8300 Calera Drive

I was recently contacted by a new client to photograph a luxury home in the Barton Creek area. Her regular photographer wasn't available for several days and she was in a bit of a rush. Great news is that she was very happy with the results and I think I might have a new regular client. Always happy when the customer is happy.

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.

Agave Plant Before Breakfast

On my way to the coffee shop this morning in Cedar Park, TX, I decided to take a back road I had not been on before to avoid some rush hour traffic. They had landscaped the median of the road with Agave plants, which were flowering. Agave's apparently don't flower until they reach a certain age - around 100 years depending on the plant and its environment. I thought it made for a nice couple of pictures with the sun rising behind it. This is why I try to keep my cameras with me at all times. First image is a high dynamic range photography exposure blended from 9 exposures and then run through Essential HDR. The second image below is a normal exposure and has very little post processing done on it. Third exposure below is another high dynamic range exposure run through Photomatix. I thought it would be fun to compare the two different editors.