Heaven after hell... the aftermath of the October 30th storm- part 1

Quite literally. While the Monday (and Sunday, but those pictures will come later after I go through them!) morning after the terrible snowstorm we got was quite beautiful, and I enjoyed photographing that early morning, it was a terrible 4 days without heat. Huddled in front of the fireplace, using candles for light, keeping food in a cooler outside so none of the food spoiled...

...and not all the damage is really gone, yet. Only 40% of our town right now has power-- and there are several other towns in the area that has no power at all.

It just goes to show that, while snow is beautiful and should be revered, tread with caution! I never stopped to really take photos of the damage along my way to work and along the way of my regular routes.... hour and a half commute, i don't like you much!

Pics from Monday morning:

A few more people....

 

Because I never up and leave anything, without following up on my commitments first! Models have been a large part of my growth as a photographer, and i'm eternally grateful!

Photographers Block

I've been in a "Photographers Block" for pretty much the last 2 months, and it's extremely frustrating! On a wider scale, i've been fighting with it on and off for the last 4 years. It's manifested itself through taking photos, liking them for about a week, then seething with pure hatred for everything I do-- or driving around and seeing beautiful potential shots, but not really feeling like shooting much of anything.

When it comes right down to it, I suppose I need a muse of sorts. Inspiration. Everything lately has been coming and going in bursts- I can shoot for maybe an hour or so, and then my mind and eye just shuts off. Nada.

Anyone have any good ideas on how to get out of this funk i'm in??

I've pretty much tried everything I possibly can try- car photography, architecture, landscapes, nature, wildlife, models, portraits, etc.

There really isn't all that much left....

Never let your camera think for itself.

Okay, so originally my whole "unplugging" idea was to go back to film, hands down- due to quality and focus issues that I was encountered with the digital camera, and getting extremely frustrated at.

My lesson this weekend, taught me that, wow, a digital camera can actually create a decent shot-- IF you don't allow it to make any decisions itself.

Let me explain my thinking.

I've always shot on Manual, I choose the exposure, the fstop, the iso and anything else I possibly can... except for the focus. I always left it on auto focus, because I was shooting quicker things such as wildlife, and I've been just sort of whipping the camera around while i've been shooting landscapes. Until this weekend, when I switched over to manual focus.

Part of my reasoning for doing so is my 20-40 wide angle lens. I love this lens, but I haven't been able to use it due to the fact that it's had a consistent lack of focus no matter what camera it's on, the digital or the 35mm. Apparently, it's simply a lens that's sharp as hell-- but needs to be focused manually.

Check this out and let me show you what I mean. The first shot is the full composition- the 2nd shot is a zoom in of a close up on the trees leaves. Look at the detail-- i'm pretty impressed to be honest! I'm finally getting the sharpness that I expect- from a 10MP digital camera.

Who says that MPs matter?

Welcome!

Here we go again, since i'm condensing all my internet usages and eliminating most everything but my flickr and this blog for photo sharing, welcome to my page :D I'll try to answer any questions that pop up about any posts, so please feel free to ask anything, and i'll do my best to answer. I can also be contacted at SPiercePhotography@gmail.com if you don't feel like posting on the blog, for any future posts/issues that you'd like my take on....

4am Photo Randomness

What do I do when I can't sleep? I get up and edit stuff on the computer.. but I *SHOULD* be sleeping right now....

Father's day photos

I miss my dad- since we're in different states, we're unable to spend any time together today ;(

So I went out and took some fathers day photos, instead. Happy father's day, dad! Love you!

Mooooose!

Yes, i'm still editing stuff from Yellowstone. I really need to hurry up and finish my shots!

How I edit photos

I keep getting lots of questions about my photo editing processes, that I never really get around to answering. I figured a good useful post on this thing would be to show what I do when I'm going through my editing process! It really is quite simple and I don't do a lot. One edit from my last shoot took me around 5 to 10 minutes to process. I pulled this one separately from my original editing session, and as some of you can attest, every single time I edit an image it comes out slightly different. Makes things adventurous :)

The Original, i kept it darker on purpose, and i shot all these knowing they were going to end up b/w

Second Step: convert to black and white. I used the photoshop default conversion

  

Third, brighten the pic some by adding in a brightness/contrast layer and then up the contrast some more to get the feeling i wanted

 Forth, bring some texture back into the bathing suit, selected it with the quick selection tool, brighten, add in contrast, and, done!

For reference, this is the ORIGINAL edited file in black and white and color.

For the final color, i added in some magenta and singled out the back wall to get rid of the blue tint, then selected Marketa to brighten her a bit more and give her more of a golden tone.

Osprey

I've refallen in love with some of the shots of this Osprey young, so i'm giving him a post of his own. It's a good thing mom/dad didn't drop by to attack my head while I was photographing him! There was a span of a few minutes there where he was screeching at me like there was no tomorrow. I think he was saying "go away!"