Shooting children can be difficult at times. Some want nothing to do with you and your camera and fight throughout the shoot and some just don't want to give an expression no matter how hard you try to make them smile.
Then there's Lucie, who you can't get to stop smiling if you wanted. In a perfect world, every child I shoot would be as cooperative and smiley as Lucie.

DPG meeting 3-26-09

Met up at Primrose for our Monthly DPG (Duluth Photographers Guild) meeting. Yes, Primrose is a retirement community, but they catered for us and bought us beer and wine, we really like them a lot as you can imagine.

Here are a few snaps I took during the meeting.

Met up With the DPG tonight, snapped some shots.


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Borrowed a 70-200 F/2.8 for a few minutes. Is a verrr niiiice!!



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Back to the Tamron 28-75mm F/2.8
This is Nate, he got the monthly Trophy for winning shot of the month for the theme self portraits. Worth taking a look at, it is funny as hell and very well done. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3469/3382908974_a367f3d912.jpg
That shot was done with two flashes, flare was not added in post.



These next couple I took out the Lumiquest III mini Softbox, put it on a Nikon SB-24 and triggered via Cybersyncs. Camera in right hand, Flash/softbox in left hand.

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Josh and his Preeecious...



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Had Pete hold the flash/softbox off to camera right aimed at Josh and I hand held the lens in my left hand and the camera in my right. Yes I flipped the image in PS.

Tischer Creek This Afternoon 3-24-09

Met up with my good friend Joe Gunderson after work today. The weather was drizzly and overall not generally suitable for great photos. Joe suggested we go to Tischer Creek because the streams have really been rushing lately due to the rain and melting snow.
Turned out to be a great idea.

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Duluth Ice Storm 3-23-09 - Skyline

Most of you already know, but for those that don't we had a pretty awesome ice storm today, roads weren't bad, but the trees got nailed. I took a drive around Skyline Blvd after work and these are the images I took.

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I had to get in the Middle of the stream for the next two images.
The water was up to my calves, but it was the only way to get a decent
perspective.
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Jay Cooke State Park 3-22-09

It has been a few weeks since I shot some landscapes and it was really driving me crazy. We had some pretty strong winds all day and I decided to head to Jay Cooke to see if I could find anything new and interesting. Because of the ice, I was able to get out to some rock ribs that are usually not accessible in the spring and summer months.
These rocks are huge and are billions of years old.

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Revisiting old, overlooked images

Recently I became bored at home and decided to look through some images from a couple months ago and see if there was anything I had missed.
this was taken at Split Rock state Park, from Pebble Beach. I was out shooting with Brian Rauvala
that day and we stopped in here on our way to Tettegouche State Park to hike up to shovel point and scout the area.
As i was looking through the images from that day, I found this one. I shot it with a Heavy Neutral density Filter (9 stop Hoya) to get a 47 second exposure in the mid morning light.
the long exposure time captured the movement in the sky and made the water look glassed over and calm. I love the ominous feel I get from this image and cannot wait to print it.


the following was done in Post Production

Sensor Dust removal

Contrast adjustment/levels adjustments

Dodging and burning

Approximately 90% De-saturation to leave a slight blue tone.

Sharpening

So, if you shoot often, don't be afraid to go back to those old images, you might be surprised with what you left behind.

Shooting with my new Canon 5D

All shot with 17-40 F/4 @17mm (I believe) Exif information is intact for all of you technical geeks.

I got the gear today, took the afternoon off, charged the battery and Set out to shoot. As I got close to Stoney Point, the clouds were looking interesting and thankfully they stayed that way. The colors started coming out 45 minutes before the sun set but faded to blues by fast.

For those that aren't sure what is happening here, I decided to sell off my Pentax gear to fund a move over to Canon Gear. I bought their Canon 5D, which is a Full Frame camera. What this means is the camera's sensor is the same size as a 35mm negative. Most digital cameras are crop sensors.
Please visit here to see the advantages of full frame cameras over crop sensor cameras.

Anyways, enough rambling and on to the pictures.

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First impressions of the Canon 5D : the AF is great, fast and precise coming from the Pentax lineup, 17mm is Suuuper WIIIIIIDE and just plain awesome.
The quality of the files this camera produces are amazing.

All I am asking myself is, Why didn't I switch earlier?