#726. In Memoriam

I love this family portrait originally taken and posted back in November of 2009. I'm re-posting it today in honor of Grandma T who passed on to a better place this morning after 98 years full of life.

Title: "Three Generations Pano"

#713. Emma and Phobe

I'm processing a few shots from the archives (this was taken on our trip to Rockport and Port Aransas back in March) and I found this shot of my daughter that I really liked. I spent a few minutes in photoshop to add in a texture in order to fill in the solid blue sky and tweak the contrast. I think the overall photo turned out well.

Title: "Emma and Phoebe"


Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
Shot data: 1/800s f/5.6 at 400.0mm iso200
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Adobe Photoshop CS4 > texture from flypapertexture.blogspot.com

#706. Gately Guitarist

Taken two weekends ago at Bay Area Photo Club's shoot at Gately Paper Co. in Galveston.

Title: "Gately Guitarist"


Shot data: 1/160s f/5.6 at 15.0mm iso100
Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 15MM fisheye

#531. Emma on Mustang Island

Taken a few weekends ago on Mustang Island near Port Aransas, Texas. I used a new (to me) tool on this shot: Portrait Professional. I have been seeing Portrait Professional's advertisements in Shutterbug Magazine for a while and after reading a few reviews on-line I went ahead and purchased it. I haven't used the program much yet but in the early going I find I like it a lot; it is very easy to use and the slider bar interface it uses makes it possible to apply very precise adjustments. I hope you like the results here.

Title: "Emma on Mustang Island"


Shot data: 1/1000s f/10.0 at 275.0mm iso500
Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 100-400mm L Zoom
Post-processing: Portrait Professional > Photoshop CS4 > Topaz Adjust plugin > Nik Viveza plugin > texture from flypapertexture.blogspot.com

#530. Emma at Little Gretel

Taken this past weekend at a restaurant in Bourne, Texas called Little Gretel.

Title: "Emma at Little Gretel"


Shot data: 1/200s f/4.0 at 105.0mm iso2000
Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 24-105mm L zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Topaz Adjust plugin > Red Paw Media Beautifier

#516. Shelton Hank Williams #2

Here's another shot of Shelton Hank Williams taken at the Homes for Our Troops VIP tour of Ellington Field last Saturday.In

Title: "Shelton Hank Williams #2"


Shot data: 1/200s f/22.0 at 96.0mm iso1000
Camera / lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 24-105mm L zoom

#514. Shelton Hank Williams III

This past Saturday I was invited along to take photographs at a private tour of Ellington Field with a group of VIPs from the charity group "Homes for our Troops". One of the VIPs was Shelton Hank Williams III who was giving a concert Saturday night benefiting the cause. I didn't have an opportunity to speak to Mr. Williams but my impression was that he was a fairly intense individual and I think this photo best captures that intensity.

Title: "Shelton Hank Williams III"


Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 24-105mm L zoom
Flash: On-camera Canon 430EX (ceiling bounced)
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Topaz Adjust plugin > NIK Viveza plugin

#513. Most of the Rest

Here are most of the rest of the poets from this past Friday night's poetry reading at the Baytown Art Legue.

Title: "Anabel"


Title: "Terry"


Title: "Soundman"


Title: "Most of the Rest"

#511. More Bards

Here are a couple more of the poets from Friday night's poetry reading at the Baytown Art League.

Title: "Poet No. 2: Shelby"


Shot Data: 1/125s f/4.0 at 105.0mm iso800
Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Tapaz Adjust plugin


Title: "Poet #3: San Diego"


Shot Data: 1/50s f/5.6 at 400.0mm iso800
Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Tapaz Adjust plugin

#510. Emcee and Poet

I attended a poetry reading in Baytown last night at the Baytown Art League building on Texas Avenue. This gentleman was the Emcee and one of the poets.

Title: "Emcee and Poet"


Camera / Lens: Canon 5D Mark II / Canon 100-400mm L zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Topaz Adjust plugin

Event Photos

These photos are from our company's annual Christmas party where I volunteered to be the event photographer. All shots were taken using light stand mounted strobes fired by Pocket Wizards into shoot through umbrellas. One umbrella was head high camera left and one was chest high camera right.

