Mudfest

As I said previously, we had just finished 10 straight days of rain, so the trails at In Sync Exotics were pretty muddy. It was hard to avoid at times, and I felt really bad for the girl wearing her pretty new sneakers who was trying so hard not to get mud on them.



Everyone headed back to the visitor center at the end of the tour.

Girl Scout Outing

More from the outing with my daughter's Junior Girl Scout troop. These were both taken near the end of the tour. The girls were tired, hot, and somewhat muddy (we had just finished 10 straight days of rain).

There were some very shady areas and it probably would have helped to use a flash when taking pics of the girls, but I didn't want to take it out in the mud and I was afraid that a flash that big might spook some of the cats. One tiger named Apollo gave me a big roar when I approached his cage holding the camera.

The pic below is my daughter, the same person on the right in the pic above. It seemed like when one kid crossed their arms, they all did.

In-Sync Exotics

Recently I got to accompany my daughters Girl Scout troop to In-Sync Exotics, an exotic wildlife rehabilitation facility. Mostly big cats, the animals are kept in cages until rehabilitated and adopted by qualified owners (zoo's, etc. ) Many of the animals came from private owners and were abused, so the facility has some very strict policies regarding how the animals are viewed and treated.

Our tour guide took one look at my camera and requested that I sign a waiver stating I wouldn't try to sell any pictures I took of the animals. I hadn't planned on it, but most of the animals were behind two chain link fences which made getting a good shot next to impossible. I had to do a lot of manual focusing to get anything.

Kayla Sets Sail

Kayla has been modeling for me since she was 15. Whenever I needed to practice or needed to update my portfolio, she always volunteered to help me out. She also helped me out on jobs when I needed an extra person. AND she was my kids babysitter.

Well, Kayla is all grown up now and leaves for her new life with the Navy starting today. She signed up for 5 years which is why I took her out on a marathon photo shoot a few weeks ago. I told her I needed at least 5 years worth of pictures. I think I got it, too.

We all wish her luck!

Web Site Redo: PhotoFrame

I am fully aware that my web site ain't so hot.

It looks the way it does because at the time I couldn't afford to hire someone to build it for me, so I built it myself. The only program I'm familiar with for web site building is Microsoft FrontPage. I built it completely using that program and used the Lightroom web function for the picture galleries.

It was boring and dated when I first put it up 2 years ago, but now it REALLY looks boring and dated. This week I've implemented a plan to redo, refurbish and rebuild.

Step one is choosing the appropriate pictures. I'll use several that I already have up plus a whole bunch of new ones. One thing I've been experimenting with is software called PhotoFrame that adds artistic frames to your images. Above is one example.

Still learning the software...the frame in the above pic was from a PhotoFrame preset.

SuperDUPER Shallow Depth

You can REALLY see the depth of field on this one. Her face is in focus while parts of her hair and everything behind her is completely out.

Same location as the last pic. I asked her to swing around on that pole, but then quickly realized that's not an appropriate request to make of a respectable young lady. Oops...

Super Shallow Depth

Still at the Heard, I used a 50mm f1.4 for this one. Not my lens, I'm still mostly working with my 24-200mm f4.0.

Got some great depth of field on this one. I used a little bit of flash just for some fill-in since this was a covered area. It was also about 85 degrees. Kayla was becoming uncomfortable wearing that sweater.

Argyle & Pigtails

The week before last I did a marathon photo shoot with Kayla, who has worked with/for me for a few years now. I also did her senior pics last year. She's getting ready to to move on to some big endeavors so she agreed to squeeze in one more shoot while she's still in town. More on that later.

Our first stop was the Heard Museum where we spent over two hours taking pictures. This was one of the first ones we did. I thought the ripped up jeans and pigtails against the wood screamed for some sepia. The argyle sweater doesn't exactly fit, but we weren't going for any type of theme and I didn't tell Kayla what to wear or what to do with her hair.

More Tunnel Light

If this pic looks very similar to this one of my daughter, there's a reason.

Alex and his Mom described a picture they wanted me to make and showed me an example of one they had done previously; Alex looking down with the light coming in from the left, background out of focus. I tried photographing Julia in the tunnel to see how it would look before I suggested this to Alex.

I had Alex meet me at 7:00pm at Adriatica to do the shot. I noticed it was starting to get cloudy and could see a storm moving in in the distance. Alex arrived just as the rain started so I figured we might as well see what we can do anyway. The big problem was light. The dark clouds from the storm cut the light to almost 50% of what I was expecting to get.

This is where the 5D Mark II really came in handy. I borrowed a friends 50mm f1.4 and pushed the ISO up to 1600. This was the result. Not bad considering the light was very limited. In the raw image I could see just a little bit of grain when I zoomed in on the picture, but I was able to get rid of most of it using Lightroom, as well as converting the image to black & white.

I'm sure it's legit...

Spotted this sign while walking down 6th Street in Austin last month. I wonder how many times this place has been raided by the police...when you give your business a name like this you're just asking for trouble.

..and NO...I didn't go in.

Prison Courtyard

Still at the old Collin County Prison, this area was at one time the prison courtyard. I've heard stories of prisoners yelling and whistling at women if they happened to walk down the alley where the prison courtyard is located. It's hard to believe you could get that close to inmates less than 40 years ago.

For this shot, I asked Alex to pretend he was getting slightly agitated that his girlfriend was not on time yet again. His expression was just what I was after. This is one of my favorite shots from our entire session.