So I spent the first part of the night out shooting time lapses for a TV show Newtography is producing. Then came the storms.

After I had already returned home, I heard the thunder start rolling in around midnight. I grabbed my gear. Hit up taco bell for some 4th meal, and went to find a spot to shoot lightning. 

I ended up under the Tennessee Aquarium. They had changed the lights to red so I thought it would be interesting to shoot it with the red lights and maybe get some lightning strikes. I set my camera up outside my car window (while illegally parked on the sidewalks in front of the aquarium) and started shooting for a couple hours. I had no idea if I was getting any since I set it to shoot consecutive shots non stop. I was confident in the settings I chose so I knew if there was lightning that I would get it but not being able to see it while I shot was a bit nerve racking. I called it quits when the lightning intervals reached 5 minutes and headed home. 

I refrained from looking at the camera while driving, and upon getting home I saw that I was able to get a few shots with strikes in it. I was too excited to go to bed so I imported the photos and did some basic editing. When I awoke this morning I finished the edit and now we have the pic of the day :)

Hope you enjoy

Really busy lately so I have a hard time finding the time to edit. But here is a shot from a week or so ago that I was able to do a quick edit to for a pic of the day today :)

Hope you enjoy

Have you ever taken a picture and it just didn't come out the same as you saw it?  I would guess that this has happened to most of us. For some reason your camera just has a hard time capturing the world as we see it. Well I could get into why that is, with the dynamic range of the human eye vs an image sensor and tonal range and all this and that but I don't want to bore you. 

Basically, we all understand that the human body is an amazing thing and they eye is much better at viewing the world than your camera is. So what should you do about this? I personally enjoy spending time on my computer adding that mood to the photograph. I am a pretty emotional person when it comes to photography and I like implementing the emotion into my final images.

So let's look at what all goes into adding that emotion.

This last trip I took for work sent me up to Hershey PA. On my way home I stopped by to visit my friends Jeff and Emily in Virginia as I often do. Upon leaving their house I took my usual route through the mountains to get back to the interstate. This particular day was a very gloomy day with low fast moving clouds and hazy misty rain hither and tither :). I took a turn and passed this old run down building and immediately busted a U turn and went back to shoot it. 

It barely caught the corner of my eye since it was something I had often passed. However, the mood on this particular day really brought out the spirit of this old place really well, so I got a shot. 

my canvas

Now on the camera it didn't look too impressive, but that didn't bother me because I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. I wanted to have this canvas to really add the mood and feel of that day. Shooting RAW format in the camera usually leaves me with a pretty bland image. This is because it captures all the light data there is in the scene and allows me to access it when I am processing. So this bland photo becomes my canvas that allows me to let my artistic brain go to work and create something of my own. 

So I start out by making some basic adjustments on the initial image, and also tonemapping an HDR to use as an overlay in photoshop. 

Basic Adjustments

Tonemapped HDR

The New Canvas

I then blend those to together to make a nicely balanced image. Duplicating and using multiple layers and applying subtle filters to bring out the color and texture really helps me keep the true image feel while adding a bit of the detail in the highlights and shadows that I like from the HDR. 

With a little cloning to remove power lines, this becomes my new canvas :).

I then let the creativity flow and now that I have a true to life image, I can add some of the mood and emotion that the real life scene and misty gloomy day made me feel when I was there shooting.

Splashing paint on my canvas

Black and white edit to blend with the over colored edit

I start by adding a bit of color, since every artist likes splashing paint on their canvas :). I do this because I felt the gravel and the clouds, both being bland and grey, needed a little something to make them feel a little less boring. 

The next thing I notice is that the yellow color of the grass is a bit overwhelming for the image, while I think the dead grass adds to the mood of the photo, it needs to be tamed a bit. So I go ahead and edit the image as a black and white to blend together with the color image in photoshop in order to mask out these colors I don't want while adding the grey overcast feel that was taken away when I splashed in the color.

With those two blended together and the color masked in more on the building where I want it, I have gotten much closer to my final product. This is pretty close to the emotion I want to portray in this image. There is just a little something missing. 

Mood added...almost done

With the end in sight, there are just a few minor things that I want to tweak to make it perfect. so with some adjustment brush work to add detail where I see fit and a quick crop, and some custom vignetting to draw the eyes in to my subject and make the gravel a bit less distracting. I come away with my final product :)

I recently started helping my wife edit photos for her photography class and realized that I do a lot of things to photos without every actually thinking about why, it has always been a feeling for me when I edit.

When I pointed things out to her and told her why I thought this or that, it made me realize that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes with me, when I create an image, than I ever noticed. Saying it out loud made me really notice all the stuff that my brain thinks and I just wanted to write it all down for once. While there was actually a lot more that went into this, I feel like I got the main ideas across. I don't even know if anyone will read all of this but if you do, feel free to comment on here or whatever social media I post this on and let me know your thoughts. 

Hope you enjoy :)

So as a photographer, often times you come across an amazing subject. But even when you do find that special something you want to make an image of, its not always just about the subject. the background is always a big thing to consider when making an image. 

For todays image I had several difficult choices to make. I was downtown Lynchburg, VA with some friends, along the river. They, being photographers too, wanted to show me this love monument since they knew I had taken images of these monuments in other major cities. 

This particular monument was very unique, in that it had different things on each letter like spinning wheels and footprints and stuff. I didn't want to leave without getting a good shot of it for a pic of the day. 

The problem I was running into however, was that behind this monument was just dead trees and a very distracting background. So I took some shots from the front in various positions but I was not satisfied with any of them. Just because the background was so dead and distracting.

So then I decided to go around behind the monument. Which meant I would be shooting the word backwards and also that I would not have any of the unique items from the front of it in the shot. But for me personally just being able to shoot into the sun to add some light and also get some of the old buildings and streets in it, though distracting, were less of an evil than the background I was getting when shooting from the front. 

So while I am not completely satisfied with the image, I feel like of the angles I took, the overall image came out better when I flipped the shot from the back with a less dreadful background. O

One day I will have to return when there is plenty of life and green behind the statue to get a great shot but for the circumstances, this image will have to suffice. Feel free to comment below and let me know what you think and which angle you like best. 

Hope you enjoy :)

Took the wifey out for a night on the town tonight. We went to her favorite BBQ place and then walked around the city with our cameras. She had to shoot a DoF project for her photography class. So that meant I got to walk around with the person I love, doing what I love most :).

The night city covered by hazy clouds that reflected the cities ambiance back onto it. We went to the walking bridge so she could find some good things to shoot with a shallow depth of field. Since I had shot every possible angle of the bridge over the years, I decided to redo one of my old favorite POVs. 

I went and shot out over the rail for 10ish seconds while some cars drove by to make a better image of the same old photo I have taken dozens of times. I liked the way this one came out since I was able to take my time and wait for some cars, and the sky which was diffusing the city lights. 

I also did some warping in photoshop to get rid of some dead space and bring the walk way to life a bit more. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable, but I like the outcome. So here is todays quick pic of the day. Hope you enjoy :)