Substitute Pets

So my apartment complex doesn't allow dogs, and I do so desperately want a dog. Thankfully, a colleague of mine, Wendy, asked me to dog sit last weekend while she and her husband went up north to play in the snow (heh). Anyway, I was finally able to use the AM "golden hour" (that sunrise/sunset light that makes everything look pretty) because these dogs are very used to being up and adventurous at an absurdly early hour. Ahem. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these shots as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Osgood (left) and Munster (right) love to fight for toys.

Here we can see Munster performing a sweet side kick.

While he's definitely a handful, this dog is absolutely gorgeous.

To round things off, I wanted to post this pic of Amber's cat, Kitty (I can't help but chuckle at the name every time). I took this while doing a follow up shoot for the rings-on-belly shot from the BW maternity series. Kitty happened to get up in my face as I was testing my flash, and this photo came out. I wish the left eye were more in focus, but I absolutely love how the whiskers appear as stark white due to the flash going off not six inches from them.

A Club Above the Rest

I'm sure that I'll shoot my good friend Charlie Slick more than once, and in the future, I'll have more tools to work with (I'm investing in an off-camera flash system very soon). This shoot taught me a lot of things. It taught me that my autofocus helper light doesn't help a lot at Charlie's shows, and that my own manual focusing abilities need some work. It also taught me that my on-camera flash can be useful (all of these shots use it, and no shots without it were usable), but most importantly, it taught me that I need better flash. I'll be dropping around 900 bucks on an upgrade soon.

This is the clearest shot of Mr. Slick from the night, and thankfully his stage lighting and the composition worked together to make an interesting shot!

I was trying to get a focused in shot of Charlie, but I ended up getting this dancing dude. A the club itself, I thought the guy looked, well, silly, but he made a good photo.

This shot would be just so much better if Charlie were more in focus and not the tattooed girl in the front.

So, I tried out that first shot in black and white, cranked up the contrast a little more . . I'm not sure which one I like more. I'd love to hear your opinions.

Who Do You Think is In There?

My good friend and colleague, Amber, and her husband, Justin, have recently had their first baby, Alivia. I just met her for the first time today (the baby, obviously), and she is a genuinely adorable little girl. I'm not saying that in the "aw, it's a baby, of course it's adorable" way, because sometimes babies are ugly, but she is really, really cute.

About a month ago I did this photo shoot. It was my idea, and today I delivered these final products as my official gift to them.

It should be noted that during the shoot, Amber was wearing a bra, as we both sort of decided that, you know, it'd be weird otherwise. Anyway, the goal was to make it look as though she wasn't wearing a bra, and if I do say so myself, the results were awesome.

Very little work had to be done on this shot. It's adorable.

Yes, she was wearing a bra for this.

No seriously, there used to be a bra there. Isn't Amber the cutest pregnant woman ever?

This was done a couple of weeks later. We did a shot that looks like this originally, but I was a little nervous the whole time and didn't realize that her ring was crooked. So I came back later and did this with an on-camera flash. The results are good, but I'm going to be investing in some better flash equipment soon.

If you're an ECA person and happen to visit Amber, Justin and Alivia, be sure to ask to see the framed pics!

That Squirrel Would Be COVERED in Makeup

David and I were out on the back porch the other day when a very nosey squirrel decided to come up and investigate. I ran back inside to grab my camera, but squirrels don't pose, and when they do, they don't pose in visually interesting places (these are the rules that I've just made up). However, I managed to get a couple of visually interesting shots.

Bonus points for finding both Eddie Izzard references.

I liked this one because of the lattice being in sharper focus than the squirrel. It's just a bit different than usual. I've also gotten into the habit of cropping things down to emphasize the most visually interesting elements in the shot, so this one is a standard 8x10 crop.

I tried cropping this one in all sorts of ways, but the most interesting version was the original. Unfortunately I don't have a better zoom lens . . . something I'm going to try to correct some time this summer.

Back Yard and Beyond

On Friday, we had a bit of a power outage for some reason. So what better to do than go out into the back yard area of your apartment complex and start taking some photos? It's especially nice when there's a creek winding around back there as well. Remember to click on pictures to bring up the bigger, higher quality versions.

This is the shot I had in my head when I decided to go shoot, and it's the first one I got. I like all of the lines in it. I thought of doing this one in black and white, but I decided to let the color of the grass contrast with the natural blue shadows to get that early Spring look.

Here we have a hole dug by some small animal, surrounded by new Spring grasses and the like. Something about this shot seems hopeful to me.

I did decide to play with some black and white shots, though (pretty easy to do with Photoshop). It took me a while to realize that when you want an interesting looking black and shot, you've just got to contrast it all to hell. There was a different version of this shot with only minor tweeks, and there just wasn't anything to look it. It all blended in. I'm happy with this result.

This was the shot I was most excited about when taking it. Originally I had just intended to shoot the little puddle by the side of the creek, by suddenly my camera decided (thank you, autofocus!) to get a crisp shot of the reflection of the trees above this tiny puddle instead. Again, I thought this one looked nicer in black and white (dull brown mud, dull brown water). I hope you enjoy it.

Before and After

I've done a couple of new shoots recently, but one was my first attempt at a self portrait shoot (which was kind of boring, but one became my new profile pick) and the other was a shoot for my super pregnant friend and colleague, Amber. Eventually I'll post one or two from that shoot, but I've only just begun to start selecting the best shots and start the touch up process (they're meant to be keepsakes, so the touchup process will be a little more meticulous and detail oriented).

In the meantime, I'll post up this quick before and after series that I had talked about before. I know, I know, enough of Cammila, right? Hah, yeah right, even if it's the same series over and over, she's still gorgeous, so enjoy this while it lasts!

So this was the original, unedited shot. Notice the credit card stickers and the like in the window on the right, and also take note of the car in the reflection in the window on the left. I wanted all that stuff gone to give it more of an old timey look. Most of the work was done with teh clone stamp tool, but I have a nice pen tablet, so really it felt more like painting.

This is the punched up version. Obviously the color is much more vibrant, the skin tone has been smoothed to give it that hint of pinup quality, and the window stuff has been eliminated. Take special note of the hanging lamp below Cammila's elbow in the window on the right. That part was a bit tricky.

Thanks for reading. I'll try to have entirely new stuff up next week at some point.

You're Getting Warmer

This is from the same shoot as my previous post, but Cammila (as made famous by her style blog, Dressed Up Like a Lady) decided to post up two different entries on this shoot, with coat and sans coat. Now I'm treating to you to the "with coat" portion.

Many of the same effects are in employ in these shoots, but I left my blur filter on a little bit higher because I love how it made the coat look.

I love the post and the facial expression in this one, though I wish I had positioned her in the fram a little better. I suppose I could crop this a little bit for a "best of" reel someday.

So innocent.

And for some reason, this reminds me of The Joker. Love it.

I've had a few friends tell me I should do a couple of before and after shots to display how much I took out of the background and what the particular blur effect I used really does. I'll get around to that one of these days, but I just want you to enjoy these shots for now. Remember to click on each one for a larger, more detailed version.