Day 181/366

"Seattle Underground Sign"

If any of you have been to Seattle, there is a tour of Old Seattle, that is currently 2 stories beneath the current seattle, or al least a part of Seattle.
It's interesting and entertaining to do the tour once, but loses some of it's luster the 2nd and 3rd time around. I will probably do it one more time once I get my 5D MK III, just because it's pretty low light down there and I couldn't relly get some of my shots, and it would be great to shoot some brackets down there.

So anyway they had this cool old sign down there. And I love me some cool old signs. :)

Thanks for stopping by, I am getting really close to being half way through this self assignment.

Day 180/366

"Barbwire"

This was shot in Aruba, I was down there on a cruise. While I shot lots of pretty pictures, there was lots of grunge to shoot as well. Which I love to shot as well.

Have a good night everyone.

Day 170/366

I always like to tune into +creativelive and check out what they have to offer, This last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday they had Jared Platt on Lightroom Workflow. He had some pretty compelling workflow concepts. So, I am reworking my workflow using some of his concepts and merging them with my current workflow. Mostly this came about because I was getting close to running out of hard drive space and had to upgrade my storage. So this class came at the exact right time, and lots of his ideas seemed pretty smart.

So during my restructuring, i am coming across some images from many years ago that i am reworking with Lightroom 4 and Nik Silver Effects. This one was shot at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. And it is the only shot that contains a Human element. I just wasn't into shooting people back then. And while i am not ready for full on street photography, I do think that having this person helps this image to tell a story, as opposed to it being straight Architectural.

Thanks for stopping by.

Day 165/366

"Ground Control to Major Tom"

Day 164/366

"Painted Nascar"

Last year for fathers day I sold a print of an image I shot at a Nascar race. It was of Earnhardt Junior who was at the time in the #8 car. So this year I was approached again by this client for a new image. I have only shot that one race and so would need to rely on those shots to find this new image.

The race was back in 2007 and I had to borrow my friends Canon Rebel XT. Which needless to say was not the best camera for the job, but as +Chase Jarvis says, The best camera is the one you have with you. I had rented a 70-200 2.8 lens, So I was good on the Glass. Just didn't have a lot of room to crop in, with the low resolution of the XT, especially since this was going to be enlarged to 12x16 image.

So I went back through and looked at the images I had. I was very happy with the image I had sold previously, Here it is if you haven't seen it.

http://bit.ly/L3YCpJ

So I was trying to get something in the same ball park of quality and creativity. And the clients father is a big Earnhardt Jr. fan, so he really wanted it to be of the #8 car. And from what I was seeing in the images, I didn't have anything that was tack sharp and interesting enough. I had an image of #8 and another car battling it out, but it was a little soft and grainy from the noise.

I was all set to cobble together an image in photoshop, I had gone through and tried to get images that would fit together, but it wasn't working, because of the steep bank of the track, the perspective of the cars were off and looked weird, I left it last night and figured I would figure it out today. But apparently there was a scheduled power outage today, so from 9am to 6:15PM I had no power and couldn't work on this image on the computer, which left me thinking time on how to solve this problem. I knew I didn't have the time to do a respectable PS Composite. So I had to figure out a new solution. Luckily with the power being off, I was relaxing and reading the latest issue of Photoshop User, and +Matt Kloskowski was showing off the Oil Paint filter, and I thought that might look pretty cool on my image. Once the power came back on I began preparing the image, I toned the image and got it looking cool, color wise, then took it to PS CS6 and started playing with the filter. And I was very pleased with how it came out. I called the Client and he came over and was as excited about it as I was.

I think if you put your mind to it, there is always a solution.

Thanks for stopping by.

Day 163/366

"Getting Lucky"

I was recently reading a statement by someone on Gplus, stating that being a good photographer is 75% luck. Well atleast getting a good shot is 75% luck. Now while this may seem logical in certain areas, like sports or landscape, where you have no control over what plays unfold in front of you, you just hope you get "Lucky" and get the right shot, or if you are shooting Landscape, you can't control the weather. Sometimes you get "Lucky" and have amazing skies.

But one of my favorite quotes is "Luck favors the prepared" So while to the novice it may seem like it is all LUCK, trust me, there is a lot of work that goes into getting those shots and predicting and preparing so you are ready when it happens. If any of you have seen Dave Black's Sports images or heard him speak, you know that he is a proponent of the ideas, "ARRIVE EARLY AND LEAVE LATE". and "KNOW YOUR SUBJECT" This is what makes the professionals look like they are just getting lucky. Over and Over  and Over.

So this was an image I was trying to get, I had this idea of panning with the car as it left the pits. JUST as it left, I wanted the people to be slightly out of focus. For there to be a slight hint of confusion by the viewer as to what was going on. It looks as though the car is still. But the energy in the wheels leads the viewer to question which element of the image is actually moving.

So while it is technically Luck, that I got this shot, there was a lot of effort that went in to me getting lucky.

Day 162/366

"Snakes on Things"

Last Tuesday I went to the Seattle Zoo, I was a Chaperone for my Nephews 4th grade class, unfortunately it was raining which makes all the animals head indoors, I got some decent shots. We were in the reptile area and they had this really cool colored Green Snake and had some nice light on it and the backgrounds help to emphasize the snake.

I shot this with my iPhone.

Day 161/366

"Night At The Museum"

I like to imagine the animals like in Night at the Museum, After the museum closes, the animals get to roam around and be cool. This elephant was getting ready to High Five his buddy. They would use there trunk to high five right? In my mind they would.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Day 160/366

"Tunnel of Love Indubitably"

Hopefully some of you get that title?

Today's image takes us back to Washington DC. This was the night Photoshop World ended and Photowalk Pro  hosted a photowalk. I have posted several from that night in the past. But after seeing  post with the blurry bus, I remembered I had this image, This was actually at the Very Very end of the Photowalk and we were waiting for our trains to come and take us home. The station was fairly empty, which is what allowed me to get this image with nobody in it.

This was processed in Lightroom 4.

Take care and have a great weekend.

Day 159/366

"Go into the light"

I love the feel of having the sun in the shot, whether it be back lit stuff or lens flare. Without the light in this shot, I think this would be a very boring picture, but the fact that the building trails off into white, is what makes this shot interesting. I shot this as a bracketed sequence, but after seeing this shot, I knew I didn't want to bring back any of the blown out sky. I had looked at a couple different Toned versions, but once I did the straight Black and White version I knew it felt like a much stronger image.

And I specifically framed it to have the other buildings just peeking in on the edges. Thought it would help create a little tension. :)

I took a bunch of other shots and haven't made it through them all, But if any of the other ones turn out this nice as this one, I might have a little series going on.

As always thanks for stopping by.

Day 153/366

"Birds on Things"

This picture just makes me laugh a little. We were on our #gpluspc Chinatown Photowalk with +RC Concepcion and there was this bird just kickin it on a pipe. And he or she would be looking around and right as I am about to snap the picture, it whips it's head around and stares me down. I was BUSTED. You gotta be careful when doing street photography. I am not sure you can zoom in enough on this smaller version, but in the full res version it's eyes are staring right at me. So I took the shot and moved on for fear of provoking it into violence. And after listening to the GRID on Wednesday, I know to be careful.

So the second part of this story and thus the Title of the image, On my flight back fron San Francisco, I set next to the guy who created the Birds on Things craze in Portland. And the basis for one of the funnier skits from the sketch comedy show Portlandia. So now this image is doubly funny to me.

Hope you all get a little humor from it.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone.