Hi Everyone-

Today's images were shot on our recent family trip to Walt Disney World. More specifically they were shot in Disney's Animal Kingdom.

While we walked through the Dinoland section of the park I noticed this orange and green wall that seemed to go with the clothes that Cree had on that day. She was really ready to keep moving so I was only able to get one shot off while she was fully engaged with me. Then she gave me the I'm done look and walked away.



Later on in the day while we were walking around in the Asia themed area of the park I noticed a very cool wall outside of the restrooms. Conveniently for us it had a bench built in. So we stopped and played around for a few minutes and got the images of Tonya and I with Cree.





One thing that I always try to do when we are traveling or even out and about in our own area is to look for cool backgrounds and textures that I can incorporate into fun images of the family.

Have a great day!!

Hi everyone-

Yesterday we left the Disney parks for the day and headed over to Universal and Islands of Adventure. While I tend to like Disney a bit more we had a great time.

First of all the weather was perfect. Around 70 and not a cloud in the sky. Secondly and almost as important, there was not a large crowd. At no point did we wait even ten minutes for anything,

After we arrived in the morning we headed right over to Islands of Adventure and specifically the Dr. Seuss area. It was awesome. Not only did the kids love it but we practically had the place to our selves. Most rides we actually rode alone and for a good hour there was only a handful of people in the area.

It couldn't have worked out better.

Just after lunch we had a few minutes while everyone was getting lunch cleaned up and hit the restrooms. While everyone was doing that Cree and I found an area of open shade with some cool colors on the ground or in the background. Something that was easy to do in this part of the park.

Cree recently got a new pair of shoes that are quite sparkly and light up. Well they were perfect for a little photo fun. So while we waited I found an area that I liked and we began shooting. That lasted about 10 minutes before everyone else was ready to go.

Cree had fun and we got a few cool shots.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Yesterday, which was day three of SNOWMAGEDDON 2010, everyone was home so we got to play a little, have a nice lunch and take a few pictures before I headed in to work for the night.

During all of that I was outside trying to expand the road and driveway back to its normal size with the snow blower. While I was outside Cree decided that it would be nice to get all "beautiful" for daddy.

So while I was gone her and Tonya painted her nails and she put on her pretty dress that I got her recently in Nashville. When I came in she very daintily showed off her beautiful dress and nails to me.

Of course I had to get a few pictures. However she wasn't really in the mood for any posed "pretty" pictures. This was more of a fun goofing off kind of day.

So here's a few from our 5 min photo session. They were all lit with natural light from the kitchen door. I was actually outside kneeling on the deck and Cree was in the house. I wasn't able to come in because I had on my fire gear which was full of snow from my little project. But it seems to have worked out ok.

Have a great day!!

Hi everyone-

Today wraps up some images that I shot of Cree this week. We had a lot fun fun with this little impromptu photo session.

Today is a short post because i have a TON of photo editing to do and have to get to it!

I hope you have a great day and weekend!

Hi everyone-

Last night we went to the mall to pick up Cree's Christmas dress. We decided to walk around a little bit and show Cree where Santa will sitting.

Well much to our surprise and even more to Cree's Santa was already there. When Tonya said oh look he's here Cree said "HE"S HERE!?!" and got real close to mommy.

It was pretty funny. So we walked up and talked to him for a while. Cree was completely silent while daddy and Santa had a great conversation about Christmas and Disney World and what time if year is best in Florida. Who new that Santa winters in FLA!

So in the end Cree got a coloring book and said she would like to come back. So I guess we'll try a few more times and eventually I think she'll go for a picture with him.

As soon as we walked away, just as Santa predicted, she was back to her normal self laughing at the reindeer and snowmen.

Have a great day!

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-

Last night we spent the evening at the Great York Interstate Fair. We had a good time. We saw some live music, had a steak sandwich from the York Firefighters, checked out some animals, and road some rides.

Cree was especially excited. She had driven past the fair a few times with Tonya and was really ready to get there. Her hands down favorite was this "ride" where you get in a harness and your attached to rubber bands and you can jump and bounce and flip. She LOVED it. Although she wouldn't flip, she said she was too little for that yet.

