One late afternoon while I was in Tahoe this last trip, I didn't feel like snowboarding so I told my friend Colton I would try and get a few shots of him.  I really enjoyed filming.  You wouldn't think so but it is very hard to find good angles for snowboard.  My friend Colton gave me some pointers in where to stand for a couple of them and then I started figuring it out.  The location of the setup was just in his backyard. 

http://www.vimeo.com/23389980

I got my inspiration from my friend Mike Miller. He has been in the snow and skate industry for awhile and he knows what he is doing behind a camera as well as a computer.   He doesn't really have a website but I will give you a link to his vimeo account to check out some of his edits. 

http://www.vimeo.com/common

Family Walks are Nice 4/29/11

      Every once in awhile my family and I go on a walk together around our house.  It was really mellow and I just wanted to take my camera along and snap some photos.  Life is always such a rush that sometimes it's really nice just to slow down for a little and just go walk around and chill with the fam.  All of these pictures were taken on the walk except the last one with the bear.  

This is a picture of a stream in front of my house.  I got pretty low to get the shot and my f-stop # was as low as it could go.  Thats why the rock and only a little bit of the stream is in focus. Everything else is blurred more than an old ladies vision.   

Grass as well as that green stuff.  This is another nice picture with  depth of field.

When I look at this picture it just really touches my heart and makes think of love.   NOT! are you kidding me.. don't even listen to me. Anyways though, i like this picture a lot. When we were on this walk my sister got some water from the stream and I drew this heart on this rock.

This is a picture of another stream.  

Well this is a picture of a branch.. the question is, is there any point to it? NO absolutely not but I was there at the time and figured it would make a cool picture.  Although its pretty dumb, I like all the different colors in this picture.  For editing, I bumped the contrast as well as a little bit of the clarity

Family!

I like the colors. Black trees to blue skies. Probably one of my favorite color combos.

COOL

Death Stick!

I got my inspiration from DIY photography.  I read up on depth of field on their site and it inspired me to take some close up, eye level, strong depth of field photos.

http://www.diyphotography.net/depth_of_field

Mammoth and Tahoe= fun times! 4/22/11

 It's always a privilege being in mammoth getting to hang with my mom's side of the family.  Every year we go to mammoth and visit my moms side of the family and often times I am so focused on my snowboarding, I forgot how much of a blessing my family is to me and how much they mean to me.  If I had to give any advice to people out there.. it would be don't take your family for granted. You never know what could happen in the future so appreciate their presence everyday and don't let the little things work you up because in the end they aren't that big of a deal compared to life itself. 

     With that being said, this is my little cousin and she is 14 years younger than me.  She had a long car ride to mammoth and was passed out on the couch there so I figured it was a perfect opportunity to get some pictures of a peaceful child at rest.  Don't rush through your childhood.. soak all of it in!

family: the most important people in an individuals life 

I was experimenting a little bit on this picture and turned the clarity down some rather than up a little bit.  I like how the face is a little more dull and how it really emphasizes the smoothness of a child's face.  If I could go back though, I would of not turned down the the clarity quite as much.  I then obviously desaturated the picture and turned up the contrast some. 

I like the depth of field a lot on this picture and how the couch before her is all blurry.  I turned down the vibrance some on this and then bumped the contrast up some.  I then lightened her face a little bit and bumped the exposure a hair.  And then I turned up the clarity a little. 

I like this photo except for the fact that her right cheek looks like it has pink on it from  the reflection of her shirt.  I tried to fix it some but it didn't work out as well as I thought. By all means though, its still a really cool photo. 

This one is a little better.  I like how I put her knee in the shot also and got that out of focus.  It shows the direction of where her body is going yet it's blurry so it leaves all of the focus on her face still.  I bumped the contrast, the clarity a hair and turned down the temperature a little.  On about all of these pictures of my little cousin, I turned down the temperature because the color of the light above made the picture more yellow than normal. 

This is my little cousin Sterling.  Since there are three very similar photos, I am  going to talk about this one and it will kind of represent the other too.  Ok so in these photos, I put his face under a light to try and light up both sides of his face. It did a pretty good job of lighting up his face.  As far as editing went though, I bumped the contrast a little, and turned down the exposure, then used the vignetting tool to darken the corners.  I then used the bandage tool to touch up his face.  After that, I lightened his face with sampling a lighter part of his face and using the paint tool to lighten up some of the darker parts of the picture. 

A bear.. photo credit: Paul Haran.  I was in so much shock from seeing this bear outside of my friends house.. I forgot how to use my camera so I gave it to him real fast hah. Hopefully that won't ever happen again. 

This is a picture through a pair of my sunglass of lake tahoe.  I set the exposure the part inside the sunglass lens would be a little under exposed and then the outside would be a little over exposed.  I had to do that or else part of it would of been way to dark or way to over exposed. I then just sharpened the picture a little bit and bumped the contrast some and that's about it. 

I like this picture.  The water colors are incredible and so summer warm feeling yet there is still snow in the mountains off in the distance.  I bumped the contrast, used the vignetting tool, and cropped it some. 

Same applies for this except the darkening of the edges.

