2013 In Review

So for this post since I've been a bit busy with finals and now the Christmas and New Years holiday I wanted to do a year in review type of post where I look back on what all I have done with my life in the past year and amazingly enough I almost have pictures to cover all the months! Also the idea came to me while I was taking inventory of what all I still had after my hard drive with my life got stolen. I must say I am slightly impressed with myself because at times this year seems to have passed so fast but some of these pictures I feel were last year or so but they weren't! If you click on the month (unless otherwise stated) it will take you to the corresponding blog post.

So its only right to kick this post off with the shoot that started this blog out!

January: The water droplets, I loved this shoot and would love to do it again given the time, assistant and equipment since the assistant used lives in New York and the equipment was borrowed. I feel like this was was so long ago but it was only a year ago and its what has set me on this lovely journey with you readers :D.

 February: So these were from the time I got food poisoning and wasn't able to do the lovely 5k so I stood back and took pictures which was super duper fun and amazing.

 March: Here are a couple shots from a shoot with one of my amazing friends back in March, I honestly thought this was done back in 2012 but to my memories surprise it was in March!

April: Now this one has multiple posts that correspond with it so I am linking you to the month of April because the second post starts the five post long adventure I took in April. Each group of pictures will have their own link to that post if you just want to individually look at that post. In April I went on a cruise to shoot my cousins wedding but it was such a wonderful experience altogether and so many amazing pictures! Some of these pictures did not make it to the blog posts so here are some new things!

Costa Maya

Belieze

Roatan

Cozumel which I apparently never posted about...

And the wedding pictures I did were not readily available on my computer after the incident so i'm just linking you all, but enjoy some pictures of the ship because it was super pretty and I never posted any.

May: I had worked a convention and shared with you all how to photoshop a background and make it blend a bit better than in you just dropped something in the picture.

June was quiet but July was super busy so each has their own link! First was the milk shoot, then fourth of July but I held off posting until recently and another convention!

 August: Ok so for august i'm actually liking you to a youtube channel that me and my brother had started up with him and his puppet because they are a hoot and a half together! We do plan on doing more with him but we have booth been so busy with school and work that it just hasn't happened yet! But we do have two videos up! So shameless plug, you should check it out!

Now there is where my progress kind of halted, school and work kind of got in the way and I went through a bit financially so finally I am back on track and doing what I love, I am linking but not attaching the newest pictures from posts but I am throwing in one of a soon to be post. I did pictures of one of my friends little girls, the shoot was fun and challenging (try shooting a super curious child who wont for the life of her stay on the backdrop) but as a photographer you have to make do and produce pictures that are to last a lifetime. I am also throwing in one of the graduation pictures I did of my roommate, Congrats!

So I'm thankful for those of you who have been on this crazy journey with me and stuck around. 2014 promises to be just as fun I am kicking it off in New York and hopefully if I can save up the money I will be going to Scotland in the summer for school! So as a shameless plug for me I am trying to save up money for the Scotland trip so I have opened up an etsy account and I am selling different .little things that I make so check it out and buy things please! (Also you should check out those ads on the sided and bottom of my blog...)
I am also selling fine art portraits of my photos if you are interested feel free to contact me for prices!

So I am signing off for this year and I will see you all bright eyed and bushy-tailed in 2014!

Fireworks in the dark!

Well why would you have fireworks without the dark? Ok fine lets get on with what this post is actually about, cheese! Ok just kidding, as the title states I am pretty sure that you know this post is about fireworks! I took these pictures back during 4th of July and I saved them to post for now because I figured New Years has fireworks and you might possibly want to take pictures of them. Also lucky for you these pictures were on my computer at work! Otherwise we would have been SOL because they would have been on my hard drive that got stolen and not on my personal computer.

What I used in this shoot:
-My Nikon D7000
-Vello wireless remote trigger
-Tripod

As set up you will want to out your camera on a tripod because I don't think you can hold a camera 100% steady for two seconds. You will also want to set up your remote trigger and I will explain its importance in a bit. While on setup I should inform you that you will want to be set up on something that does not move.

Firstly you are going to want to set your f-stop as high as your camera will let it, mine was at 22. You want to do this because the higher your f-stop the more you will have in focus and this is very important for fireworks. (you can refer back to my depth of field post) Since you are not able to focus on a firework before it is set off you will want to give yourself as much wiggle room as possible. If you know where they are shooting the fireworks from and you can focus on something right there I would recommend focusing and then setting your focus to manual so that it doesn't try to focus every time you push the shutter.

Also you will want to zoom out as far as possible and leave it that way because it is extremely hard to tell where the fireworks are going to end up so the wider area you can capture the better. So keeping this in mind you will want to use the widest lens you have at your mercy.

Your ISO in this instance isn't too terribly but you do not want anything too low or too high. I usually set mine anywhere between 800-1000.

