PBPhoto

The Space Center Visitors Complex is free once a year for Brevard County residents.  So cool.  It's been many years since I've been there.  Always loved space as a kid and as an adult.  We had a such a great time.  Here are a few shots that I really liked.  The T-38 above was extremely backlit by the sun just over the vertical stabilizer.  Using the fill light slider on Lightroom2 makes quick work of this.

I love this shot with the clouds reflecting in the memorial.  The astronauts listed in the foreground are from the Challenger disaster.

Here's one of Hezekiah trying to land the lunar lander.  Thankfully they didn't have a 6 year old trying to do that.  It wasn't pretty.

And here are a few more that I liked.

I can say that I haven't really been inspired photographically speaking lately.  Life has been busy and stressful.  But for some reason today I was looking at Dan Winters website.  It was linked off of the Strobist.  I really dig the look of the site.  It is kinda retro.  I really liked his portraits.  Probably because they are so different from what I would typically do.  No popping colors.  Everything is nice and muted.  Not as much separation between subject and background.  He has some unique lighting setups as well.  He has a portrait of Tom Hanks that is cool.  Interesting shadows on the face.  The fill light is just enough for detail.  The poses are different as well.  There's a portrait of Bono where Bono is facing camera left at 90 degrees.  It has a different feel to it. 

So I tried to incorporate some ideas: reducing the ratio between the subject and background, muted colors and experiment with the poses.

I love the pose on the above shot.  Just looking at the flash with his head turned toward the flash. 

Now I gave Eli the same instructions and this is what I got.

For my colors, I put orange gels (3/4 CTO) on my key flash and then did a custom white balance on that.  I left my background flash bare.  The custom white balance changes the white light to blue.  Nice cool (temperature) colors.

I love capturing the crying moments.  Goes against the grain of children portraits.  They are supposed to always be happy.  Not so much.

But they are happy most of the time.


Be blessed.

So most mornings recently, early mornings, as I am leaving for work, I have been greeted by walking through a spider web as I go to get in my truck.  Spider webs on my face are not on my "favorite things in life" list.  I have just sort of swiped it away, said lots of righteous things under my breath and gone to work.  But one morning, as I walked out of the garage, I clicked the key fob for Gretchen's car.  That causes the backup lights to come on, which revealed a strand of spider web.  It was going up to the sycamore on the north side of the driveway.  As I followed it in the other direction, I see one of the biggest webs I've ever seen.  And in the middle . . . this. 

Not sure what type of spider this is.  If you closet etymologists out there can identify it, I would love to know.  It is about the size of a half dollar, maybe a little bigger. (update:  I found out that is neoscona hentzi, in the family of orb-weavers.  Charlotte was also an orb-weaver.  Since we just read Charlotte's web with the kids, I'm sure that is why this spider has shown up.  Now I'm waiting to see some words in the web.  Maybe "Some Gretchen" for her birthday.  He probably doesn't take requests.)

So one morning I popped up the little flash on my camera but that looked horrible.  So of course the next night after the kids went to sleep I dragged Gretchen out into the dark holding my camera stand and umbrella to take some shots.  I ordered an umbrella adapter from Adorama that came with a tiny little fold up umbrella.  Seriously, this thing looks like a toy umbrella but at close range on a small subject, it's apparent size is huge so it worked well.

The wind was blowing so getting a crisp shot was tough as thing was constantly moving closer and farther away.  And I'm just thinking "Please God, Creator of Heaven and Earth and spiders, please don't let thing jump on me or I'm going to scream like a girl."

I have to give props to my sweet wife for being willing to home school our son.  I know it's a lot of extra work on top of an already busy schedule.  But between you and me (shhhh), she's a natural.  I always knew she would be amazing at it.  And she is.

So this new phase in our lives has lead us into a new era of discovery.  Lot's of first time discovery for the kiddos and rediscovery for us.  So easy to take so much for granted.  But you know what, mushrooms are a really cool creation. 

My wife brings the kiddos by for lunch like every other day.  I get in the car and find out we are going to look at mushrooms.  They had just passed by a bunch of mushrooms beside the mall parking lot.  So that's what we did.  And here's the proof.

I had the opportunity to photograph a wedding for a friend of our family.  What a great pair they make.  And great family and friends as well.

So here are some of my favorites from the event.  Above is Daddy and Daughter.  I really like the low angle and composition.  I shot this wedding with my friend Mark and he was bouncing a camera mounted strobe off of the ceiling and suggested that I bounce my lightstand mounted one.  So that's what I did.  The ceiling was reflective but high.  I had the strobe set to 1/4 power so I could get a lot of shots off.  But I still had to shoot at ISO 1600 because it was so dark at the reception.

Here's the retrieval of the garter.  He accomplished this hands free.  Nuff said.

I thought this one was funny.


This was taken just before the ceremony.  I have to give props to Seth.  He's the guy on the right.  He wanted this type of shot because they had done this type of thing at past events.  Great suggestion. 

This one was suggested by the bride and groom.  It was supposed to have a "Top Gun" feel.  But I guess they chickened out on the sunglasses at the last minute.  Still came out cool I think.  Another low angle shot.  I gave it a high contrast treatment.

I love the light coming into the limo in this one.  Amazing limo by the way.






And a few of my favorite beach shots.  The lighting was perfect from the setting sun.

Got a chance to do some product photography for a cool local business.  They make fire extinguishers for RV's and racecars.  Very cool I think.

So the idea is that his webmaster wanted some shots on black that he could separate for use on his website HERE.  So I brought some black foam core for background and some white foam core for reflectors.  In the above shot I used a strobe and shoot-through for key @ camera right and white foam core for fill @ camera left.  The metal cage around the nozzle didn't have a well defined edge so I added another strobe with a grid on it behind and camera left to help that situation.  This set up was great for the red extinguishers.  But not so much for the shiny aluminum ones.  The top left edge of the canister was still being lost in the black.  So I added another piece of foamcore behind and camera right to define that edge.  Here is the shot and setup below.