My first home Studio Shoot

I’ve been wanting to do it for a while now.  I have the space for it, I bought the lighting equipment off a buddy of mine, I got the backdrops and some other necessities and my home studio was ready to be broken in with it’s first Shoot.  The lucky winner was Amy McIlwain.  She is a friend of a friend in Denver that is branching out to try her hand at her own business and needed some professional shots to help market herself and her comapny. 

Her company has a niche in the Financial Services industry implementing social media marketing strategies for other companies.   Take a peak at her website here.  Also, please let me know what you think of the shots.

I’m also GIVING AWAY 2 MORE FREE STUDIO SHOOTS to the next two people that contact me.  If you want shots for yourself, your family or your dog, please contact me and let me know.  I’d be happy to pass on the details (Studio time is free, prints are for purchase).  I’m still learning about lighting and angles, etc…..so the free shoots are going to be partial classroom time for me as well.

I hope you all enjoy the shots and I’m really looking forward to doing more studio work from my home and on location.

Colorado Dragon Boat Festival…..

As you may or may not know, I live directly on Sloan’s Lake in Denver.  I wake up every morning and look out my front window across a park and see the lake with the Rockies as a backdrop.  I have to say, it’s not a bad way to start the day.  Well in late July the 10th Annual Colorado Dragon Boat Festival was held on the lake, which means 2 packed days of Dragon Boat Races right in front of my house.  How can you go wrong? 

No boat for me this year, but the races went on all day and the festival was in full swing as well.  Every type of Asian food you could imagine and some that you couldn’t.  The Asian market was also a good place to start practicing for your trip to SE Asia.  “$15 for this Bamboo plant and some rocks?  How about $5 and you keep the rocks?”  There was also a dragon head in search of it’s body and a few karate demonstrations going on too.

I even managed to track down some wild life and get Riley out for a little while.  Looks like this goose lost a paddle!  Lucky for him Riley was on a lease 😉

Perseids Meteor Shower

Decided to play with some long exposures a few nights ago.  Some were too long and some were not long enough.  It’s a fine line really.  Either way a tri-pod is obviously required.  I need to go back and re-read the manual, but I stumbled on a setting in my 5D II where with a Bulb setting you can set automatic noise reduction.  After shooting without it I can see how that would be greatly beneficial!  Here are a few shots from the other night of the Perseids Meteor Shower. 

Tear Sheets

Just updated my gallery with my Tear Sheets.  For those that don’t know, its fairly common for anyone who has had work published one way or another to build their portfolio of work that has been published in one location.  One way to accomplish this is with Tear Sheets.  The term comes from back in the day when you would literally ‘tear the page‘ out of a magazine, thus adding one more page to your tear sheets.

Long story short, this is where I’ve had my work seen over the years.   To view all of my Tear Sheet, please visit my Tear Sheet’s Gallery.  Enjoy!

In Stock Canvas on Sale

Between the Gallery Wrapped Canvas that adorn my walls as well art that has been on display at shows, I have several pieces that I’m offering at 10 – 15% off their normal price simply because I have them in stock.  Each piece has been signed and has been on display so there might be minor wear.  Please ask about a particular piece if you are curious.  There is a link below to the In Stock list.

Please take a look at the pieces that I have In Stock.  Shipping is included in the price displayed for the Continental USA only.  International orders please contact me for a price on shipping.

What color is your monitor?

So I had a trip early last month that took me to Arizona and Carolina for an event and a boogie.  When I got back, needless to say I had a lot of pictures.  About half way through editing these shots I realized that my colors were a bit off.  I pulled up an old image that I had edited a while back on my other machine and it wasn’t quite right, pretty good, but not perfect.  I pulled out my Spyder Screen Calibrator 2.0 and hooked it up to my new dual monitor Windows 7, 64-bit work horse only to find out that woops….it doesn’t work on Windows 7.  Off to the wonders of the internet and I ordered myself this:

ColorVision S3P100 Spyder3 pro

ColorVision’s Spyder3 Pro.  So you might be asking, why do you need to calibrate your screen?  Well, as time goes on and you leave your monitors on for days on end or beat them up here and there, things change and they need to get calibrated.  This Spyder device literally hangs over the front of your screen and a program runs showing off different colors and ranges, etc….The Spyder has a sensor that is reading the color as it’s happening and the program adjusts it one way or the other to make sure that Red is showing up EXACTLY as Red and not Red with a little Orange.  Once it calibrates each monitor it applies a Color Profile to each and from that point forward, the profile adjusts images being displayed so that the colors are spot on.

Make sense?  This unit is the pro version which is needed for dual monitors and goes for around $150.  For the average home user / casual photographer you can grab the Spyder 3 Express for around $90.  

Hello PD….I’m famous!

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then I actually have a picture taken of me.  I guess that partly explains why when picking up the last issue of Parachutist I flipped right past a full page ad that PD ran with me in it!  Ok, maybe it was that and the fact I’m wearing a friends helmet that’s 2 sizes too big and someone elses rig, but either way someone else had to ask if it was me and I said….’Oh Yeah!  That’s IS me!’  Good times!  This shot was taken by Nik Daniel while we were jumping at Palatka shooting the entire PD Armada for future ads and other marketing material.

Both of these shots were taken while jumping Performance Designs new Optimum Reserves.  The shot below I took while flying a PD OP 143.  Not only is it a great canopy, but it can give you a real nice swoop as well!

It only took 16 years….but I finally did it!

It took 16 years and 4 attempts, but I finally made my first Balloon Jump.  I’ve tried several times over the years but wind, rain and clouds kept me from jumping out of a hot air balloon.  I hooked up with Michael at Life Cycle Balloons who took my buddy Stephen and I on a quick flight just north of Denver.  Looking down we found a nice high school field just waiting for us to land in.  Here are a few shots from that fun!  Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Stephen made a quick video of the jump from both his angle and mine.  Check it out!  Thanks for the jump, best one I’ve done in a long time!