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-

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 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-

Today's image was shot in Choteau, MT this past July. There is a corridor of rail road tracks that run through the center of town. Along these tracks are several businesses that load and unload products to rail cars.

One of them is the grain towers. Here there are several old granaries as well as three large concrete towers. Sprinkled throughout the area are old out buildings. It makes a pretty cool setting to shoot photographs.

One night when the sun was beginning it's decent I headed down to that area as it usually lights up pretty nicely, especially against a stormy sky to the south or east.

On this particular day I got a special treat in this old farm truck. I didn't have a lot of time to shoot but was able to get several nice shot of this cool truck.

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

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-

Well I finally have made it back to York, PA. A bit under duress but I was excited to get to see my girls and Tehya. I got home last night around 7, which wasn't so bad.

But back to work today! I normally like to have a few days to get back on EST but sometimes that doesn't work out so great.

Today's image is of an old mill near the town of Choteau, MT. For those of you who might be familiar with the area this mill is near Priest Butte and can be seen from Hwy. 89 just south of town.

In the future I'll be sharing some images from a shoot that Bryan Allen and myself did here with my little cousins. It was really cool.

Don't forget to check out the cool images on the blogs of everyone who participates in Skywatch Friday. Check them out by clicking here: -----> Skywatch Friday

Have a great day!!

Hi everyone-

Yesterday was a nearly perfect day here in Montana. The weather was cool and the sky was sunny. A few afternoon clouds and isolated storms created dramatic skies for a while. Then a cool evening with a nice sunset.

I picked up m friend Bryan (BA to some of you) at the airport in the late afternoon, we headed up to Choteau where got got situated and then had a nice dinner at the Elk Country Grill. After that we headed out towards the mountains for a drive to "see what we could see".

Along the way we stopped to check out an unobstructed view of the mountains. While we were there I saw this interesting looking fence set up. I have seen a ton of fences out here but never one that was like this.

Today we are heading up to Glacier National Park and will be shooting there for a few days as well as the North American Indian Days Powwow on the Blackfeet Nation. It should be a great time.

I'm not so sure of the Internet situation up there so I'll check it out and post if possible. If I can then the next post will be on Monday.

Have a great day!!

HI everyone-

Did you ever think that you needed a vacation from vacation?? Well I am about there. Over the last few days I have been suffering from issue after issue after the crash of my main external hard drive.

On the night it happened I got about 2 hours of sleep (July 3). I spent every free second on the 4th trying to retrieve the data. And most of the 5th trying to make heads or tale of the salvaged data and trying to put it back into some semblance of order.

Well that has continued through today. I really started to make progress. I bought a new external hard drive. Started backing everything up to it. And even though the recovered files were a total mess and completely renamed I was happy to have them back.

Then tonight while i was editing and importing images in Lightroom, the power went out. Only enough to go completely off and then turn right back on. It was just enough time to shut off the power supply to the external hard drive. It was also enough to break the connection between Lightroom and that drive.

Well that was enough to completely screw up the catalog, to the point were I have deleted it and started a new one.

In both instances I lost data. What a huge pain in the butt. And we are talking thousands of images here. So you can understand the considerable amount of stress that this has created. Thus the vacation from the vacation thought.

Hopefully if I just hang on tight, use my head and think about where I am going and what is coming next I can work through this and move ahead. Much like the bull rider in the image.

I am picking up my friend and amazing photographer Bryan Allen tomorrow in Great Falls. Then we will spend the next few days in Glacier National Park and at the North American Indian Days in Browning, MT.

It should be a great time. Hope you enjoy today's photograph.

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-

Today I am writing from the lobby of our hotel in Missoula, MT. We came down here yesterday for a fun day with the kids. Missoula is a great town and there are a ton of things to do with or without the kids.

But we hit a few kid friendly spots, had a great Mexican lunch and then after a much needed nap we hit the water slides.
They, well we all had a blast.

Today we are heading to the Elk Country Visitor Center to let them check out all the animals and displays. We secretly checked it out yesterday during nap time.

Then I am not sure where we will head after that. But we have to be at my cousin's house at 7 for a picnic.


So today's post was shot back in May while I was in Choteau, MT. In these images are my cousins Freda and Bobby. The images were shot on their property just after sunset.

They live in a very cool little spot at the mouth of a canyon leading back into the Bob Marshal Wilderness. It is surrounded by mountains and the Teton River. I am not sure it gets much better!!

Bobby owns and operates a masonry company that specializes in great (real) stone work. What they can do with stone is really amazing. Freda works in "guest services" for a local ranch.

I lit these images with a single softbox and a reflector to fill in the shadows a bit. The camera was a D700 with 70-200 2.8vr handheld. The strobe was tripped with pocket wizards.

I hope you enjoy them, have a great day!

Oh don't forgett o check out the skywatch blog by clicking here: skywatch

Hi everyone-

Wow what an exciting day yesterday was here in Choteau, MT. This is a normally quiet town with a population of somewhere over 1,000 people.

