Hi everyone-

Hope everyone had a great week. Mine was ok, and pretty long. Just got back from Las Vegas last night and you would think that after spending a week there at the WPPI photography conference I would be all amped up.

While I did learn a lot and am thankful for the experience I was really sick the whole time and didn't have any of the fun you might expect out of a Vegas trip. I never even got to play a single hand of black jack. Most days were spent in class trying stay awake, learn something and not hack up a lung. Evenings were spent trying to eat something and then heading to bed.

So today I went to the doctors again and then for x-rays to rule out pneumonia. Super. Waiting to hear back on that. And I'm starting another round of medications.

But one good thing has happened this week. One of my images shot at a fire in West Manchester Township was selected for this months cover for FireRescue Magazine.

The issue covers rural fire tactics. So the image is a good fit. FireRescue tries to create covers that give the reader a glimpse of what's inside. This image fits well because of the barns and windmill in it.

When I shoot fires I try to shoot a variety of scenes and angles. I want to tell the story of the incident. But one thing I always try to shoot are images that will fit well on the cover of the magazine. Obviously they need to be vertical bet I also like to arrange areas for the mast head (magazine title) as well as areas of dead space where text can be laid over.

This image worked pretty good in that way.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

As those of you who stop by the blog often know I have been taking a much needed break from daily postings. But I am back up and running recovering from the busy schedule related to the holidays. So check back often for new posts.

At this time of transition from 2009 to 2010 I as many others take a look back at where we have been and ahead to where we might be going.

2009 was a great year. There was a lot of good things that happened. As well there were a lot of new friends made. Friends I hope to have forever.

I don't like to make resolutions because I don't ever really keep them. Instead I like to set some goals of things I would like to accomplish or things on which to improve. I have stopped setting unrealistic goals that I know I will never reach.

I have decided that I will strive to improve upon where I am at right now. It doesn't really apply to anyone thing but really to everything, being a husband, father, son, friend, firefighter, photographer etc.

My goal is to be able to look back and say ya I'm better at that than I was last year. It seems like a much more reasonable way to go about this.

I selected today's image because it reminds me of thinking of the year to come. There is a long road, you don't really know where it will take you and along that road will be some storms and uncertainty. But if you stick to it it will take you to a beautiful place. And along the way if you take time to stop and look around the whole journey is beautiful.

Thank you to everyone who is a part of my life. You all mean so much to me.

Thank you also to everyone who comes to this blog. Your comments and friendship are what keeps me and this blog going!

I hope that everyone has a great 2010 !!!

Hi everyone-

I hope you all had a great weekend. I was a bit under the weather but got to spend a lot of time with my girls so it ended up being a great weekend.

And for you gamers out there I also upgraded to Play Station 3 and got Modern Warfare 2. AWESOME!!!!!!!!

On Saturday afternoon Cree was getting her nails painted by her mom and I wanted to capture a few images. Cree wasn't overly excited about that idea. So actually capturing the images was quite a task which ended with me standing on the bathroom vanity with on leg and the other across the room against the wall shooting almost straight down on the two of them who were sitting on the floor.

Cree though that was just crazy so she loosened up a bit and a few of the images came out ok. During the process though I was able to catch a few other images that were a bit more serious.

These were taken at ground level with me in the bathroom and Cree in the doorway looking in. I just replaced the vanity lights with 4 100 watt incandescent soft white bulbs so the light was very bright and soft. It was camera left and up pretty high. It made for some bright but nice light falling onto Cree's face.

The resulting images were a complete departure from what I had set out to capture. I am not really sure how to characterize her expressions in these shots but they really moved me.

I darkened them up a bit in the background and added a few sight textures to bring out the mood that had developed in these images.

I might add a some more info about how this was all accomplished later but for now I have to end the post as the sun is moving and between now and 10:15 will be shining directly into my eyes as I sit at the computer... So for now its off to rake some leaves....

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I'd like to start off today's post by saying happy anniversary to my wife Tonya. We have been married for 8 years today. Tonya has truly been my best friend since the day we met. It's because of her and her unbelievable support of everything I take on that I am able to spend so much time creating the images that I post here daily. Thank you so much for your support and love, you mean the world to me! Happy Anniversary!! I love you!

Today's post is a selection of image of Dora who we shot at the HP Video Production studios in Knoxville. Jim Johnson and his crew there were great. We spent a full day shooting at his state of the art facility.

