The Town
(A much better view can be had by clicking to see with a black border and slightly larger!) This is probably the first time that a Movie Title Wednesday film has been something so recent. That could mainly be due to the fact I don’t SEE as many movies as I used to what with a kid and all. Before Lyla, my wife and I would tend to see around 1-2 movies a month, always on Saturday mornings with the elderly folks at the earliest possible showing. It’s less crowded, more quiet and then we could always come back home [...]
Eights
(image is bigger and looks better with a dark background if you click on it) Wow, today is starting off weird. Have you ever had an image that you poured over, processed for hours, uploaded to your blog, published it and then actually LOOKED at it and realized it had major flaws? Halos? Dust spots? How did you miss that? How is it possible you looked over that whole image for hours and it took this new eye of viewing it on your blog that made you REALLY see it? Well, I’m honest enough about this stuff…happened to me today. [...]
Screencast: Natural clouds in your HDR images
Natural Clouds in your HDR Landscapes from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo. (Before you start watching the screencast here, you may just want to watch it over on Vimeo because the quality of the embedded version appears to be a lot lower than what you get to see on their website. So I’d suggest going there, choosing Full Screen and then turn Scaling off to get the best experience.) For awhile now I’ve been wanting to put together a screencast of my processing methods when it comes to HDR. The way I use Photomatix, Photoshop and the Perfect Photo Suite [...]
Warped
(yo…the image gets bigger if you click on it…try it out) Last month about 20 of us got together for a little downtown Phoenix photowalk and it was simply a blast. Especially when we all stopped to eat at Five Guys…holy moley that place is good. I owe this shot to one of the other photographers with us that night. I wish I could remember her name, but I suck. I saw her standing by a fence looking into this place, so I wandered over to see what was up. What an amazing spot. The first thing I thought of [...]
The winding road
(clickity click on the image for a biggity big version) I know, a road shot right? This is yet another shot from my trip to Nelson/El Dorado Canyon southeast of Las Vegas back in mid-March. The clouds, the light, the winding road…were almost too much fro me to handle. I saw too many shots I loved and had to reel myself in thinking “Do you really need 25 more road shots Mike??” My real, unabashed answer to that from deep inside me is YES…but in reality, certain road shots are special, most aren’t and you gotta know when it’s worth [...]
Cold Mountain
(please click on me, I look better a bit bigger with a nice, dark frame around me – sincerely, the image above) Sometimes the movies I pick for Movie Title Wednesdays are ones that I absolutely love and would watch a hundred times over. However, on some occasions, I love them mainly because the title fits perfectly with the photo I want to use. At the same time…you can always be sure I’ve at least SEEN the movie. That is my one rule. So this week we have Cold Mountain, a film starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman (pre-plastic) and Renee [...]
Ripples
(click to see larger and a bit better…Wordpress re-sizing makes this one a tad too dark in places) The image I posted yesterday evoked some awesome comments from you guys about what might be wrong with the composition of the scene. It came down to the foreground element. And over the course of the comments, it became clear that the foreground in a landscape photo can make it or break it. I wanted to thank you all for your input. I honestly wasn’t able to put a finger on it until your thoughts helped me realize I was thinking the [...]
Morning on the Bradshaws
(click to view a little bigger and better in lightbox) Do you ever have an image where you struggle and struggle with liking it, then hating it, then liking it, then hating it…and…well you get the idea. I’m sure you do. For those of us blogging on a daily basis, we can’t necessarily post masterpieces every single day. We sometimes have those borderline photographs that we like, but we may not like it enough to actually hit the “publish” button on the blog. This image is one of those for me. I figured I may as well post it to [...]
Seraphim Falls
(image can be viewed larger with a sweet black border if you click on it. you know you want to…) Coming up with a title for this image for Movie Title Wednesday was kind of difficult. Most of the movies that came to mind I either didn’t remember much about, or really didn’t think fit too well. My wife liked Legends of the Fall, but I think I’ll save that for when the leaves change down the road. There was The Grand, or The Majestic…or even one that seems to fit perfectly…A River Runs Through It. But again, I don’t [...]
The open door
(click to view image larger in lightbox for a better look) My life has become a lot about where I am currently located these days…either Phoenix or Las Vegas. The project at my day job has gotten really busy up there so my presence has been required more. It’s hard to travel to much, because I hate being away from my girls. But traveling does give me chances to see new places. One of the recent visits I made included a trip to the ghost town of Nelson. I was a bit bummed to find out that the actual “real” [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.