We had some family over to the house this Labor day and it was a great opportunity to take some photo's. Our nephews son was being a bit shy with the camera at 1st, then he turned into a camera ham and you would of though he had a modeling career. I used an off camera flash and he was pretty intrigued at it. This is one of the shots as he looked into the flash that was sitting on the coffee table...

Jumping for joy!

Rachel and I had some fun a couple of days before School started. We headed out to the back yard and Rachel had a blast on the trampoline. She jumped and I shot. She was doing what she loved and so was I. I took about a hundred shots of her jumping and spinning shooting in continuous mode. My camera shoots at about 3 frames per second but it was still very challenging to get the perfect shot. This one was one of my favorites, I just wished I didn't crop the top of her hair. I would love to hear your thoughts on this shot.

HDR

This is a shot of the golf course at the Grand Cypress Resort in Orlando. It was my 1st attempt at HDR which stands for High Dynamic Range. It is a composit of 6 different shots ranging from 3 stops over exposed to 3 stops under exposed.

Portraits

It is senior time for my daughter Meghan and that means time for some senior portraits. So, the other day we set up camp in the family room at the house and set up a mini studio. I had purchased some material from the fabric store and tacked it up to the wall and set up a couple of off camera flashes. Here are a couple of the shots...You can here to view a slide show of more of the shots...

Meghan

Well, Yesterday brought quite a scare! I went to book up the old computer in the morning and got this error message that said...Corrupt windows root>sysytem32/hal.dll please reload file before rebooting. The hard drive was not looking good. After a search online on another computer searching that error message, I was left with a very sick sinking feeling. I have told myself dozens of times to make sure I back up my files, and read horror stories online of people who haven't. I would always get around to it or do it next time I had some more time...as you know that time never seems to come around. I did however invest in a 400GB external hard drive and may have backed up a fraction of my photo files, but thats about it....Thanks so much to Harold at work, in out IT department. He broke out the old defibrulator and somehow rebuilt Windows XP without losing my files! WHEH! I can breath again. Needless to say, I will be spending quite a bit of time backing up files and looking for a software product that can do this automatically. Here is a recent shot that I almost lost...

Limkin, aka "the Kirate Kid"

I recently caught this shot of a Limkin at Saddle Creek park in Lakeland, Florida. It really reminded me of the scene from the Kirate Kid movie...I must not get out much.

New Flower shots

Ok, it's been a while since I posted here so it is time to put up some stuff. Life has certainly not been slowing up with kids out of school. I had the recent pleasure of spending the day with my brother Marc and we drive around Lakeland and Winter Haven shooting fence photo's. At the last house we stopped at, aw we were leaving, I noticed this small garden between by the driveway and had to take some shots with my 50mm lens. I love this lens as it takes some of the best shots you can imagine. This is one of the shots after I cropped in quite a bit in photoshop and thought the image came out looking quite nice. I suppose I ought to post a fence shot as well.....

Name this Orchid

My Mother-in-law had me shoot this shot of her "award winning" orchid on Thanksgiving day. But, I do not know the name of it, so if anyone knows the name of this orchid, please let me know. The sun was shinning directly on this flower, so I had my daughter grab a clump of moss hanging from the tree to hold it up in front of the flower to difuse the sun and create some nice shadows...

Candle Trail.

Ok, this one was fun to shoot. My Daughter Rachel and I set up a candle on the kitchen counter with a black foam board in the background. Set up the flash off camera and to the right of the candle with some tin foil on the left side to reflect some light on that side. Rachel blew out the candle and I hit the remote shutter release to get this effect. We thought the shot came out pretty cool.

The road to Highlands.

This is a very simple looking shot, but I love the way it came out. It was taken in Highlands Nort Carolina in October at the peak of the Fall leaves changing ceremonies. I used a tripod and shot at 100 ISO F8 1/10, using my Canon 20D and 28-70 F2.8L lens.

Perfect timing!

Well, My lovely and talented wife, Kelly and I made it to North Carolina to celebrate number 18 together...and they said it wouldn't last. Our timing couldn't have been better for the weather and the leaves changing to thier beautiful fall colors. We stayed in the town of Glenville in the Great Smokey Mountains. Here is one of the shots I took at Whitewater Falls...

Florida Sunset's

Well, just as the sunrises have been spectacular as of late, the sunsets have been running a close 2nd. This shot was taken over Lake Howard in winter Haven, Florida at an ISO of 200 f8 1/2500 in manual mode with a 28-70mm 2.8 lens. These shots are getting more dificult to catch as it is getting dark earlier and earlier and work calls...

Beauty Evolution (You have to watch this video)

I found this link on one of my frequently visited sites. I am not famliar with the orginazation that made this short film, but I thought it was worthy of posting this link to view it. Please check it out, as it is a shorty but goody...

Beauty (short but sweet)

Florida Sunrises

Well, lately the sunrises around here have bee breathtaking. It makes it hard to get to work on time. I forturnately live across the street from beautiul Lake Hamilton in Florida and often stop in my car pull out the camera and tripod which I try to have with me many days. Although the Florida heat prevents me from taking it to work and leaving it in the car to bake all day. Here is one of those beautiful October mornings. This was taken at 100 ISO f9 20' in Aperature priority with my Canon 20D.

My wife, Kelly and I will be heading to the mountains in North Carolina shortly and hopefuly can catch some of the leaves changing colors.

The Great Pumpkin!

Ok, today we headed for the pumpkin patch in Lakeland, florida in search of Charlie Brown and the great Pumkin. I think this kid spotted him. I didn't get this kids parents' name unfortunately as I would have loved to give them a copy of this shot..

Working on trying to improve on my photo skills, a group of us from our local camera club had an outing. We took off one morning and went to the Hillsborough State park, near Tampa Florida. We were working on the topic of reading exposures and I shot this shot of the river. It was taken at 100 ISO f18 5''. What do you think?

 

1st blog

Whew...45 years old and this is my 1st "blog." Who whould have known what a blog was just a few short years ago. I thought I was doing well when I figured out this whole email thing, on the cutting edge of technology. Then, Bam! here comes the BLOG. My 13 year old daughter is my more technology savy that I am. What happened?

Anyway. This was just some idle thoughts I wanted to throw down on paper...oops...the blog.

Photography is my hobby of choice and it seems that if I go a day without shooting a few shots, I start having withdrawls and have to pick up the Canon and get a few shots of something under my belt. More later...