The first set of images is the result of what was probably my most complicated lighting set up of the entire week. We placed Dora in a director's chair and used a total of 5 lights to create ambient light as well as to light Dora. I'll post an image after the series of what the ambient conditions were.









So in the next image you can see kinda of what the area we were shooting in looked like in normal lighting. The area was pretty crowded with equipment. I wanted to have that as a central part of the image but not to dominate it in a busy way so that it took over. I wanted to create a nice environmental portrait of a TV or movie star on the set.

We light Dora with a beauty dish with a sock on it. It was camera right just a touch off center. The remaining four lights were used to light and create shadow in the background. Two of the lights were "hot" lights being used for some video taping. The other two were strobe heads that we placed. Both had honeycomb grids on them to focus the light where we wanted it to go.
There was on hot and one strobe on each side of Dora in the background.

It took us quite a while to get everything positioned correctly and create the look I was going for. That involved moving the lights we were setting up as well as relocating the lights that were used as props in the background to create shadows, control hot spots and create a visually pleasing arrangement in the background.

Hi everyone-

Well the day I have been kinda not looking forward to has arrived. Today I go back to work at the FD. I have been off since the middle of September and it has been GREAT! But all good things come to an end I suppose...

So I thought this series of images would go along good with today, it's kind of how I feel. :0)

These images are of Alec Johnson, a fantastic photographer and all around amazing person. I am so glad that I finally got to meet him, learn from him, shoot with him and just hang out. I had a great time.

I'm sure he is going to be thrilled with these images (lol) but I thought the series was pretty cool. They were shot against a white backdrop and were lit with a ring flash and a big octabox.

The ring flash was the key light and was directly facing Alec at the same height as his head. The octabox was slightly camera left and higher than Alec with a downward angle to help fill in any shadow that was created by the ring light.

Then of course a few texture layers were added to add to the interesting vibe of these images.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Here is a great sunset that happened after a line of storms moved through our area last week.

I was at home with Cree and Tonya had just gotten back from a meeting. We were having dinner when I noticed that the house across the street was glowing a brilliant orange color.

I quickly realized one of two things was happening, either our house was on fire, which I knew it wasn't or there was a spectacular sunset brewing. I went to the deck out back and found that the whole sky was glowing orange. So as I passed through the house I said I've got to go shoot this and off I went.

I wasn't sure where I would go as we are in a pretty built up area. But one spot came to mind that I might be able to get up high enough to shoot over the city.

The light was continually changing so I shot this first image while I was on my way just to show what it looked like in case it changed before I could get to my destination.



I got out to this new development not far from us and was able to get just high enough to shoot above the city. The sky was spectacular in any direction you looked. I was really excited because this is not the type of sunset we get around here very often. So I began shooting and continued as the light continued to change. The next two images are stitched panoramas that were either 5 vertical shots or three horizontal depending on the image.





The last image was shot at a pond with a large fountain in it. I was on my way out and thought it might make a nice shot only to realize that in my rush I had forgotten my tripod so this is about as good as it could get.

I hope you enjoyed them! I haven't been this excited to go out and shoot nature in this area in a long time.

Please don't forget to check out all of the other Skywatch posts today by following the link here:----> SKYWATCH BLOG

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Well it's Thursday and that means its time for another Skywatch post!

Today's image was shot a few years ago along Montana's Rocky Mountain Front, west of Choteau.

In October there seems to be a lot of overcast days in this area. This of course was one of them But I set out to shoot some images anyway.

As it turns out there was a bit of a storm brewing and as I headed toward the mountains it began to push over and on tho the east.

Have a great Skywatch and dont forget to check out everyone else's images by clicking the link here:---> SKYWATCH

Hi everyone-

Sorry about the delay in today's post. I didn't get the chance to work up an image for today until this morning. I had an idea for how I wanted to treat the image but after a few attempts it just wasn't working out.

So it ended up taking most of the morning to figure that out. After abandoning that attempt I decided to try and give the image a bit more of a whimsical or fairy take look to it.

I thought that might work for this image as the girls were kind of looking up in wonder at the rain that was beginning to fall.

I also would like to take the opportunity to thank Bryan Allen for promoting both my work and my blog in his post today. I also would like to add that these images would not have been possible without him working with me to create them in the first place.

