Have you every had one of those days that you think nature is after you? Well, yesterday was one of those days for me. My goal for yesterday was to get out and capture some Fine Art work. I waited until there was a break in the rain, grabbed my gear and headed out. Not a moment soon after reaching the curb it started to rain and progressed rather quickly. I retreated back into the house and it stopped raining, my luck right! Since it was lunch time and I was hungry I took a few minutes to make some lunch, and sat down to one of my favorite movies. During this time it had not rained and the cement was beginning to dry. I figured the rained had stopped at this point and I headed back out, and you would not believe what happened next. It started raining once again. Frustrated at this point I decided to call it a day, so I thought. Since I wasn’t able to do what I wanted, I figured it was time for my Parakeet to get his pictures taken. Normally Trinity doesn’t like to get his picture taken and runs away, but this time he was all for it. Matter of fact, he was showing off to the camera and to himself. I was able to get a couple of shots from him, but still disappointed in the outcome. During this time my dog was watching, so I also took an image of her as well.

My Spoiled Brats: (Trinity Left, Cinnamon Right)

Early that morning I received a text message from my cousin asking if I would do a mini-session of her child in his raingear. I gave her some information regarding a time that would be best considering the amount of luck that I was having. When she got off of work she stopped by and we started discussing it. I figured since Aiden was already over, had all his raingear with him and the skies were looking amazing I decided lets go ahead and give it a shot. I mistakenly said “I haven’t had any luck today, every time I went outside with my gear it started to rain,” that wasn’t very smart. I hauled all my gear outside, got it setup and it started raining. Aiden was playing behind the shed, having a blast and didn’t want to come out. After a few minutes I got him to come out and stand where I wanted him. I took an exposure shot, readjusted my flash and before I got to compose the shot he started to take off, so I took a blind-fire shot and he said I’m done. Like a true celebrity. I didn’t get a chance to review the image, as I wanted to get all my gear inside and out of the rain. After I got my gear all cleaned up, I finally got a chance to review the image and I nailed it. Exposure was perfect and sharp. The composition wasn’t what I wanted, but who’s going to argue. I got the shot, which counts.

I got my first gig coming up shooting a Company Christmas Party for a friend. One of his ideas was to have some portraits taken in front of a Christmas tree. Having not working very much with a combination of ambient light mixed with some flash, I decided that it would be time to dial in some settings and techniques. Overall, I think I have nailed a good combination of ambient and flash, while still maintaining hand holding of the camera.

These last two shots are the same as the previous with a few different editing techniques. There are some additional techniques that I eventually would like to give a try, but those will have to wait until a later date.

This past week I completed and turned in all my work so that I can have it easy until the end of the semester. Now that I didn’t have to worry about projects, due dates, etc, I took some time to go through some of my old photographs back from when I was just starting photography. I re-edited some of the more popular images and edited some new images. These images were shot from: Morro Bay, March Field Air Museum, Irvine Regional Park, Las Vegas, and Temecula.