I was asked a few weeks ago to shoot the Georgia Healers (a Southern Blues Band) during one of their gigs.  While I am almost done editing them, this one just totally popped out at me and I wanted to share! I am not a music photographer but I enjoyed this night a lot; might want to do it again!  As always….more to come.

Last night I drove, what seemed like forever,  to a small city 30 miles south of Atlanta to shoot with some other photographers.  We had 2 great models that we worked with in both outdoor settings and inside.  Not only do I love getting the chance to work with models, but I also enjoy meeting and learning from other photographers. I always find that it is the small things that I pick up that makes me better at what I do.  Can’t wait for next time.

A sneak peak at one of last nights shots!

Last Sunday I was fortunate enough to be able to photography Stuart and Amy’s wedding.  While they are fun just by themselves, they made this event spectacular with the detail in their wedding planning.

To be honest, I have never shot a celtic wedding;  But I am not sure how many people have either.  I knew there would be a lot of color; and boy was I right.  Everywhere I looked there was red.  Red red and more red.  Just amazing.  To boot, they picked a perfect place, Callanwolde Fine Art Center in Decatur. The planner at Callanwolde, Khadijah, was so great.  She just made my life so easy.

It will take me a bit of time to go through everything, but I wanted to share a few images from the day.

Before I do that, I owe a ton of thanks to Nat Guname.  I don’t think I would have been able to do what needed to be done or capture the essence of the day without him as a 2nd shooter. Thanks Nat!

Each of the groomsman wore a kilt and appropriate attire.  Just amazing in the detail.

Nat and I were doing some portrits of Amy before the ceremony.  We had lights at the top of the stairs and at the bottom.  For one of the shots, I ran upstairs to adjust the lights.  As I looked down, I saw the below.  I yelled down (I know, not polite, but that is what I did) and asked Amy to stand still.  And the results speak for themselves.

Stuart has 3 amazing children from a previous marriage.  All were part of the ceremony and participated.  When we were doing some portraits of Stuart, one of them placed their hand on Dad’s shoulder.  And I had a vision. This is the result.  I love this shot.

Without question, this is my favorite shot of the day.  All of the groomsman getting ready for a shot and there was Stuart’s son looking up at him.  Just perfect and so touching.

While Larry may not look familiar to you, many of you do know him, you just don’t know it.  He is one of those Hollywood behind the scenes kind of guys.  But if told you “who” he was, you would know him or at least his work.  Simply put,  the words that you have heard on many TV shows have been his, not his voice, but the spoken words.

Many years ago Larry was a typical hollywood struggling writer.  He graduated from NYU film school, but was having the hardest time finding consistant work.  But with a bit (OK, a lot) of  fortitude, Larry’s success has finally come.   His resume now reads like a hit show wonder.  And to be honest, I think it is about to get bigger.  Larry has either written or produced for shows like Six Feet Under, Alais, Boomtown, Millennium. But this next Sunday, one of the most exciting projects he has worked on thus far will start to air.

I am not exactly sure how long I have known Larry, but my guess is we are at about 20 years or so.  Larry is one of those people that I consider one of my best friends. We may not speak every day, or even every month, but when we do, it is like not a day has passed since we last saw each other.  Each day when I come to my office, I get to see Larry, along with Bear, (Bear’s name is another story), in a photo from many years ago right after we all jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.  The smiles on our faces were as wide as they could get.

Larry and I have been through a lot together.  Truly the good bad and ugly.  That photo is certainly from the “good”.  A number of years ago, Larry was writing for a show and called me a few days before one of the eposides to let me know that he has a little shout out for me that week.  I was not sure what to expect, but when we watched it, I laughed out loud. Two of the shows characters that week were “Chris and Priti” (my wife).  Thankfully neither of us died in the show, but it was truly funny and one of those things that Larry will at times pull out of his hat.

A few weeks ago, I was in California and had the chance to spend some time with Larry.  Just as he was about to take me to the airport, I took 5 minutes and shot a few frames in his backyard by the pool.

If you have a chance and would like to see some of Larry’s work, on Sunday, HBO will start the 10 series show The Pacific.  Larry has written two of the episodes for this series.  And while I have not seen the final product, I can tell you that the previews look awesome.

I am so behind on my editing that I am completely ignoring the people part of my photography and going with the fun (and to me) easy stuff.  We had, what I hope is, our last winter storm come through Atlanta the other day.  The weather man said that we may get a light dusting of now, but we ended up with a more than a few inches.  Not fun.

I went out my front door and saw these buds blossoming on a tree.  I loved how the ice crystals formed around them  I think it once again proves the fact that you  don’t have to go far to get some cool shots (pun not intended).  Sometimes just out your own front door.

