Andi at the Villa

Hi all - my friend Andi offered to model for me out at La Villa Vista. Wanted to practice some portraits and bridal shots out there. Here's a few I liked. Enjoy. :)

Paul and Cammie

Engagement shoots with friends are always fun. The couple had a very specific idea which made things easy. I had fun with this. :) We got everything they wanted in less than 70 exposures which is practically unheard of. Also, many thanks to the Austin Speed Shop for putting up with us while we did the shoot. They were awesome. Wishing P & C all the best. :)

Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary

I like it when you can take something either very ordinary and plain, or even something that you would normally consider an eyesore and make it interesting or beautiful in a photograph. I had this weed that kept popping up in my back yard. It had a very thick stalk and very broad leaves, so I decided to let one grow and see what it did. It ended up being a very large sunflower plant. It's now about 6 feet high. One evening last week I noticed a couple of flower pods were about to open. I thought they were interesting and the soft light was kind of nice so I grabbed a couple of shots. I really liked this one.

View from the gallery

Hello all. :) I love being downtown at sunset. So many cool building reflecting and bouncing the last few rays of the day in crazy ways. You almost wish it lasted a little longer so you had time to wander around in it and take it all in.

The shot above was taken when I stepped out of the Alpha Omega gallery opening for the Austin Gathering of Photographers on Thursday for a bit. That's the Frost Bank tower - I believe its the tallest building in Austin at the moment.

I decided to test the RAW capabilities of the Panasonic LX3. I had to use Silkypix as my other RAW editors will not work with the Panasonic files. I manually developed the file into 3 different pictures with 2 stops variance in exposure. I then used Essential HDR to generate a high dynamic range image.

One thing that really bugged me though was the distortion created by shooting up with the camera. Its just what happens when you shoot up a tall objects - the lines converge as they go up. The best way to deal with this is with a tilt/shift lens. I didn't happen to have one on me, plus they are very expensive, so I used a program called PT Lens. Great product, and not too expensive. I believe it runs about $25 or so and is very useful at correcting all kinds of distortions. It even has a database for putting in certain lens/camera combos for automatic distortion correction - barrel/pincushion, chromatic aberration, and perspective distortions such as in this case. Anyway, here's the image before it was corrected, you can see what a difference it makes. Although side effect of correcting this distortion is that it crops in quite a bit in the final product, so you have to shoot with plenty of room around the subject.

Photo Exhibit Tonight

Time to iron my jeans I guess. :) The Austin Gathering of Photographers photo exhibit opens tonight at the Alpha Omega Gallery downtown. Several Austin photographers were asked to show work, including me.

I'm hanging 4 images in the show. Since many of you won't be able to make it I thought I'd post the images here. Unfortunately a few are repeats from previous posts. I promise I'll put some fresh work up soon!

If you're in town and can make it, the opening starts at 6pm tonight. I believe the show will be on display at the gallery through the month of July however.