Some lightning on North Mountain
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 35mm 1.4 l, f/11, iso 200, 25 sec // buy print) Getting any kind of lightning from a winter storm here in Arizona is possible, but a lot harder to come by than the summer monsoons. Tuesday night ended up being a lucky one for me, as some nice looking winter-ish cells blew through town and put on a bit more of a lightning show than we’re used to. This was taken on top of a 7-8 story parking garage looking north. Ironically, the lightning strike hits a mountain [...]
Cape Fear
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 35mm 1.4 L, f/16, iso 400, 58 sec // buy print) As this Movie Title Series continues on an on for over a year now…it feels like I’m running thin on movies I’ve seen that have titles which work well enough for images. Hence you may start seeing films that I’ve actually never viewed before. Or perhaps I may have seen portions of it, but have no clue what it was about, nor remember anything. Sort of like Cape Fear. I am certain I saw this movie, or at [...]
A sliver of color
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35 f/2.8, 17mm, f/16, iso 100, 0.6 sec // buy print) This was one of the last shots I took during the 2011 summer monsoons. I was about as far away from Phoenix as I’d been all year…near a town called Joseph City that I don’t recall having known existed before. The sky at sunset was pretty epic, but I found myself in somewhat of a bad spot…houses, industrial stuff around, so I kind of missed out on some clouds to my south. But I drove north along a [...]
Cloud to ground
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 24mm, iso 125, f/7.1, 30 sec // buy print) I recommend clicking on the image…it will put a black box around it and fit it to your screen size…just in case your monitor isn’t giant like mine isn’t. Haven’t posted a lightning strike in what feels like AGES, which is probably far from the truth. Anyways, this was a towering strike that I cropped to fill the entire frame. The original capture had it a bit more to the left than I liked. When shooting lightning, sometimes [...]
A road less traveled
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, tamron 17-35mm 2.8, 17mm, f/16, iso 100, 1/60 // buy print) A random dirt road off I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff. The day was supposed to be epic up north, but it turned out to be mostly a bust. Still, my daughter and I drove down this road looking for something interesting to shoot against the puffy clouds and desert-y terrain. I climbed a low hill to shoot the giant rocks up there, but ended up seeing this instead and liked it a whole lot better. Love me some roads [...]
When Harry Met Sally
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 50mm 1.4, f/1.8, iso 400, 1/320 // buy print) I’ve been waiting and waiting for a time when I could use this film for Movie Title Wednesday and it’s finally here. It took a trip to New York to make it happen, but that is perfectly okay with me. When Harry Met Sally is one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, I wanted to join my wife in visiting The Met just so we could stand in that one spot and practice saying “Pecaan pieeeeeee…pecan pieeeeeeee.” Probably the [...]
Paparazzi
So what do a group of photographers do when they get bored of shooting stuff around them, or have to wait 30 minutes for a large table at John’s Pizzeria? Turn the cameras on each other, of course. Become our own paparazzi. The photo above of my pal Brian Matiash kind of says it all. Someone is off-camera left shooting a picture of him, then a second guy is on the right taking a picture too for some reason, and thus I completed the trifecta in an attempt to capture BM in his element: the center of attention *grin* Most [...]
Devil’s Gulch
(please click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 16-35mm 2.8l, 33mm, iso 200, f/10, 302 sec, 10-stop // buy print) Ever since I first saw a long exposure of the Oregon coast, I knew I wanted to shoot something like that…someday. The sunsets there are spectacular, but when you can’t get those, the rocks, the water, the waves…they make for some of the most beautiful coastal shots anywhere. Last week I got sent to Corvallis, Oregon for my day job, and from the second I knew I was going, I got excited. I borrowed a B+W [...]
Aussie’s have big lenses…and other pictures
I’ve talked about it enough on Twitter and Facebook, but last week my wife and I went on a four-day trip to New York City. The primary reason for this little jaunt was to take a little vacation together, but also to meet some of my favorite people in the world. In the last year or two, I’ve become great friends with a group of photographers that are based all over the place…Seattle, California, Canada…and a bunch who are up in the New England area. So we planned this epic meetup. And amazingly, it actually happened. Somehow, someway…all of us, [...]
Sunrise in Brooklyn Bridge Park
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 16-35mm 2.8 L, 17mm, f/8.0, iso 100, 39 seconds, 10-stop filter) So I was in New York last Thursday through Sunday, and here I am sitting in a hotel in Corvallis, Oregon. New York was a vacation, Oregon is for my day job. Looking forward to my off-hours in Oregon though, as I plan on hitting the coast a few times, starting tonight. Since I don’t have a lot of time, I wanted to pass on an image from my trip to NYC. This was taken at 7:25am in [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.