"Lady Gaga" based photo shoot

These are a few pictures from a shoot I recently did at Tamarack beach. The MUA's idea was based on Lady Gaga's style. Everyone did a great job. As soon as I have everyone's info (Facebooks, Model Mayhem, and other social network sites) I will post the links on here. It was my first time doing this kind of a photo shoot, and I would definitely like to do something like this again. I like being able to be as creative as I want.

Pseudo Kodachrome

It's been a while since I've posted, and I feel very neglectful of my sad little blog. So I decided to post this image I took today on my walk with my dog Fiona. I had Kodachrome film on my mind, and I wanted to emulate that look as much as I could. It makes me sad to think that film will probably go the way of the dinosaurs within my lifetime. I remember shooting only film just 5 years ago, and now getting 120 film processed is so expensive, and time consuming. Anyway just random thoughts...

Coming home

Coming back from vacation always makes me a little sad. It means it's time to come back to reality, remember that we have actual jobs, and that we can't just sit in a pool in a mexican resort, and drink margaritas all day, unfortunately. We had such a good time in Cabo, met some wonderful people, got to witness two great people getting married. I think we will start planning for next year tomorrow.

Dean Collins Motorcycle shoot

This guy is out of control. It's pretty cool how he gets the illusion of motion by moving the background, and not the motorcycle. The fact that he did this all on an 8 x 10 view camera makes it even crazier. Dean Collins was definitely a master of light. R.I.P.

A touching story

This is an awesome story of a photographer going overseas to get a story, hopefully make some sort of a difference, and end up changing many peoples life. It is an incredibly touching story, and I really hope that you watch the entire thing. I have watched it a few times now, and I find it very inspiring each time.

New iPhone ad

"There's an app for that". Apple is constantly releasing ads that are just ripe for parody. This ones pretty funny. I especially like the facial recognition app for "when it's time to move on".

How it's made- Canon "L" glass

This is part 1 of a 3 part video about the making of Canon's "L" lens'. I found it very interesting to see the perfection, and engineering that goes into every "Pro" Canon lens. This is why we are willing to pay an ungodly amount of money for this quality product.

Topaz Detail

I've been using a product from Topaz Labs for quite a while now. The product is called Topaz Adjust, and you can see many images in my Flickr stream edited with this program (including the recently posted wave jumping photo of my son). It is a fantastic program that enhances details, and colors to an almost HDRish quality, if thats what your looking for.

I am currently testing out another program of theirs aptly named Topaz Detail. So far I'm liking what I see. The basic overview of the program states that it is an image sharpener without the terrible halo effect that you would get with the unsharp mask filter in Photoshop. I haven't found it useful in all the images I've tested. Especially images that I shot at higher ISOs. However, for $40 bucks I think it's well worth it. It is worth noting though that If you are just looking for sharpening, and not any more effect than that. I would probably go for Nik software's Sharpener Pro.

Here is a sample image using Topaz Detail, and the corresponding link. http://www.topazlabs.com/detail/

Business cards

Just got Melissa's business cards back from PremiumCards.net - Business Cards & Postcards - Custom Business Card Printing. Awesome customer service, and the cards look great. I will definitely be using them to design my new business cards.

Wave jumping

We spent the day in La Jolla today eating sweets, checking out art galleries. Later on we went down to the shore, and I told my son I didn't want him to get too wet. He started jumping waves right by the rocks, and I knew it was gonna be a cool shot.

Senior moments

Really enjoying having my sister in town from Oregon. This will be her final year in high school so we shot her senior portraits this weekend. I think she will be really happy with them once they're finished.