playin in drains

Spent some time in the cold last night clicking of 30 sec. exposures one after another. Here is the result, a little over an hour worth of the sky over Banner Mtn. 123 images stacked in layers.

The Light

Light Hearted

This past november I took my first Photography course since high school. It was a short three evening course and the only thing that I knew going into it was that it was about night photography.  Turned out to be about a lot more than that. 
The class was a life changing event for me, all about long exposure techniques that many have now dubbed "light painting". Instructed by an amazing artist and photographer Douglas Hooper this course has introduced me to the most addictive form of photography I have known. Whatever becomes of my photography path,when I want to just enjoy making images I know that light painting will be something I can go to for the rest of my life. Thank you Douglas.

Inspiration

My children are probably the biggest reason I started getting more serious about my photography, or as my wife might say  "my photo obsession." I have loved photography since the first time I was in a dark room back in high school. I loved the process of developing black and white film, making and seeing the results of pin hole cameras, and just walking around and taking pictures.  Class schedules change, dark room time gets more restrictive and eventually I had to return a school owned camera. ( Pentax k1000 with a 35mm if I remember correctly) Years passed before I finally picked up a camera of my own ( another old pentax) and by that time I had to start re teaching myself the basics.

Then my first child came. At first I was just snapping away with a cheap digital point and shoot. Before to long I bought a Nikon n80 not fully convinced that a digital slr was the way to go. But the cost of film and developing was taking it's toll and in a few years my second daughter was born and the n80 got shelved for a d80. The progression I started seeing in shooting digital was amazing. I can shoot anything try anything and it doesn't cost me a penny. It doesn't cost me a penny until I find a blog called Strobist and a man named David Hobby completely teaches me to light off camera with small strobes. Now my obsession is born and keeps evolving.  But the most rewarding thing about becoming a better photographer is capturing great images of  important moments in life. And nothing is more important then these moments with my wife and our fast growing little girls. 

1st post

RWA
Originally uploaded by Ry's-pics

This is the first image in my blog not because I feel it best represents me, or because I think it is a great image, but because this image came very close to looking the way I had imagined it would before pressing the shutter. I hear photographers talking about the creative gap, the gap between what you want your work to look like and how it actually looks. For me this gap is huge.
I'm a hobby photographer and have been for years. I have only in the last year started to take photography more seriously, and by that I mean that I have been active in trying to grow as photographer technically and artistically . I have come to terms with the fact that I have to better learn digital post processing now too to become a better photographer. I try to shoot daily and I try to put my self in assignment type situations as much as possible. The image above is from one of those very situations.
I had been asked to shoot some live shows for this young metal band called Red Wire Army and have since helped them fill there myspace profile with some decent performance images. These guys are seniors in high school, they are young, talented and driven and before there last show I asked if we could do some promotional type portraits. Going into it I knew I wanted to start simple, even typical, five young metal heads standing around looking like metal heads. I wasn't trying to break any molds, just form a vision and complete that vision.
Our time was limited and our first set up was short lived when a security guard told us we were not allowed to shoot in the locations I wanted. After becoming frustrated and growing shorter on time I decided to just start throwing a couple of radio triggered speedlights on the ground and shooting some direct hard light. After a couple of peeks at the lcd I decided the affect was decent for the subject. It gave a nice hard look to the band. I then thought that I wanted them to be backlit and I wanted it to look like they were looking into a cars headlights. I set up the speedlights and hopped up onto a dumpster and took just a few exposures.
Although my original concept was vague, and I had just planned on walking city streets to find a cool looking location, there was a point were an image popped into my head, and to the best of my recollection this is that image. Now, it's nothing special, and I am in no way close to were I want to be as a photographer but for brief moment in closing that creative gap I have become even more driven to improve.