The Two Towers
Without realizing what I’ve been doing, this has become the second Lord of the Rings movie to be featured on Movie Title Wednesday in the last few weeks. I guess I’m sub-consciously excited for the June 28th release of the entire extended edition version of the trilogy on Blu-Ray for the first time. It’s been pre-ordered for months and soon I’ll be camped out on the sofa for about 12 straight hours. I’m going to have a heck of time finding an image to represent Return of the King. I dunno if I can do it. This week we’re going [...]
Triple Threat
(Click to see a bit larger, with a nice, dark background) I’ve had the Canon 5D Mark II since around February and while it’s obviously an awesome camera, it’s going to be a lot of fun when it comes to lightning photography. Fun not just in the lack of a lot of noise for long exposures, but also with the full sensor allowing you a lot more freedom in cropping. Because of all those megapixels…it’s a lot easier to fix a shot when the lightning appears off-center and not in a good way. For example, this shot was taken with [...]
First lightning of the year
I knew it would work out this way. After spending three days driving 2200 miles stormchasing the midwest…and getting essentially nothing…all it took was a vacation to Memphis and standing outside on the patio to get my first real lightning shots of the season. I did get a few in Nebraska two weeks ago, but they were from pretty far away and don’t really measure up to my standards *tee hee* I actually did take my bro-in-law’s car and drove about 1/4 mile down the road to a more open area to get the shot above, but most of the [...]
The Dark Tower
(click the image to view full size for your resolution, or if you have a humongous monitor, see it larger!) Ah yes…rain in Phoenix. It’s always awesome. I can be completely “blah” about photography for whatever reason…long days at work, tiredness, blue skies, no motivation, you name it. But rain arrives, stormy skies ensue and suddenly nothing can stop me from getting out and exploring the world. If you’ve followed me for long, you may have seen a shot or two of Chase Tower in downtown Phoenix. I didn’t go down there last night with the intention of shooting it [...]
A Nebraska supercell after dark
(Click to enjoy the storm a little bigger, almost like you were there. Okay, not really) Whew. It’s around 9am right now and I just landed in Phoenix a bit after 7am after flying out from Oklahoma City this morning. A long trip, I added around 2200 miles to the lovely Hyundai Santa Fe I rented and slept in the car two of the three nights for a total of five hours. I did actually rent a hotel on Tuesday night and it was some of the best sleep I’ve had in awhile. The bottom line from the trip was [...]
Hanging sunset
(click…to…see…larger…and…stuff) Sometimes there are clouds and sometimes there are CLOUDS. This doesn’t even compare to the monster storm clouds I’d love to be photographing in the midwest right now, but as far as sunsets go in Arizona, this was one of my favorites. You may remember a few shots already taken on this day: The “Seventh Heaven” reflection and the one of Chase Field called “Fever Pitch“. With my wife and daughter looking on in the chilly, windy weather, I was running around like a psycho trying to capture the clouds anyway I could. Not exactly my favorite composition in [...]
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 [...]
Serenity
(Click to view larger and sexier in lightbox) I’m been on a Firefly kick the last few weeks, so it makes complete sense that when I looked at this image tonight, the name of the movie came flying at me. For those that don’t know, Firefly is an awesome, awesome sci-fi TV show that the Fox Network brutally, and without just cause, canceled before it had a chance to really find legs. They only aired about 10 episodes and all told there were 14 made which you can see on DVD now. It had such a big following that the [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.