Thanks Bryan!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I hope everyone is doing well this morning. If your in our neck of the woods...stay inside! it is hazy, hot and humid here and when I say hot were talking 90's...no time to be outside...lol I'm taking advantage of the weather to try and get a bit caught up on editing and posting today.

So on to today's image...

I am continuing with the shoot we did with Savanah and Shay along the Rocky Mountain Front west of Choteau, MT. As I said yesterday we rushed to get to this spot in time to get some shots before the sunset went away and we got clobbered with a thunderstorm.

Initially we were looking to shoot the girls with a nice sunset in the background, but as the weather rapidly developed we realized it wouldn't be the case. As a matter of fact if we didn't do something quickly we wouldn't get any more images that night period.

So initially we set out with a beauty dish as our light source and me shooting a 70-200mm 2.8 on my D700. We used pocket wizards to trigger the light.

My initial intention was to get the girls walking along a prairie road with a dramatic sunset behind them. But several factors just weren't working out. The skies were rapidly changing, the distance was to great and made the girls look way to small in the image and the light wasn't really believable.

Since I had initially been shooting from on top of a vehicle We moved the vehicle closer to keep the leading lines of the two tracks that made up the 'road'. But it just wasn't working.

After abandoning the vehicle I was shooting down at the level of the girls and things were looking a bit better. The shot was still just not looking right.

At that point Bryan suggested switching to his camera. He was shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 lens. I switched over, set the lens to 24mm, got the exposure dialed in and we suddenly had a much better image.

We now had the girls as the main subject and not the sky, which was the case the original set up.

We finished out the shoot this way and I am really happy we did. Tomorrow I'll talk more about the actual set up and lighting set up.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

As many of you know this past July Bryan Allen joined me in Montana for some fun and shooting for just over a week. Bryan is a fantastic photographer and great friend who live in Knoxville, TN. He is an amazing people photographer and teacher. please make sure to check out his work, you will love it.

One of the fun things I had lined up was a shoot with my cousins Savanah and Shay. I only had a mild plan in mind for what we would do. Other than that I thought we would wing it and see what happened. We brought a long some props and a few changes of clothing.

Well we were out for a few hours and decided it was time to head back to town and get some dinner, a change of clothes and then head back out toward the mountains for sunset.

Well as luck would have it we were running late from a longer dinner than we had planned. So as we were driving the 20 miles out to the mountains the sunset was fast developing before us. Not necessarily a problem abut a line of thunderstorms were moving through and were really threatening to put the kabash on the whole sunset.

So we dropped back and punted. And I think it really worked out well for us. We just stopped along side the road, went out into the field and began shooting. The results were very cool.

All of the images in this series are a joint effort between Bryan and I to create the final image. As I post them I will explain more about what we did to create them.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Thanks to all of you who emailed or commented on Facebook about my Dad. He is doing well. The hip replacement surgery went smoothly and the doctor said everything looked great. He rested fairly comforably throughout the afternoon and evening.

Today he started therapy and will continue learning to walk with the new hip today and tomorrow. He should go home on Saturday and then will continue therapy for several weeks a few days a week.

He was in good spirits and seemed to be doing quite well. Thanks again to everyone that asked about him, he was glad to hear from all of you.

Today's image was shot from a bluff south east of Fairfield, Montana called the Fairfield Bench. This was the first day of Bryan Allen's trip to Montana. He had come from some really warm weather to the low 70's and no humidity. Once we started driving toward Choteau we noticed these storms moving out of the mountains and across the prairie lands.

I figured this would be a good spot to shoot from so we headed in that direction. Well the temperature dropped to the low 60's and the wind was around 30mph gusts. It was quite a change....I said well Bryan, welcome to Montana!

There was cool images to be shot in any direction. This one was looking to the south at Square Butte, a local landmark that looked a bit ominous in the storm. I hope you enjoy...

Make sure you take the opportunity to check out all the other cool Skywatch Friday Blog posts starting at 2:30 today by clicking the link here:----> SKYWATCH FRIDAY

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I'm going to finish out the week with two really cool images of Chad and Erin Fuller, of Fuller Edge Photography. These images were shot inside The Downtown a very hip cocktail lounge in downtown Las Vegas Freemont Street area.



Not only are these guys fantastic photographers but also great models. They knew just how to move and pose for the best shots.



The lighting and art work in The Downtown were very nice and added the perfect dramatic background for these images.

Have a great weekend!