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!!

The Frida short blog

Just finished the first day of a creative live class on food photography. As usual it's great education.
Here is another of image in celebration of National Photography Month.

Thanks for reading! Lets go Shoot!!

Creative live today

Another 3 day seminar! This one is on Food photography with Penny De Los Santos. Trying to figure out what junk food to use during a food photography class.

National Photography Month

I found out about 3 days ago that it was national photography month. I've been putting up a pic a day on my face book account so I'll be doing the same here. I need to do some blogging but I'm out of subjects right now. My family portrait was postponed but we are working on a reschedule for next Sunday. I have another creative live class this Friday a 3 day event covering food photography and as usual i am stoked. I did a practice  portrait session using  natural and supplemental light had some good results I'll post one of those as well. First the photography month images. Just images that I like,  no theme or anything like that.

So that's the end of the post.
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!!

The Friday post on tuesday

Not much going on, I have a mothers day portrait shoot at Washington Oaks. I'm really looking forward to that. Last weekend I "attended" a 3 day seminar on creative live, Zack Arias was the instructor on Friday he taught basic stuff:  ISO, shutter speed, aperture, and how they all dance together to form a good exposure. About half way in we started with lighting for various style portraits. Technical difficulties caused me to have to quit watching before it was over. I learned so much,  I can't wait to put some light on some people and make them look good! With the information and education I've received from Joe Mcnally, Bambi Cantrell, and Zack Arias, I'm stoked to go do it. I also have a practice session set up with a friend, She has agreed to let me shoot her for a couple hours Thursday morning, great light, beach, and nature scenes and an amazing model. LIGHT IT UP!The last time i shot her I shot a head shot  that came out really well, that pic is on the blog a couple posts back.

I was looking through earlier blog posts thinking I had talked about Creative Live but I haven't, so I'm going to fix that right now. Creative live is something started by Chase Jarvis. He brings in instructors from the creative world, Photographers, Designers etc... and has them teach seminars between 2 and 5 days long. It's live streamed and you can ask questions, but here is the best part, the live streamed version is free, watch it, take notes, ask questions, all free. If you want to keep the course pay a down load fee and download it. Chase has made it his mission to educate folks and man what an education! The photography classes have students, they get to shoot and make mistakes then the instructor makes corrections so you get to see it all. It's so cool!

No images in this post. I'll have some bird stuff next Friday and some from my mothers day shoot this Sunday.

Thanks for reading!! Lets go shoot!!

Another Late Blog

This weekend I'm "attending" another creative live class, this one is with Zack Arias. I'll do the substantial Friday blog on Monday. No real change there I guess!

The Friday post. On friday no less!

Hi everybody, this post will be in 2 parts sort of. First off, I shot a portrait shoot a few weeks ago, I have two  images from that shoot, and one I shot a couple of  years ago.The shoot with the dogs and the people was a great time and produced some good images for Jen and John as well as the seven four legged members of that family.  here are two of my favorites!  That's Jennifer and the dog's name is Mitch.

The dogs, with two exceptions, all come from pet rescue centers. four of these dogs are dachshunds, I think one of them is16 years old. He wasn't very happy about my supplemental light, I'd trip the shutter and he'd  go the other way. After 3 takes he just decided he was headed for the nice soft dog bed, that's when i got him! So this is my friend monk.

   This next one, is one i shot of a friend of mine. Thanks Trish!

Ok, so now on to the second part.Today is earth day so i spent the morning form 530 to 1030 shooting. The light was good, but not alot going on. The critters had not heard about this earth day thing. I have 5 images one of which is a pano I shot especially for earth day.

And so ends the Friday post for earth day!
Thanks for reading! Lest go shoot!

Tech problems

I'm back, tomorrow is earth day  so I think I'll go out and shoot the earth, check back tomorrow for some of that.

The Friday post on sunday

Hey ya'll, Saturday I shot a portrait session, which was a combination pet shoot with people. 7 dogs, 4 dachunds, 1 huskie, 1 german shepherd wolf mix and one large dog that i wasn't to sure what she was, and the 2 people that run the show. It was a blast, I shot the dogs like they were wildlife, we just let them run. I followed looking for images, and made quite a few. The light was great, had that really nice morning sun thru clouds thing going on (huge soft box) and the rest was just imaging the dogs as they went. We did resort to some on the leash action, no problem, a little retouching magic and boom, no leash! When it was time to shoot the family portrait the dogs were just ready to lay around which is what i wanted. Only used small flash bouncing off a gold card so no big lights and used a gold reflector for that extra kiss of light. I've been editing all day, Monday I'll start cropping, de leashing and retouching as well. I'll put some images up after i show them to my clients. My clients were real troopers, Jennifer wrangled the dogs and I used both Jennifer and John as reflector holders. Great time, good looking images, Going to call this one a success!

Meanwhile, I have nature stuff to edit, last week I shot hummingbirds. I like hummers, i think they get buzzed on caffeine to start the day so they are always moving. I got a few sittin on a small branch though, put some flash on them and got that glowing wing happening, very cool! The roses at washington oaks are making a spectacle of themselves so i have a couple images to put up here.

