Craig's Blog

A couple days ago Mark and I decided to head to a downtown photography store called Photomark and check out some lighting, tripods and other cool stuff. They have a large selection of items there but unfortunately didn’t have the Gitzo traveller tripod that I am considering for a trip to Cancun with Michelle later this month. Naturally we had to eat lunch during our trip and Mark selected a very authentic Mexican food restaurant he remembered seeing before so we stopped by to check it out. It was a fun experience and Mark had his camera with him to capture it all. Instead of me re-explaining it all here I am just going to link Mark’s blog entry on the subject which includes several pictures.

http://blog.markwallace.net/?p=417

Now I need to share a photograph that was taken over the holidays that I’ve been waiting to post for a while now waiting for the right moment. This shot was taken right after I received my 1D Mark III. Mark, his wife Diane and I met at a local shopping plaza and we just walked around taking pictures of random things including each other as I was learning the new camera.  When Mark and I are out with our cameras he often becomes the subject of the photograph in teaching me something about my camera or a particular shot. I still don’t know exactly what Mark was intending to convey in this shot but I think its hilarious – I converted it to black and white for effect. Mark’s heading out of town tomorrow so hopefully it will be a little while before he notices this – he’s got plenty of things from me to work with I know that.

The disturbing photo

I’ve spent some time going through several landscape shots and that first one I want to share is a picture taken this past Saturday at sunset with a storm coming into the area. I walked into the median of a busy road and setup my tripod to take the scene below. I was trying to exclude the vehicles in the shot but the headlights coming in through the dark turned out pretty well I think. The shapes of the clouds in the background are my favorite part of the shot though.

This is a picture from Zion – really like how the clouds turned out in this one too.

This is another shot from Zion that was severely underexposed in the foreground while the back of the scene was perfectly exposed. I really liked the picture and wanted to see if I could salvage it. I brought the foreground back in with some work in LightRoom but I think the scene now looks very artificial due to the post production work.

This Sunday we are heading out to the Arizona Renaissance Festival which is in town for the next few weeks. Our first time attending was last year and it’s a great place to take pictures of people in costumes and the entertainers there. The food is pretty good too! I will definitely be posting some pics next week so stay tuned.

Arizona Renaissance Festival

Thanks for stopping by, any feedback on the photos is always appreciated.