Warm Grass, Lake Sam Rayburn TX I love the way that a sunset can light up a foreground! This glowing grass caught my eye as I was looking for a new foreground composition that included the reflection pool. We hope to get back to the lake this weekend and maybe even today! This is a three exposure HDR. I haven’t made many HDR photos lately, but still find it to be a handy technique when I have to shoot into the sun without any filters. The only filter used here is the circular polarizer. CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today with Jen Rozenbaum and workshop titled “Building a Successful Boudoir Business.” Check it out FOR FREE 24hrs a day for the next two days at www.creativeLIVE.com/live Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 15, 2013, taken January 21, 2013

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Crashing Waves, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

A beautiful cloudy sunset on our favorite beach. The sunset was beautiful despite all of the clouds, as you can see here. The waves were crashing gently on our beach.

This is a single ½ second exposure. I like the wave action that is captured with this fast shutter speed. Usually I shoot at longer shutter speeds that washout the details of the waves. I like both looks but prefer the long exposure look a little more just because it looks so much different. You can read about my filter set up for this shot here.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 18, 2013, taken January 25, 2013

Spooning, Nacogdoches TX

Cheech and Sala spooning for an evening nap in Big Red’s kennel. Cheech and Sala have become great friends but Big Red has been much slower to warm up to Sala. At this point I’d say Big Red tolerates him, but will be quick to put Sala in his place if he gets too rowdy. Sala on the other hand, adores Big Red. He follows Big Red everywhere and is constantly submitting to Big Red and trying to gain his favor. It seems Big Red’s dominant strategy is paying off. Cheech and Sala both submit to Big Red and he is the undisputed leader of the dogs, while I am Big Red’s undisputed leader. I think that’s why Cheech and Sala like laying in Big Red’s kennel.

This was taken indoors with available light, mostly from a ceiling light. The dogs were entirely in the shadows. I didn’t want to spook them by bringing out a flash or reflector, so I just cranked up the ISO to 6400. I rarely shoot above ISO 320 or 640, so 6400 is like a million to me, and it introduced a lot of noise. When I do shoot high ISO I like to convert the image to black and white and embrace the graininess of the high ISO noise. I didn’t add any additional grain in processing, and I did apply quite a bit of noise reduction.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 17, 2013, taken February 12, 2013

Warm Grass, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

I love the way that a sunset can light up a foreground! This glowing grass caught my eye as I was looking for a new foreground composition that included the reflection pool. We hope to get back to the lake this weekend and maybe even today!

This is a three exposure HDR. I haven’t made many HDR photos lately, but still find it to be a handy technique when I have to shoot into the sun without any filters. The only filter used here is the circular polarizer.

CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today with Jen Rozenbaum and workshop titled “Building a Successful Boudoir Business.” Check it out FOR FREE 24hrs a day for the next two days at www.creativeLIVE.com/live

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 15, 2013, taken January 21, 2013

Shy Smile, Nacogdoches TX

This is Nini’s favorite pose from our anniversary shoot over the weekend. The only problem was that the flash didn’t fire. The batteries were running low and the flash wouldn’t recharge very fast. But her pose was great! So she made me salvage the image in processing even though I probably would have never processed something so dark. I really like the result. There is more noise and less sharpness than I’d like, but the emotion of her pose more than makes up for what this photo lacks in technical quality. The crop is straight from camera, I’ve been practicing cropping into heads and I like it!

If you missed it the other day, my favorite photo from the shoot is here.

CreativeLIVE is live and FREE with Jasmine Star’s wedding photography restart. Check it out at www.creativeLIVE.com/live

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 13, 2013, taken February 9, 2013

Blue Hour Reflections, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

The high water at Lake Sam Rayburn makes for some beautiful reflecting pools. I tried several different compositions, but this one was kept catching my eye as I scrolled through my recent photos. I hope you like it! A previous photo of this sunset can be seen here.

This is a single four minute exposure with no filters. The clouds were moving right at us and I really wanted to capture some cloud movement. This was the last photo I took before hiking back to the car in the dark.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 11, 2013, taken January 21, 2013

Nini in Black, Nacogdoches TX

We had a busy day yesterday with our anniversary gifts. Nini had her massage, hair and makeup done at a local salon, and then I got to take her photo. The sky was perfectly overcast for the first hour or so giving us great natural light, but when we took a lunch break it got too cloudy to shoot without adding some flash. It was 60 degrees, which was perfect for me, but Nini was chilled. You can see her goosebumps in larger sizes.

For this portrait Nini is lit with a single speedlite shot through a beauty dish with a grid on it. The grid helps to prevent the light from spilling too far in any direction, creating really cool light falloff that is fun to work with when you have a nice background. We shot it downtown Nacogdoches with a beauty dish on a stand, on several sidewalks and alleyways, and no one ever bothered us a bit. One of my goals was to do a wider shot like this that will look good printed in large sizes. It was a fun day!

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 10, 2013, taken February 9, 2013

My Love in Black and White, Nacogdoches TX

I don’t usually post the same photo twice but I was really happy with how this turned out in black and white. And I think it’s fitting since Nini and I are celebrating our anniversary today with a photo shoot.

For this photo Nini was lit with natural window light. There is a big styrofoam reflector just out of frame to the camera right of Nini. I also held a 20 inch silver reflector to the right of my camera to add the catch light in her eye. She is the catch light in my eye!

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 9, 2013, taken February 3, 2013

Colorful Sunset, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

A colorful sunset on our favorite beach. Hopefully we’ll be there again this weekend to have an anniversary picnic. Today is our actual anniversary and we’re celebrating with friends tonight. Tomorrow we are giving each other our anniversary gift. Nini is getting an hour and a half massage, hair and makeup at a local salon. I’m getting a photoshoot with my wife! Then we’ll go out to dinner. It should be a fun anniversary for the both of us. Thanks for all of your anniversary wishes yesterday!

CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today for the third day with wedding master photographer Marcus Bell. Catch the FREE re-watch all night long if you miss the live version. I actually like the re-watches better because they cut out the breaks. www.creativeLIVE.com/live

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this is a three exposure HDR.

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 8, 2013, taken January 21, 2013

Warm Grass, Lake Sam Rayburn TX

I love the way that a sunset can light up a foreground! This glowing grass caught my eye as I was looking for a new foreground composition that included the reflection pool. We hope to get back to the lake this weekend and maybe even today!

This is a three exposure HDR. I haven’t made many HDR photos lately, but still find it to be a handy technique when I have to shoot into the sun without any filters. The only filter used here is the circular polarizer.

CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today with Jen Rozenbaum and workshop titled “Building a Successful Boudoir Business.” Check it out FOR FREE 24hrs a day for the next two days at http://www.creativeLIVE.com/live

Critiques are always welcome.

Daily photo: February 15, 2013, taken January 21, 2013