Sunsets, Sunflowers and Cactus
After bailing on the storms, I saw a giant monolith of a mountain jutting from the land way east of Florence. I knew I couldn’t get there, so I tried to get as close as I could…so I took off down a dirt road named East Price. Well, I never got to the mountains as the sun just set too quickly, but it didn’t stop me from pulling the car over on a few occasions and lining up a couple of shots. A typical Arizona summer sunset right here, with debris clouds from the monsoons creating some spectacular lighting. The [...]
Light in the branches
(You can click on the photo for the large version) I’ve been desperate to chase some monsoon storms around Arizona since the season started over a week ago, mostly to get solid lightning shots, but also general storm photos. But the storms aren’t cooperating and monsoon moisture is taking a very long time to move into the state so all we have are scattered thunderstorms during the afternoon hours that die off before the sun goes down. I went out anyways yesterday, hopefully to somehow get lucky…which didn’t happen. But I was treated to some great skies with cloud debris [...]
Photoshoot: 525 Town Lake | real estate | apartments
On Sunday I teased my Twitter/Facebook followers about a photography opportunity that was becoming more of a reality. Well this is it and I’m excited about being able to do this kind of work. A month or two ago I came into contact with a real estate broker who has some nice locations in the downtown Tempe area that he’s trying to rent/sell. I offered him a chance to see what High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography could do to showcase the places he wanted to rent and he told me to use 525 Town Lake as a test subject. A [...]
The road through the forest
While it may be obvious from my constant babble about weather, storms and lightning, that I LOVE that stuff with passion, there is also something else I enjoy immensely. The cool pine trees of northern Arizona. Being a desert-born dude who lives in the Phoenix area almost year round, minus the occasional excursion elsewhere, getting out of that blistering sunshine is of vital importance, especially during the summer. Ever since I was a kid my dad used to take us camping once or twice a summer. People who don’t live in Arizona have no idea that the pine trees are [...]
An old church on the Gila River Indian reservation
Rarely do I allow random people to pose in any of my HDR landscape photos, but this is my wife, it was on a date night that started off with storm chasing and she looked pretty dang cute sitting in front of a battered looking old church. Sadly I have no idea the name of this place, but it’s located on the Gila River Indian Reservation a few miles south of where we live. There was a bunch of dust headed our way, so we jumped out, took a few pictures and then zoomed back off. The church itself was [...]
Photoshoot: Wyatt and Rachel
These are some of my favorite shots from a little photoshoot I did with Wyatt and Rachel on Tuesday night. The little guy was just four days old and the parents wanted some pictures of him, plus a few together with his big sister Rachel for some birth announcements. We got the full spectrum of Wyatt…some super-sleepy to kind of wide-awake…he did such a great job. Of course, when you are that little and the goofy camera guy asks mom and dad to pose you in a certain spot…you are pretty much stuck that way *grin* Although, little Wyatt actually [...]
A closer look at the Ogalalla feed mill
A week or so ago I posted a much wider shot of this feel mill located in the small town of Ogalalla, Nebraska. It just stood out from the town like a place beckoning me to photograph it. It was old looking, boarded up and left alone…but somehow the whiteness of the silos and buildings made it feel alive somehow. This was a hand-held shot and my only wish is that I had more practice in with the lens I had rented for the trip…a 16-35mm Canon. It just wasn’t as sharp on the wider apertures.
An old barn in northern Arizona
Another shot from my trip to Grand Falls last month…this was an old barn in the town of Williams, Arizona, which was where I actually was working earlier in the day before heading to the falls. Lots of barbed wire around this thing or I may have tried to get closer to it, but I definitely loved the color of wood on the outside, the rusty looking roof and the trees around it. Not to mention there were a few clouds in the sky to add a little fun to the shot.
Sneak peak: Brand new baby Wyatt
As some of you know, I have a full-time job that doesn’t involve photography and the last few days have been long, tedious and tiring. After about 10 hours today, I drove across Phoenix in rush hour traffic to meet my wife, daughter and our friends who just had their second child in the wee hours of Friday morning. My wife made them a delicious dinner and I was going to take a few shots of Wyatt along with his big sister Rachel. Photography is such a blessing to me. After such a draining day, I got to take pictures [...]
A sweet Ford GT
During the maternity photoshoot last week, the father-to-be noticed this sweet Ford GT drive up and we ended up finding it a bit later on our walk-around at Joe’s Farm Grill. I don’t know much about cars at all (that’s probably an understatement too), so I didn’t even realize Ford made a sweet looking ride like this. I tried to explain to Terrence the beauty of HDR photography and what a picture of this car might look like once I was done processing it…and then I realized how trying to explain HDR to a non-photog is almost like explaining what [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.