I had basically an eight foot square of area to work with as long as I could maintain a corridor through the middle of the space for foot traffic. The space was an art gallery and both walls available for backdrops were covered with art work. I didn't have enough room to get enough distance between the background and the subjects (subjects were 6" to 8" from the wall) to make it possible to blur the background and keep a good working depth of field. I don't have a portable background but I don't think the gallery manager would have allowed me to cover any of the art anyway. I guess the one option I had but didn't think of at the time was to rearrange the art and move a couple of the more distracting pieces to less prominent locations on the wall.

These five photos are fairly representative of the portraits I took that night. Any commments about how I might have improved the results would be greatly appreciated.

Title: "Party #1"


Shot data: 1/160s f/5.0 at 55.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom

Title: "Party #2"


Shot data: 1/125s f/4.5 at 55.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom

Title: "Party #3"


Shot data: 1/125s f/4.5 at 55.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom

Title: "Party #4"


Shot data: 1/160s f/5.0 at 44.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom

Title: "Party #5"


Shot data: 1/125s f/4.5 at 55.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom

Gallery Manager

The company I work for had it's annual Christmas party last night at a local gallery. I volunteered to take photos. This shot is of the gallery manager who was kind enough to spare 30 seconds for me while I was trying to get my lights set. This isn't the final settings for the lights but I really loved the expression on her face and the pose she struck.

Title: "Gallery Manager"


Shot data: 1/125s f/4.5 at 20.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Lighting: Vivitar strobe on stand with 43" shoot-through umbrella camera left, Canon 430EX flash on stand with small (35"?) shoot-through umbrella camera right, triggered with Pocket Wizards

Robert

Last night my siblings and I met Robert at Donnaley's Restaurant in Baytown. Robert was in Houston on a business trip and my sister had arranged the get together. We hadn't seen Robert since we were kids which meant we hadn't seen him in more than three decades! Robert is a VIP in the field of health care law in Washington. He's also a great guy and we all had a terrific amount of fun reminiscing about the old days and catching up on the events of each other's lives. I took a couple dozen photos during the night while we were sitting at the dinner table and today's post is one of the two that I liked.

Title: "Robert"


Shot data: 1/250s f/2.8 at 55.0mm iso320
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Flash: Canon 430EX on camera bounced against the ceiling
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS4 > Nik Viveza plugin > Topaz Adjust plugin

Jon, The Pianist

Today I have one last photo I want to post from our Thanksgiving get-together in Teague last week. I know conventional wisdom would suggest that I could have, maybe even should have, cropped away some of the negative space from the top of the photo. I like it as it is though because it gives me the feeling that music is filling void.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have some weather related photos as Houston is scheduled to get it's earliest ever snowfall today. We'll see...even though we've had a couple days of snow in the last five years, a snow day in Houston is still a pretty rare event.

Title: "Jon, The Pianist"


Shot data: 1/50s f/6.3 at 52.0mm iso800
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS3 > Topaz Adjust plugin

Miki and Adrian

Here is another informal portrait taken at our family's Thanksgiving get together.

Title: "Miki and Adrian"


Shot data: 1/60s f/5.0 at 55.0mm iso250
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55m f/2.8 zoom
Flash: Canon 430EX > On Camera

Waiting Their Turn

Taken Thanksgiving Day. Because a lot of our family members are blessed with talent (present company excluded) our Thanksgiving Day celebration traditionally includes a talent show. Here two aspiring musicians await their respective turns.

Title: "Waiting Their Turn"


Shot data: 1/50s f/6.3 at 28.0mm iso640
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS3 > Topaz Adjust plugin > Virtual Photographer plugin

Emma and Sophia

Another shot from Thanksgiving. I'm not sure exactly how this particular photo was lit but most of the day I was using my Canon 430EX flash on camera and bounced from the ceiling.

Title: "Emma and Sophia"


Shot data: 1/60s f/5.0 at 55.0mm iso400
Camera / Lens: Canon 40D / Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 zoom
Post-processing: Adobe Camera Raw > Photoshop CS3 > Topaz Adjust plugin

Three Generations Redo

Here's a couple of more versions of the photo I posted yesterday. These versions are in response to feedback I received yesterday.

Title: "Three Generations Pano"


Title: "Three Generations B&W"