Well just after noon 15 agencies worth of Law Enforcement swooped into town conducting simultaneous raids on a drug operation they had been investigating for several years.

They conducted raids in two towns and the county. Interestingly one of the arrests happen to take place less than a block from our house. One of the suspects happened to be driving down main street when they law caught up with him. Out of an unmarked pickup jumped two officers, guns drawn. They quickly took him into custody and disappeared.

All the while a DHS helicopter with men hanging out the sides with automatic weapons hovered overhead.

The raids lasted about 2 hours. The helicopter circled overhead and occasionally seemed to swoop in low to block roads or escape routes for suspects.

At one point one of the helicopters took a path over our house and was just above the trees max height was 30-40 feet over the house. We were outside and had to quickly retreat into the house to avoid the debris what was blowing all over. The kids strollers were outside and were picked up and blown to the neighbors yard. Tree branches were blown down and dust was every where.

This caused quite a stir in this normally quite town. Here are a few pics of when they were hovering over the house at a bit higher altitude.







So I did have a regular post set up for today. But I thought the action deserved to be posted right away. I had about 5 shots of a Grizzly that I had shot in Yellowstone ready. I am going to save most of them for another day but I still wanted to share one today.

This guy was about a 1/4 mile from where I shot the wolf images and taken about 15 minutes later. He had just emerged from the river and was heading up into the hills for the day.



Have a great day!

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-

I hope you're all having a great weekend. Great so far here.

Still in Choteau, MT until tomorrow morning. Then I'll be heading to Yellowstone Nation Park for a few days.

I'm sure it will be busy because of the holiday weekend but the weather forecast is for clouds, rain and possibly some snow so we'll see.

Today's images were shot yesterday along the Belview Road west of Choteau. These horses always seem to be in the same area near the road. I am not sure why as they have thousands of acres to roam. But we always see them in the same area.

I think they like to see the people passing by on the road.

Have a great weekend!!

Hi everybody-

It's another great day in Montana, crisp air, clear skies and fresh air.

Today's image was shot in last night just outside of Choteau, MT. I call the road the Farmington Road but I am sure it has a proer name of some sort.

Anyway this is a cool spot just off the road that I have photographed before. The sunset last night came together in about two hours. It had been clear al day long and I didn't think there would be much of a sunset at all. But about two hours before the clouds started moving in and just in the nick of time, pretty sunset.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Well I am here today patiently waiting for the snow that probably isn't going to come. Between staring out the window and going through all of my information for my tax preparations I took a break and looked through some images from the rodeo I posted last week.

There are a few more i wanted to share. I hope they aren't getting old. I am a huge rodeo fan so if it gets to be too much just let me know.

Today's image is of a clown distracting a bull so the cowboy can safely recover from being bucked off and get to safety.

It's a dangerous but very important job, one I have a lot of respect for. It takes lot to put yourself in between something that is pissed off and out weighs you by many tons and someone who is laying on the ground depending on you to by them the time to get out of Dodge.

I also wanted to address a question that Woody posed yesterday in the comments section. He asked what my thoughts were on shooting RAW vs JPG or some other form of image.

Initially I rejected RAW, as many did, out of fear. What is it, what do I do with it, etc... But once I read enough about the 'wonders of RAW' I decided to try it out. What happened next was simply amazing. Of course the first thing I thought was why haven't I been using this for 2 years!?!

Using the RAW format has revolutionized my images. I strive to get the shot right in the field but that does not always happen. In the days of JPG or film, what you got was what you got. You had to make it work, do the best you could with post processing or scrap it altogether.

Now I can essentially re expose my image in photoshop by using the RAW converter. I can do it globally or I can process the image several times and make more local corrections or changes and the blend them together in photoshop later.

The possibilities are endless. I am not an expert be any stretch of the imagination in the use of the RAW converter or even everything I can accomplish with this format and tools. But doing the few things that I do know how to do is really unbelieveable.

So to answer your question simply I think RAW is the way to go. But there are a few complicators to just making an blanket statement like that... Fisrt off is that RAW files are a lot bigger than what you are using now so they will eat up storage space quicker. And secondly the Photoshop RAW converter now supports jpg images.

This means that you can now do things to jpg's that you couldn't before, at least easily. So now you have to decide what you want to use. Keep in mind that quality wise there is no comparison, RAW is the way to go.

If I am shooting for a client, or shooting on one of my trips for the purpose of creating images I always shoot in RAW. If I am shooting a fire, I might consider shooting jpg. (most of those images are not going to be printed huge) However I don't do it that often. I normally do that to conserve space if I am running out of memory.

I do shoot in jpg mode when we're on vacation and are just taking "Hey we were here type of shots".

Like I said I am not an expert in all things RAW, but those are just my thoughts. If anyone has anything to add please feel free to do so.

Hope that was helpful. Have a great day!