More from Maine

A few more of the thousands of images taken during the Maine 2008 series. I was there to shoot the Black and White series but I could not help but capture some of the color while I was there.

Indiana Fall Fire

I grew up in the West, Tucson to be exact, and I will always consider the desert and mountains my home; but never let it be said that the Midwest does not have its own beauty. The light was nice today, and even with the lack of water this summer I found some fall fire to capture. I would say we will peak next weekend.

A Fish Tail

I considered taking a picture of the rest of this huge Rainbow Trout, but I thought it best to leave it just a Fish Tail :)

Elegance in the Alley

I find that putting competing elements together can be very interesting. Here you have the beauty and the grunge, the silk and suede with the rust and run-down. The added element of the breeze just at shutter release was a nice surprise.

Midnight Minimalism

Another long exposure, night shot. Sometimes you just want to keep it simple, you see something in your mind, even with choppy water and hardly enough light to focus so you just wait for your eyes to acclimate to the dark conditions and hope you get the focus and the composure the way your visualize it. I love minimalism in photography.

Old Truck Love

Broken down, rusting away, neglected to the point of no return; and yet I am still so attracted to them I will stop the car and trudge through the tall grass of someones side yard to get a shot. I found this one in just that manner while in Maine shooting the coast series.

More Maine

Here are two more images from the summer shoot in Maine. I really like the texture that the wet rocks give the one; the drama is palpable to me. The Lighthouse image was taken at just the moments when a thunderhead was moving behind the light itself. Though it was dark at the time the thunderhead was tall enough to catch the last rays of sunlight that had already fallen bellow the horizon to those of us on the ground. It's time like this that we as photographers wait for.

Hope you enjoy.

Maine 2008

My latest series comes from a trip I took this summer to the rocky coast of Maine. I had been working on a new technique of night, long exposure photography for some time and this was the perfect place to really exercise these.

I will post more as time goes on, but here is one of my personal favorites (and there are many) from this very special shoot. These prints will be exclusively for sale through a retailer who commissioned me to shoot some images for his new store in Kennebunkport. We are really excited about the response we will get from the series.

Come back for more images from this series.

Natural Abstraction

We took a drive Sunday up to Cliffty Falls State Park to have a look at what the fall colors where doing. We are about a week or so away from peak, but it was still quite beautiful. In this shot I was trying to capture the absolute sensory overload that can occur when the sun is coming through the leaves and reflecting on some and bringing out shadow in others. It just reminded me of an abstract piece of art where the artist seems to have just thrown the paint onto the canvas and accepted whatever happened. Your eyes don't even know where to go as there is so much to attract your atention.

Saturday Fly Fishing

My son-in-law David and I went fishing on the Cumberland River today. The fishing was slow, a dozen or so, but it was a nice fall day. I could not resist pulling the camera out for a few minutes. We have not had the best color this year due to a drought this summer, but it was still a nice scene though.

Challenge and Reward

Last Christmas my wife Lisa, who helps me with my group projects, and I done a photo shoot for a family's three children. We produced a coffee table book for them that they gave away to family members for gifts. Maybe I will link the whole book sometime with their permission but here is the image we used for the book cover.

These kids were a joy to work with; I hope we get a few more of these jobs this year, they are quite challenging and yet rewarding.

River Dock at Night

Here is another one from a nighttime shoot. It was almost pitch dark at this point, and the river, thought quite choppy at the time, became just a fog of exposure. I really started in earnest honing my technique after this night because I just loved the results.

Movement in a Still Shot

Back in May I got very interested in attempting to capture motion, movement, in a still shot to the point the viewer could feel it. I love night photography and long exposure; this is one of my first successful attempts at doing just that (in my opinion).

I have since done hundreds of experiments, bought many ND filters, spent hot and cold nights in the dark shooting extremely long exposures from 10 seconds to 120 seconds just to learn and enjoy myself. I spent the summer in Maine trying out these new techniques; I'll share some with you over the next little while.

This is just a feild of yellow flowers that were blowing in the breeze; the correct exposure here froze the stems and 70% of the flowers, while letting the wind capture the rest and move them before your eyes. If you just let go a little you can almost feel the breeze...

The Bailey Gang

A few months back I did a wedding where the groom was an old dear friend. He and his wife to-be met while riding horses competitively. They wanted to do a Western Style wedding so we did the entire engagement shoot with horses on one of their farms, I will post a few more of those later on, and this is one of my favorites from the Wedding Day itself.

Almost everyone of the groomsmen were riders so it had that authentic feel and not something you pretentiously set up. They were so much fun to work with. I was told by someone that this looks like an album cover for a country music band :) I took it as a compliment because I had that type of feel in mind before we got on location.

The bad weather on the day of the wedding added to the drama of the outdoor shots immensity, giving me a chance to use it to my advantage. I hope you enjoy. Don't forget to click the image to get a bigger version.

Lightroom and Photomatix Plug-in

Pseudo HDR

Normal Export

This is a rainbow I caught a few months back on the Cumberland River in Kentucky. The fish was a nice specimen of how the day went, even if a little on the lean side; but this entry is a tutorial of sorts and not a fish story.

Sometimes its nice to have the time and forethought to shoot multiple exposures of an image even its only meant to be a memento shot like this one, but when you don't you still have options to get a little more dynamic range into the final.

Using Lightroom 2.0 I exported three different images using an 2-stop over / normal / 2-stop under technique then import those images back into Lightroom. Using the new Photomatix Plug-In for Lightroom from HDRSoft I created a pseudo HDR image from one exposure and I was able to get more range therefore getting more detail in the shadow areas like the black net and detail in the rock's texture; and in this case I believe a much more pleasing version of this capture.

I don't care too much for HDR images that take Tone Mapping to an extreme, unless that is what you are shooting for. I believe HDR can be utilized to bring out detail that the eye sees with it's mega dynamic range and put some of it back into the photo with it's limited range.

Let me know what you think.