Old Town Emporium

This photo was taken in the Old Town section of Albuquerque last weekend. There are a lot of things I wish I could change about this image. Wish I could have taken it in softer light. Also wish I would have seen, as I took this photo, that the New Mexico flag to the right of the doorway was twisted around the flagpole and I had walked across the street and fixed that. Photoshop can do a lot, but it can't straighten out a flag. So when all else fails, there's the crutch of HDR. Single frame HDR done with Nik HDR Efex. Some day this will be re-shot and done right.

Migrating Hummingbird

I was in New Mexico this past weekend, and was pleasantly surprised to see a bunch of migrating ruby throated hummingbirds at a stop we made near a ski lodge near Angel Fire, New Mexico. I'm not an expert, but I assume these are the same group that makes an appearance in the Houston area in August and September. It's always a challenge shooting these little creatures, made even harder this time because I was limited to my travel gear. Shot at 300 mm with the Nikon 28-300 with a pop-up flash, f/5.6 at 1/250 sec handheld while trying to duck as they buzzed me. My metadata said distance to subject was 1.5 meters.

Lauren Senior Photos #4

Another senior portrait of Lauren. I really liked the peacock dress and had a lot of fun playing the color against the background. For this one I stood on a step stool to give it a little different angle. 1/400 sec at f/4, flash from camera left in high speed sync.

Lauren Senior Photos #3

I used a vintage treatment for this one of Lauren in a swing. 1/60 sec at f/25, panning.

Lauren Senior Photos #2

More high speed sync flash with Lauren -- 1/640 sec at f/4; flash from camera left. I liked the color combination here a lot so tried to push the colors a little to really emphasize that relationship. In post, I also tried to bring up the warm tones in the tops of the reeds in the background.

Lauren Senior Photos #1

I thought I'd post a few senior photos I did with Lauren recently. She just graduated from Clear Lake High School. During the session I used high-speed sync a lot, trying to knock down the ambient light. This image was shot at f/4 and 1/640 sec, light from an SB900 in a Lastolite EZYbox from camera right. I've also been studying some of the postprocessing techniques of Calvin Hollywood. He's known for a very textured, detailed style. Thought I'd try some of those techniques here, although I masked them off all skin tones so the texture would only affect the clothes and environment.

Pikes Peak

From our trip to Colorado in April -- this is Pikes Peak as viewed from Garden of the Gods Park near Colorado Springs in the early morning of April 11. Processed entirely in Nik HDR Efex. 1/320 sec at f/6.3, 90mm.

Chyree

Photo above is from a quick photo shoot I did this week with David LeMaster and Neal Kelsoe. This is David's sister, Chyree ... shot at Clear Lake Park Wednesday night. I was experimenting with shallow depth of field portraiture, an ongoing project of mine. I asked Chyree to stand in the middle of some tree branches and began playing with the filtered light from a parking lot behind her. Nikon D7000, f/1.4, cheated the sync up to 1/320 sec, with light from an SB900 through a Lastolite EZYbox from camera right. Black and white conversion done with Nik Silver Efex Pro, followed by a color tinting layer to soften the contrast and add some warmer tones.