Earth day is coming up. Take a camera outside and shoot some earth.

That's it for now Thanks for reading!! Lets go shoot!!

the friday post is gunna be late

I have an online seminar at 1pm at creative live. I have a portrait shoot  at 9 am Saturday as well as day two of this online seminar so I'll be posting the Friday post on Sunday.

Check this out though, this is the first slide I ever took. I originally picked up a camera because my mom wanted pictures of Europe. The U.S. Airforce sent me to the Netherlands in 1984. I shot this picture from my motel window then i went to sleep. I shot this image with the venerable Pentax k1000 fully manual camera i think the users manual was 25 pages maybe. Now just the users manual for the sb 900 flash is 139 pages.
OK I'll do a full post on Sunday.
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

My First Portrait Session

I have my first portrait session next sunday! A dog and people shoot. 7 dogs, 1 person, outside, probably 1 light and a reflector or at least that's the plan right now. i'll post some results afterward. STOKED!   

The Friday post on saturday

For the last 2 days the sun has been out after a week of overcast and rainy skies. So, obviously, I've been out shooting. Today's post is going to be  a combination of stuff I was thinking about while wandering the nature trails early this morning at Washington oaks. Today I saw 2 bald eagles on an oyster bed in the Matanzas river, I've never seen 2 on the ground I've seen them in trees but never on the ground. There was also a red tailed hawk in the trees in the gardens today, I was moving into position for a better look and lost him for about 5 minutes, then i heard this chirping noise and I saw a squirrel on the ground, yep, you guessed it, the hawk came in about mach 2. Heres the part you wouldn't have guessed, the squirrel sidestepped the hawk! and the hawk flew off. I never got my camera passed my chest it was one of those wow moments! Later i saw the hawk on a fence looking at the roses.

OK so here's a little story, I have friends that used to have chows and the female chow was a bird chaser, the cool part was that she would chase them when they were in the air. she would see a bird flying over the yard and take off after it till she got to the fence, then she would turn around and come back to me and say, "next time I'm going to get one of those." Today I was shooting at little birds and when one would fly past I would throw the camera up to face, but little birds fly quick, and sometimes my timing is off,  anyway I always tell myself "next time I'm going  get one of those."

Another thing i noticed today was that my camera smells like insect repellent, the camera body is a magnesium alloy but it has rubber and plastic covers and things like that. But i noticed that mosquito's still try to suck blood out of my camera. mosquito's, not the sharpest tool in the shed.

All of us shooters are out now, I ran across one that was doing some great hummingbird pics. He was also settling the great Nikon vs Cannon debate for himself by carrying both brands. His result? stick with Nikon. He had some really nice images, he shoots strictly for himself so he doesn't have a web presence I just saw them on the back of his camera.

.

ok the only image i'm going to put up on this one is an adolescent owl. I shot this a couple days ago right after the rain quit
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot"

The pre friday post

Here in North East FL it's been raining for 4 or 5 days, I've kinda lost track. Today the rain stopped, I went out to shoot some macro stuff at vail point park. I struck out, but I was walking past the owl tree and sure enough, I saw the adult in a large oak, and the adolescent in the nest. The nest is in a hole in  a dead tree. Anyway I'll post that tomorow along with all the stuff i think is interesting. The sun is back for the next few days. So see ya friday.
Lets Go Shoot!

It's the Friday blog

The last few days have been a complete wash for snowy egrets at Washington Oaks, so instead I've been shooting flowers, all you have to do is walk 50 yards from the river (matanzas) to the gardens. I know less about flowers than I do birds, so everything is described by color and other elements inside the image.Of course if i know the name of the thing I use it but today i was processing a flower image, the file name is "orngflwrprplbg" in my shorthand that's orange flower with a purple background. I tried to familiarize myself with flowers years ago while i was living in Texas. Lady bird Johnson was the spearhead for this thing where all the medians and fields alongside the roads in Tx  were planted with wildflowers and it became a tourist event to go see them, much like us folks that live in mostly pine go up north to see leaves. This is especially true in the hill country down around Austin. This area is already an amazing place, so add this major color flush and it's really something. Most of the time that i tried to shoot Tx wildflowers I was standing in a ditch, another one of those location things.I don't have anything left that survives from back then except for a wildflowers of  Tx guide book. Oh yeah , back to Washington oaks, they have all these different types of flowers some are labeled, some aren't, but they are all just popping with color, put some good light in the mix and boom! u have some amazing flower images. Here are two.

