Saturday, May 02, 2020

I am alive.


It's been a minute since I've updated this blog. So much has happened. It just seems blogs these days don't get the views or attention they used to. With the rise in social media, Blogger and other similar sites, have fallen away. I'm thinking about posting here more regularly. If you're reading this, comment letting me know if you'd read what I post. Until then, I'll just keep walking, camera in hand. Thanks! 



Monday, January 02, 2017

Website Refresh!

Whenever I get around to it I try my best to update my main website with my latest work.  Not only does it now contain a LOT of new work, but much better key wording so the search feature is actually useful.    It seems I get around to doing this once or twice a year.  I really should get better about it.  Anywho, stop by my site and have a look at what I spend most my time photographing.  Perhaps one day I'll get better about updating this blog.  It's neglected, but not forgotten!

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

I've made some of my most popular landscape images available over at Etsy.  Check them out and decorate your walls with something beautiful!

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Intense!

This Spring, Texas has had record level rain fall.  I've never seen anything quite like it in all the years I've lived here.  We've had so much rain that all the local lakes are reaching or are now over capacity.  They've started releasing water at spillways.  Such was the case last week at the Lake Ray Roberts Spillway.  They opened that puppy 100%, releasing 25,000 gallons a second!  I've never seen such violent and intense water come through that spillway chute.  To get this shot, I had to lean out over the wall, avoiding the high waves which crashed over onto the crowd every couple minutes.  I got soaked, but managed to keep my camera dry... enough.  It was a fun evening.

Lake Ray Robers Spillway

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Wednesday Addams

I teamed up with my friend Alaina to create the adult version of Wednesday Addams.  She pulled it off with perfection!  We were really happy with the photos from this shoot.

Wednesday Addams

Long Live Banter

This was my favorite photo of one of my favorite places to eat and hang out in this little town of Denton Texas.  Banter Bistro was a mainstay just off the town square for 10 years.  They recently closed this past spring.  This made me sad.  But i'll always have the photos I took there to keep my memories alive.  What a great place, filled with great people.

Banter Nights

Catching Some Air...

Skate parks are a great place to shoot some quick action.  I captured this image last summer at the Lewisville Texas Skatepark.  We just showed up with our cameras and some lighting gear and started setting up.  It didn't take long before most the advanced skaters in the park because performing jumps and stunts for us.  It was a fun time.  I shot this with a Canon 5DmkII and a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8mm L II lens.  Funny thing was, when I first looked at this shot, I flagged it as a "reject".  It wasn't until I went back through my photos about a month later that I decided to give this one another look.  After working on it a bit, it's become one of my favorite skateboard shots from the day!

Half Pipe

Etsy Prints Available!

I'm now offering discounted prints over at my new Etsy shop on select photos.  Some of my favorite travel and landscape images can now be purchased on beautiful Kodak Endura Metallic paper.  This prints look absolutely incredible when matted, framed and hung up on the wall.  Check it out!
#etsy #prints #crafts #sale #photo #landscape #travel #art #decor #homedecor

Wednesday, June 04, 2014

I'm Pretty Sure It's Time For An Update...

   Ah the burden of social media.  Between personal facebook, fan page facebook, Google+ and twitter, the old blog sometimes slips through the cracks.  Which is a shame because I don't really keep this blog going for it's massive readership (sarcasm alert).  I've kept it going all these years as more of a public diary of sorts.  It's fun to look back at where life has taken me, what I've learned and who I've met.  I've documented places I've traveled to, exciting events in my life and boring days at work.  It makes me sad to look back and see a block of months where I posted nothing.  So time to get things up to date.  Might as well use this post as a recap, right?

    Rather than go in depth about every photo shoot I've done, I'm just going to skim the highlights and give a few words about each image.  As I recall, my last post was in November (geeze..) after an awesome camp out in Beavers Bend Oklahoma.  About a week after returning from camping, I had a really cool session with the very photogenic Rosie. We had been trying to arrange a shoot for over a year and our schedules finally aligned.  Rosie is a very talented roller derby skater.  But unfortunately tore her ACL at the start of this season, putting her out for the year.  I wish her a full and speedy recovery!