I received a call the other day from some local realtors asking if  I would help them with a new listing that they had.  It was a big deal for them and they wanted to make sure they could do the best they could.  They had been working with the homeowner for 2 years and felt they really needed to go all out for their client.  And for a $1.3mm house, I think I would go all out as well.

We spoke about what they were looking for and what they needed.  The project ended up taking a bit more time then I planned on, but I wanted to makes sure that they got it right and had a client who was thrilled with the images of their home.  Below are some of the shots that I took.

As a PS: yes, these are all HDR.  And no, I don’t think that is cheating. The goal is to show off the house right?  And I think these images do just that.

Last night, my little 9 year old received an “Honorable Mention” with his entry of Night Rider.  The contest theme was Motion.  He went up against 35 other people and end up in the top 6! 6th against 35 other adults! Not shabby for a 9 year old if I do say so myself.

He shot this last summer in Washington DC just outside the Jefferson Monument.  It was about 11 o’clock (yes, way past his bedtime); I was focusing on the monument itself trying to get some neat night time stuff and he was standing there besides me when he saw the rider coming down the path.  He thought it was cool, framed his shot, and nailed it the first time.

Make sure you leave him some blog love and let him know what you think.

Last night I attended a talk given by John Mariana at the Roswell Photographic Society.  The topic was Fine Art with Photoshop and Adobe Raw.  To be honest, I was not all that thrilled to go.  While I thought I might pick up one or two small things, I did not expect much.  But what occurred was just the opposite;  What I walked away with, I believe may change how I look at post processing. In other words, it may be one of the larger things I have ever learned.

I know that many people say you should never fix or change something in Photoshop;  The way it comes out of the camera is the way you should present it.  To that I say boo-ha-ha; and I always have said that.  Even before digital photography took off, everyone made changes to their images.  It may not have been called post processing, but they were still changes.  It is just that these changes occurred in the darkroom rather then on a computer.

My goal in presenting an image is to see it the way I saw it when I snapped the shutter.  If I really go over the top, number 1, people can tell and number 2, I admit it. The ultimate goal is to capture the viewers imagination and build excitement.

What John spoke about last night was nothing really new.  I was familiar with each of the tools in Photoshop that he spoke about.  Some I knew were there, but I had forgotten them or just gotten into a habit of not using them. But it was the way he presented his information and at that moment, for some reason, it just resonated in me.  So what did I learn?  Two very simply things really: 1) In our culture, we read left to right. So your image should be viewed that way.  2) If the lines aren’t straight, straighten them. Nothing earth spattering.  But it is one of those small things that I think will allow me to get that much better in the images that I present.

Below are two images that I have taken this past year.  Neither are out of this world shots, but I wanted to show you my point.  The first two images are exactly the same, but with one minor difference, I switched the horizontal position from one side to the other.  Look at the top image;  That is the “final image”.  Below that is how I started out.  On the top image, my eye seems to naturally lead from the left to the right.  On the bottom shot, it felt forced.  Again a minor change, but now it just feels right;  I enjoy the flow of it more.

The 2nd series has the same change as above, but this time, I straightened up the lines.  When I took this shot, it was impossible for me to get level with the building.  But with some minor tweaks in Photoshop, it now looks just like I saw it.

I love technology.  But in reality, I love learning even more!!

I participated in a photo shoot last night with a number of other photographers south Atlanta.  With 3 stations and 3 models, we had the opportunity to be creative and work on our skill set.  But as you will see, it didn’t go as planned.  I think it must as been a full moon, as we ended up with some crazy fun stuff.

The first shot, is by far my fav; the 2nd, is a spur of the moment shot as were waiting for the model to change outfits; it went downhill from there……….

At about 10pm last night, I went out to a part of Atlanta that may not be considered to be the best part of town to try and get some skyline shots of downtown.  For the longest time, I have wanted to do this and a few weeks ago I found what I thought would be a perfect place to do it.  The spot was a constriction site located across the street from a MARTA train station.  To get into the site, I had to do some crawling around fences, up some hills and the like.  I am sure that I wasn’t supposed to be there, but this looked just too perfect to pass up.

In looking at the shots afterwards, I am pleased with how they turned out, but I may go back.  Really for two reasons: 1st, I would like to play with the duration a bit more of my shots and 2nd, I ended up only staying for about 20 minutes.  It was very dark and as I said, not the best part of town.  So the next time, I will bring someone along with me if I can. Any takers?  :-)

Some technical info for those of you that are interested:  The first shot is a glimpse of where I was situated.  I set the camera to an ISO of 100, f8 aperture and kept the shutter open for 25 seconds.  The bottom 2 shots are the same except the exposure was only for about 8 seconds.