Hi everyone-

Today I thought I would take the same images from yesterday's post and go about processing them in a different way. Same images, totally different look.

The basis for the look is a vertical blur. This is normally done in camera but I have decided to do it via photo shop. Once the image is blurred it becomes an abstract opening to door to just about any type of processing you can come up with.

The first image is pretty much just the blurred shot. The later images are all the same but processed an similar but different ways.

The nice part about this technique is that you really can't go wrong. But some will turn out better than others. I just like to experiment and let the process go where it takes me. The results are never quite the same.

Have a great day!

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-

Today's image is one more from the e-shoot with Carolyn and Floyd this past week. I wanted to try something a little different so this image was a long exposure coupled with a little light painting.

But it didn't end there I also shot a few other long exposure images of the scene and incorporated those into the final image to "fix" some problem areas.

Have a great day and a great weekend!




Here's one more...

This was shot on our way into the city for an evening of shooting. We're crossing the State Street Bridge with the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in the background...

Hi everyone-

Today's post was shot on Tuesday during Carolyn and Floyd's e-shoot. We had a great time and shot at a bunch of different locations. There will be a ton of images to come from this shoot so stay tuned! Don't forget to check out the SKYWATCH BLOG and see great skies from around the world.

In the comments from the post yesterday Larry asked me to talk a little about how the image was created. So here is a bit of information on how it was created.

First off here is the SOOC image:



This is a diagram of the basic set up:



So here is the story- Over the past three years Floyd purchased and restored this vehicle. So while we were shooting he asked if I would shoot some images of him and the car. We were at the Harrisburg Train and Bus Station which is a fantastic location to shoot.

The car was parked outside of the main entrance of the building. As you can see in the images there are a lot of lights that hang under the canopy. I wanted the light that I was going to use to look natural like it might be coming from one of those lights.

To do that I used a beauty dish with a diffuser on it to soften it up a bit. I had my assistant Kayla hold it up as high as she could so it would kinda of shine down on the car. She was at about a 45 degree angle from the passenger side front corner of the car.

That was it. We took several shots and adjusted the location and intensity of the light.

Once I got the image back and on the computer I went to work created the look I wanted. It had to have a vintagey feel to it so I altered the color a bit by desaturating and warming it up slightly.

Once that was done I removed some of the background objects that I didn't like. The rest of the work was local contrast adjustments to bring out the details.

It ended up being a pretty simple image to pull off and finish.

Here is the final image (which is different than yesterday's image.)

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-

Hope you all had a great week.

Today starts my normal 4 days off from the fire department and boy am I happy they are here. There is a ton of stuff to get done for the show next week as well as stuff around the house. But The best part of this weekend is I am off the same days as Tonya so we get a whole weekend together. It will be great to have some good family time with no real place to go!

That doesn't happen that often.

So today's image is another installment of the Bison Art series that I started earlier in the week. This image was shot last fall in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley. One of the most beautiful places in the park and the country in my opinion.

The image was initially shot at a slow shutter speed while panning with the running buffalo.

Have a great weekend!!

Oh and don't forget the Yorkfest Arts Festival in downtown York, PA next weekend. (29,30 AUG) I hope to see you there!

Hi everyone-

Today's image also started out as a photograph and was then 'painted' in Photoshop.

I decided to try a tighter crop on part of the bison's head. It seems to have turned out pretty good.

This one was a bit tougher to create though because of the amount of dark detail. It was hard to see what had been painted and what was not. So in the end what I thought would be a quicker job ended up taking just as long as the other images had.

***ON ANOTHER NOTE***

For those of you close by the York, PA area next weekend August 29th and 30th I will be displaying and selling my work at the Yorkfest Arts Festival along the Codorus Creek in downtown York. I would love to see you stop by and say hi!!

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Just a quick post this morning as I have to get on the road for work today.

I am continuing to experiment with this painting technique that I have come up with. I have a few more in the works so your feedback on what you think would be great.

I hope you have a great day and if you're in our area find some water to cool down in or stay inside. I don't know if I'll be lucky enough to do either but hopefully we don't have many calls today.

Have a great day!!

HI everyone-

Hope you all had a great weekend! I spent much of mine preparing files for printing and framing for the upcoming Yorkfest Arts Festival in just under two weeks. There is a ton to get ready, but it is always fun.

While I was going through some files I came across a few bison images that I liked but were missing something as straight photographs. So I set out to change them up a bit. I ended up "painting" them in photoshop and went from there.