     As fall set in and things cooled off closer to Halloween, Denton held its annual Day of the Dead Festival.  At this festival they hold a downhill coffin kart race.  Which is nothing short of hilarious  With the street lined with hay bales and people, karts are pushed off two at a time in a race to the bottom!  Some karts fall apart on the way down, many crash... a few hold together for the win.  Overall, it's a hilarious event!


     October also means it's time to participate in the Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk Event!  Groups of photographers around the world gather in their local town and cities to host photo walks on the same day.  We then submit our photos to the Kelby website for voting.  Even if our photos don't win any awards, it's a great time getting out with other photogs, going for a walk with our camera's and capturing the sights of the day.  As usual, the Denton Camera Club held our walk here in Denton where we had a decent turn out despite a sudden rain storm.  I felt it just made photos all the better!


     Winter is usually a slow season for me photographically speaking.  There just isn't much to shoot during the winter in North Texas.  Everything is brown and cloudy.  Blah!  One of the few things I get to shoot are team portraits and head shots for the local womens roller derby league!  These are always one of my favorite types of shoots.  Below are the Hickory Street Hooligans of the North Texas Derby Revolution.  I was really happy with how this team photo came out.  It took a bit of photoshop creativity, as their original location was a little on the bland side.  I think they enjoyed it as well!


     As things warmed up into March, so do the photo shoots.  I had the chance to work with the talented Shelby to practice some lighting and posing ideas.  It was a fun shoot and gave us both some portfolio work.


     Near the end of March the days began to get longer.  Fellow photographer Stephen Masker and I decided to get out early and shoot the sunrise over Denton. We captured some nice images of the Corn Kits building and the Courthouse on the square.  It was a great morning to be up shooting, but it was very windy and cold at our shoot location.  By the time I left, I couldn't feel my hands or face.




     I had the chance to shoot two more local roller derby teams in March.  Below are the Elm St. Nightmares and the Main St. Mafia.  Both came up with great locations for their shoots.  The Nightmares gained access to a boiler room, similar to the one in the Freddy Krueger movies.  And the Mafia got the use of a turn of the century old style bar.  I was really happy with how these came out!




     In April I ventured out again with Stephen Masker to the downtown Dallas area.  We wanted to capture some nice evening images of Victory Plaza and the American Airlines Center.  We shot through dusk and I was most happy with this image from the night.


In May I had the awesome opportunity to shoot from the sidelines of the FC Dallas vs NY Red Bulls match at Toyota Stadium in Plano Texas.  It was a great match and even though the Red Bulls won 1-0, I had a fun time and came away with some nice shots.



   
     Continuing with a sports theme, in late May I headed out to the Oakhill MotoX park in Alvord Texas to shoot some race action.  This was a lot of fun because I used to race motoX myself (on quads) and had not been around that scene in many years.  I'll be headed back out there again to shoot for sure!


   

     In May I went with the Denton Camera Club to the Frank Buck Zoo in Gainesville Texas.  Id been to this zoo a few times over the years, but because we were a camera club we were able to secure a behind the scenes tour.  This was great because it gave us chance photograph some of the animals from perspectives the normal zoo visitors cannot.  It was a fun morning at the zoo.


     April 5th was the opening bout (game) of the Dallas Derby Devils, another league I shoot for.  This is guaranteed action and I always come back with some good derby photos.  This particular photo is actually more of a creative edit.  I added some motion blur behind the skater to highlight her.


Spring in Texas is the idea time for camping, which is one of my favorite things to do!  You have to go in the spring, unless you're ready to handle the 100+ temps of summer a month or two later.  So, some friends and I headed up north into Oklahoma to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge.  This place is full of great hiking trails, camping spots and free roaming Bison.  Like this big fella.


