A fun shoot with a HS Senior in Alaska

My very first assignment when I arrived in Alaska, was to shoot a HS Senior in Eagle River. I got my rental truck, got directions, and off I went from the airport to meet Bridget and her daughter, Victoria for the shoot. We briefly had discussed what they wanted over a great lunch prepared by Bridget (thank you), and then drove to the shoot location that had 2 beautiful horses. Once there, we began shooting and the weather actually cleared up as the shoot progressed. It was almost as if I brought some good weather up to them from Vegas. Victoria was a trooper and quickly relaxed and got into the "shooting mood" and just focused on what we were doing and I think that comes through in the images below. One thing I feel is very important is building a trust and a comfort level between the photographer and the subject. Although Bridget and Victoria differed on what would look good as a senior portrait, the end images came out beautiful. See for yourself....

This kid Rocks!

I thought i would share some images from a kid i know.... My Daughter! she is barely a teenager and has been shooting with a P&S camera for about 6 years and in my opinion (I may be slightly biased) has an AMAZING natural eye. Her framing and composition of shots is very refreshing and I am blown away when I see new images that she shares with me. She is a big fan of landscape photography and self-portraits. She will probably be getting her first Digital SLR this fall and I hope she will want to learn all of the "boring" settings and stuff so she can improve on her raw and great talent. To see some more of her work, click here. All images below are shot by her except the one of us at the Valley of Fire... that one was on a timer on a tripod. I love her angle on the St. Louis Arch! Enjoy... and keep a look out, I plan on blogging alot more in the upcoming weeks!

paying homage to my true inspiration... my vision... literally

Between my lens and my mind lies my true inspiration... my vision. I am writing about my eyes. They allow me the privilege see the world and give my mind things to think about all of the time, yet sometimes I overlook their presence and significance to me and my life. I recently read an article about the eye and it's comparison to the camera in the digital world and I thought I would share some of this knowledge with you. I am not going to quote this article, but I will tell you where I got it, so you can read all of it for yourself, if you choose. It was printed in the August 2008 issue of "Popular Photography". Most of what I am going to talk about is based on photography, so if it sounds foreign to you, read up on what you don't understand ~ if anything it will help your photo-taking skills! Let's start with the ISO of the eye: in daylight the ISO rating is 1 and the max ISO for the eye at night is 800. This refers to the sensitivity of the eye. In comparison Film's lowest ISO is 25, and some digital cameras go as high as 6400 (we see better in the day and cameras have the huge advantage in the dark). Now let's talk Depth of Field: the eye has the equivalent focal length of about 22mm and a field of view of almost 180 degrees at its extreme; our eyes are capable of f/3.5 at wide open. Camera Lenses have the advantage here as the fastest lens available now is a f/1.2 and there are some crazy fish-eye lenses out there, but i am content with non-distorted vision, thank you. The final eye detail I will mention for now is the one I have wondered about ever since I heard about digital cameras and mega-pixels... Resolution: the eye has the resolution of 576 Mega-Pixels! That in itself is incredible, as the biggest camera i have seen on the market is pushing about 39 mega-pixels. This is telling me that we are just at the beginning of digital photography and I am looking forward to see where it goes. I hope this opened your eyes to the marvels of... the EYE.