Tampa Trip #2

So it's my brothers bday this weekend so I headed over to tampa again. This time (along with celebrtating his bday) I wanted some downtown and some more skyline images but from a distance. My first night I stayed in "the hood" haha there was an establishment that will go unknown near it so I figured I would grace it with my presence since I havent been there in 2 years. Anyways, I went to ballice Point Park and got some awesome long distance daytime skyline shots, unfortunately it was not clear but hazy out so hopefully the pics turn out.

I took my laptop this week and for some reason I can't even look at my pics because they are so big or whatever so I had to go download Adobe Lightroom and I'm hoping once that downloads I'll be able to look at them. I use the Adobe cloud, because I'm not about to pay $3,000 for all that crap.

I just took some interesting architecture shots and look forward to tonight taking some night shots of downtown tampa. Pics to come soon.

Trip #1 to Tampa -Skyline and Hyde Park

So I traveled to Tampa this weekend with the intention of getting some cool skyline pictures. Luckily the bridge changed colors every 30 seconds and it's so bright down there you don't need anything more than a 15 second exposure. Here are a couple of the pics from the Platt Street Bridge.

There were so many cars passing us I decided to do a long exposure on the bridge we were standing on. 

The next night we went to Hyde Park, an upscale shopping area. We hung out until it was night. 

It was still busy with cars so I got this cool long exposure light trail. 

So this was my first trip. My next trip this weekend Im going downtown and taking night exposures of the building downtown.

Sushii Xhyvette Promotional Video

So like every photographer I look for ways I can make a little bit of money on the side. I had just gotten a ton of video equipment so I figured I'd give the model promotional video a try and Sushii was my test subject.

Portraits Part 2 - Gemma and Sushii

My first working opportunity with another human being  was with Gemma James. We were at my secret shooting spot in Melbourne beach and captured a couple cool pictures.  Heres a few

First off, people think you have to have all this thousands of dollars in equipment to have the ability to shoot a great photo. The 2 photo's I had a Nikon consumer DSLR like $400 and a $40 Reflector. That's it. That's why I loved shooting at the beach in the afternoon because you didn't need $5,000 in lights to get great shots! 

This shot was colored in lightroom as I'm sure you can tell. But I LOVE the detailed line down the side of her breast and arm pit. It gives it a 3 dimensional aspect and makes the photo pop! 

Pretty much the same pose just from a different angle. Now she is looking directly into the sunset light. Where you get that beautiful Orange glow and highlights instead of the typical white highlight from a flash or direct sunlight.  I always try to shoot at the beach either at sunrise or sunset. Usually I will start the shoot around 4pm depending on that stupid daylight savings time. I never shoot on the weekends at the beach or outdoors anywhere because there are too many people out that you have to photoshop out.

Gemma was a great first subject, she took direction well and knew how to give a look. Just like an actor, its all in the face. These girls who starve themselves to because they think it's in the body are whacko's. I'd take a great facial expression over a tight body any day. 

Ahh Sushii Xhyvette, one of my favorite models I've ever worked with. I've shot stills and did a promotional video with her. She is great and really has a thing for being a personality and letting that personality show in the picture. I shot her inside with LED lights and natural light. 

This one shot was one of the best portrait shots I have ever taken in my opinion. It show sexyness, class, and a little bit of the subjects personality. I did some color correction to get the green overtone to it but the pose and expression speaks for itself. I used one 500W LED light on her right and I had a large window on her left which let in a great amount of natural light. I used a canon 7D for this shoot. 

Nudity is overrated. Yes you heard me. I strongly believe nudity is simply easy. Anyone can go online and see a pretty girl naked but teasing is much hotter. I like doing implied nudity because it lets the viewers do what their used to doing... using their imaginations. I've always like this pose due to the angles and the use of ones imagination. I think the use of a red silk sheet really stood out to.  

This picture I think depicts the model more than any other, with her spiked braclet, boots, multi-colored hair, etc. T\I've done this pose several times but like I said before Sushii was able to pull it off more than others.

Another Teaser but this one I loved so much because it has a great shadow to light ratio. I love color so I try in every picture to bring out as much of the color as possible. In this picture I made the pink stand out using lightroom.

Neat experiement!

