Inspired: Thanks to Luna Luciani Photography

I spent some time wandering through Flickr yesterday afternoon, and I came upon a collection of Photography by Sara Strimpel, one of my little brother's friends and a talented photographer.
She has a bunch of very diverse work and I spent probably an hour going through her 440 pictures.

This photo really inspired me to get off my ass, grab my camera and go shoot.

© Luna Luciani Photography 

It seems that everyone is always looking for a new interesting way to show the world... but so few people do it upside down! I grabbed my camera, turned it upside down and practically ran out the door to try my hand at seeing the world upside down.

 Unsurprisingly, most of what I shot was crap. Seeing the world in a new way is really tough and I just couldn't get ahold of any compositions that looked better upside down than they did right side up.

It was a great exercise though; anything that forces me to change my perspective can help me grow as a photographer and, I think, as a person in general.

After I got back from this shoot, I did the whiskey shoot in the following post, which turned out much better in my opinion.

TGIF: first round is on me

Had a bit of fun yesterday afternoon in my pseudo-studio:

Jim Beam. I used two glasses so I could pour from one glass to the other fairly quickly. This allowed me to get a variety of activities from the liquid without wasting a bunch. If Beam Global Spirits & Wine were to ask me to do this shoot for them, I'd shoot at a lower ISO (100 instead of 800) and I'd pour from the bottle... that I assume they would provide.

Lit with my ever-trusty pizza softbox. 1/250 sec at f/5.6 or so.

I've got another post coming tomorrow, inspired by a high school photographer who will go un-named for now...

Please, enjoy your Friday responsibly ;-)

Blog Lite: continued

Sorry for the total lack of posts recently. I'm working on getting my DAM stuff organized from the last year. That means a lot of tedious work and even more time spent watching the computer copy files from one drive to another.

The other day I purchased a waterproof, fireproof, lockable safe for my external hard drives, so I'm busy filling it with backups of my personal photos as well as the 135gb I shot for NAU Athletics over the last 8 months. This ensures my copies will be safe while I'm away in Colorado and it saves me from hauling a dozen hard drives all over the place. I got mine at Wal Mart for a bit over $50. A small price to pay to protect a year's worth of work.

Hopefully I'll dredge out my camera in the next couple days to take some pictures... the last couple weeks have proven to be a nice break from the shutter though. I originally intended to do a bunch of shooting while at my buddy's cabin out near Showlow, AZ, but the wind and dust combination was too much for me to handle, though I do need to get my gear cleaned over the summer. All of it. That will not be cheap...

I'm off to run *more* errands and hopefully to get in a bike ride. Have a great Thursday!

Portfolios updated

I spent some time yesterday updating my portfolios and my rates at www.vaultphotos.com

As I learn more and more about photography I am able to deliver more and more. My photographs are of a much higher caliber now than when I started business in 2006 (imagine that) and I will continue to learn and to grow as an artist - which means my rates will continue to rise.

I will be back in Colorado starting May 22nd - If you're in the Boulder area and are looking to get some portraits done, please send me an email or leave a comment below so we can schedule your session and get you some great photographs!

I'm going to be away from real internet for the next few days - time to relax and enjoy life without the burdens (or conveniences) of modern technology.

Jeeping in Sedona - videos

I did not shoot or edit these vids - they are straight out of a friend's camera phone. Check out THIS post for the story and stills.

Jeeping in Sedona

Whew. Finals are over and for better or worse, I'm done with my fourth semester at NAU.

Last weekend I took a break from studying and went down to Sedona with a few of my buddies to do some 4 wheeling. We took Schneebly road down and then hit up the features on Broken Arrow for a few hours.

the view on the way down Schneebly

I shot this trip pretty much my usual style with one major difference - I used a polarizer on my 18-55mm kit lens. It created a great vignette effect on all my photos because I stacked it right on top o the UV filter. My buddies laughed at me for using my cheap-o $100 lens and a filter that cost $50, but I'm happy with what I got:

borrowed the 12-24mm for this shot

The originals for all these photos were fairly unremarkable. Contrast was surprisingly low and these images took a fair amount of work in Aperture. I ended up working on just one image for 20 minutes or so, then I saved my sliders as a preset and applied it to the rest of the images. Most of them look like crap in color - the contrast and saturation are pretty far out of whack. Here's an example - Color and BW of the same image:

One reason I really like the following image is because I got some solid motion-blur on the front tire. I think the background is a bit distracting so it didn't make the final cut. Before the clouds showed up I was at 1/200 sec. When allofasudden it got much darker, I dropped my shutter to 1/60 right as Case started slipping his tires all over the rock. 

I'll update this post with VIDEOS in a bit.

May background

Whew. Another month is upon is and I was a bit more prepared for May than I was for April.

The May background is here for your enjoyment

and I updated www.mattbeaty.net with photos, links and whatnot for 2010 - March and April.

I had an absolute blast 4-wheeling in Sedona with a few buddies yesterday. When I need a break from studying I'll load those photos, a few of which I am quite proud of.

Until then, I'm buried in textbooks (electronic textbooks, of course) and stacks of old HW and exams... See you on the other side!