Happy New Year

I want to wish everyone a happy New Year. This past year I have seen some positive growth in my images taking, from the intial capture to post processing. There has been growth everywhere. I also want to thank photographers Ed Heaton and Robert Lott for there advice. It has been great getting to know you guys and I look forward to an awesome 2009.

Here are two of my favorite images from the year. I picked these mostly because I haven't shown them off as much as I'd like.

Nick

Merry Christmas

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. This image is in Penn Square in downtown Lancaster. For those that don't the memorial is a tribute to the Civil War. This image is an HDR image, with details enhanced.

Autumn Rush

With the fall season quickly coming to an end I wanted to take sometime and take a look back. For the last couple of months I've been taking a class at betterphoto.com "Portfolio Development" with William Neil. On a side note if anyone happens to read 'Outdoor Photographer' he has excellent editorials. The class was all about shooting with a theme in mind. At the start of the class I was really interested in waterfall theme, but being from Lancaster County it is pretty hard to develop that theme without having to do a lot of driving. So I began to narrow it down to shooting the angles that water hits the rocks. But I really started to focus on the leaves as well. Using different shutter speeds, times of day and weather conditions I was really pleased at the final presentation. I also really focused on getting in close and tight with the subject. Thankfully the only thing I dropped in the water was a lens cap!!!! All of the shooting took place in a 30 foot section of creek near the Holtwood Dam along the Susquehanna River. I wanted to keep to a small area to force creativity while maintaing a certain style and technique. On my website I have the theme in my gallery under the title of 'Autumn Rush.' I highly encourage you to visit and let me know what you think.

Nick

Sisters

This past weekend I spent some time photographing my neices. Now the shots here are from one image. The first one on the bottom left is the original. I felt to really give a bang it needed something else. The first thing I did was convert over to Black & White, which I was happy with; but I still wanted something else. So I went to the original copy and put paint dabs on it in photoshop to give it the effect that it had been a painting.

Christmas at Longwood

Greetings everyone,
For those that live in the area near Longwood Gardens. I highly encourage you to visit the Christmas display that they have put up this year. If you don't like to mess with the tourist crowds going in the middle of the week you can almost feel like you have the place to yourself. I took this shot of the water fountains at ISO 100 25sec. shutter at f-4. I underexposed the image at -1.7 EV. Since the lighting and the fountain colors kept on changing I underexposed to compensate for the brighter colors while keeping my aperture open the whole time. I have more images up on my website including some great shots of the Christmas trees inside the conservatory. Under the new stuff folder.
Nick

Christmas Angel

This past week I've been shooting the Christmas orniments in my house. This shot here I took a couple times due to distractions that took the focus away from the subject. It's an HDR image with four images shot at f-11 with shutter speeds from 1/2sec. to 3sec.

Back light

I was going through some old photo's today. I stumbled on this Black and White image of these Rhododendrons. I took this image at Blackwaterfalls State Park near Davis West Virgina around mid June(By the way it's an awesome park). I did take some color shots, but they weren't panning out the way I had planned. The assignment for the class I was taking at the time at Betterphoto.com were images in black 'n white. Well the sun hit the other side in the nick of time and I was able to get three shots off. Here's the best one. It's funny how shots get overlooked sometimes.

Portrait

This past weekend I spent an afternoon in Longwood Gardens working on a portrait shoot of my cousin and his wife. Due to the holiday crowds it was a very difficult time shooting. To be able to set up a scene and work it proved to be very difficult, but I did come through with a couple of images. All of the shooting was taken in the conservatory. Here they had set up a pool of cranberries with fountains. I put my camera in portrait mode the whole time. Here I shot it at an ISO 160, shutter speed 1/60 sec, f-4.5, Due to the lighting I underexposed it at 0.7EV.

The start

I've created this blog as a challenge to myself. I want to be able to post at least once a week with an image from something that I'm working on.