A little ode to the beach
We’re headed to San Diego tomorrow for a nice four-day weekend with friends in a giant vacation house that sits a couple hundred feet from the beach. It’s going to be awesome and it’s unbelievable to think I actually have to work today when all I want to do is get in the car and start driving. In honor of the sand, surf and relaxation, I figured I would post a few shots from a beach near Den Haag in Holland. We were headed back to Amsterdam to leave the next day for the States, and decided to swing by [...]
Down that dark road
I’m lucky to have a few great friends at work and one of them is Jesse. He’s a car guy, loves to go “wheeling” every Friday night and would go out of his way to help you install a new car stereo, not to mention a bazillion other things. A week or so ago we had to drive up to Williams for work, which is something we love doing despite the 3-3.5 hour drive time. Especially in the summer when it’s 110 in Phoenix, but a cool 75-80 in the gorgeous pine country of northern Arizona. He’s such a good [...]
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, [...]
Boiling storm over Nuenen
This is another shot of the storm from behind my hotel a few nights ago. You can see some brightness to the right which was a wall of rain coming that I ended up having to outrun since I stood there shooting until it was almost too late. This is a black and white, HDR photo from three handheld brackets. It’s got a looooot of grain. I kind of like it that way and it’s mainly why I decided to go with the B&W styling, but once I removed the color, I liked the scene even more. Getting rid of [...]
The Mercedes Benz of Amsterdam
I loved this old Mercedes Benz as I was walking the streets of Amsterdam and just had to take a few pictures of it. I have another view that contrasts the bike, but this one is something a little different than my normal HDR processing. I processed the photo as a normal black and white, and then did a single-image HDR out of the color version of the RAW photo and then masked that into the B&W to come up with something a little more interesting to me personally. I’m calling it an HDR Blend and would like to think [...]
Illegal Shadows
That’s me and my shadow perched on the trunk of my car on Thursday night, watching the clouds develop along an outflow boundary. The sun was close to setting and I liked how my shadow looked as it stretched across the road, plus the clouds and the mountains were fairly interesting. So what’s up with the shadows being illegal (if you read the title)? Well, where I’m parked is about 10 feet off Gilbert Road, which runs through the Gila River Indian Community for a few miles before it hits State Route 87. While I sat there, a DPS officer [...]
Mailboxes, etc
(click on the image for a larger view!) The way to Grand Falls goes through Luepp Road, which was picturesque and almost as interesting to me as the Falls themselves. There were quite a few of these little mailbox clusters along the way and this scene above spoke to me so much, I actually turned around and went back a few miles to make sure I captured it before returning to my trip to the Falls. There was just something about the way the mailboxes were all huddled together, the dirt road runs off for miles and in the far [...]
Sunset from below Grand Falls
(click on the photo for a larger view) I’ve seen pictures where Grand Falls is flowing with so much water it almost looks like a western version of Niagara Falls. In fact, the 184-drop of Grand Falls is higher than Niagara. March of this year was probably the best time to actually see the water roaring over the edge, so I missed it by a few months. However, if I’d been there back in March, this shot wouldn’t have been possible. I’d likely be standing in at least 2-4 feet of raging water, if not more. The shadows on the right side [...]
Welcome to Grand Falls, Arizona
One of my “bucket list” items if you will was to visit this amazing place called Grand Falls. It’s in northern Arizona about 30 miles or so northeast of Flagstaff. The falls are located on Indian land and the last leg is a 10 mile drive on a bumpy dirt road, which in my little Toyota Solara, took about 45 minutes to traverse. I have a ton more photos to post over the week, but this is the first one, it even may be my favorite of the bunch. So far. While not a ton of people know about this [...]
The Flatiron cliffs in black and white
Nothing but Flatiron all week, although I hope you enjoyed the interlude with the alleyway yesterday. There is a slight chance there will be nothing but Flatiron and the Lost Dutchman area next week as I may go hike it again on Saturday *grin* I loved all the color at Flatiron last week, as you can see from all the photos I’ve posted about it. The flowers were incredible, the yellow tones and hues were rich and everywhere. But I also went out there because the sky had some cool clouds going on from a cold front moving through and [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.