I think the highlight for Tonya was when Cree and I were looking at the dairy cows and we were petting one on the nose and she sneezed all over me. Good times.

Have a Great Day!

HI everyone-

Hope you had a great week! Starting tomorrow at 10AM the Yorkfest Arts Festival gets underway along the York County Heritage Rail Trail in downtown York. I'd like to invite you all to attend!

It's rain or shine and it looks like we have the chance to get a little wet tomorrow. But not to worry there are a ton of great artists as well as food and entertainment.

This year I am located at KING STREET and the Rail Trail. This is a bit further down the trail from last years spot. I am on the creek side. Just look for the huge battling elk photograph and you'll find me!

Hope to see you there! If I don't have a great weekend!

Today's image was shot this past week and I love it. We had a slot of fun shooting these images and this was one of my favorites because it captured a great moment where we went from fun to shear terror and back to fun in less than 30 seconds. It also sums up how I feel while I rush around getting all the last minute details taken care of for the show this weekend.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Quick post today. Here is another family shot from the shoot I did a bit earlier in the week.

Don't forget to come out to the Yorkfest Arts Festival this weekend along the Rail Trail in downtown York!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Thanks for all the feedback yesterday on the series of thunderstorm images. They were great fun to create and post. I thought since this week has had a series of dark images that I would end on a brighter more uplifting image of the girls.

This image was shot in the Priest Butte area just outside of town. There is a really cool old grain elevator, which you can see there and some railroad tracks and great scenery in any direction.

We shot these images around 3 in the afternoon and used a large scrim and a few reflectors to control the lighting. Post processing on this image was basically cleaning up the image, playing with local contrast, adjusting the colors and then adding the textures.

Hope you enjoy, have a great day and a better weekend!!

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-

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-

Today's images were shot earlier this month at the North American Indian Days in Browning, MT on the Blackfeet Nation.

I found the two images interesting because of the vast difference between them.

So many of the Indian Nations are struggling to keep their cultures alive within their people, especially their young people.

This year I was so happy to see a huge increase in the amount of children participating in the pow wow. More than any other year that I can remember. I hope this is a trend that continues.

While most of the tribes struggle in some way to keep their culture alive all are developing or have programs in place to do just that. But I think that the most important part is family involvement and passing traditions and culture onto their children. Many families are obviously making this a priority from what I have seen.

But modern ways and influences are obviously something that will be hard to balance with. Technology has brought the world to the door steps of these nations. While this sounds great many of the people who live there would like some sort of balance between their traditions and culture and that of the modern world.

Today's two images I think speak to these points. The first shows family involvement, and the passing on of the culture and traditions to the youngest of family members. And it represents the innocence that comes with childhood.

The second image shows the juxtaposition of the influence of the modern, outside world on the older youth of the various nations.

I didn't set out to capture images that showed this struggle when I was shooting but through the editing process I noticed these two images and the story that they seemed to tell.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

As some of you know my friend Bryan Allen joined me in Montana for a few days to do a little recreational shooting. We photographed the area, the town, the mountains, Glacier National Park and the North American Indian Days.

All of the places we shot were pretty much void of people with the exception of the Indian Days Pow Wow. Well for those of you who know Bryan, you know that he is hands down one the of the best people shooters out there. So to come to Montana and not have any people for Bryan to shoot would just not be right.

So I asked my cousins if they would be our models for the day. The happily agreed. So we went down to their house got everything ready, came up with some loose concepts and headed out to see what we could come up with.

The girls were great sports and really put up with almost everything we threw at them. We shot at two different locations and ended up shooting almost till dark ending the shoot with a rather hair raising few moments. But more on that later...

I have a ton of images to go through and process from these shoots but I wanted to share one of the images right away. So here are the girls at our first location. It is the old grain mill that you saw in yesterdays image.

I hope you enjoy this series as much as we enjoyed shooting it.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

We had a great 4th of July here in Choteau, Montana. The celebration starts here on the 3rd. The town has an art and craft show, called Art On The Green, Keg Hockey, Music In The Park, The Boxing Smoker and the Street Dance at the American Legion.