 Now on to the actual shooting part! So once you are set up the first couple shots will more than likely be testers to make sure everything is good. most of the time you will have to adjust where the camera is pointing because either you will be too low or too high.

The shutter in this instance is controlled solely on how much of the firework you want to capture so this is the biggest reason for the remote. You will have to set your shutter to bulb which on my camera you just adjust the shutter all the way to the slowest and the last option is bulb. Keep in mind that the reason you will want the remote is that with a remote you are not touching the camera and therefore you will not accidentally shake the lens in the process of holding down the shutter.

Once you are set up and pointing in the right direction have fun! Trial and error are the only ways to really know how the shot will come out.

One thing to keep in mind is that fireworks do create smoke and the light of the next firework will light up that smoke so don't be alarmed when your image comes out with something that looks like a smudge on your lens.

 Also remember that the longer you hold the shutter the more streaks you will get so eventually your shot might just be a ton of streaks and be too light to do anything with.

There is no 100% formula for shooting fireworks but this is sure to get you as close as possible to shooting them the best way I know how! So go out and have fun on New Years and please don't start any fires!

Shooting in RAW

So getting back up and on my horse and starting to post again. So today I am going to talk at you about shooting in camera RAW. Now usually I am a big believer in shooting and not editing your photos much in Photoshop but I am not dumb and I know that sometimes that just isn't an option. Over the thanksgiving holiday I usually travel up to Dallas with my parents to spend the holiday with my family on my mothers side. My aunt lives hear this beautiful park that has a trail through wooded area. Me and my mother decided to take a walk through the path after thanksgiving dinner. I being me brought my camera along but it was quickly turning into night before we were even close to leaving the house so i still brought my camera but with a different idea in mind.
Shooting in RAW is one of the most amazing things to do because if your image is too dark or too light it can recover more of the image than if you just shot in regular jpeg. Here are some of the pictures I took in a before and after sense.

 Here is probably my favorite image from the holiday. the first is the before picture, the original. Using raw i was able to bump the contrast and up the lightness of the sidewalk without lightening the grass dark. I was going for a more silhouetted look but wanted the sidewalk to stay lit up too.

 Next up is an actual silhouette but the upside for shooting raw with this one was basically bringing back the blue in the sky without compromising it with noise.

 Finally is this little gem, was an amazing shot that I would never have noticed without my mother. She pointed out that the street light was creating the leaf pattern on the sidewalk. I wasn't able to stand super still so I couldn't use a super slow shutter so to get the color that I wanted to achieve I had to rely on the amazingness of RAW.

It isn't really that easy to explain what you can do in RAW and I by no means am an expert. I have only recently started shooting in raw and I do have to say it is a wonderful asset if you are shooting a wedding or an event because just in case you over or under expose a photo you don't have to worry!

I hope this helps a little and like i said i plan on posting more in the future and hopefully with some fun exciting things! Good luck and always have fun shooting!

Life is kind of a living hell right now...

So I've been on this crazy long hiatus from you all because of life and all that jazz. I want to update you that I am still alive I have just been going through some crazy stuff, I have lost a friend (not dead just not really friends anymore), had a ton of stuff stolen from my car (which included my external hard drive so most of my pictures are all gone) and most recently I had a flat tire which hey isn't all bad but one on top of another on top of another is all fun right?

So I am not here to bore you on the woefulness that is my life but I as I make my way through all of this am thinking of starting up a separate blog about how my life could be a c list movie. I do plan on updating as soon as I have more free time but I know for sure there will be an update immediately following new years and hopefully one just before.

The one just before new years will be about how to shoot fireworks, all of those pictures should have been posted on my facebook so I should be able to go back and get those for that post, if not then I am a bit SOL because it really isn't firework season so lets hope I have them on my facebook :/

The one after new years will be of my trip to New York! I am super lucky to have this chance to go up to New York for new years, I have an amazing friend who is letting stay at his place so I don't have to pay for a hotel. I will be up there a week so I expect to have a couple different blog posts separating all of my pictures.

I am now in the midst of finals and getting crap done for my stupid art class and hopefully I will be able to have a post up in about two weeks(hopefully sooner if my life lets me do what I want) with a couple pictures I took over the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Now I don't want to just throw a bunch of words at you and not give you any pictures so here are some pics I have either previously posted the shoot and didn't share or I just hadnt had a chance to share it just yet.

 This picture was from my Night Time Photography blog post. This was a little pencil pouch I used to carry arround so we have a bit of fun up on the bridge.

 This shot is from the Photoshoot with off camera lighting blog post. I have a TON of pictures from this shoot that were just down right amazing, most of which are posted on my facebook page if you would like to check them out.

 This one is an extra from the Better then spoiled milk blog post. Yet again I have a ton of these but I havent gotten around to editing most of them! Hopefully there will be more of these up on my facebook page in the future.

This picture or rather composite is from a photoshoot I did almost a year ago. This is one of my very good friends and we were doing promo pics for the cosplay group she runs and I created this little beauty for her.