The inbox and calendar are starting to fill up with Senior Portrait requests. I am local to Lakewood High School, Green Mountain High School, Alameda High School and Bear Valley High School. Yearbook headshot deadlines will be upon you faster than you know it (indeed, I can’t believe school starts in roughly 4 weeks), so get your photoshoot scheduled today. We can do urban or mountain. Favorite locations include Red Rocks and spots along Bear Creek toward Kittredge. Rocky Mountain National Park is an option too, but additional fees would apply for travel time.

People look at the above photo and almost immediately ask “what’s up with those funky clouds?” I tell them that this isn’t a straight picture, it’s a reflection out of a mud puddle. “Ooohhhhhh, now I see.” The inversion of this image so that the mountain is pointing up totally throws people off. It’s kind of funny to me, but it also makes me wonder how good of an idea it was to flip it 180° to satisfy my feelings on what looks better.

Compare the shot above to the original below:

Which works better for you? Or should I not have gone through all this, and instead used a different image I captured, from a little further out, that really puts the scene in context?

Me being me, I naturally continue to like the first the best. I think if it makes people talk, then it can’t be all bad, right?

I was waiting to write today until the canvas wraps I ordered from Canvas On Demand had arrived. I have always wanted to do a canvas wrap of a picture, but never really knew which one to do.

As it turns out, we are decorating one room of our house in a ski theme, and the two pictures here seemed perfect for it. So last week I sent the pics off to Canvas On Demand and waited anxiously. Once I got the shipping notice on Tuesday, I knew they would arrive today.

They come packed very well so nothing gets damaged in transit. Standard shipping is via FedEx ground, but you can pay more to expedite it. The quality of these images is superb. After having these two made, you can be sure I will be doing more. Maybe some small 8×10’s of my flower macros. I could even add a water-color treatment in Photoshop first before I send the file in. I’ll bet those would look really sharp. I am glad I bit the bullet and did this. You should try it too!

Last week when I went to Beaver Creek, I took some time to drive up near Gray’s and Torrey’s Peaks. The idea was to get a shot of the great fall colors. Turns out though, that my favorite picture from that sidetrip is this one. It is a reflection of Gray’s Peak in a mud puddle that was in the middle of the forest service road. I rotated it so the mountain was upright, and I think it is an incredibly clear reflection of the mountain. Couldn’t have planned a shot like this, it just happened. The big question to me is if you like it upright like this, or should I have left it upside down?

Last week I had the privilege of staying at the Park Hyatt Resort in Beaver Creek, Colorado for the 2008 Governor’s Colorado Tourism Conference. The event was a huge success, and the keynote’s and breakout’s alike were immensely valuable.

One thing that kept getting mentioned was how intense the fall colors were. A co-worker and I drove up Wednesday morning. Along the way we stopped near Gray’s and Torrey’s Peaks to take in the color and snap some photos. I hate doing my PP work on my laptop (the photo above was done on the laptop and I think it is time to recalibrate the color on it), so I saved most of them until this week. I’ll work on the post processing and get the photos online in the next few days. I think I got some good shots, including some beetle kill ones that might make for good stock imagery, since that is such a hot topic these days.

Sadly, the beautiful color may not have lasted through the weekend. As we were leaving Beaver Creek on Friday afternoon, storms were blowing in with a fury. And I saw on the news last night that it was snowing pretty good in the mountains. That usually equates to the leaves being knocked off the trees. Hopefully you were able to experience it while it was there, I can’t remember the last time the colors were so vivid. By the way, the photo above is the view from my room at the conference.

All in all I have taken somewhere around 200 pictures of Megan in the last couple of months. We did it mostly in 2 location, Golden Gate Canyon State Park and Rocky Mountain National Park. Of those photos, Megan and my wife narrowed it down to 24 that they really liked. Using the guidelines set forth by the Lakewood High School yearbook staff, I narrowed the field down to 6 images I thought would be suitable for a headshot for the yearbook. I then exported these 6 from Lightroom 2 into their own slideshow online (the first time I had used this feature, and it worked pretty well).

Of the 6, the image above is the one she wants to use in the yearbook. After adjusting some of the lighting levels in Lightroom, I took it into Photoshop to apply some effects with Portraiture. The end result is pretty good, and I am sure will look great when printed at 2″ x 2″, or whatever yearbooks are printing at these days.

In the coming months we will be taking more photos. Why? Well, since the bulk of Senior Pictures are sent out in the spring with graduation announcements, party invitations and so forth, we have some time yet to get more pictures in more surroundings at different times of the year. Besides, she is going off to college next year. As her parents, we can never have enough pictures when she is out on her own.