And... that pretty much gets me caught up with my photography work the past few months.  I'll try not to let the blog go for five months again!  Geeze.  That's bad.  With it being Spring/Summer now, I should be shooting a lot more.  And with that, I'll update things here as well.
Thanks for stopping by for a read!




   


  

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

The Getaway

Beavers Bend State Park

Those who know me, know I am rarely happy sitting at home on the couch.  I like the outdoors.  Correction.  I LOVE the outdoors.  This is only second to traveling, which ranks only slightly higher.  My only problem is by living in Texas, outdoor activities can be limited by the brutal heat of summer.  And since camping is one of my favorite outdoor activities, attempting to camp during the summer here in North Texas is a lesson in pain.  So, I wait till the spring and fall to get my camping trips in.

About a month ago I was talking to friend and fellow photographer Shaina and I mentioned always wanting to camp at a place called Beavers Bend, near Broken Bow Oklahoma.  It's a fairly secluded place, with rolling woods covered hills, a lake and an ice cold river full of trout.  Located about 4 hours from Dallas... this was the getaway I needed.  Shaina had been to this location before and insisted I needed to go there, so why not get some friends together and let's camp!

A week later we had all the details in order and had added another friend, Katy, to the crew.  Check lists were made, directions mapped and good camp food bought... this was happening!  We knew going into this trip that it could well be one of the best documented camping trips any of us had been on.  Myself and Shaina being photographers and Katy who also enjoys picking up a camera now and then were going to make sure there were photos of all of us and everything we did throughout the weekend.  To put icing on our adventure-cake, weather reports just before the trip showed absolutely perfect weather for the 3 day trip.  Mild days with sun and cool nights would provide great weather for day time activities and night time campfires.

We arrived that Friday evening and were greeted by this river side view at our camp site.  It was difficult not to spend the next hour shooting.  But we had to get setup and start cooking dinner.  We were in the prime color change week of fall.  This was just a perfect start.

With night setting, the campfire going and dinner cooking... we just relaxed and enjoyed the sounds of mother nature.  There weren't many people in the campground at this time.  So it was very remote and peaceful feeling.

After dinner Shaina and I grabbed our camera's and headed down to the dam in the river to get some night photos.  Although it was starting to get cold out, the air was still.  The river was perfectly calm and this location is so far from any major city, the stars were quite bright.  You could even see the Milky Way slightly.






















The next morning we got up, made breakfast and headed up river so Shaina and Katy could do some trout fishing.  I just wanted to shoot while they fished.  It was Shaina's mission to catch us lunch/dinner.  It didn't take long before she caught one!  She named him Henry.  Unfortunately, they didn't catch anymore.  She hooked one more, but it got loose as she reeled it in.





















That evening got quite a bit colder.  But, we were ready for it with lots of clothing layers and a good camp fire!  It was really nice to just sit around the fire and talk, tell stories and laugh.  This is what camping is all about.
























The next morning was the start of our final day in this magical place.  None of us were really ready to go home.  I think all of us could have stayed another 2 to 3 days and been quite happy about it.  But, life in the real world called so we started our day off with camp chocolate-coffee (Shainas brilliant idea) and some amazing food cooked up by Katy!























As we packed up our tents and gear we all knew this campout was a complete success.  We were returning to civilization with great memories and great photos.  What more could we ask for?  And I couldn't have asked for two better camp buddies.  These two were real troopers no matter what challenge we ran into.























I'll be returning to you Beavers Bend.  This is probably one of the most scenic and beautiful camp grounds I've been to.  I felt like I barely scratched the surface of things to see there.  Next time I need to rent a canoe and go down the river and explore some of the hiking trails.  If you're looking for a real outdoor experience, you definitely need to check this place out.  And if tents aren't your thing, they also have cabins for rent.

I could I not return to this?!