yourphotographynow.com

Just returned from a short trip down to Daytona Beach, where we went with some friends to help move their friends back to Va. While there for 3 quick days, I was able to go to the beach one afternoon, and to Blue Spring State Park the following day.

     This shot was taken while riding down the beach. It was cold and very windy, as you can see, with not many of the spring breakers in the water. I did manage to shoot a lot of shots and also some video that I will be processing in the upcoming days.

     I love this shot, I think its the dark sky I find so appealing. I watched this guy, and another one for about an hour, and was amazed at what they could do. You talk about catching some air, they could do it.

     I shot this shot our second day there. This was at our motel, we found out, there was a wild fire, and the wind was driving it right to us. It was so thick at times you couldn’t even see. When we returned from the beach that evening, the entrance to our motel was full of fire trucks, state police, and 3 different TV station vans. On our last night there, the fire was just a 1/2 mile away from us, and they were talking like they might have to make everyone leave the motel. Luckly enough, the wind died down and in the morning firefighters and TV crews, were gone. It was my first time ever in Florida, and it was different to say the least. Will post more later…. Hope you enjoy….

While I am learning the YouTube thing, with uploading slide shows, I really haven’t had the chance to play with my Canon Vixia HG 21, that I purchased recently. I thought that yesterday while it was snowing outside, we would go to our store and do some short videos of a infomercial type thing, trying to get everyone in the mood for spring. I have learned its a lot tougher using a video camera, compared to my 1D MkII.

I really enjoy the features of the HG 21. It will take me some time with the learning curve it has. Here’s the first upload for everyone to see.

As a photographer, I am always busy this time of year finishing up with all my Senior Portrait clients. My portraiture photography work is very different for seniors. Neither me or my company, go to schools shooting for their yearbooks, nor am I hired by the schools for my work. For years, I have taken a different approach to photographing Senior Portraits. I am hired to shoot the style of shots that are not offered by the big company that contracts out to all schools. My work is based on the idea of me traveling to the clients location to give them those special shots that they would not other wise get in there package offered by the schools.

In my area, SW Virginia, most of the families have horses, and many of the seniors I shoot, want to be shot with their horses, or any other special pet they might own. To me, this style of portraiture work is some much fun to do. Personally, I hate to be stuck in the studio day after day. I find it tends to become boring and loose insight on the work being done. I jump at the chance for the location work, and my mind starts running, thinking of all the different props and lighting effects that will be offered to me for each and every different session I do. The shot of Allison on her horse, was very challenging. It was getting very late in the evening, I was loosing light fast, and I had Betty holding a white reflector, trying to bounce light back into Allison’s face. Bumping my ISO up brought in some noise, but gave me a high enough shutter speed to work. We did not want to use any strobes or flash, in fear of freaking out her horse, which was not very cooperative to begin with. It did turn out that this shot, was one of the shots they loved the best.

Since Allison was in to the Rodeo scene, we had tons of fun shooting her senior portraits. I find that when I do this type of portraiture work, I will shoot any where from 3 to 4 hours. Everyone is having so much fun, that time seems to escape us. Granted not all sessions are like this, but for the most part, the biggest majority are. I believe that the biggest key to success, is to just go out and have fun.

This session with Stacey, is one of the sessions I am processing now. I have just upgraded to PS CS4, so I am having another learning curve to go through. So far, I am really enjoying this new program, and what it has to offer. I come from the old school days of film, and post processing was somewhat limited. But with the modern Digital technology, I am totally amazed with all that can be done with your photography.

I do hope you have enjoyed this post. If you have anything you would like to add, please feel free to leave a comment. I have a couple of articles I am finishing up, which will be released in the short future, so you will want to keep an eye out for them.

I will add one more photo from the session I am working on now for your viewing.

landscape photography picture

With being so busy this time of year, I was able to take off last Sunday and go out to a place in Little Creek Va. to a location that has been vacant for quite some time. I was told about this location by a friend and I wasn’t disappointed. I love the old buildings and what they have to offer. This one had a wrought iron fence on 2 sides of it that I really loved.

There were 4 different buildings on this location that runs next to a stream. I even found a small waterfall after climbing a fence and walking upstream. Had a very enjoyable Sunday afternoon. If the photos seem off a little, bear with me. I am learning Photoshop CS4 which i just purchased. I will be adding more of this outing in the Photos page under landscapes. I hope you enjoy.

landscape photography fence picture

landscape photography waterfall picture

landscape photography porch picture

landscape photography out-building picture

I usually spend my early morning hours while having coffee either, shooting backyard birds, or cleaning out files of photos I will want to keep. This morning is one of those cleaning out mornings. I was going through my files and found one of my zip drives in my camera bag from my trip down to the coast in S.C.

With 4 gb of photos, it is going to take me some time going through all of these shots. I do remember that while I was there for 7 days, I don’t remember the sun shining for one single day. It was cloudy, and rain and fog the whole time I was there. In upcoming weeks, I will try to put together a series to see what I can come up with. Here are just a few that I liked. Please let me know your opinions on them.