So I wanted to do something artistic and figured I'd give the old splash photography a try. Here was my setup: I used water with Hawaiian punch mix

So I have an led 500w on full power my canon 60d, 50mm 1.4 lens, and cable trigger. I put my camera on continuous shooting mode and my settings were:

ISO: 100

F/5.6

Shutter 1/200

And after a slight editing process I got this!

So not bad, it was a cool experiment and def opened my mind to more creative stuff!

Portraits Beach Photography Part 1

Here are some of my beach photography. This is where I learned to shoot portraits. Using natural light is extremely difficult compared to using light you can control. I shot on the east coast so I typically shot around 3pm, which is what I found to be a good time for the sun. No artificial lighting but I did use a reflector on some of the shots inside the pavilion.

The next 4 photos were taken inside a pavilion at the beach. It was difficult because obviously there was no light but I used a 42" reflector to get some of the fill light.

Shooting on the beach was a struggle, a lot because of the sea weed that would come onshore and make the beach look disgusting. You also had to deal with people on the beach but the simple way to get that done was to just stamp them out or clone them out in photoshop.

Here are some before and after beach shots to show the editing involved. I might add that this was very very early on in my portrait experiences.

Sea Weed!!!!!

Obviously I did a horrible job at framing this picture but it was sooo difficult to get the sea weed out of this picture.

Sometime you just have to be creative. Her looking at the grass was not interesting at all.

Some Portraits - Lezli and Kelsey

So just so everyone doesn't think Im only a landscape guy, here are a couple of portraits I've done over the past couple of years.

Portraits
If you have worked with models then there's no need to tell you but models are difficult. They tend to show up late unprepared and have some sort of drama that the their whole world is going to end that day. I had this one model who demanded we shoot at 11am, so I was like ok, I usually like to shoot in the afternoon but this was a inside shoot. So here comes 12...12:30pm nothing from her. I finally texted her and she was like oh my car is broken down 20 miles away!!! Im like thank you! Thanks for letting me know. Long story short I had to go and pick her up off the side of the highway, she even ended up stealing my iphone charger before she left only to return it 4 weeks later. I can't stress enough NOT ALL MODELS are like this but if you bring a model to your house lock up your personal crap.

I've never really liked people, like I said in my bio (if you read it), I was a cop for 7 years so I dealt and saw things normal people couldn't imagine. I don't have a hatred for society but I really have to know you to open up to you. This is not a good mixture when you want to shoot models lol, you have to be outgoing and talkative. This is why I prefer landscapes ;)

Anyways here are a couple of my portraits.....

First up is Lezli Moore MM#1420361 , she was awesome. This was a basic one light setup.

This picture I learned the whole dodge and burn thing. I thought I did decent

I wanted to get Lezli to do some type of Mafia pose because I was going to put a cooler background there but that didn't work out so here a pic of her like a boss!

Haha so we wanted to have some fun and I was playing around with a light behind her, obviously it didn't workout as I wanted it to but it was a cool candid shot.

This is one of my favorites! I added all makeup in photoshop, 2 light one 45 degree on her right then another on her left arm. It's a sweet picture perfect for a banner like on facebook or something.

So Kelsey Marie, I really liked her modeling ability, she was great but I learned a lesson as a photographer. You never want to be too pushy. Even though she was friends with my ex and my ex was present during all the shoots, I think I freaked her out lol. She never responded back to me but its a lesson learned, there are a lot of perv photographers out there so if the model gets that feeling from you, she'll probably never talk to you again. If you are on model mayhem look her up and give her some action, she's great very little direction needed. I think shes under the name of Kelsey Friedrich  in Melbourne, Florida. MM# 2319728

This shot was pretty cool, I had her over to do some implied and girl/girl shoots with my ex.

This is a hilarious candid shot!!! hahaha I dunno why or how this shot came about but the look on her face is priceless!!! I caption it "You want me to do what?!?!?!"

At the time of shooting Kelsey I didn't have any lights so both of these shots were done with Natural Light.

Night Time/Daybreak at the Lakefront

Went down to the local lakefront at 5AM this morning!!! Way to early but as soon as I got there I saw this..

It was amazing! The moon was still out and the sun was rising in about 30 minutes. I walked around using my Canon 60d just taking this shot at different angles to try and get the perfect shot. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be able to sell any of these but hey they are great shots anyway.

At sunrise it was a harsh orange and I saw a guy fishing in the water so I broke out my 70-300mm lens to try and get him but instead he was gone and I got this...

