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.

I made it into Arizona Wildlife Views!

I don't typically post twice in a day, but since I've been away so long and have great news I figured that I could go ahead and do it. Today in the mail I received two copies of the Jan/Feb issue of Arizona Wildlife Views. Inside is the published article that my brother-in-law Jason Keele wrote covering the Tres Rios Restoration Project. The awesome news is that they chose to use one of my photos for the article. Needless to say that I was super excited by the news.

Phil and Beth Jackson Wedding

Well, its been quite some time since my last post. After a busy fall followed up by a wedding shoot I'm finally back. If you haven't noticed, I've finally made a change in that I've found a more permanent "home" for my blog. No longer does it reside at an unmemorable blogger address, I now have it resting at benelyphoto.com. A small change, but non the less, a big step.

With that being said, the last month I've been busy at editing the photos for the wedding that I shot just before Christmas. The new husband and wife are Phil and Beth Jackson. Both have been family friends for the last several years and are an extremely fun and nice couple. The wedding was held at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, which turned out being a very nice venue.

Weddings are definitely a strange beast to photograph. There is only so much planning that can be done, after that, its a whirlwind until the nights all over. The nice thing was that I was able to move around several areas of the hotel for both the ceremony and portraits. With my wife Samantha helping during the ceremony, we were able to get several shots not just from ground level but also from a balcony over looking the courtyard. Now at the end of it all, I have to say that I am happy how the photos came out.

Archive Photo

So I've been working at trying to reorganize and sift through all of my photos, and for that matter my entire computer. In doing so I've come across some photos that I never posted for one reason or another. Often times, they just got lost as an individual or small collection amidst other sets or projects that I was working on to post. This particular photo was glossed over during our move into our house. My wife, Samantha, wanted me to take a photo of her design work in our previous apartment prior to packing and beginning our journey into our first house. Once in the house, the photo sat unedited during the maelstrom of changes that occurred until later in the summer, when I came across it and did some editing only to lose in again to larger projects like the Pony Express. Now I find myself staring at it on my desktop wondering why I have yet to post it. So here it is, seven months after the shutter clicked.

Tres Rios

Hayfield Site

Hey everyone. Tonight is a quick update and post. I am currently working with my brother-in-law, Jason Keele, on a story for Arizona Wildlife Views magazine. The story, which Jason is writing, is covering the Tres Rios water reclamation plant and wetlands projects. The story has already been accepted and is in the editing phase and due to be printed sometime early next year. I have been making several trips to the Hayfield Site, above, as well as the site near Phoenix International Raceway to capture photos for the article. Our hopes are to have both Jason's article with my photos published. We'll see how it works out.