From the archive |Summer 2010 Travel

Farmland and a desolate tree outside of Window Rock, AZ in the Navajo Nation

Imagine 14 days of skies as perfect as the picture above, driving around the southwestern United States just capturing everything that the eyes can feast one.  In the Summer of 2010 Ian, Tiffany and I did just that and it was a life changing experience.

Typical.  I swear I'm there, just behind the camera.  Grrr.

In mid July we drove from Atlanta to New Mexico to visit my parents home in Belen, NM. My parents moved out their in 2005 because of work,and I've fortunately been able to visit several times.  It was Tiffany's first time going anywhere west past Texas, and Ian hadn't been out this way since he was a pre-teen.  Going on a trip with other photographers always sound like a good idea, but you hear the horror stories of people who just can't get along because they are crammed in a car together for over 24 hours, they have different schedules and ideas, and also just in general personalities start clashing.  Ian and Tiffany were angels as travel partners, and it really rocked traveling out there with them. 

None the less, I really wanted to share some of the images I took during the trip.  We went to several places such as Meteor Crater, Window Rock, The Ice Caves, and some small place called the Grand Canyon.  Along with the images there will be a little excerpt about how cool the place was.

Photojournalism : Sports Photography

Our first assignment for photojournalism in school is to capture a team based sports event.  I love sports, I watch baseball and football and it rocks....but I don't really do sports photography so the assignment is very new to me.  Fred, a fellow classmate, hook me up with some sideline media passes for Clark University vs. Fort Valley and there couldn't of been a better day to have a football game.  The weather was perfect, the atmosphere was great, and the sun was bright as could be.  It was a full day of shooting iso 200, f2.8 at 1/2500~1/8000 and I'm pretty positive about the photos that came out of shooting.  Check out some of the results.

For sports fan, unfortunately Clark University lost 40-16 to Fort Valley.

20 minutes with Christina Lee

 
I love Lee, she's hilarious.  For those who don't know her, Lee is the residential artist and all around sassy awesome in our photography upper quarter class.  She is pretty much known throughout the school, and everyone gets along with her.  I also love the fact that she told me she disliked me once, before she knew me.  Cause I was that dude who had all the camera stuff, and I acted all snooty and high and mighty.  Of course that was for like a day, or maybe 10...than she gave me a second chance :).

Well Lee dropped by a few days ago to borrow a light, and we all hung out at my place.  Ian, Sterling, Tiff, Lee, and I talked movies, mayhem, and more.  Like all hippie fest (or how it seems to be) a Ukulele comes out and Lee starts jamming.  After the initial wail of Tiff screaming bloody murder about anyone who can play the Ukulele better than her (which is anyone who plays a guitar at all), I decided to take some photos of Lee.

And thus the title!  20 minutes of shooting Christina Lee.

For this shoot I broke out a Paul C Buff Parabolic Light Modifier that my friend Jamie let me borrow.  It's this uber huge umbrella light modifier that reflects a huge amount of light into a tinier than normal area.  Attached to my Norman ML600r, it was popping a crazy amount of light out and even provided a unique background.  Check out the photos!

Advance Portraiture Assignment 1 | Pet Portraits

The first assignment for our Advance Portraiture class at school was pet portraiture.  While at first I was very much interested in taking a picture of Copper, my amazingly awesome cat, I ended up having this cool opportunity to photograph a sugar glider.  My friend Maryn has the cutest little sugar glider named Stella Luna (after some popular children book about a bat), and Stella was the perfect little model.  We ended up shooting for about 45 minutes and Stella posed for some super adorable photos.  It was really a unique experience shooting something so small and so delicate.  Here are some photographs.  Read after the jump about what I was going for, how I lit these shots, and what equipment was used.

From the archives | Photoshop'ing 101

A while back in Mr. Jones Photo Imaging I class we were asked to spice up an image via adjustment layers and various other none destructive methods in Photoshop.  It's hard to believe that it's been nearly half a year now since that class.  This post was on my old blog which is slowly being fine tuned and possibly migrated to this personal blog.

The Photoshop work on this image shows blending of layers, hue and saturation adjustment, airbrushing, and a burn and dodge layer.  The image was light with a Norman ML600R on camera right at about 1/4 power, and a Canon 580ex II on the left with a soft box and a blue gel.  Now you get to see where the blog header comes from :)

Sarah and Obaid | A preview of my wedding photography

It's said that a photographer either loves wedding photography, or hates it.  I just happen to be one of those people who LOVE it.  By all means the first few weddings back in 2004~2005 were quite a source of stress, but after about 90 weddings now since then the worries have died down.  What hasn't died down though is the enthusiasm about shooting weddings.  Being able to mix the technical aspects of photography, the creativity demands, and most importantly the people skills really makes weddings a blast.

That being said I was asked to do my first Pakastani wedding a few months ago for Sarah and Obaid.  A 3 day event spanning from Saturday to Tuesday (of course you need a Monday to rest you know), the wedding was the ultimate deep end of cultural experience, shock, and amazement.  Located at three separate venues starting in Augusta, Georgia and ending in Atlanta, Georgia, the wedding was housed in absolutely spectacular locations with ornate stages and designs.  Over 400 people attended, some coming as far as England and Pakistan itself. 

In all my weddings shot it truly was a unique and amazing experience.  Here are some sample images from the wedding.  I would like to thank Tiffany Bayona, and Chris Oh.  Those two assisted me during the wedding and provided some excellent photographs of their own.