Texas Snow

We don't get snow every year in North Texas and even more rarely in the beginning of December but, we did this year.  We only got about a quarter of an inch of snow and it all but disappeared before noon. 

Whereas the natural world up north had been bracing for the winter for a few weeks already, the people, plants and animals in the lower latitudes tend to get caught off-guard with Mother Nature's surprises like this.  The kids love it.  My daughter was no exception.  She took the opportunity to jump on the snowy trampoline and tried to catch snowflakes on her tongue.

Airshow 2009!

I went to the 2009 Fort Worth Airshow at Alliance Airport.  I was one of the volunteers working hospitality.  We drove around in golf carts handing out water bottles and boxed lunches to the aircrew that were there.  We got special badges that also allowed us some special access to areas off limits to the general public.

The US Navy's Blue Angels also performed.  I've been watching them and the US Air Force's Thunderbirds since I was a kid and it just never gets old for me.  Actually, I got to watch the Blues practice the week prior because my office is right at AFW airport towards the south end of the parallel runways and the window facing the runway is right behind me.  So, when they perform it is pretty exciting.  I'm three floors up and we get a pretty good view out of the floor to ceiling windows.

When the Blue Angels performed on Saturday, we took a golf cart and went to the show line off to one side away from the general public.  It was nice to be able to photograph (don't want to use the word "shoot" with regard to military aircraft) without having to compete for space or to worry about being accidentally bumped causing a blurry image.

About ten minutes into their show a car drove up and four guys with London accents start frantically breaking open pelican cases and assembling video and computer equipment.  It turns out that these guys were from the BBC and they were sent to tape the show in high-speed HD video.  They got slowed down coming in from El Paso for some reason.  I'll look forward to seeing that video when it comes out.

After the crowds left and we were done with hospitality duties, I got to have a few beers and BS with some of the aircrews who weren't flying out that evening.  It was fun.

 

Halloween

Ever since I started blogging I've been waiting to post this photo from a few Halloweens ago.  This is one of my favorite photos.

My wife and her friend Leslie went around as witches on their electric scooters handing out candy to kids.  The electric scooters were a little mojo challenged, so they had to walk the scooters up our hill.  The hill peaks right at the point where I took this photo.  So, I had the open sky from the angle where I was standing in the middle of the road down the hill a bit in front of our house.  The light and the timing could not have been more perfect.  They went out just as the sun was going down and there was an orange glow off of the clouds.  Our road also happens to face to the west in the direction of the setting sun.  So, it all came together.

I realized this all after I had snapped the shot.  This was done purely on reflex.  I saw their silhouettes against the cool sky and bang, bang, bang I fired away a few frames.  I realized afterward right away that this had potential and I just hoped that one of them was in focus and that I hadn't done anything stupid with the exposure settings.  I was really glad when I saw it on the computer monitor a few minutes later.

They've since upgraded their brooms to gas power.  So, we'll see what this year brings.

The Streets of St. Johns, NL

It rains a lot in St. Johns.  This is St. Johns, Newfoundland, not San Juan, Puerto Rico.  Whereas San Juan is remarkable for its sun and beaches, Newfoundland is an island about the size of Texas hanging out in the middle of the North Atlantic like a big green iceberg which is remarkable because it seems to have large chunks of the North Atlantic just hanging airborne over the island in cloud form most of the time dumping that moisture back to earth.

I always look forward to jobs in out of the way or unusual places for their photographic possibilities.  This wasn’t looking good so far.  No car and rain, rain, rain.  I was to only get one opportunity to take any pictures in St. Johns.  After two days my SD card was as empty as the day I landed there.

I found out when sunrise in St. Johns would be then planned to be out of my hotel room about half an hour before then.  (I’m such a photo-nerd, thinking back on it now.)  “Sunrise” was to be kind of an optimistic misnomer because it continued to rain heavily steadily and the prospects of seeing the sun at all that day were not great.

I understand why armies make their soldiers get up at God-awful hours and perform calisthenics.  There is a special kind of mental hardening that takes place when you train while others are sleeping comfortably.  Forcing myself to shoot in bad weather, limited geographically by walking distance, wet, cold and trying to make something artistically out of nothing was going to be my form of morning exercise. Actual calisthenics probably would have been more heart healthy and less cold.

Every place has its own charm if you are willing to go out and find it.  In the case of St. Johns it came in the form of the gingerbread houses that lined many of the old streets, many of which were probably built before the turn of the previous century.

The new age technology street lights cast out a display of subdued chemically colored lights at night.  Just like adding various chemicals changes the colors of fireworks, the different technologies that use different chemicals makes the lights have different color casts.  The early morning light provides a nice balance of natural sunlight to the greens, blues and pinks from the periodic table of elements colors in the newer lights as well as the dingy yellow from the old fashioned Edison lamps.

The human eye doesn’t notice the color casts as much as a camera does.  This is kind of a cool artistic trick to make the scenes more surrealistic due to the highly saturated colors.  Timing is everything to being there when the light is balanced just right.

 

 

 

 

Felton - Wandro Wedding

I was really happy when John and Tracey asked me to photograph their wedding.  I got the job because their wedding arranger, Gayla is a friend who was familiar with my work suggested me to the bride, Tracey.

I had a long email dialog with Tracey starting months before the wedding but, because of schedules we never actually met until the night of the rehearsal.  I was a little scared that some of my location shot ideas might be a little too out there for the couple but, as it turned out Tracey was very adventurous and was all for it.  She let me have pretty much complete artistic control which was a real pleasure.  Like most grooms, myself included, John was up for whatever would make his new wife happy.

I got lucky because they’re a very handsome couple which helps a lot for making nice photos.  John was really sensitive to the lights from the flash.  There were a lot of photos where I used the strobe and Tracey looked fine but John looked like he was in pain.  That’s because he was.  He rolled with the punches really well though.

When it came time for the location photos, one of the last things that we were going to try was to take a few shots near the Justin, Texas firehouse but, we would need permission to be near the equipment.   Tracey was absolutely awesome.  She turned on the girl charm and knocked on the door where the firemen were in her wedding dress, of course and said “I just got married.  Could we take some pictures on your fire truck?”  The guys absolutely melted.  She could have ANYTHING she wanted.

Thanks to Tracey, the picture I took of her and John laughing at something one of the firemen said is probably one of my proudest images.

This was my first professional wedding shoot.  As such, it was kind of a nail biter for me.  I’ve done photo shoots before but, they were never professional jobs.  Overall, I’m pretty happy with the way things turned out.  I probably took more images than I needed to.  I took about 1,000 in all.  I handed my second camera over to my daughter who was assisting me and she shot about 50 and her friend Alyssa who wanted to do it also took about another 150.   It’s so easy to just snap away, especially at the reception when you’re taking mostly candid shots because there is just so much opportunity for interesting photography.

My Nikon D-90 camera will also take video, though it’s primarily designed for still images.  I took some video snippets here and there.  If there is something that I need to work on it’s my video skills.  Because I was there to take stills, I would shoot what seemed like a reasonable amount of video then quickly switch over to stills again.  In my post-processing I discovered that what seemed like 30 seconds of video was really more like 6 or 7 seconds.  I also took some vertical video thinking that I would just rotate it in post.  No such luck.  I’m sure that there’s a way to do it but, I haven’t figured it out yet.  I’ll still deliver the amateurish video because I think that would be a nice unexpected bonus but, I will polish up my act in the future.

Anyway, cheers to Tracey and John!

All of the images and video can be found here.