I got my inspiration from an influential artist and business man in the snowboard industry.. Corey Smith

http://www.highpoweredstreetdrugs.com/

Potatoes aint the only thing Idaho grows. . . wait we aren't in Idaho 4/15/11

     

     As the year starts to get closer to an end, I find it much harder to find some type of motivation to spit some words on to this worthless blog.  Since I am sitting in Tahoe and I can't find anything else to do here, cause there is really not that many activities to do, I am going to write about this blog.  These pictures were taken on the way to Tahoe.  On the road to Tahoe, there is a lot of desolate areas with isolated trees and other cool features so I decided to whip out my camera and shoot my little heart away. I have quite a bit of photos this week so I won't be repetitive on every description of every photo.  I hope all is well in the world outside the blog world cause I know for a fact the blog world sucks right now.  I have one question. . . why wast your time with a blog if no one views it?  there is more to life then just sitting around at a computer reflecting over some piece of work of yours that simply just boosts yourself esteem so you can make it through another day.  All I am saying is get out and go enjoy some fresh air. Hope you enjoy. Later

This photo is cool but it would be even more cool if that dumb telephone wire post wasn't in the way.   You know what they say though, beggars can't be choosers.  I like this photo cause of the colors. I bumped the contrast in this and a few other things and thats about it. 

I like this photo pretty good.  I shot it with the idea of making the mountains a silhouette as well as the tree on the right side of the photo. In editing, I bumped the contrast, sharpened the picture a hair, turned the vibrance up hair, and then I used the vignetting tool to brighten up the corners a little.

     These two photos above are the same picture. I couldn't decide if I wanted to bump the clarity down or up on them side I did one picture with the clarity up and one with it down. I think it is pretty obvious which one is which. Let me know which one you like better. 

This was a picture right as we were leaving Coeur d' Alene.  I thought is was sweet so I decided to put some work into it.  I made the temperature a little warmer and turned up the contrast and thats about it. 

Potatoes are nice. These are a bunch of potatoes dumped on the side of the road. Very nice!

Nice little tree. See the black bar on the left side of the picture.  I didn't mean to do that, and I was going to change it but then I realized I kind of like it there, so I left it. 

This is probably one my favorite photos out of all of these.  I like it because it's not supper sharp.  It turned out almost like the clarity was bumped down some when I shot it. It looks like a photo from a film camera.  Therefore,  I desaturated the photo and didn't do a whole lot of editing to it. 

before

after

This photo is awesome. I love the color change from dark black of the tree and the ground to the nicely colorful sky and clouds.  It's the difference between life and death. I really like this photo a lot. 

Old Schooooooool baby

Gerrralldo. . . enough said.

I got my inspiration from Lisa Elmaleh. Check her stuff out!

http://lisaelmaleh.com/

Calgary part II: 4/8/11

     Ok so these are the second half of the Calgary photos.  Most of these were the pictures we took when we stopped at rest stops on the drive back.  On the way home we stopped at this frozen lake and the light was really cool so I snapped a few photos.  The second photo down is also a good group shot of all the guys I went to Calgary with.  Even though the trip was kind of a mess all around.. we still had a great time! 

     Anyways, I will talk about a few of the photos below each picture.

Glass to the stache- 4/1/11

     Since I have a little more photos than usual this week I am not going to talk as much and just let the photos speak for themselves.  These photos obviously weren't all taken in the same place.  I just want to send a warning out to people just to give a fair heads up.  Someone is goin around.. he is climbin in your windows, snatchin your people up, so you betta hide your kids hide your wife and hide your husbands too cause he's taken photos of everyone all up in here.  Anyways, just make sure you keep an eye out for that soniva B word. 

     The first 4 photos were from the inside of my brothers place in tahoe.  It was dumping outside and the avalanche danger was really to high to ride so we had to find things to do to pass the time.  I quickly noticed this wine cup and was curious how pictures would turn out if I take pictures through it.  To bad there wasn't any special juices in that cup.  My photos would of probably turned out a little better after I drained that juice.  I was thinking the edges of the glass cup would possibly make the photo turn out like a tilt shift lens picture would.  I really like how the upper middle part of the photos is blown out.  It puts more focus on the lower part of the glass cup and the trees to the left. 

One day when we were driving through different roads at Alpine (looking for something to snowboard on) we came upon this animal eating something right by the woods.  We weren't totally sure if this was a wolf or a dog.  So I carefully got out and snapped a few quick photos of him.  Once he came out of the hole though, we saw his dog tags and were slightly relieved.  I think it would of been cooler if it was a wolf though.  The picture below is the same story.. it's just when he was emerging from his hole. 

This photo and the one below was on the road in the middle of nowhere on my way home from Targhee.  I really like how these pictures laid out and how there is so many windmills in the picture frame.  For editing, I desaturated the photo all the way and bumped the contrast and thats about it. 

The editing part of this photo was very similar to the one above.  I bumped the contrast and turned down the vibrance quite a bit. Once the vibrance was down I bumped the saturation up a little to make the sky a little more blue.

This was a picture of a sunset and this picture was taken out the back window of my dads car.   I used part of the left side of the car to get a natural darkened left corner. And once I bumped the contrast up on this picture, that lower turned black almost making a natural vignett.  I also like how the road/hill/street signs all turned really dark black like a silhouette.   

There was a crash on the highway and I got to snap a shot in a quick second. 

BEER..

Ok so this photo and the photo below are the same picture.  I just wanted to see how one turned out being desaturated.   I really like how all these trees lined up on this little hill.  In a perfect world, I would of shot this photo at a little faster shutter speed.   It still turned out great though and I really like it. 

I like how this line formed from these telephone pole wires.. starting from the left side of the picture moving to the middle.  On the right side of the photo, right above the hill, I did some clone stamping to get rid of some distracting tiny little windmills in the distance.  Without them it just cleaned up the picture and make it less distracting. 

For the last couple months I have been looking at this girls work.. and even though these photos might not totally represent her work, It still is a motivator to one day try and shoot some stuff like her. She is really young also and she kills it. 

http://nirrimiphotography.carbonmade.com/projects/2910054#17