Saturday Morning Shooting

It has been forever since I went out JUST to take pictures. I left the house at 6:15 this morning with my gear bag and found out a few things:

1. 28 degrees Fahrenheit might be warmer than most Saturdays have been recently but it's still damn cold.
2. My shooting is way out of practice
3. I really need to practice shooting with my zoom lenses again.
4. In general, I really have to watch my shutter speed and focal length and use my tripod more. Using the 50mm at home under lights has gotten me too confident in handheld shots when I got back outside using a zoom lens.
   
5. I still love photography and need to get back to it outside of the kitchen.

Water Hazard
Yellow golf ball frozen in the shore of Lake Loudon. I like the shot but should have used the 50mm/1.8f lens.

Martian Landscape
Actually is the exposed and frozen clay shoreline.

I loved the color in this shot, the sun was just peaking over my shoulder. I HATE the focus. I had been shooting manual focus before this shot and wonder if I thought I had switched back to auto. I don't know but this could have been a great shot.


High and Dry
I like the stratified layers of color in this shot, but it's a bit washed out in the lightest layer.



Lost Summer

This stump of a post embedded in concrete caught my eye because of how the water erosion has etched the natural rings of the wood out. I should have used the tripod more to get cleaner shots.

Dang, I have long legs at 7 in the morning!

The ONLY shot I took all morning that I really liked. At least it's the only one that didn't make me think I should have done something differently.
As disappointed as I was in the pictures, I feel like I learned a lot, or more to the point, "re-learned" a great deal.

Fun With Tequila

I should just drink the stuff but where would be the fun in that?

I was getting ready to make a tequila marinade for steaks when the light of the late afternoon sun caught my eye and I had to play around a bit. There were no special effects or lighting. Just the tequila, a window, and the sun.

Wiping Off The Dust In Here

It's been over a month since I've posted here? Sheesh.

I just haven't been shooting much lately except practicing my food photography for my food blog, Nibble Me This.

Football season finally ended for my 10 y/o son's team tonight when they lost in the playoffs. That means no more 2 hour practices 3 nights a week plus games. I'm going to have more time to get back to doing things I want to do, like working out and photography.

I did shoot this interesting hunk of wood in my driveway. The mood matched my mood for the day. Kind of a "crap, summer is over winter is coming, and dang the days are growing very short" kind of a mood.

Peek-a-boo

I believe this little fella is some sort of an Anole (lizard). He was following another one up on the deck at the pool but froze when he found my lens peering at him.

Put a cork in it

As found on the beach in Perdido Key on a late afternoon.

Sunday Morning Drive

We were childless this morning so Alexis and I left the house at 7am to go on a photo safari. We ended up driving 100+ miles to the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. Unfortunately, the 1,000 percent humidity was oppressive and the ozone impenetrable, so mountain shots were out due to the haze. Even with UV or polarizing filters, it is still to hazy to get a clean shot.
But I didn't let the weather conditions ruin my photo safari. I took just over 100 shots of other things as we meandered through country back roads (right at a photo per mile). I got some real "keepers" today and I'll post some of them over the next few days.

Here's one taken at one of the first stops we made. Alexis noticed this old softball sitting at the base of a lake side tree. To me, this instantly began the storytelling in my head.
I couldn't help but notice the ANCIENT pop top tab (what are those, 30 years old now?) next to it, so I thought this would look great as a black and white.
Which version do you prefer?

Update: Alexis read this post and pointed out that she liked THIS one better. Only a slightly different take, but still, which one do you like better, color or b&w?

Late Afternoon eukenaisa...echonesia...screw it, late afternoon flower.

Shadow Shot Sunday

Once again, it is Shadow Shot Sunday over at Hey Harriet's blog and this is my contribution for this week.
I snapped these while cooking a London Broil tonight, using my Big Green Egg.

