This is one of the two major sandstone formations that comprise the Red Rocks Amphitheater in suburban Denver, Colorado. To me it looked like a guardian, protecting the lonely pine tree struggling to survive in the rocks. Order your copy today.

My daughter is one of the hardest kids to get a good picture of. At 3 years of age (4 in a couple weeks), she is a non-stop dynamo of energy that never seems to stop. That energy is magnified even more when we are exploring a new (to her) place.

This past weekend she decided she wanted to go see Red Rocks - as in the Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, but famous by the U2 video in the 80’s. It is actually a pretty popular hangout among people in Denver, there were a lot of people using it for a workout today (running up and down the stairs and “seats” is a popular workout).

Natalie was in explorer mode today, so she wanted to go all the way down to the bottom and look around. I was able to convince her to pose for me a little bit at the top first though. As she gets older, she is starting to enjoy being in front of the camera. Later in the day she told me I should be taking pictures of her splashing in the puddles left by the rain.

I haven’t shot any families with little kids other than my own, but my advice would be to be patient, follow the little ones around, and shoot a lot of pics to get the keepers. It’s kind of like shooting sports. They are that unpredictable and fast paced.

The other day I lamented about how my little girl goes crazy once the camera comes out. I have figured out the secret. Put her in an environment where she is distracted, and you can get the really candid pics. Yesterday she and I went to City Park and Washington Park in Denver. Out in Lakewood, the parks just don’t have the massive, modern play structures you find at the better Denver parks. We had a great time, and she played hard as she always does. Since Washington Park is about a 15 minute drive from City Park, she had time to wind down a little bit.

Upon arriving at Washington Park (or Wash Park as the locals know it), she saw the ducks and geese in the lake. We went over to take a look, which was when I was able to snap this shot. I actually got a few good, candid portraits yesterday. She was in her own element, having a grand time. That is the secret.

I have the rest of the images from yesterday available if you want to see them.

Last week in Beaver Creek I was able to take advantage of the great surroundings to do some practice photos for real estate purposes. At the same conference, I met with the manager of a new property in the mountains that is wanting some photography done. They don’t have a budget per se, but do love to trade. So I am planning on trading my photography for a couple of nights in the property during ski season. Should work out well for both of us.

The picture above, while not quite what I wanted, was generated on my laptop from 5 exposures (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2) combined in Photomatix. It is my intent to do a full on review of Photomatix in the next couple of weeks. But all in all, I am happy with the result here. I’d like to lighten it a bit of course, but it does give the feeling of the view you get from my room at the Park Hyatt. I think that the next time I do this, I might be inclined to take 9 exposures, shooting at -2, -1.5, -1, -0.5, 0, +0.5, +1, +1.5, +2 and seeing if that results in a better image. I need to go back to my notes from the HDRI book I read so long ago.

I could probably hang my shingle out for this now, but I want to get it right before I start expecting people to pay for my time.

When you are shooting a room with a great view, it is a good idea to show that view, if you can. But that is more complicated when you think about the exposure levels outside versus inside the room. Since I was in an awesome location recently (the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, Colorado), I decided to use the property to do some practice on. I have posted a few images from this test in the Photography For Real Estate Flickr group (yes, it is a Flickr complement to Larry Lohrman’s excellent site/ blog) and have received some useful feedback from it.
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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.