I would love to hear what you think of the finished product!

Have a great day!

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 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-

I hope yo all had a great weekend and Monday. Sorry I missed yesterday's post. I went up to visit with my dad who is still recovering from hip surgery but seems to be doing very well.

Today's images were shot in Glacier National Park on Logan Pass. There were a lot of mountain goats in the area and they were pretty animated, chasing each other, playing and climbing on some very steep cliffs.

It was a lot of fun to watch.

In the first image see if you can spot all the goats. There is actually one more than you will be able to count, but during this image he was hiding behind a rock.

In the second image these two kids were running and playing and just bounding through the beautiful summer day. They were a lot of fun to watch and photograph.

I hope you have a great day, thanks for stopping by!

Hi everyone-

Just a quick post today. Leaving to go visit with my father and family. He is having a hip replacement today.

This image was shot this summer at the North American Indian Days on the Blackfeet Nation, MT.

As you know great light is really important for creating a good portrait. Well, at this location lighting and access with an unobstructed view are a bit tough.

But if you hit it at the right time there is a perfect spot that where the light is just right as the sun begins to set. Depending on the weather and what is going on around the area it might not last for long but when its good, its very good.

I try to get that spot every year and have been pretty successful most of the time.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I hope you had a great weekend.

I want to start out to day's post by saying Happy Birthday to my mom. My mom is truly one of my best friends and I look forward to every conversation, visit or call. She is responsible for so much of the prosperity and love in my life and I can not thank her enough for that. You mean the world to me! Have a great birthday!

Today's image was shot at the North American Indian Day's this year. I hope you enjoy it!

Oh and for those of you wondering, Naangide e Dibishkaawin Ingashi is Happy Birthday Mother, roughly translated to Ojibwe (Chippewa)

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-

Today's post is a big one albeit a bit late for you guys on the east coast. We have some internet access issues right now that are causing me to seek out some wifi hot spots for access. So I am writing to you today from the sidewalk in front of the Choteau, MT Public Library.

It's not a bad spot to post from. The temps are in the mid 60's and town is starting to come alive. I am adjacent to the Teton County Court House which is a very cool old building sitting in the center of a circle that divides Main Street. I have been told but have no way of confirming that my grandfather is one of the men who planted the huge pine trees that dot the outline of the circle.

So today's post is a big one for me. It is my 500th post on this blog. Going into this blog project I wasn't sure what it would be like or what would come of it at all. So to make it to this point is pretty a pretty cool accomplishment I believe. I have been posting for almost 2 full years.

During the process I have meet and talked to many great folks from around the world and have struck up friendships that will last for many years to come.

Thank you to everyone who stops by each day, weekly or whenever you get a chance. Your viewership, support, feedback and friendship have made the work that goes into this blog worth every second.

I hope to continue the blog for many years to come. I have some plans for some upcoming changes that I think will improve the viewing and reading experience. But dont expect any of that until at least August. There is to much to be out seeing and photographing for the next month or so to be stuck inside re creating my blog...lol

So again thanks to everyone for everything. I really have enjoyed your company here.\

On to to today's images. We have been traveling around South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana for the last week all to take up some time before visiting the Little Bighorn National Monument and attending the Battle of the Little Bighorn re enactment near Hardin, MT.

Well we arrived just in time for the re enactment to begin. It was a great show as not only did they re enact the battle but created a narrated living history of the events leading up to that fateful day. From Lewis and Clark through the battle of the Greasy Grass and the Souix called it all the events played out before us.

I highly recomend checking out this re enactment. After is was over we went to the real battle field where we learned there was also another reenactmant that takes place in the area. So we will definitely be back to check out that as well. In a futur post I will provide some more information as to websites or numbers that you can get additional information if you want to.

These images are just a few of the many I shot during the show.

Have a great day!!

Hi everyone-

I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was pretty busy and lonely as the girls were away and I had to work. I was sure happy to see them come home. But I did get a bunch of stuff done so it wasn't all bad I suppose.

So today's images were shot within a few minutes of the images from last week. Interestingly they were all shot in the first hour of the first day at the ranch and are really a few of my favorite from the whole trip.

Today's shots were a few things that I noticed while we were talking with Dallas and his son in law John while they were getting the horses ready for the day.

I love old spurs so these are really up there as some of my favorite shots.

Have a great day!

HI everyone-

Here are a few more images of Dallas that I shot and have been playing around with over the last few days.

I would love to hear your feedback on what you like and don't like.

Have a great day!