In actuality there is no connection; they just didn’t fit into the other categories.

But when life gives you rain, make rain-aid. The below shot of the rain was taken at the Horseshoe Canyon; while not as colorful and dynamic as the shot I arrived to take I think it does hold meaning. Photography is many things to many people; to me the best photography evokes an emotion.

This image is a metaphor for all the frustration and disappointment of real life. Each drop is a set back and the out of focus clouds are that hard-to-shake vague sense of impending doom often found in the depravity of modern life.

Black and White is the perfect medium to convey texture and patterns. Unfortunately the web is not. These images were capture on various digital backs between 39 and 60 megapixels; when printed several feet wide they reveal more subtle texture that even my 30″ monitors can begin too.

The two images below were captured with a Cambo Wide RS body, Phase One P40+ digital back using a 2-image stitch (horizontal@15mm fall, horizontal@25mm rise) for 70 megapixel image. Since the stitching occurred by shifting the capture device within the image circle there was no distortion or geometric alignment of the two frames, making the stitching process both easy, and high quality.

Viewing these balanced rocks makes you wonder at the amazing effect of time on the landscape of the Great American West.

I’ll post more of my images from the trip as soon as I get some rest. Until then enjoy these images from Antelope Canyon.

Wonder no more.

While I went to Vegas to help my friend and fellow photographer Luke Potter shoot a wedding (including a shoot at an abandoned Vegas Sign graveyard) I couldn’t pass on the chance to shoot in the desert.

The wind was blowing across the sand like a banshee. Fortunately Teri Marie was a truly professional model and stuck through the high wind, constant dust in her eyes, and abusive sun. Finding good models (10% looks, 40% talent, 50% professionalism) is hard work, so if you are in the Vegas area and need a model who you can count on I can strongly recommend Teri.

The style in these shots is heavily dependent on the lighting technique. The camera used for this shoot was a Hasselblad H2 medium format body with a Phase One digital back. The H2 system uses leaf shutter lenses which can sync with flash at 1/800th of a second, which means it’s relatively easy to under-expose the ambient light (making the clouds, sky, and ground dark) and take most of the light from the strobes.

Returning today for the Orchids festival with my friend Julia (of Shoe fame) and her husband, I brought along two visible light cameras.

The below frame is strait out of the camera without any contrast or saturation changes made. This flower really looks just like this.

These are four photos taken at a sunset shoot organized by this group. It’s always a pleasure to meet fellow photographers. If you’d like to join there are two such groups Miami Photography and Shoot Miami.

Images: Black and White, the Flight from Miami, Losing my Leica Virginity, Moab in Color

This week I joined the Meetup.com organization “Shoot Miami” for a group shoot of the harvest moon. When we first arrived we had calculated the moonrise time and position from several astronomical websites and were extremely confused when the time came and went without a moon. After all the moon isn’t a Miami Bus; you should know when and where it is. Finally the moon popped out over a cloud which was blending perfectly into the sky and our night of moon shooting began.

The above shot was inspired by the work of another photographer that night. He discovered this great angle which allows the rising moon to backlite this lighthouse-beach-lookout while a soft light from a nearby high rise gently filled in the facade facing the camera. I was just lucky enough to copy his location idea with my camera, which in the great tradition of photography means I can show it as my own.

In many of these shots the moon appears almost sun like. This is due to the long exposure time. Imagine filling a bottle of water at a sink; if you open the faucet all the way then the bottle fills quickly; if you open the faucet only a little then it takes a long time to fill the bottle. Either way you end up with a bottle of water. In this case you are filling the film with light. In broad daylite it only takes a fraction of a second to fill your bottle, but at night there is only a trickle of light, requiring the use of longer shutter speeds. The image above was a 120 second exposure.

This wonderful environment was the perfect opportunity to test out a new camera: a Phase One P45+ Infrared Modified Digital Back. This is a 39 megapixel digital camera designed specifically to capture infrared light. I’ve previously blogged about the basics of infrared photography when I captured Infrared Landscapes of Australia’s Northern Coast. Previously however, all of my infrared work had been done with a point and shoot digital camera when traveling, or infrared film when shooting locally. Using this camera brought my love of infrared photography to a whole new level.

Infrared photography relies on light outside the visible spectrum. Just as a red flower is red because it strongly reflects red light, an object is brighter (or darker) in infrared photography based on how much infrared light it reflects. Foliage containing chlorophyll, which strongly reflects infrared light, is bright, while open sky, which reflects blue light but very little infrared light, is very dark. This creates an interesting reversal of tones; instead of a light sky and dark foliage, the sky is very dark and foliage glows brightly. Photographers can take advantage of this tone reversal to create an eerie or ethereal feeling.