At vail point park the great blue herons are loud and proud. They are in the nesting trees and it's mating season so lots of flaring wings and loud noises it's the equivalent of the male going up to the female and saying  "you must be a parking ticket you got fine written all over you"  lol, I heard that on a commercial a while back. Anyway i have a few of those, one looks like a real fight the other is the whole courtship thing. The blue heron nesting tree is next to the tree with the eagles nest, in the background is an adolescent eagle.Another thing going on in vp park is an owls nest. I finally saw the owl, but  this weird fog bank rolled in and zapped my light, so now that area is part of the morning patrol .I noticed a bunch of cardinals running around (ok, flying). They are really quick! I'm usually out in the morning I think these little birds drink more coffee than I do, but i managed to get a couple.

 so thats it for the friday post.
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

Inspiration part 2

I finished this lighting and posing seminar, which is why i didn't get back to the Friday blog post till monday. This thing was an on line, a live streamed seminar. The instructor was Bambi Cantrell she had 7 students and they all got to do setups with a mix of professional models as well as just folks. I had done online lighting seminar taught by Joe Mcnally. He specilizes in using small (hot shoe flashes) lights to get big results. Because Bambi is a wedding, portrait and budoir photographer she uses bigger lights or just available light, in fact the first day was nothing but available light shooting. The real challenge was the posing aspect. Posing so it looks normal and pretty is an art unto itself! Posing and lighting guys is  relatively easy this class was more concerned with posing women and, I might add, posing and using light in such a way that retouching in post production is kept to a minimum. It was an amazing class, inspiring and challenging and that was just sitting in front of my computer taking notes! Since this class was live you could ask questions via an im sorta thing, I found that the questions that i had were asked by other folks. Creative live is a production of Chase Jarvis, a great  commercial photographer (ads and stuff) he has given himself the mission of educating photographers. He sponsors classes, gets the best folks around to teach them and the cool part is, in there live iteration, they are free. So you wanna watch these things and most are 8 hrs a day for at least 2 days, just enroll. If you want that class after it's over they charge for download cheap at 99 bucks for the one i attended, the same clinic would cost about 2000 if you went and hired bambi. Anyway a great time! I have so many notes and so many people to image, so if you cross my path i'm probably going to want to make a portrait.Just say yes!

Ok, so who else inspires me photography wise?. At the top of the list is Ansel Adams, his autobigraphy sits on my desk and i think i'm always in the process of reading it. Joe Mcnally and Moose Peterson, Frans Lanting, Dewitt Jones and David Ziser, Chase Jarvis, the folks over at Kelby media group they produce Dtown tv which is a great 20 to 30 minute show for beginners and folks new to digital photography, They also produce the Grid. The grid is a talk show with guests and such it's also live and comes on at 1230 est and Photoshop user tv, My bro John Sanborn and Savanah Kaszas. Savanah is a wedding and family photographer I think she has been out of photography school for about a year she's the daughter of a friend of mine and SHE ROCKS. Thats about it, I get inspired by other folks as well, sometimes i just pull stuff up on the net and check them out.
And so ends the friday post on monday
here are some links
http://www.chasejarvis.com/

creativelive.com/

kelbytv.com/
the last one is for phtoshop user tv, Dtown tv and The Grid.



Thanks for reading!! Lets go shoot!! 

Inspiration part 1

Today, I'm attending a Lighting and Posing seminar live on line at chasejarvis live.com. so the normal friday blog will be late today. This is very cool goes for 3 days 8 hours a day. So i'll be late with the rest of the blog. This starts at 1300 est 

The lions have returned to the Bridge of Lions in the nations oldest

Here in St. Augustine fl, we have all kinds of landmarks. The two stand outs for me have always been the Castillo de San Marcos, known to us locals as the fort, and the Bridge of Lions. The bridge opened in 1927 and at the foot of the bridge were two large marble lions. The bridge was replaced, and the lions sent off to be restored in 2005 and came back today at 2am. 2 am is a bit early for me, but i went out there at 630 shot around the news crews and got a couple images. I did one in HDR the other i did straight. The restorers, a local company here in St.Augustine did a great job. so regardless of what we think about the new bridge,. THE LIONS ARE BACK!!

 Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

Washington Oaks on Saturday and an eagle lesson on Monday

Saturday I went running around Washington oaks, the snowy egrets are back and the camellias are rocking.

Monday I went to the park with the eagles nest, ran into the guy that audits the nest once a week. His reports go thru channels ultimately to florida fish and game and i got to hang out and ask questions. I have two fun facts.
The great horned owl is actually capable of taking the nest from a bald eagle.
The parents feed these kids once an hour.
and a bonus fact, eagles don't defecate in the nest.
This conversation also gave me some specific information about this nest so I know when to go back.
Ok so here are 2 images from saturday.
Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!

The Friday post part 2. Crescent beach and the Matanzas National Monument

 Moving north on A1A from Washington Oaks about 5 miles is crescent beach and the area around the Matanzas National Monument. The beach here is really cool because of a layer of crushed shell and sand that's mostly orange. The water comes in and takes the gray sand away and leaves this orange color in places, so you  get this nice contrast of gray and orange, the orange sand is really rocking at sunrise. This is my favorite place to capture pelicans, terns, skimmers, sandpipers and something called a willet, there are also osprey and eagles around. recently I've been trying to give the little birds some attention so in this post I'll be putting up a mocking bird and what i think is something called a yellow rumped warbler.

  A few words about the Matanzas National Monument, it's a masonry fort and was sort of the early warning site for the Castillo de San Marcos. This is a national park, ride the boat over from the visitors center to the fort. the Rangers and the volunteers are great and they tell you about the place

Thats the end of the friday post, Thanks for reading! Lets go shoot!