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-

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-

I am rounding out the thunderstorm shoot with Savanah and Shay today with something I think they're going to like. They're big fans of the movie Twilight, which was a big influence in this shoot, so I thought I'd up the game and make their very own Twilight poster.

In today's post there are three images. The SOOC raw image, the fully edited image and then the movie poster shot. The fully edited image took me about 3 hours to complete.

Its not that hard to create just very time consuming because of all the detail work that must go into it. I have a few presets that I have created or found that I like to use in Lightroom. Basically similar to an action in Photoshop, its a quick way to make a batch of images look the same with a file that tells the program what to make it look like. Thats probably not a great explanation.

So first I crop the iamge to what I like, then I clean it up. Remove dust, dirt, objects I don't like etc. Once that is done then I retouch the main subjects. That is the easy part.

The next step is what is time consuming. I basically do a few layers (at least) of local contrast enhancement. There is a ton of detail work to be done here so it takes a while.

Once that is done I play around with color and anything else I would like to change in the image. In this case I added lightning. Once that is done then I might have to go back and revisit some of the earlier steps again to blend the added elements nicely.

Once the editing is done I'll go back and look at it again and fix anything that doesn't look right, then I might add some textures or try to create an over all look or feel to the image. That could be another big project. but in these images it was pretty simple.

I hope that racks the surface of how these images were created.

Also today is the Skywatch Friday post so be sure to click the link and visit all the blogs for more great images involving the skies! Click here:----> SKYWATCH FRIDAY

Have a great day!

This is straight out of the camera:



This is the edited version:



And finally, the movie poster:

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 you might have noticed today's post is just a little late. Sorry about that but I just plum FORGOT!! Can you believe it?

I have been trying get a lot done around here (at the house) and got busy first thing this morning and before I knew it, it was the middle of the afternoon!

So anyway, today's image was shot on the Belview Road just out side of Choteau, Montana. ONe afternoon a pretty large thunderstorm moved through the area and Created some spectacular skies. This image is shot looking southwest toward the Sun River Valley west of Agusta, Montana.

The angle of the sun created a brilliant red sky as the rain fell from the clouds. I hope you enjoy this image as I was a bit on the nervous side as the lighting crashed around me.

Have a great day and don't forget to check out all the great Skywatch action be clicking here: --> SKYWATCH