Hi everyone-

Last month we spent a few days in the Great Smoky Mountains and though we didn't do the park justice we got to travel around a see a good portion of it. At least to get the lay of the land and get some better intel for future trips.

Even though it was not an intense photo trip I was able to come away with a few images that I really like. Today's is one of those images.

I am not sure exactly what it is about this one that makes me like it but it keeps coming back as one of my favorites. I don't even know what kind of tree this is but I really liked the red berries against the deep blue sky.

Hi everyone-

Today's post was shot just after we had wrapped up shooting what you saw yesterday. While we were shooting that image Josh Berardi had set up another area to shoot at. So when we were done we quickly went over to that set up and began shooting again.

I don't seem to have an image of the exact set up here But I believe it was shot with just one very large parabolic umbrella as the key light.

There was a backdrop, which was essentially a piece of fabric hung in the back ground. They picked this fabric because it complimented Dora's dress. I included a wider shot to show you how the backdrop was set up.

Hi everyone-

Last night I arrived back from Knoxville or Knox Vegas as they like to call it. The trip was amazing! started out in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with my family and then traveled to Knoxville to attend the Bryan Allen Location People II workshop.

It was fantastic. Hands down THE best workshop experience I have ever had. Bryan worked his tail off to make sure that we not only had everything we needed, but got the most out of the week possible. As well you couldn't help but be effected by his kind nature and giving spirit.

If you ever get the opportunity to attend one of Bryan's workshops you have to do it. They are fantastic! More about them in coming posts.

Today's image was shot on our first night while we were doing some single light studio work. The image is of Vincent a fantastic model and super nice guy.

I am trying to figure out how to present the images from the work shop over the next few days but check back as there will definitely be lots more to come!

Have a great day!



Oh, here's a diagram of how the lighting was set up....

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-

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-

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-

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-

Hope you had a great week. Thanks for all of the skywatch comments yesterday. I really appreciate your feedback.

Today is going to be a quick post because I have to get out and get the grass cut before the rain comes in about an hour or so.

These images were shot of Laura last week in York. We traveled around the city and shot at a few locations. Nothing fancy, just available light and a few reflectors.

I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Oh and have a great day today!

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-

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-

The other day I did a shoot with Laura. We had a great time and Laura did a super job.

We shot a various locations around York. Although we thought we might get rained out a few time we did just fine.

I just started processing these images but here are a few of the stand outs thus far.

Have a great weekend!!

Hi everyone-

Today's image started out as an experiment and really ended up looking nothing like what I had set out to do.

I figured out during the process that I did not have the proper components to create what I had in mind. So that will have to wait. I am excited about the prospect of creating something completely new however, so I'm sure you'll be seeing and reading more about that as time goes on.

Back to today's image...

The Blackfeet Sentries stand at the four main entrances to the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana. These larger than life statues were created, on a commission from the Blackfeet Nation, by artist Jay Polite Laber. Jay was born on the Blackfeet reservation but after his families home was destroyed by a flood moved to New Hampshire. Eventually Jay returned home to Montana.

Jay attended college at and is now a professor of art at the Salish Kootenai College in Montana.

The statues are made entirely of cars damaged in the 1963 flood on the reservation. The base on which they stand was created from rocks taken from the walls of a local mission school.

Interestingly I believe it was the mission school that my grandfather attended in his childhood. I am trying to see if I can substantiate that fact.

Have a great day!



For those of you who might be interested, here is the SOOC version of the image.

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-

I hope you had a great weekend. I think summer is fully settled in here in PA. Although it seems in Montana and Wyoming it's still trying to figure out if it wants to be spring. My cousins reported that they were getting snow on Saturday morning in Choteau, MT and I saw pictures of at least 3 inches in Yellowstone.

I wish I would have stayed just a few days more. I love when it snows in Yellowstone.

So today's images were taken at an undisclosed location the I visited this year. I am sure some of you will recognize this place right away while some may have to do a little thinking to figure it out.

Let me know if you get it!!

Have a great day!





Oh...here's a clue...

Hi everybody-

I finally arrived in Montana yesterday and had sometime to look at some of the images that I shot while I was on my way out.

Since yesterday was my shortest drive I took the opportunity to stop at the Little Bighorn National Monument. I have been there a few times before but always take the chance to stop and visit again.

I arrived just after the monument opened and there were only a few people there and they were all in the visitors center. So I walked up to last stand hill and walked the trails completely alone.

It was really peaceful walking along the trail. I was able to walk and read all of the interpretive panels, take photographs and take in the views completely alone.

It was a great way to see the monument and reflect on the events which took place there.

"Wowasake kin slolyapo wowahwala he e" "Know the power that is peace" -Black Elk




Have a great day!