A Golden Egg Story

It can take so much to get just the right shot, knowing the subject matter your shooting is utmost of importance. The ability to understand your lighting situation and the limitations that come with the light setup, its all about adjustments and quick decisions on the fly. 
Patience is a must when setting up for that perfect angle of view and when trying to capture just the right point of view. Knowing your equipment inside and out becomes essential when in the field, getting things like the correct exposure, being in focus at just the right moment and having that sixth sense to capture the image you've been waiting for with precise timing and accuracy. 
All those things are what it takes to go into a wonderful photograph, to tell a story with light and composition. And then sometimes we just get lucky like this one I took here, I call it a 'golden egg'. Happy Shooting!  

Vote For Your Fav

Photo 1

Photo 2

I'm very excited to post these two photo's of the Iwo Jima Memorial, I got the images several years ago when visiting Arlington National Cemetery and Washington D.C.. It's part of my analog collection that is slowly being converted into digital images. 

Above are the same two images, they have been processes a different way, one to expose the colors and the later to underexpose the color, which brings out the detail in shadows. 

Vote for your favorite, you can leave a comment on here or go over to my Google+ page and +1 the image you most like. 

Voting will be open till Oct 1@ 6pm, the winning image I'll turn into a print which will be given away for Veterans Day in November, more details about that following. 

Also check out some more recovered analog images from Arlington on my Google+ page.

From a Different View

This image was taken on a cloudy afternoon as I walked around Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There just hadn't been anything to photograph up to this point. I was frustrated and tired, my left knee which just had surgery on it, was starting to ache. On the way back to the vehicle, I noticed this.  I had come across the back entrance of a eatery. I liked the unique characteristics of the building, it was much more appealing than the front. Just goes to show you sometimes its okay to take shortcuts. 

To get the image the way I wanted, I just put my lens on f/16, 200 ISO and held the camera at just below waist level. Took a few releases of the shutter button and came out with this image. 

I really love finding those old small buildings to photograph, and here's one from a different view. 

Baby Before & After

Before

I took the original image and placed it into the DxO Film Pack 3, which I've placed a link to on my Google+ page, it's free till Oct. 31st. I used the Kodak Portra 160NC filter(this is the 'Before' photo above),that was such a good film to use, it always gave me such good results as once again it does here.

But there was still more I could do as a master craftsman,[tongue and cheek]!  

I tossed the before image into Lightroom 5 by Adobe, made a few tweeks to the exposure and in just a few minutes I had an image that truly popped! I didn't have to spend hours in Photoshop making a fake image,it was a good image to begin with, now its even better! 

The Christmas cards will get out early this year!    

After