Happy Birthday Arizona!

It's a tad bit belated but Happy Birthday Arizona! For those of you that didn't know, this past Tuesday, February 14th, was Arizona's centennial. To celebrate, Phoenix had their Best Fest celebration from the 10th through the 12th. We went downtown for the party on Saturday since that was the biggest of the days and the day in which the centennial motorcycle ride took place. I'm not sure on the numbers, but an estimate that I heard was somewhere around 2500-3000 bikes in the ride. I was hoping to get a few shots showing the immensity of the event, but alas, at ground level it all turned into a blend of steel and Harley logos.

There was a lot going on that day and for the most part I was there to enjoy. I had my camera out in case I felt the need to go photographer on the fly, but for the most part I perused the different tents, food stands, events, art shops, food stands (I said that already didn't I). Anyways, if you missed the event, keep looking around as other cities will be holding smaller events themselves throughout the remainder of the year.

Pony Express Video

Around the start of the new year I started playing around with the idea of doing some photo videos to showcase large sets of photos. One such video that I felt I had to do and thus worked on first is a selection of photos from the Pony Express ride from last year. I've uploaded it to my newly established Youtube page (needing some improvements of its own). I hope to put out some more such videos in the future. For now, enjoy:

Three Hoots and a splash of Garnacha

This past week I did a small shoot in order to get some photos for my sister-in-law, Renee. I've posted before on the subject, in a nutshell: she has a wine blog, I take photos for said blog. I really enjoyed this particular shoot as I tried some new lighting methods and worked on using multiple exposures for the final products. More on this momentarily.

My victims in this shoot were bottles for Three Hoots and Garnacha de Fuego. The Three Hoots shot was primary for use in her post, the Garnacha secondary for its good looks. I am extremely happy with both results and as a bonus for you guys, I'm going to give you an inside the studio view of this shoot.

Your first thoughts are probably "Wow, whats going on here?" Well, first off, my studio is my office, nice and unorganized most of the time. What I've done for the platform and backdrop is simple. I have a roller cart that I placed in front of the wall and draped a black sheet from the wall to the cart. The lighting is the fun part. For the bottle I wanted to faintly light the edges and put a splash of light to the label. Using my singular flash (seen above) I took 3 photos: One lit from the right, left and from above in the front. I bounced the flash off of a piece of white matte board to soften the light as well as expand it along the edges of the bottle rather than blast a singular point. Once in Photoshop, I blended the three photos together and finito.

I hope you guys enjoyed this first ever glance into my work methods. Once your done here, check out Renee's blog at www.wineabit.net.

Phoenix Zoo In Black and White

I would be lying if I said these photos haven't been floating around my computer for some time now. Back in December my wife and I made a trip to the Phoenix Zoo. It had been a while since our last visit and I was curious to see if things had changed much. Needless to say, they've added or changed a lot and it looks like they have a lot planned for the future.

Before our trip I was toying around with settings on my camera and decided that I haven't really done much black and white. As a result I shot straight to b&w on much of our trip. As I was editing later, I pushed myself to dive more into to monochrome realm.

I used to actually dislike monochrome images, but over the last several years I've found myself gravitating to it more. I love it because I personally feel that color can distract from some elements such as texture and pattern (obviously not color patterns). More importantly, there is a mood and even a closeness to subjects that monochrome images exude that often is not captured in color.

To me the biggest risk I took with this set was taking a macaw, known for its beautiful colors and converting it took monochrome. Even as I was working on it I was thinking to myself, "this is stupid." But, I feel that in this case, it paid off. With the focus of color taken out, the focus becomes the shape and detail of each feather.

For me this was a fun shoot and editing experience. I'd definitely recommend to take a photo in color, then try it out in black and white (most new cameras have this setting). You may really enjoy the results.