Kidz

 Everybody loves photos of children. I know I do. I’m a sucker for friends, and even strangers, who posts photos of their kids. I immediately click the Like or Heart button. 

 But as every photographer will tell you, they are the WORSE subjects to photograph. They’re squirmy and inattentive, and couldn’t care less of the importance of what we’re trying to accomplish. You literally have less than two seconds to snap the pic once you get their attention for a shot. I could never work at a photo studio. I would get fired within a day by saying things like, “Will you sedate the little bastard, please?”. 

 I always joked that there is not a shutter speed fast enough to capture children without blurring. You have a better chance of shooting a hummingbird without blurring the wings than capturing a child ‘standing still’. 

 The photo above was shot during my very first family session, ever. This was also my first time shooting a family with my new camera, which before this day was used for nature only. The family are very dear friends mine. And though they wanted nice pro pictures for Easter, they also allowed me to take my time and figure out settings, angles and focus. 

 And just the day before I had just had surgery on my spine, so I was highly medicated. 

 I took nearly 200 photos that day. 80% of the photos were scrapped because either the kids would not stand still and look at me, or they were making ridiculous faces. These kids are naturally funny, fun-filled, and obnoxiously goofy characters. Trying to get them to stand still and just smile while looking at me was not happening. 

 This shot was taken after trying to get a few nice posing photos of the kids alone. But by this time they were just tired of being there, and ‘posing’, and just wanted to be their silly selves. 

 As soon as I gave them the ‘all clear’ to be themselves and act goofy, the magic happened. And as you can see they are beautiful and wonderfully photographic children.  

 But my opinion on photographing children still stands. They are the devil. 

 😈

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#nofilter

 Purists piss me off. Their attitude, like their beard-wearing, vape-smoking, douchebag Hipsters counterparts, makes me want to download all of their photos and edit the shit outta them, and re-upload them to their Mom and Dad’s joint Facebook account. 

 Look, here’s my take on photo editing. If you think your picture looks great as it is, awesome! You enjoy your bland photos. But don’t shit on my parade because I love to make colors pop with vibrance, bring out details in clouds, bring objects out of the shadows, or even crop. I have never seen an amazing photo that didn’t have at least some minor editing done to it. Don’t believe me? Ask the NatGeo photographers. 

 Back in the day, they didn’t have computers, so they experimented with techniques in the darkroom while processing them. All to make their photos look more amazing than they did originally. 

 OK, now, back to the above photo. I didn’t do any editing other than cropping out a sign that was in the left side frame. My LG G2 phone had this cool feature that if you tapped on the brightest section of your shot (and in this case, it was the Sun), it would focus and darken the frame, to not let the brightness overtake the picture, then snap the picture. 

 This was the result of that feature. I actually tried some filters and other effects, but nothing worked. So i left it alone. 

Luna

  Taken in 2002, this is the oldest existing photo in my digital portfolio. 

 This was shot using my very first digital camera. It was an 8 Megapixel Kodak that cost me, like, $600. Back then it was new technology. And having an 8 megapixel camera, I was the talk of the block (for about 30 seconds… when I told someone… who was walking by with their dog… who really didn’t care). It didn’t have interchangeable lenses and the digital zoom sucked back then just as much as it sucks today. 

 With all of that said, I had to hold the camera up to the eyepiece of my old homemade 4″ Reflector telescope. It’s not easy to do it that way, either. Don’t believe me? Try it. You’ll hate me later. 

Do you smell something burning?

 I totally overcooked this photo. But on purpose. Meaning, I overused filters to give it a more unrealistic look. 

 The original photo (again, using my cell phone) looked pretty, but I really wanted to capture the warm glow of the setting Sun on the trees. And I wanted to give the clouds a more ‘illustrated’ vibe. 

 This was taken in Keedysville, MD. My kids were shooting hoops at the town’s quiet little park during a visit to their Grandfather’s, when I noticed the sunset’s glow on the trees and mountains in the distance. 

 Though the grain is unforgiving, it was a popular picture on my Facebook page, so it must be good, right? 

A Winter’s Morn’

The last thing I wanted to do that morning before work was to run to Walmart. First of all, it cut my extra cup of coffee out of my schedule. Second, I hate Walmart. But at that hour of the morning, nothing else is open for what I needed to purchase. 

 My daughter had just left to catch the bus for school and it was still somewhat dark due to the cloud cover from a storm that dumped 7″ of snow the day before. 

 I was just expecting another shitty morning drive, getting stuck behind every school bus stopping every 50′ to pick up kids. So I took the back roads. 

 But back roads, a day old snowfall, clouds, a bare tomato field, and the rising sun was the perfect cocktail for one of my favorite photos. 

 This was taken using my old phone’s (LG G2) stock camera. 

 A little side note, if you ever HAVE to go to Walmart, the best time is the early AM. It’s a more civilized clientele. 😉

This Could Be A Inspirational Meme…

… but pffffft, whatever. Another cell phone pic.

I was setting up my gear to shoot a sunset (in Gettysburg, go figure!) and my daughter, who was with me on this photo venture, wanted to have a photo of herself doing this. I’ve always dug photos like this and never had the chance to shoot one.

So I told her to kneel down so I could get the right angle. The people driving past looked at us with stupid faces. But I’ll do anything to make my kids happy. 

I think it looks adorably perfect… like my kids… who are adorable!

Sunset #1,276

Seriously though, I take way too many sunset photos. But when something like this happens, I can’t just look at it. This photo was taken using my cell phone (LG G5) because I don’t normally drive around with my camera (Canon Rebel SL1) unless I’m purposefully out to shoot something.

It’s not about the equipment used (typical little penis’d guy response, HA!), but how it looks post editing (that’s NOT what she said! 😉).

Would you have guessed this was taken using a stock cell phone camera?

Also taken in Gettysburg while driving around on the Battlefield tour route. At this point, my son was running amok from cannon to cannon and my 2 y/o daughter was in complete meltdown mode because she was nap-less and tired. I snapped this while I was walking to my SUV to get them the hell home. 😄