Pelican in Flight

I've been known to add a few well-placed clouds, even drop in a sky every now and then. But this one's completely natural. No compositing here. Sometimes when you're shooting birds in flight you are taking so many photos so quickly it's not until months later when you see something like this -- how the single strand of cloud lines up perfectly with the pelican's beak. The only postprocessing involved a little crop in Photoshop and some mild sharpening on the bird. Nikon D200 at 200mm, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6.

Eye to Eye

Another pelican shot from January in Galveston. The crop here is as captured in camera. It's amazing how close you can get to pelicans as they are feeding. Also experimenting with minimum focusing distance and shallow depth of field. This one's right on the edge of both. Nikon D200 at 200mm, 1/750 sec at f/2.8.

Resting Pelican

Pelican at rest. Photo taken in January down in Galveston. Nikon D200, 200mm, 1/2000 sec at f/4.

Renaissance Gothic

Back to the Renaissance Festival for another shot. We found the guy in this photo first, asked to take his photo and he was great -- very animated. Moved him in front of an ivy-lined tree and shot him with our standard strobe through a Photoflex softbox. Doug shot him first and got some really intense stuff. We thought he had a great costume until he asked if we would take a photo with his girlfriend too. And then she walked over in what you see above. I was shooting by then and had them pose in more of a stoic stance. In a weird way it reminded me of Grant Wood's American Gothic.

Gypsy Dancers All in a Row

Taken at the Texas Renaissance Festival in November at the Gypsy Dance Theater performance. Nikon D200, 116mm, 1/500 sec at f/3.2, ISO 400.

Black and White HDR

Black and white HDR of Bishop's Palace in Galveston -- 5 bracketed frames beginning at 1/15 sec at f/8. Seems like whenever I've shot Bishop's Palace in the past I never had a wide enough lens. This time I made sure I didn't have that problem. Shot at 12mm.

Beauty Light

From the session a week ago with Sarah. Worked with a high key background and really concentrated on composition, posing, and shooting with enough depth of field to get everything tack sharp. How nice is it to scroll through 200 shots and know that 195 are tack sharp? Very nice. I should shoot at f/13 more often. Nikon D200, 70mm, 1/160 sec at f/13. Light high right from an Elinchrom BXRi with a shallow Octa, triggered with Skyports.

Vintage

Working on some different processing techniques -- this one light and vintage. It's from my November shoot with Alyssa. Created lots of separation between her and the background here and shot very shallow. Background is true; no Photoshop additions. 85mm, f/1.8 at 1/1000 sec, SB900 through Lastolite EZYbox from camera left in high speed sync.