Ok, so Mitch, who I work with says to me on a Thursday that his photographer bailed out on him for his wedding on Saturday. Yup, in 2 days. He is begging me to photograph his wedding in 2 days. Fortunately I was able to make arrangements at work to allow me the day off and agree to shoot for him and Bonnie. The wedding is to take place at the very beautiful Honeymoon Island on Clearwater Beach, FL. When I arrive the winds are blasting a steady 30 mph with gusts to 40. This would have mixed sand with my camera equipment and been very scary. There is a wicked front moving in from Canada and it means business. The poor beach workers are trying desperately trying to put up a canopy, but no way was this going to happen. There is a great little picnic area just around the other side of the beach with wonderful palm trees, oaks and plenty of shrubs to block the wind. The day turned out just great and the wedding was a treat to shoot. Thanks to Mitch for not letting me say no...

A few months ago we were heading to a Memorial Service at a local cemetary. While en route we came across a wonderful abandoned building, which I immediatley thought would be an amazing spot to photograph. Several months later, I finaly found the time to take a couple of my daughters there for a photo shoot. Anna came with me 1st then Meghan when she came home from college for Christmas time. Broken concrete, shattered glass, paint ball wars, exposed insulation...it all makes for beautiful images.

Florida's Cow Camp

We recently went on a photo trip to Lake Kissimmee State Park. There is a place there called Cow Camp. It's a throw back to Florida of old where cattle roamed free and wireless internet was hard to come by. It's like stepping back to the 1800's. It's an awesome place for photo opportunities and I had a great time shooting with the lens baby and getting some great blurring effects.

Pirates of Penzance

Just finished photographing the theatre performance of Pirates of Penzance. This was performed by Harrison School for the Arts, in Lakeland Florida. This was just a great job by all the High School performers and the staff. It was wonderfully entertaining. If you missed it, I encourage you to try and catch other performances by this school as they do a top notch job.

Drops of reflections

So, I woke up this morning and had a hunger to photograph something. I grabbed my camera with the macro lens, a spray bottle filled with water and my tripod and trekked all the way to the backyard. The sun was still pretty low in the sky so I was able to get some soft light on these flowers. I needed a bit more light coming in from the side so I ran back inside and wrapped some aluminum foil around a piece of mail and used that to reflect a bit more light in from the other side of the sun and this was the resulting shot...ISO 400, 1/200 f/9...

Bok Tower Trip

Well, members of the Polk County Camera club made a trip to Beautiful Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Saturday April 19th. We spent the morning taking and working on some macro photography. The lens I used was a Canon 100mm Macro f/2.8 and my 40D. It was a perfect spring morning with most of the flowers in full bloom and it was hard not to find great subjects to photograph. Here is one of my favorite shots from the morning. I love the blurred background and muted colors in this shot.

The meaning of Life

I had the opportunity to photograph the new born baby, Hannah. Hannah was born to a coworker, Todd and his wife. Hannah was not exactly in the mood for photographs this evening as she seemed, of course much more interested in a bit of nourishment. After a few bottles she started tp relax a bit and then didn't mind. This was one of my favorite shots from the night.

Choreography Class

This is a shot of Meghan during one of the dances choreographed by Harrison School of the Arts' Musical Theatre Dept. The seniors choreographed thier own pieces and performed them Tuesday Jan. 15th, 2008.

Fog horn!

Took a quick trip to Lake Morton in Lakeland in late December and snapped a few shots on a foggy morning. Here is one of those shots that I thought came out pretty well.

More wedding fun

This was one of my favorite shots of the wedding from Britany & Ryan. Britany was getting ready in a motor home on site of the wedding and the room was a bit tight. Even so, we still managed to get of quite a few shots that I was happy with. This wedding was especially enjoyable for me as my 14 year old daughter, Anna assisted me. Anna took some wonderful and creative shots. I hope to bring her along to more weddings. Here is one of the young bridesmaids from the wedding and one of my favorite shots.

Photo Contest Winner

I recently entered a photo contest sponsored ny the New York Institute for Photography. One of the photo's I entered has been selected as one of the top 16 photo's, which is pretty cool. They are going to be printing and framing the photo in a 16 x 20 size and displaying it along with all the other winning photo's at 11 Madison Ave. in new York city from October 22 through Nov. 2. They should be selecting the overal grand prize winner shortly with the top prise being a trip to New York and some nice photo gear. This was the photo I entered.

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.