Little People Big World

The first in hopefully a lot of photos like this. I went to the hobby shop today and got some model train people.

The idea is to place these little guys into interesting and sometimes humorous locations. I'm going order others off the internet since the hobby shop had a pretty limited selection.

This was just a test shot to get a feel for the scale and field of the lenses I plan to use. The figures are really small, smaller than i expected. I also need a good way to get these little guys to stand, playdough filled in ok for now, however I don't think my wife would be to thrilled with me gluing them all over the house.

Bubbles

One of the first images I ever made. I took about 100 pictures trying to get this shot (bubbles are very hard to get in focus). I actually captured this with manual focus since the auto-focus on my old Rebel XS and 55-250 lens wasn't nearly fast enough. My daughter had a little bubble maker that made things a bit easier since the initial approach of her bowing them the old fashioned way wasn't working.

This image came out very dark from the camera and it took a lot of work and noise removal to get it bright and clean enough. Figures that the one that had bubbles in focus was dark, but hey that's what shooting in RAW is for right?

Take me out to the ballgame

Here's another favorite. I was at a baseball game at Cambell's field in Camden with my daughter for a baseball game. The scenery at this field is amazing. I have been wanting a good shot of the Ben Franklin at sunset for some time.

This shot was actually tough, it took a lot of post processing since i couldn't get the exposure of the sky and the field right. I ended up having to lighten the field up quite a bit which added tons of noise, thank god for the internet and noise removal techniques. If i ever go back, I'm sure to recreate this one, probably with more than one exposure.

Beer and Pretzels

This is my latest creation. I made this for an online photo challenge, "Things that go together". Not an original idea, recreated from something similar I saw once in a magazine. I was really just playing around with lighting, which I'm not very good at and is surprisingly very important.

I used two really hot halogen floor lamps from home depot so I probably didn't need to cook the pretzel ahead of time.

Its also the first time in a while I drank beer through a straw so I didn't get fingerprints all over the glass (The head on Miller lite dies off really quick and I needed to keep refilling).

Probably the tastiest image I will ever make.

Fall fun

This image made the front page of the local paper as part of a photo contest. Only picture I ever made money on (maybe this blog will change that...).

That's my daughter throwing some leaves around.

I was trying out a new lens and I wanted some fall pictures. Since we have no trees n out yard, we went for a walk down Mantua creek. She was getting bored, which happened about 5 or so pics in. I was actually able to coax her into throwing some leaves in the air. She was thrilled to be on the front page and brought t in for show and share the next Friday after we won.

Lens Flare

I was just trying out some new new photoshop techniques with this. I took this one morning at the marina where my parents keep their boat. I added the sun flare and the sun rays in Photoshop and it really makes the image. I also added that bright ball of light where the sun was. The lighting is natural , i just enhanced the sun effect.

Beach Run

This has to be one of my favorite images. I got up early one day to take some pictures of the sunrise at the beach while on vacation last summer. I quickly got bored of the ocean not to mention frustrated how rude people are walking and running right through the shot... like this girl.

This isn't an accidental shot, I got that earlier, I wanted a better one. I quickly set up and waited for more runners. Luckily she came running back the other direction a bit later and i fired a burst and snagged this one.

ND filter was used to not blow out the sun and salvage some of the blue in the sky, and we can thank Photoshop for the pretty colors.

Abandoned

My first first place online ribbon! Contest was "Lonely shoes in black and white". Basically had to take a picture of shoes without feet in them. That's my friend Ryan in the boat. We shot this at a pond on his brothers property.

I initially envisioned a different shot, but the weight of a shoe on a fishing is something we underestimated and I had to crop off the tip of the rod so it didn't look so much like a cartoon. We also had to tied the line to the eye for the laces since the weight kept ripping the lure off the line.

Highway to Heaven

Another of the Ben Franklin bridge. I took this image while i was waiting for my wife to run across the bridge during her 10K bridge run. I over estimated how many people would be watching and got there way to early, leaving me plenty of time for pictures.

Definitely one of the better shots I got that day. It came out really great in black and white and the clouds in the sky look great. In color it doesn't quite have the pop that has here. I always find it hard to convert to black and white, but the more i try, the more i like it. It really gives a different feel and I'm finding that it can make a boring image look really good. I may need to revisit some of my older images.

I'm trying to persuade my boss to get a huge print of this to hang on the wall in the office, since the founder of our firm designed this bridge originally.

Spin!

This was taken at the Jolly Roger in Ocean City, MD this past summer. Surprisingly this image has hardly any Photoshopping done to it, really just some cropping.

A 5 second exposure and I used an ND filter to cut out some of the light from a nearby ride. The filter really gave a nice black sky that contrasts the Ferris wheel nicely. Its amazing how a 5 second exposure make this thing look as if t was spinning extremely fast when it was actually moving rather slowly.

Under the Ben Franklin Bridge

I took this photo on the way to work one morning, i entered it in an online photo contest and it took 4th place.

It was also featured as a popphoto.com picture of the day.