Mosquito's send greetings and an invitation to come for a meal :)

So there ya have it. thanks for looking!!
Lets go shoot!!!

Lets try another blog post

So, after the big smoke season here in Florida I've been trying to shoot, up until just recently i couldn't come up with anything.I tried the hdr stuff that was cool but just wasn't what i wanted. The 4th of July came, nothing like fireworks to break the inspiration block. Nothing like taking firework images, it's all abstract and light that goes boom. So what do you do when the inspiration tank is dry?. I find that i have to back off, forcing it leads to bad images! I actually dusted off illustrator and did some stuff there, that's that part of my education that i don't use so out pops the for dummies and classroom in a book. But when the 4th got here well it was on! Here in the nations oldest you have to show up 3 hrs earlier than show time just to get a parking place, that's cool, go get something to eat then go get your spot. Mine is a spot that nobody wants, but it's great for fireworks on the bay front. Then sit around for 2 hrs waiting for launch and then 30 minutes of shooting, f8 4 seconds 200 mils the first 2 are focus shots and then the rest is just hooting and hollering listening to the 1812 and grooving on the colors.  Then 2 hrs waiting for traffic to clear. I ran out of biz cards talking to folks in the parking lot, getting re hydrated. It's hot in fl! And humid as well, but it's the 4th, and I wouldn't want to be anywhere else!
here are some of the images i made.

 thanks for reading! lets go shoot!!  

Lots of smoke No photography

So here north east Florida we've had fires all over the place. The smoke was thick, making for horrible conditions! I haven't taken an image in about three weeks,That's going to change today, we've had some rain and the smoke seems to have left, so I'm going to go shoot this evening!

I've been shooting some hdr (High Dynamic Range)

I've had Photomatix pro 3 for about 2 years and I think I've made 6 hdr images. The thing is that not everything needs hdr, I think I've probably made some bad choices for some of those pictures, so some have just turned out to be crap. I have one over on my NAPP portfolio that I'm really proud of. I have it in my print portfolio as well. So, anyway, since some of my wildlife subjects have decided to take a vacation I decided to shoot some landscape hdr, that's what you'll see below. Something that I've noticed is that hdr lends itself nicely to black and white. Hdr is just a part of a workflow soI take mine from Photomatix to Acr and then into Photoshop. I like realistic hdr more than I like the fantasy harry potter stuff, but I've seen some amazing works in that style as well. Tommorow, now that the smoke has cleared, I'm going to try an hdr panorama. The two images below are the same scene one in black and white one in color.

Thanks for reading!! Lets go shoot!!!

Finally a friday post.

Last Sunday I had a family portrait session, I got all the processing and retouching done in two days, proofs sent out on the third day, and then today I did the printing, I love printing, it's my favorite thing second only to shooting. When you make that image and see it on the screen it will usually look good, it's easy to look good on a computer screen but when you put ink on paper that's when the magic happens. Ansel Adams said "the negative is the score and the print is the performance". That says it all, when i print, the sheet rolls out and at first it's in shadow just because of where the printer is, but then the edge comes out of shadow and you see the first color and you look over at the screen and it matches! you knew it would it's not like it's the first print you've ever made but for me it's like Christmas. I let my prints gas out for 24 hrs before i show them to anybody. It's a little difficult  to sit on them. We print so we can show this thing that we have created. OK enough of that, what else can i type about?

We are coming to the end of National Photography Month, I've been posting images, one a day on face book and I need to get caught up putting them here. On youtube i found a couple of old photography oriented documentaries, one is "Ansel Adams photographer" and the other is "Exposures" Exposures is a documentary on the history of American photography it's about an hour long and well worth the time, and anything on AA is worth the time. Kind of a given huh?

It's memorial day on 30 may, so when you are out grilling stuff or whatever, take a moment to remember the fallen.

Think I'll post some images now.

Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

Just some more images in celebration of NPM

A couple more for NPM (OOH, nice abbreviation!)

Just a couple of images in celebration of National Photography Month
Thanks for Looking! (See what i did?) Lets go Shoot!!