This is the shadow of my MAPP gas torch that I use to start my lump charcoal.Same torch, shadowing the seasoned top round roast I was cooking today.My glasses on the grill table. I know....awesome, it is the shade of my shades!
My grill spatula turned on it's side.Hope you all are having a great weekend!

Food Porn

This is a shot that I took this weekend for my food blog (Pan seared scallops with golden shrimp sauce...and a bit of sriracha heat!) but it is soooooo purty that I had to post it here too! Not only was it nicely executed from a culinary standpoint, I was proud of the styling, the composition, and color from a photography standpoint.

I'd have to say it's one of the top 10 food shots I've ever created and taken!

Trip The Light Fantastic

My back deck was bathed in gentle shadows late this afternoon when I found a firehose of light being splashed on one spot.

One of my hobbies other than photography is cooking, but especially BBQ (See the little green guy over there to the right in my side bar? That's my food blog.) For 25 hours straight this rainy weekend I was smoking chicken and pork so the deck was a wreck! I was cleaning it up, taking down my EZ-Up cover when the brilliant beam of sunlight reflected off my neighbor's window like the ending scene from Raiders of The Lost Ark.

I chased it as it moved from my pile of thin sliced hickory.....

To the batch of bok choy Alexis is growing....

Then I went out front and chased Trevor around the maple tree....

He's my favorite model....

But I have a technical question about lighting for all you photographers out there. Here are two action shots I tried to take of Trev the past two afternoons.

Yesterday with an external flash (SB-600) to light up the shadows on the front side of Trevor. I could have started to work on the exposure but since I'm firing a D-60 with a maximum shutter sync speed of 1/200th of a second I won't be able to stop the blur while using a flash.

So today I tried just using no flash and a shutter speed of 1/320th. The blur is better but the lighting is not good. I need a light source from the front.

So what do you think? Is it just an issue of my camera being too slow of a sync speed? Or is there something else I could try?

Shadow Shot Sunday

Shadow Shot Sunday
This weekend is the 52 edition of Hey Harriett's Shadow Shot Sunday, marking it's first anniversary.

Photo Safari
Normally I like to go on my photo trips alone but this time I'll make an exception. Come on along.

I head west, trying to out run the breaking dawn so I can get some sunrise shots at the lakes. (I guess this also counts for SSS with the sun reflecting off the review mirror.)It's a quarter before "too damn early" so Red Bull is a must.
The gear bag is packed....well not exactly "packed" but it is in the car!
The trusty GPS is ready just in case I decide to get "lost" on purpose.
And the weather? Crap. No sunrise this morning.
I don't really like shooting with overcast skies because all of the colors seem muted. I shot for about 45 minutes but didn't really get anything that wowed me. The best I got was the "if" shot from yesterday and this one, a submerged stump. I just liked how minimal it was.

So what about you....do you have any special tricks for shooting in overcast conditions? Do you even bother shooting when it's like that?

Old Man Waiting At The Window

I took this shot today of a 78 y/o neighbor looking out of his door window this afternoon waiting for his daughter bringing his wife home from the doctor's office.Ok, I'm kidding. I made this shot of myself tonight using my son's pocket camera, a Fuji Fine Pix Z20. And I wasn't "by a window".

I was walking down the hall this afternoon when I saw that one golden beam of late afternoon sunlight coming from the window in my son's bathroom reflecting on the door jam on my bedroom about 20 feet away. I saw my shadow pass in front of it as I walked to my bedroom and stopped. The word "composition" flashed through my head and I started playing.

I put the little camera on a tripod and then stood about halfway between the window and the door, lining my shadow up on the wall. I then reached down and snapped the shot.

To give you an idea of how small of a sliver of light this is, here is the rest of the light that was caught by a wall by the bathroom. Only the right edge of the octagonal window was hitting the door jamb in the first photo.To be honest, I'm pretty damn proud of the image I created in the first picture using a crappy camera. This is what I like about photography. Sometimes it's not just "recording a happening". Sometimes, it is creating a scene, developing a mood, and telling a story.

I still can't wait to get MY camera back.