Today, I did a quick session with my son Caleb. I had this setup for a client, but they had to reschedule, so why waste it? I went and got some bowls, and some utensils, and some flour for his face, and I think they turned out pretty cute.

Today I read page 86 in the Canon 40D manual.

Tags: 365, baker, Caleb

Today my daughter got to color Easter Eggs at Grandma Debbie’s house. She is going to be in Las Vegas during Easter, and didn’t want to miss Addison coloring eggs, so we decided to do it a little early. She had so much fun coloring the eggs! She is getting so big, she was doing most of the work all by herself. It makes me sad, but happy that I am a photographer and she and her brother are my favorite subjects, so we will have lot of memories for years to come. This shot was of some eggs she had finished coloring. It was lit just with natural light.

Read page 61 in 40D manual.

Tags: 365, coloring, Easter, eggs

Today, I am continuing with a basketball shot. And no, I didn’t cheat, I made more images today. I changed the lighting to be one bare bulb B800 from the front. I then used Topaz Adjust 4 to create the dark ghostly look, in fact it was the Dark Ghostly preset that I used. I think the image is interesting, and different from everything else I have done.

Today page 123 in the 40D manual.

Tags: 365, basketball, dark, ghostly

March Madness is here! Today’s image is one of my old basketballs, The basketball is lit from behind with two bare-bulb B800’s, and from the front with a 580EXII. I then processed the image using Topaz Adjust 4 to give it a little more gritty feel to it. There are a couple of other interesting things about this image. If you happen to have a Canon 40D you would know that the maximum sync speed of the 40D is 1/250 sec. You may notice that I shot the image at 1/320 sec, faster than the sync speed. Why did I do this? Well I wanted to use the faster sync speed to create a natural gradient on the top of the image. You may say, but the top looks brighter than the bottom…well, that is the second interesting part. I actually held the camera completely upside down in order to make the gradient come up from the bottom. I then flipped the image in Lightroom 3. This image is a combination of techniques that I picked up from a Scott Kelby web cast the other night, and from David Zeiser’s book “Captured By The Light”. I think it makes the image more interesting to me, because I know what went in to make it, and now you do as well.

Today I read page 154 in the 40D manual.

Tags: 365, basketball, Madness, March

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! It is a tradition here, as I am sure it is many other places, for bars to serve green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. This particular beer was sitting on my kitchen table, next to my patio doors. The mug is one that my brother brought back from Munich, Germany for me when he was on a college trip there. I took some beer and filled the mug (which took a little more than three cans, added about 5 drops of green food coloring, and that was it. The lighting is all natural light with my patio doors to the left, and a small home made reflector to the right. That is how I got the cool catch lights all the way down both sides of the glass. Pretty simple, but pretty cool as well, I think anyway!

Today I read page 54 in the 40D manual.

Tags: 365, beer, green, St. Patrick's Day

Today was a really nice day out! The temperature was a little over 60 degrees, and so we got to play outside. Addison loves to blow bubbles, and it was a great night for it. This image was taken with my favorite combination: my 5D Mark II and my 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM lens. I then touched up the image in Lightroom 3. After that, I took the image into Photoshop, and used Topaz Adjust 4 to create the look of the background and give the photo a little pop.

Read page 88 in 40D manual.

Tags: 365, Addison, spring

This is my first attempt to use my iPhone 3G as a camera. I have taken a few shots here and there, but nothing like this. I made this image this morning because the sunrise was beautiful, but I did not have my DSLR with me. I also have not gotten a good compact yet, but I have my iPhone. I edited the photo using Photoshop Mobile on my phone. I think it turned out decent, but there is a lot of room for improvement! Another interesting part of this is that I am blogging right from my iPhone as well using the Wordpress App. We’ll see how this goes…

Tags: 365, iPhone, Photoshop Mobile, sunrise

Spring ahead! LAst night we had to turn the clocks ahead one hour. I don’t know about you, but that hour time change sure messes me up! My kids will be out of whack for a week because of it. I really don’t know why we even bother to do the time change anymore. It originally started (I think) to help farmers get more daylight in to farm and I guess to save energy. These days, I don’t think it matters. There are far less farmers, and technology is so much better, that it is really not necessary any longer. I shot this image of a new clock we bought using a small hot shoe flash off camera with a small softbox.

Today I read page 52 in my Canon 40D manual, Shooting Moving Subjects.

Tags: 365, ahead, clock, spring

Today I got to photogrpah my wife’s cousin Baylie. Her mom was looking to update her pictures, and I was more than happy to do it! This image was shot using my ringlight. I like the look that I got with it, and I thought this was a pretty cool image.

Today I read page 98 in the Canon 40D manual, Mirror Lockup.

Tags: 365, Baylie, ringlight

I am feeling pretty sick today, so this is going to be short and sweet. My Xbox 360 controller.

Read page 67 in the Canon 40D Manual, Setting White Balance.

Tags: 360, 365, controller, Macro, mXbox