My birthday gift from Mother Nature came a couple days early in 2019 as I awoke to the sight of dense fog outside my hotel room in Hochatown, Oklahoma. Wake up call came well before dawn, and only the lights of the parking lot outside gave any indication to the heavy blanket of fog outside the hotel room door. In an instant my original plans for a vivid sunrise vanished, replaced instead with new ideas and new locations that I had scouted on previous visits to the area. Grabbing our …
Show and Tell – Barn Burner Vertical
As they say, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” – as so was the 2018 Fall trip to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. And that enemy in our case was Hurricane Micheal. It’s path up the east coast put it squarely over where my shooting partner and I were planning to be. So a detour into Kentucky was quickly planned on the fly so we would be on the outer edges of it’s influence instead of sitting right under it in a downpour for 2 days. …
Show and Tell: Ketetahi Falls
Tongariro National Park, home to the major volcanoes of New Zealand’s North Island. And where there are mountains, there will be streams of water flowing down from the high elevations, and where there is flowing water, with a little luck there will be a waterfall or two. Ketetahi Falls is one of the smallest named falls within the National Park, but that makes it no less picturesque and worth a visit. Located at the end of the popular Alpine Crossing hiking trail, most hikers pass it right by in the …
Show & Tell: Downpour
Leaving Dallas on a Sunday evening, pointing my truck to the western sky I headed out to Montague for what was planned to be an astrophotography shoot. The skies were clear, the winds were light, nearly ideal weather for shooting the night sky. However once I passed through Denton and left the DFW metroplex a light gray shadow appeared on the horizon. By the time I was approaching Montague the gray shadow was now an ominous monster of a storm. The original plan was to meet up with a few …
Show & Tell: Creative Canoe
Early this year, at Tyler State Park, I finally found one of those ‘wish list’ locations and opportunities that had lived in the back of my mind for a good long while. A nice stacked line of canoes in the early morning light. Making use of the amazing 70-200’s compression, I took a sequence of photos down the row of canoe bows. Shadows in hues of blue, the morning light in hues of gold. What more could you ask for? How about a little creative editing? Golden light, shallow depth …
Show & Tell: Cascading waters in Oklahoma
When most people think of Oklahoma, they do not immediately think of rolling hills, tall trees, and most of all – waterfalls. However, there are pockets of the state that defy the generalizations most people have about Oklahoma. McCurtain County in the south eastern corner of the state is just such a pocket. And at Beavers Bend State Park you can indeed find cascading waterfalls – if the timing is right. Bound and determined to shake the ‘curse’ of my last two trips to Broken Bow and Beavers Bend, …
Exceeding Photoshop’s PSD 2GB File Size Limit
I remember when my family got their first computer. It was an Acer, it was this huge, heavy, dark colored tower case and even heavier 15″ CRT monitor. It was top of the line, Pentium 100 mhz (yes, mhz), and it had a 1 GB hard drive. Our neighbor exclaimed that we’d never possibly fill up a 1 GB hard drive. Six months later my father was none too pleased when I proved the old phrase “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Somehow, over a 56k modem, I had …
Show & Tell: Studio Rose Macro
When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. However,if those lemons of life come with roses to cheer you up, you bring out the macro lens and studio lights (or at least a flash or two) and take your mind off whatever it was that brought you down in the first place and try to focus on the beauty in the flowers. Such was the situation early in December last year, and while I’ll spare you the details of why my lovely wife was compelled to bring home a dozen …
Show & Tell: Lake Bob Sandlin Sunrise #2
Lake Bob Sandlin State Park sits nearly 2 hrs east of my home near Dallas Texas. Getting to the park and getting setup for a sunrise shoot was going to require getting up well before sunrise, which even in January meant a 5am departure time. This realization wasn’t helped by the fact the forecast showed a morning temperature several degrees below freezing. However, my friend and fellow photographer Elizabeth Jamison said she was certain it would be a sunrise worth getting up for. So with coffee in hand we hit …