Also my cousins have a great family reunion picnic. That is the most fun part of the day because we have a lot of fun, get to see family from all over the country and of course eat a ton of great food.

On Saturday the day starts with a Run and Walk (we skipped that...lol) and then the parade. After the parade there is a Steak Fry in the park but we head to another cousins house for one more picnic. Then after that its off to the rodeo. That is always a great time.

The evening ended at another family gathering at my cousin Laura's house. There we made s'mores lit fireworks and of course ended the evening watching the towns fireworks display.

The weekend ended on Sunday with a majority of the immediate family departing for home. My girls, my sister and her son and my dad all headed home to PA to get back to the real world while my mom and I hang out for another week or so.

So here is are a few images from the weekend. There are tons more that will come out over the next year. Hope you had a great weekend and Independence Day!

Have a great day!

Waiting for the parade to get started...


Pony rides in the park...


My little 4th of July Princess...


Can't forget the great rodeo action...

Hi everyone-

Yesterday we had a really fun family day. We basically just relaxed at the house. in the morning then headed to the park for a picnic lunch and a little playing in the Spring Creek. After that it was back home for naps, a little yard work a great dinner and then off to the movies to see UP.

All in all it was a great summer day. The weather was perfect. But what was the best part for me is to see my daughter playing and loving some of my favorite spots as a kid.

There are a few things here in Choteau, MT that I clearly remember as huge parts of my childhood. One of them was tubing on the Spring Creek. This is a little creek that meanders through town. Its not big, not deep and doesn't always have water in it.

But As a kid I spent hours and hours floating down the length of the creek that boarders the city park. We would float to one spot where it got a bit over grown and then we would get out very afraid to go any further, unsure of what might get us in there.

After that we'd walk back up to the bridge and do it all again. Cree loved it.

After our day in the park she took a much needed nap and then we played and she took a trip to the grocery store with grandma.

After dinner we headed to the Roxy Theater to see UP. I loved going to this theater as a kid and it hasn't changed one bit.

So al in all it was just a great family day. The ones that only summer can bring and there isn't a better place for that than Choteau, Montana.

Have a Great Day!

Hi everyone-

Last week I had the great opportunity to photograph Cree while she was hard at work, well play, being a mommy. One of her favorite pass times is taking care of her babies. Since she has recently gone through potty training, her babies are too.

And man do they poop alot. Most days no sooner than she gets the new diaper on and BOOM, more poop. I bet some of you wished you could go like that...lol

Anyway, I quietly laid on my back with my head propped up against the wall out in the hallway while she carried on her motherly duties. It is so much fun to experience these little moments. She concentrated so hard on getting everything right and was very caring towards her baby, in her own way as you will see in today's images.


First we try the big girl potty:



But that doesn't seem to be working, so we'll switch to the little potty to see if that helps:



Yup, that did the trick! Bend over so I can clean your little butt:



Look Pop POOOOOOOP!!!!



Ok let's get this cleaned up:



Don't worry her legs are supposed to bend up to her face:



Ok let's take a look, did I get it all???



Ooooooooops, missed a spot:



Alright, how does this thing go:



There we go nice new diapie:



Got to make sure this thing is on good. Oh don't worry she's got a strong face and neck...



All done, now lets get this floor cleaned up...



This was so much fun. I love to watch Cree play and wonder what must be going on in that little mind. Man I wish my only job was playing all day! Oh wait, ummm never mind...LOL

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

While I was editing the images from this week I couldn't help but think of the times when Birthdays were the best. Looking at all of the images of these guys just having a great time, opening presents, eating cupcakes, climbing all over the fire engine and playing like there is no tomorrow, brought back a lot of great memories of days gone by.

Obviously birthdays seems to diminish in their importance as time marches on, but looking at images like these can't help but bring you back to a time in your life when things were so much simpler. All you had to do was wake up, eat, play and sleep. And everything was perfect, everything was amazing and each day you were blown away by something new.

The only thing that really brings that back is having children of your own. I don't know if I would have said this a few years ago, but I get it now. They are the one gift that makes you experience all those feelings and emotions all over again for yourself and by watching them live it out for the first time each day.

Have a great day!