Sunrise in Brooklyn Bridge Park
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 16-35mm 2.8 L, 17mm, f/8.0, iso 100, 39 seconds, 10-stop filter) So I was in New York last Thursday through Sunday, and here I am sitting in a hotel in Corvallis, Oregon. New York was a vacation, Oregon is for my day job. Looking forward to my off-hours in Oregon though, as I plan on hitting the coast a few times, starting tonight. Since I don’t have a lot of time, I wanted to pass on an image from my trip to NYC. This was taken at 7:25am in [...]
Good morning, Kansas
(click to view on black // canon 5d mark ii, canon 85mm 1.8, f/8.0, iso 100, 1/400 // buy print) Please click on this one to view in the lightbox, I think it looks a lot more accurate. This photo represents such a beautiful moment for me, it’s an image I’ve held back for awhile, for whatever reason. I took it on the open roads of Kansas the second day of my stormchasing trip to the Midwest this past May. I had landed in Denver the day before around noon, drove to Nebraska’s northwestern corner…then into South Dakota…then hovered around [...]
The Superstitions just before dawn
(click to see an extra larger than normal version to really fill your screen) Back in April we had some good rain on the 9th, so the morning of the 10th I planned to get up waaaaay early and head out to the Superstition Mountains to shoot a beautiful sunrise with gorgeous clouds, cactus and all kinds of juicy stuff. I was also meeting by buddy Ken Peterson out here and we’d hit the Apache Trail together. You can imagine the slight disappointment you get when you are praying for awesome clouds in the morning and this is what you [...]
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 [...]
Waves in the Desert
(click to view with a dark border and sized to fit your monitor/resolution) I’m pretty tired right now. I get back in town tomorrow afternoon, but will be back here in Vegas all next week. Long days, focused work…draining. I’ll be a happier man once vacation gets here in mid-May. I can’t wait to see some of our family living in Memphis. This is another photograph from last Sunday morning’s trip along the Apache Trail in search of those wonderful morning-after-a-storm pictures that I love. The scene has a lot of crazy elements to it, including a solo Saguaro cactus, [...]
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 [...]
Anduril
(click on the image for a nicer view in lightbox) Sometimes getting the right shot is all about being there. I’m not going to brag about this photo being some kind of amazing composition…because in reality, it’s pretty simple. At the time I was actually wishing I had something better to get into the frame than just a few saguaros. Like maybe a glacial lake in the Himalayas (whaaat?) But sometimes all it takes for me is a killer sky. And killer skies aren’t always easy to come by. I remember seeing photographs and always being jealous that they somehow [...]
Terry’s Bug
(image looks a wee bit sexier if you click on it to view in lightbox) This bug was one of the first arrivals at a car show the morning of our February 5th Urban Phoenix Photowalk. The sun wasn’t even up yet when we wandered through here and there were quite a few of us grabbing shots of this sweet ride. I’ve always had a fondness for Beetles even though I never owned one. I was friends with a girl in high school who for some reason had an awesome tripped out blue Bug that I got to ride in [...]
Foundations of Stone
(Looks nicer in lightbox…just click on the image for a larger view) – Usery Mountains, Apache Trail, Superstitions One thing becomes evident when you explore the mountains and cliffs of the Arizona desert: The stuff under the ground appears to be made from jagged rock and rising stone. Everywhere you look, you see giant precipices bursting out of the earth…and you realize that the soil is hiding some amazing beauty that we may never see. The title of today’s post is from the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack. Weird how just kind of browsing for a title [...]
Precipice
I feel like I’m running out of titles for blog posts. Part of the problem is I tend to do these things on the fly, without much preparation, so I don’t take a whole lot of time to think about them. I usually just write what’s on my mind when I sit down and finally start typing. Like today. On our last few photowalks in downtown Phoenix, I noticed my buddy Rick Young with a headphone stuck in one ear as he wandered around looking for shots. It was interesting and I thought that sounded kind of cool. My car has [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.