A couple weeks ago, Photography Director Rob Haggart wrote a blog post entitled “Here’s What I Think Of Your Pictures“. It seems to have struck a chord with a number of people, myself included. I am a flickr-holic, constantly browsing the recent uploads to see what is moving through there. Most of it is uninspiring. A lot of cutesy snapshots (not that I am above taking such images). Every once in a while though, I see an image that moves me, and I either favorite it, or sometimes go so far as to add the photographer as a contact. The timing of Rob’s post is interesting. It came right about the time I was editing the photo above. The original is in color, and the sky is horribly blown out. But because I shot it in RAW, and with the assistance of a friend and also Lightroom 2, I was able to selectively adjust the exposure of the sky, bringing out more detail. Then I went in a direction I don’t normally go.

Sepia has never done a whole lot for me. In my mind, it just made things look “antiquey”. But as I was floating over the presets in LR2, the preview of the Sepia version caught my eye. I applied it, and you see the result (after about 4 iterations of exposure correction, leveling the shoreline, etc - see the original color version). Now this photo talks to me. I am sure it is in part because that is “daddy’s little girl” in the picture. But for me, this was a rare instance where she was sitting idle, taking in the scene. None of it was staged, other than me telling her to sit on the rock so I could take some pictures. The rest was all her. I have some with her facing me, some with her back to me (such as this), but it was all her choice. The strap on her shirt off her shoulder, the hair, everything about it was as it happened. I didn’t do anything but take the picture. I have always said that I am more lucky than anything else - right place, right time.

I printed this image on the color laser at work, using HP Glossy Laser Photo Paper and have shown it to some people, looking for objective opinions. The reactions were all the same. This picture moved them. They all interpreted it differently, but the bottom line is that it moved them in some way. This is what Rob was looking for in his blog post. I feel fortunate that I was able to capture a moment that has moved some people. But I also know I cannot bask in the glory of this moment for long. There is no doubt that I will still get more snapshots than moving pictures. But at least I know I am capable.

While we were up in Rocky Mountain National Park last weekend, I noticed an elk on the side of the road. We kept going up to Bear Lake, but I knew I’d want to stop on the return to see if I could get some pics of him.

On the way back, it became clear he had apparently moved a bit to the west. This was perfect, as there was a scenic pullout that afforded us some parking. I left everyone else in the car, put my Sigma 55-200 on the camera and headed into the woods. Much to my pleasure, there were actually 4 elk up there. 2 bucks, a doe and a younger one. There were already some people shooting them, and the elk were moving deeper into the woods. I took a guess as to which direction they were going to go and moved that way. A clambered up a hill, and another, and there they were. Good guess! I settled down into a spot so that I wouldn’t appear to be very threatening. With all of the branches in between me and the animals, there was no way that auto-focus was going to work. So, for the first time with this lens, I switched to manual focus and was able to get off a few good shots. This one is one of the better ones, even though that darned branch is covering his eye. Right after I took this one, he bolted down the hill and was gone. I thought it best to get back to the car and resume the reason we were here - Megan’s senior pictures. I was pretty happy to get these shots though.

I don’t break this lens out very often, but when I do, I am very pleased I have it. For the price point (I think it is down to $136 now), this has proven to be a great one to have in my bag. Especially until I can get a 300. If you have been debating on whether or not you want to buy this lens, go for it. I haven’t seen any quality issues, and the pics speak for themselves.

As we were driving into the Bear/ Sprague Lake area on Sunday, we drove alongside Mill Creek and I noticed that it had a significantly-sized channel with a lot of boulders in it. I filed it away in the back of my mind, thinking it warranted more inspection. I think Megan noticed it too.

After we wrapped up with all the shooting at Bear Lake and Sprague Lake, we started to head out of the park. It had rained pretty good, and the roads were pretty wet. As we crossed the bridge over Mill Creek, Megan and I agreed that we should at least check the site out. I was a bit concerned because of how much it had rained. The rocks looked pretty slick. We walked all the way from where we parked down to the bridge (where I took a photo of the underside of the bridge because of George Barr and his book. I still had reservations because of the wetness of the rock, but Megan wanted to do it and was confident she could if she went barefoot.

Throwing caution to the wind, we went out into the boulder field/ creek. I wouldn’t want to try this in May/ June when the runoff is raging through there, but at this time of the year the creek was pretty tame. I found what I thought was a good rock for Megan to pose on. I got a good number of shots of her on that rock. Some laughing, some serious, but all good I think. I decided to “think outside the box” a little and moved her off to one side of the frame. That resulted in the picture above. When she saw it in camera later, she was really excited. Didn’t catch what she thought of it full size on the screen. Guess I’ll have to dig into her myspace page - I am sure it is there if she liked it.

For me though, this image could be used to convey so many thoughts. I could easily see it being some type of album cover (or something along these lines at least), or an advertisement, or just an interpretive piece for the viewer to decide what it means. For some reason this image is very powerful to me. Maybe I am reading more into it since I took the image. Definitely possible. Doesn’t matter though, I really like it.