Weekend Warrior

Weekends are by far my favorite time of the week. For me they are a time for adventure, exploration, and fanatical photography formulation. This weekend I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit a concrete plant for a shoot. This definitely brought me out of my comfort zone but I welcomed the challenge.

This shoot was an exciting chance to work with a whole new subject matter that I had not previously touched upon in my art. Although my day job consists of producing product photography, the inorganic shapes I worked with on this particular shoot made me pay particular attention to how they interacted with their environment.

Another thing I don't often work with is black and white. This is an area that I have been pushing myself in recently. A photo can taken a whole different mood or meaning when taken in black and white. This can be a challenge because it's not as simple as slapping a black and white filter onto your image. Anyway, here is the outcome of some of my work from this shoot. A little mix of industrial grunge with a splash of black and white practice.

 

M + J Engagement Shoot

For every shoot I do, I like to learn as much as I can about the person or people I am photographing. This is only natural of course. By understanding your subject you as a photographer are able to gain a bit of insight into their life to better capture their essence and beauty in your image.

As soon as they began to tell me about their relationship I was instantly inspired. Being an active and outdoorsy couple, I could easily relate to their appreciation of nature. When it was mentioned that the two of them loved water, my mind began to race with ideas for possible shots to do. A few locations were recommended to me but a waterfall was a must. I scouted out the different shooting locations before deciding on the perfect spot for them.

But as with all things, the shoot did not go completely as planned. When I arrived, as the sun was rising, I took a quick walk through the park once more to test the lighting in each area. Unfortunately the beautiful waterfall that I specifically picked this particular location for was not currently flowing. The water was very low that day which surprised me because of all the rain we had received that week. It was also a bit of a surprise because I had just been there a few days before when it was flowing perfectly. 

Even with this small setback we as artists must do our best to achieve our vision. I wanted this shoot to go well for this adorable couple so I went to work with what we were given. I am pleased with the outcome even if it wasn’t as I had initially intended it. I believe that this is not only an important part of being an artist but also just as human beings in general. We must learn to go with the flow (no pun intended) and tackle challenges head on.  

Click Here to see the full shoot.

How Much I Love Photo Editing

I'm just going to say that it's a lot. I really do have a passion for photography and photo editing. Below I have added some photos that I needed to edit for class that I had a really good time doing. These were intended as practice with editing photos in Photoshop and Camera Raw (so they were not taken by me just edited). You can never get enough practice. There is just something about the creativity you have, not only while taking a photo but with the post processing as well, that I just love.

Photo Credit: Scott Kelby (pre-edit behind)

This photo was an example of edits with white balance, that is the photos color temperature. New cameras these days have so many settings when it comes to white balance. You can allow your camera to do the work for you and use its little camera brain to determine the best balance for your photo or you can access the lighting yourself and let the camera know how it should balance it. Our eyes have a way of balancing the colors in different lighting so it may be difficult at times to understand why your pictures comes out with a particular hue to it and what white balance setting to use. 

In this case the original photo came out very blue and cold (this may be how you wanted the photo to come out, and that's fine, its all artistic opinion). A blue hue is usually caused by fluorescent lights. This can be combated in post by changing the white balance to the fluorescent setting and by making some adjustments of your own as well.