The sunset before the haboob
So last week when I was asked about the big haboob timelapse, I usually started off with saying “I was in the backyard doing another timelapse…” This is that one. I had been out stormchasing 4-5 nights already and was pretty beat. I figured I’d stay home that night and let the storms come to me, perhaps shoot some lightning from my balcony or the parking garage down the street. When I saw the clouds building out west, I thought to myself “Hey, I can just do a timelapse and then hang out inside, relaxing, watching TV, whatever.” Of course, [...]
Speed
Oh how I longed to live closer to the downtown area so I could explore taking shots like this one. Long exposures over freeways with loads of vehicles. Although, I realized when I look at this that it could basically have been taken on any ol’ freeway with a pedestrian overpass! But I love it because it’s downtown Phoenix! I also love the movie Speed, which is the name of the film for my weekly Movie Title Wednesday entry. I don’t care how much people hate Keanu Reeves and his acting (or lack of) style…I usually find him entertaining. If [...]
Reach for the Sky
“Reach for the skyyyyyyy.” Ah, a favorite line from one of my daughter’s favorite things to watch…Toy Story. I should note…I also love those movies. I find that I can still laugh at them over and over despite the amazing number of times we’ve watched it in our house! This is Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix, a monolithic structure that immediately caught my eye on one of my first real exploratory drives down there. We’ve now lived down here for a few weeks now and I’m finding more opportunities to explore here and there and in the process of doing that, [...]
Cloudy skies over Phoenix
Looking at the above shot, you might think it was taken with an iPhone and processed with that awesome software iPhone photos use. No, I don’t have one, but I want one someday. Just praying Verizon actually gets the iPhone in January. But no, that photo was actually taken with my Rebel XSi out of the 19th floor window of my office building. They are dirty, dirty, dirty windows. But I kind of like it sometimes, especially when you chose to process photos with a sort of faded, older look to them. These aren’t anything special…meaning I didn’t take them [...]
The light rail platform at 5th and Mill Avenue
I took this shot as I was leaving downtown Tempe last Friday night. I had been feeling pretty lousy about the shots I’d taken, they didn’t feel “awesome” and I had no idea what I would end up with. I switched to my 50mm lens when I was walking out and wished I had taken the time to just walk around and snap candid “life” photos of downtown instead of what I had been doing the last few hours. Don’t get me wrong…I ended up with a few nice shots, a beautiful sunset…but while HDR is great and fun, it’s [...]
Sunset behind the old Hayden Flour Mill in Tempe
Saturday night I went out for a little photowalk of downtown Tempe and started the little excursion by climbing up A-Mountain to watch the sunset over the city. This building on the right is a 100+ year old structure called the Hayden Flour Mill which began construction in 1872. You can read all about it on the Tempe.gov website. It was a great night for a sunset and I’ll post a few more later this week. I also have another shot of the flour mill after dark, but I just could not find a way inside the perimeter fences. I’d [...]
Revisiting the downtown Phoenix alleyway
The shot above was taken in downtown Phoenix and is just an alleyway I found whilst doing a little urban exploration. I first posted a version of this back a few weeks ago. I processed it using a tilt-shift style to create a blurred or bokeh effect on the sides of the photo. A friend of mine who shall remain nameless (BRYAN!) said he wasn’t a fan of the blur and wanted to see the details instead. I thought about it and went back for a second look. While I still like the blurred effect myself, I also really do [...]
The Herberger Theater in downtown Phoenix
This is probably the last shot from my recent walk of downtown Phoenix. The Herberger Theatre is not a historic building, having only been constructed in 1989, but it was part of the revitalization/redevelopment of downtown Phoenix and responsible for helping to foster the growth of performance art in that area. I’ve only seen one show there, a friend of mine was in Fiddler on the Roof back a very long time ago (at least 12 years) and I just remember it being a fun little play and an awesome venue. Technical gibberish about this photos: 6-7 bracket HDR ranging [...]
Downtown Phoenix from the ASU campus
Another photo from my little trip to downtown Phoenix last Saturday night. If you saw my shot of the light pillars from yesterday, you can also see them in this shot off to the left. This is definitely something a little different for me. My HDR photos tend to lean more to the “realistic” side of things, instead of being artistic and almost fake looking. The unprocessed version of this photo had a lot of color in it that just seemed a little distracting to me, so I lowered the saturation a lot and toned it down a bit. The [...]
The Multi-Color Light Pillars of downtown Phoenix
If you can imagine…I was walking past this and completely missed it. In fact, if it wasn’t for another photographer with a tripod setup, I might have just strode on by without ever knowing what could have been. In the picture above, against the sky on the right side of the shot, you can see a very large net-like structure against the sky. That was my target. I had come down to Phoenix looking to get a shot of that lit up. But as it usually works out for me, the thing I intended to photograph becomes nothing compared to [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.