See the Rise

This picture is just taken with my iPhone. I guess it's more of a snapshot than an actual photograph. It was taken last Summer in the first place we lived on the island on the Northside above Magen's Bay. We've been on St. Thomas for a year and we still are not quite used to waking up to this everyday. Photo wise I probably could have done a bit better with the composition but in a way I feel it works having the horizon across the center line since the mountainside feeds your eyes towards Magen's. Sunrise's and sunsets are incredibly fun to shoot but are pretty dang difficult to get the lighting to do what you want in your image. With a camera phone the exposure is fairly easy to set; just push your finger around the screen until it's not blown out. I have a few decent shots from my camera that I will be posting in the next week or so. Ideally I would like to post at least once a week. I'll have to see if this ends up being more of a travel/lifestyle blog of my surroundings or if it ends up being more photography specific. Either way, enjoy the sunrise.

Rekindle

Life indeed slips past us all and lofty aspirations fade from bright burning sparks to smoldering charcoal as other priorities are deemed more demanding of our time. It's been nearly two years since I have posted on my photography adventure blog. That's not to say that I have not been on adventures or that I haven't taken any photographs. I started this blog for a final project of my college education and also as a personal hobby. Since that period of time not all that much has changed for me other than the locations that my wife and I have lived in. We have had the privilege of starting our lives in Idaho where we finished school and then worked and lived in San Antonio, Texas; St. Augustine, Florida; and now currently St. Thomas, USVI. I am incredibly grateful for the last two years and the many opportunities I have had and continue to have. I do feel as if I have been missing something through these past two years though. And I do believe that this photography blog may very well play a part in finding that missing piece. This is the place where many of my thoughts about the world around me will go. More often than not in the form of a photograph. Feel free to follow along as I stoke the bellows of my rekindled flame and see how wild this fire can grow.

Stoic Pelican

Fireworks!

This year was my first year getting to photograph fireworks. I read a few articles from Caryn Esplin and POP Photo on how to adjust camera settings to get the best shots. In the end it's really trial and error to get the best images possible. I wanted to get there early enough to set up to find the best angles and fiddle with my camera settings. Unfortunately I got off work a bit late and barely managed to race home, grab my camera and run down the street before they started exploding in the sky. Seeing how large firework displays are a rarity, roughly two times a year, I really had to learn quick and stay on my toes the entire show. I ended up needing to straighten most of the photos because of the low angle that I was at. A few photos are straight out the camera as I had shot them. I only made minor edits to some of them to adjust for exposure values and blacks because the firework show was in the middle of downtown San Antonio where there was excess lighting around the area. I took around 175 pictures and these were the ones that turned out the best. Enjoy... And a happy late Fourth of July to you all...

Go ahead and click on them for a larger format.

f/8 --ISO100 -- 6 sec.

f/4.5 -- ISO100 -- 3 sec.

f/8 -- ISO200 -- 2 sec.

f/8 -- ISO200 -- 3 sec.

f/5.6 -- ISO100 -- 4 sec.

f/4.0 -- ISO100 -- 3 sec.

f/5.6 -- ISO100 -- 3 sec.

f/4 -- ISO200 -- 3 sec.

f/8 -- ISO200 -- 2 sec.

f/8 -- ISO200 -- 6 sec.

f/8 -- ISO200 -- 4 sec.

f/8 -- ISO200 -- 4 sec. 

Feel free to comment or send me a link to your Fourth of July pictures. Thanks for reading/looking!

Ready, Set, Action!

Photoshop can be immensely intimidating even when trying to teach yourself at a slow methodical pace. While browsing through my Pinterest feed the other day, I happened upon a fantastic set of tips and tricks known as actions (found from pioneerwoman.com) that allows you to set a basic layer or cover over your photo to give it an immediate upgraded touch. Click Here to download the set of actions I will be showing you and click Here to learn how to install them into your Photoshop. It's a great way to automatically alter your photo to see how it would look and feel in a couple of clicks instead of adjusting piece by piece. Of course Photoshop has a few default actions, but it's almost like using some of the default fonts in Word for graphic design and they aren't very useful.

Here is an image that is taken straight out of my camera... No post-processing is done, no correction to exposure, white balance, sharpening etc.

Make sure you click on the image to see it full-size.

f/5.6 -- ISO100 -- 1/1000

Then by simply applying an 'action' in Photoshop you have something new!

Fresh and Colorful

 Boost and Quick Edge Burn

Bring on the eyes. A basic layer mask that allows you to select what parts of the photo to highlight.

Colorized

Cooler

Ethereal

Heartland

Old West

Vintage

Warmer

Overall I think actions can be quite useful when needing to apply a similar style to a large group of photos. It's quite fun to see all the possibilities that one image can eventually become. Do you have any experience with using actions in your photos? Please share in the comments what you've learned or like about using actions in your work.

What is art?

     This post is about a conversation I had with a man a few weeks ago in downtown San Antonio, Texas.  Since May when I jumped onto the photography train I have been talking with everyone I see that has a camera, asking them what model they have, why they like it and what attracts them to photography. It's a great way to network and pick up some fun tips along the way. One day I came across a man who is currently enrolled in a master's program for photography in San Antonio. He had a Canon 5D MkII and a wicked awesome lens that far exceeds my current understanding of picture taking ability. See it here Canon TS-E 24mm Tilt-Shift. After the usual banter of why he prefers Canon over Nikon and what he was doing in town, our conversation took an unusual turn into art and its meaning. I rarely get philosophical in my own life, let alone with a man I just met in the front of my store. The statement that I remember most from our conversation was his idea that 'art is pain'. We explored what he meant by that a little more and he gave an example of a few artists (the names of which I have since forgotten) that dealt greatly with the influence of pain, hurt and sorrow in life. One of them had taken a picture of her sister each day when she was diagnosed with a disease. I also remember him saying something to the effect of, "each day is a tragedy that leads us closer to death." He later went on to explain color patterns and their meanings and we eventually ended up at discussing the importance of the histogram when shooting. I never will figure out how we went from pain and death to the histogram in a matter of 15 minutes. Normally I would think he was a little off his rocker but I could at least tell he was an intelligent person with a deep philosophical mindset. For all I know he could have been testing out his graduate thesis to see how it would be received by a t-shirt salesmen. I literally meet with hundreds of people a day working in a tourist mecca right next to the Alamo and get to briefly know many of them, so it's fairly significant that I specifically remember this conversation with this man about his idea that art is pain.

     Before this conversation I had never really contemplated the meaning of art with much intensity or  depth. I had taken a few art classes while in school and have personally been to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California and the Louve in Paris, France. I have seen beautiful pieces of art spanning multiple centuries in person and most recently been exposed to wonderful photographers capturing stunning images from across the globe and to even connect with them through the Internet. My previous interactions with high art and photography have been from a historical angle and the ability to capture a moment in time. I am a fairly simple minded person and can respect and understand great things in the world. Although, I had never equated strong emotion or deep messages to photography or historical pieces of art. This recent conversation I had with this man has begun to change my previous thinking process and challenge the way I view the world around me. By no means have I come to terms with the idea that 'art is pain'. This encounter has allowed me to begin my journey to better define what I think art is. I waited to write about my story with this man because I have been trying to figure out how I felt and if I could come to a reasonable conclusion or better define it for myself. My initial attempts have been centered around beauty, wonder and creation. After a few weeks I have slowly come out of my own think tank and come to the realization that, "What is art?" is one of the most amazing questions of our humanity that may never have a single worded answer. If I have learned anything about art and photography in recent weeks it's that art is evolutionary and will continue to expand and change the way we view the world around us.