 It's simply amazing, the colors that are so strong during a sunrise or sunset.

As I was walking down the "boardwalk" I saw these little binocular things and wondered what the heck are people using this for? On the other side of the lake are houses haha but I got low.

And finally, last night I was watching a B & H video on youtube (you should check their seminars out, and a guy took a picture of a tree and I thought it was pretty cool so here's my attempt.

So as I was walking back to my car to round out the day I had my 8mm fisheye lens on my camera and decided to shoot the best model I know!!!!!

The lakefront is a beautiful place but the sun rises in the wrong spot and it's not completely finished unfortunately. Hopefully my trip to downtown Tampa in a couple of weeks will bring out some awesome shots.

Hiking in the woods

So My first landscape trip in years was out in the middle of nowhere in St. Cloud. It was a walking trail in the 3 lakes management area. I went out there for the first time with nothing but a camera. The 2nd time I went with at least a bag, knife, and a monopod. I still forgot my water though. Never go hiking without the bare essentials. I have my hiking pack ready now for whenever I need it. It includes;

Canon 60D
Canon Backpack
18-55mm Canon Lens
50mm 1.8 Canon Lens
70-300mm Canon Lens
Large Knife
Swiss Army Knife
Minimum, 1 bottle of water
Flashlight
Compass
Cell Phone
First Aid Kit (including snake bite kit)

So I saw this row of tress as soon as I walked into the woods. I though it looked pretty cool but when I got home I was astonished!

 This picture came out so great!!

I also saw this row with this single tree in the middle so I figured I would set it to my "Lonely..." series of pictures, this one I call obviously "The Lonely Tree"

 The interesting thing is that these woods were just burned so it almost seems to give a "fall" look to the picture. This is what I love about photography.

This was simply a picnic table on the trail so I turned it black and white.

Here's me with some of my equipment walking the trail. The only problem is DON'T  GET OFF THE TRAIL!!!!

If you decide to get off the trail you might run upon some amazing and scary pictures or animals!!!

Ya, I walked off the trail and BOOM!!! here's an 11 foot alligator about 30 feet away from me. I didn't even see it until I was so close. It gave me a cool shot but man, my heart was pumping!!!!!!

Greatest Sun Shots

I love this shot! I got it right before the sun came up and it was still pretty dark out.

My settings were:

ISO: 100
F/8.0
Shutter: 1/15sec

Gear:
Canon 60D
18-55mm Lens
Tripod

I always shoot in manual mode I guess just to control everything. I actually merged 2 photos together for this shot.

Editing
I only brought out the colors and darkened up the dark spots here.

This picture is one of my favorites. I took it in Melbourne Beach. I had to hike almost 2 miles through a trail to the river. I was actually walking back to my car because it was getting dark and I didn't want to try and walk that trail in the dark when I walked past this opening and this was basically what I saw! It was beautiful!

Settings:

ISO: 200
F/8.0
Shutter: 1/1000sec

Gear:
Canon 60D
18-55mm Lens

Editing:
I only brought out the colors on this picture. No other editing was done.

Day one Sunrise at the Lakefront

 Except for the brush fire going on in the back, I thought this was a cool shot. A lot of orange and yellow plus I even threw in one of the local birds down at the lake. This picture was taken at sunrise down at the local lakefront.

I was walking by this bench just before the sun came up and thought this would be perfect! I like naming my pictures "Lonely..." so this was perfect. It just happened to be great clouds and a great sunrise. The difference in time between this picture and the top one was about 10 minutes. I guess, at least here in Florida the sun rises pretty fast.

Editing
I tend to edit all of my pictures. Sometimes I do a lot and sometimes I do nothing. It just depends on what I'm looking for in the picture. These 2 photo's I darkened the foreground because I wanted you just to see the outline so you could tell what it is. I feel that too many times photographers make the sunset the foreground and I always see the sunrise/sunset as a background.

My first DSLR image - Sunrise over the Sebastian Inlet Bridge

This was my very first ever DSLR photo taken in about 2009. I worked that area and thought to myself wow that would be a great picture! So I took it, I had a Sony Alpha something with a 300mm macro lens I think I had. I wish I could find the original large image because I could do a lot to it as far as editing it but first lesson learned haha. BACKUP EVERYTHING!!!!