Landscape Photography Foggy Sunrise Picture

Landscape Photography Black & White Picture

Landscape Photography B/W Seaside Picture

Landscape Photography Ocean & Clouds Picture

Last year at this time, I was having coffee watching it start to snow after a freezing rain, when out of nowhere, this red bird appeared. I thought, grab the camera, I have never had this species before, and noticed right away, how its bill was crossed over each other. So I grabbed my camera and starting shooting it thru my window in my breakfast nook area. After about 30 minutes he was gone. For the next 2 days after that, no sign of him. On the thrid day, he appeared again and ate from the feeders for about another half an hour, then gone again. I stayed inside every day looking for him to reappear, it seemed he only showed up when the finches were at the feeders. The next time he showed back up (which seems to be every 3 days), he had a female companion with him this time. They appeared to have the same routine, showing up every 3 days and only feeding for about a half an hour. After a couple of weeks of this same routine, I had a total of 5 appearing at the same time, and now showing up 2-3 times a day. After searching books for birds in my area, and learning nothing about them, I decided to show photos of them on the forums, that’s how I learned that they were Red Crossbills. I was informed that they are rarely seen this far south, and that their food supply in Canada was very low, so they were heading farther south to find food.

I got very use to seeing them every 3 days, and they stayed here for almost 6 weeks, and then they were gone. They would never really let me get close when they were around, any sudden noise or movement and they were gone. I was online yesterday and I noticed that reports and photos of White-winged Crossbills have been seen in Winfield Ks. on 1/2/09. Can be seen here. 

I am wondering if I will get a return this winter of the Red Crossbill. They sure were fun birds to watch. Heres a few of the shots I was able to get of them.

Bird Photography Red Crossbill picture

Bird Photography Red Crossbill-finch picture

Bird Photography Red Crossbill-feeder picture

Bird Photography Male-Female Red Crossbill picture

Bird Photography 2 Male Red Crossbills picture

Bird Photography Female Red Crossbill picture

I will be keeping my eyes open this year, hoping for their return back to SW Va.

I thought I would go through all my files and try to pick 12 of my favorite bird photos I was able to capture in 2008. Most all of these were shot in my backyard, that I have set up, trying to get the most natural looking shots I could. I hope you enjoy.

bird photography chickadee picture

bird photography woodpecker picture

bird photography wren picture

bird photography bluebird picture

bird photography cardinal picture

bird photography carolina wren picture

bird photography downy woodpecker picture

bird photography house finch picture

bird photography hummingbird picture

bird photography junco picture

bird photography nuthatch picture

bird photography titmouse picture

I am already working on my 12 favorites for the year 2009. Its very enjoyable watching your life list grow each and every year.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,

This is going to be a little different from our usual photography stuff. A friend of ours PJ’s AnitqueorNot

directed us to a site that asks, “How does your Blog test for Readability?” and I found myself curious to test myself. You always hear in Internet Marketing, how content is King, and how Google rates your site on readability and family friendly, for users to travel through you site.

What level of education is required to understand your Blog? To me this is very interesting since, I have always heard that journalist and writers always wrote at an elementary level so readers would understand their writings. With this test, they use the Gunning Fog, Flesch Reading Ease, and Flesch-Kincaid reading level algorithms

that are helpful in determining how readable the content on your Blog is. Although they only provide you a rough guide, they do tend to REWARD you for short sentences that are made up of short words, they can give you a useful indication as to whether you have pitched your content to the right level of people you are targeting.

The following table contains the readability results for http://yourphotographynow.com .

Reading Level Results Summary Value
Total sentences 406
Total words 5522
Average words per Sentence 13.60
Words with 1 Syllable 3729
Words with 2 Syllables 1216
Words with 3 Syllables 383
Words with 4 or more Syllables 194
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 10.45%
Average Syllables per Word 1.46
Gunning Fog Index 9.62
Flesch Reading Ease 69.15
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.99

Gunning-Fog Index

This is the test results that I ran for this site, in which I am real pleased with the results, I know I am targeting the right people. You can go in and give your site a test if you want to see where you would fall in the content for the people your targeting. This is the website

for testing your Blog.

I do hope that you will find all of this very interesting, and maybe helping you more in the targeting area of getting your content out to the people you want.

Did you like this? If so, please bookmark it,

With the temps getting lower, (-3 this morning) and electric companies asking for another 28% price increase, my wood stove has been working overtime this week. With my wood pile getting very low, and having 3 big Oak trees dying in my back yard, I thought today would be a very good time to drop them, cut to length and split.

I have a friend who offered me a truck load of Locust already cut and split, if I would just drive to his house and load it up. I jumped at the chance, not just for the free truck load of wood, but on the back of his land is a running stream in the wilderness, and on the other side of the stream is an old log cabin that I just love. I knew that after loading the wood, I would need a break and would go down and shoot some shots of the stream, and cabin.

With still being in single digits, and a strong breeze blowing, needless to say, I didn’t take many photos. I do wish I would have went to the studio and grabbed the tripod. I took 2 shots of the stream breaking current through the ice, the first shot was with a shutter speed of 1/4 sec., it didn’t turn out to bad, although I did close my eyes and hold my breath for a shutter that seemed to take forever. The second shot I tried a 1/2 sec. shutter speed, and did get some blur, hey, it happens.

I did run across something in the stream that I thought was amazing. Its like ice crystals standing straight up out of the stream, reminded me of the first superman movie and superman’s cave. I hope you enjoy.

Now I have a warm fire going, my body is sore, and I think its time for bed.

With it being so cold out today, I was very lucky to get to stay indoors where it was toasty and warm. So I spent my day catching up on backlogs of commerical work for a web site. A big thrill for the new year… I had to shoot bears……. Needless to say they were stuffed…..

Hey, at least they were cute and cuddley….