Enough already with the HDR bashing
Even as I write this title, I know it wont do any real good. But it’s how I feel today, I’m riled up and I’m dusting off the ol’ soapbox. I’m sick and tired of the term “HDR” feeling like a scarlet letter that forces photographers to feel ashamed about their work. I know a guy on Flickr who removed his whole HDR set and stopped tagging his photos with “HDR” so he can quit hearing the crap spewed from people about his pictures. Are you kidding me? The real sad part about all of it is that in my [...]
The Flat Iron Cliffs after the storm
The credit for this photo goes entirely to my buddy Bryan Cox. If it wasn’t for his insistence that I turn the car around, I’d never have captured it. Yes, as we were driving by, I saw the light, I commented to Bryan how amazing it looked, but we were trying to catch some storms and I just didn’t think we had the time to stop, even for a few minutes. Finally Bryan says something like, “I’m gonna have to put my foot down here…turn the car around.” This was last Wednesday…Bryan decided to tag along with me as a [...]
Wishing you were a wall cloud
Most of you know I went on a stormchasing trip to Nebraska earlier this year. The reason I went was to see stuff like in the picture above. Of course, when you see stuff like that in Oklahoma, Kansas, etc., you run and hide because that’s looking like a fairly monster-sized funnel dropping to the ground. Ah, but in Phoenix…it’s rarely that. This storm had no rotation, it was just a severe thunderstorm that had the look of something much more evil. I loved it…and was kind of glad it wasn’t a funnel, because it was coming right at me [...]
Dusty colored monsoon sunset
Sometimes when people process an HDR photo, the colors can get skewed and tweaked so you are looking at an unrealistic interpretation of what the photography actually observed. Not so here. If you look at the foreground elements…the desert, the grass, the construction vehicles…you can see those colors are fairly accurate. It was just a crazy sky right before the sun went down last night. We’re not sure what caused it to get this weird, paled burnt color. You can see a little dust storm on the left horizon in this picture, so it didn’t appear to be reflection from [...]
The Beguinage Convent in Bruges, Belgium
This is the Beguinage Convent located in the middle of Bruges, Belgium. We saw this place on the little tourist map we grabbed and figured it would be an interesting contrast to the cobblestone streets and alleyways we had seen so far. The first thing you see before entering is that no commercial photography was allowed and no tripods. Which would mean this photo of mine is not for sale. The convent is actually still functioning, which we kind of discovered when we entered into the old church that was on the grounds here. The nuns inside were all praying [...]
The Red Light Bar Coffee Shop in Amsterdam
Wandering the streets of Amsterdam early in the morning really allowed for picture taking without thousands of people in the frame. I loved this scene because of all the different colors there were to capture. From the orange flags for supporting the Dutch soccer team, to the neon signs, the Heineken sign, the graffiti in the alleyway, the red bricks, the awnings, the dirty black stairs…they just played so well together to create an explosion of color in an old town. The door was closed to the coffee shop, but if it was anything like the other ones I passed [...]
Monsoon sunset from Picacho Peak
A great photographer friend of mine, Matt Granz (see his work here on Flickr), was driving through Phoenix with his family on his way across the country to see relative in Pennsylvania. We had planned to do some monsoon chasing when he got into two and sure enough, the monsoon looked fairly spectacular so we headed out around 4:30pm and Matt got to see a little bit of what the monsoon is about. High winds, dust storms, gorgeous sunsets, awesome clouds…but sadly, no night-time lightning. We started out in Apache Junction and by 7:30pm we were down at Piacacho Peak, [...]
Happy Birthday baby Claire!
This darling, precious gift of a girl, turned two years old this past week. Her parents asked me to snap photos of her big birthday party on Saturday and I was honored. Life has been tough for little Claire, who has amazing challenges to face almost every day. But look at that smile. Oh my…how can you not get a warm, fuzzy feeling deep down inside and smile back at her?
Wandering with the Arizona monsoon
One of my goals for this summer was to chase the monsoon around Arizona and essentially create a journal of my travels in a photobook. I have no idea if that will pan out once the monsoon season is over, what it might look like, if it’s silly, whatever. But part of the plan is to take a few day trips each month out into the Arizona wilderness and follow the storms around as they develop and move towards Phoenix. Wander around if you will, see what I see. Frame the monsoons with the gorgeous Arizona deserts and high country, then [...]
A few moments captured in Amsterdam
Sometimes you can get too attached to one kind of shot, one kind of lens and you forget that the world can be seen in a wide variety of ways. My first instinct when I landed in Holland was to capture EVERYTHING, hence my 17-35mm was the lens of choice. I wanted architecture, wide plazas, canals, cars, anything and everything…but in a wide scope. For the first half of the trip, my 50mm 1.4 sat in the bag. But while I was in Bruges, I switched about halfway through and was thrilled at the shots I was getting. Tight shots, [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.