Dell'Osso Farms - Christmas Eve

Today we took Jason and Hannah to Dell'Osso Farms, Holiday On The Farm.  Its a great place to take the family for a day.  Here's some of the photos from today.

Dell'Osso, I thought you said Del Taco, this is lame.

Jason and his beautiful bride.

Scout had to get her some of this.

I love this shot, it feels very cinematic.

Scout beginning to get bored, everyone else, totally content.

Dad follow me I found a chicken.

The chicken totally saw her coming.

Hey mom, did you see that chicken?  Any chance I could get a little piece of that?

Need I say more?

Hard to decide which helmet yo choose...there are so many cool ones.

Incredible.

He's always so happy.

Also super happy.

And super super happy.

Conrad, do not look a gift horse in the mouth, not so happy with the horse he got.

Lincoln's stallion of choice.

After we rode the horses, we rode the train.

Everyone was having so much fun...just look at Jason's face!

Uhhh, hey mom, where's this train taking us?

I love trains, and all the pretty things on them.

Momma getting crazy.  Lincoln loves it when she does stuff like this.

What a great family.

Me and Scout, she really had a blast.

Sweet.

California sunset on an incredible train ride.

Couldn't wait for this.  Kettle corn rocks your face off.

At first he didn't know what to do on these tires.

But he figured it out.

Scout always knows what to do, it was basically a stage.

Lincoln found someone's hot chocolate and drank it.

Lincoln knew he shouldn't have.

Just happy to be alive.

And so are all of us.

Have a wonderful day tomorrow and Merry Merry Christmas!

Busy Day

We had such a busy day today I almost completely forgot to blog.  Our good friends Jason and Hannah Riveiro flew in from Cincinatti today and we spent the day running around.  Here's a few photos from our day.

This is Jason, he always insists we go straight to In-N-Out when he lands.  Your wish is my command.

This is Jason's beautiful wife Hannah and there baby monster Conrad, or C-Rad as I so affectionately call him.  He is pretty rad.

A closer view of his radness.

The ladies...they were really thirsty.  So was Conrad.

Lincoln was hungry too, so he threw everyones fries on the ground.  And ate some of them.

Stealing Scout's fries.  She tries to fight him but he's too strong.

Finished the night at Dave Wong's.  Sorry for the image quality, I shot this, and all the others, in the dark with an iPhone.

I'll be shooting there family portraits this weekend and I'm so excited to spend Christmas with them.  You may recognize Jason from my previous post.  I photographed Jason for his council run in Cincinatti.

Have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

Spring Street Poster

This post is a couple of hours late...I know.  I've been working my butt off on a new poster for some street marketing I'm planning for this next Spring.  I'm not the best in Photoshop but I found some tutorials to help me through the process to achieve what I was after.

I wanted to make something that had a vintage feel but still felt like me.  I wanted bold text and to incorporate my watermark.  Contact info of some kind was crucial and I wanted the verbiage to force the viewer to look harder.  "Let me shoot you", seems to do the trick.

Let me know what you think.

A Brief Comparison of Lenses

Previously I've talked about aperture and shutter speed so here's a demonstration on lens length.  We all know that a 50mm is longer than a 35mm and a 200mm is longer than a 135mm.  This isn't meant to be a comparison of the obvious.

What I want you to pay closer attention to is how the length of the lens effects the backgrounds focus and how the longer lenses compress the image and bring the different layers of the image closer together.

All images shot at 1/30th of a second at F/4.  Camera was a Nikon D700.  Lenses used were the 50mm, f/1.4, 24-120mm f/3.5 - 5.6 and the 80 - 200mm f/2.8.

35mm:

50mm:

85mm:

135mm:

The change in compression and depth of field is the most obvious in the images taken at 85mm and 135mm.  Notice how the small milk pitcher on the left of the image falls completely out of focus at 135mm.  The aperture and focal point never change.

This is used best when trying to isolate your subject from the background.  Had I shot these images at f/2.8 most of the background at 135mm would be unrecognizable, but at 35mm it would be completely recognizable.

Also notice how the items in the photograph seem to be pulled closer together with the 135mm than with the 35mm.  At 35mm there seems to be a lot of space between the objects.  Try it for yourself.  Take some photos of your children and see what you like best.  They all have there uses and they all have there advantages.

Who Would I Love to Work Along Side Of? Answered

Brandon sent me a question simply asking, "What photographer would you love to work along side of and why?"

Simple enough question, but the more and more I think about it the less and less clear the answer becomes.  There are so many great photographers out there, well known or not, who have so much to offer others.  I guess the short answer is Matt Mallams (you can see his work at www.mattmallams.com).

The ironic thing is I sat next to Matt while I was in college at the Brooks Institute of Photography.  We had a web design class together and I was constantly in awe of his abilities as a photographer and as an artist.

Here's a small sampling of some of Matt's more recent images:

Matt has a very unique way of showing a scene.  He plays heavily with reflections and high contrast images.  I would love to work along side of him just to watch his approach.  I'd like to know how much of what he does is actually captured in camera.  I'd like to see how patient he is, because a lot of his images look like the stars perfectly aligned.  I'd also just like to know the obvious, "How the heck did you see that?"  I wish I could go back to that class now, I'd pick his brain more than I did.  I think I would ask him about developing his vision and how difficult it is to stay true to who you are as a photographer.

Matt also creates these visual journals.  I remember him carrying them to class.  He basically makes two page pieces of art on a daily basis with found items and images throughout his day.  They are beautiful. His talent depth is amazing.  I wonder if he remembers me?  I doubt it.  But thank you Matt for all the inspiration you have given me!  I strive to create like you do.

Matt is also one of the founders of Aevum, an amazing collective of photographers.

But the long answer is Todd Roeth, Clay Patrick McBride, Patrick Hoelck, Annie Liebowitz, Melissa Rodwell, William Albert Allard, Nick Nichols, Henry Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Antonin Kratochvil, James Nachtwey, Clay Enos, I could go on.  There really are so many.

Be sure to check out more of Matt's work, the amount of quality images is endless.