The Blog

Happy Snow Baby [Photo]

One happy baby enjoying his first day out in a snow covered, winter wonderland.

Back Story

After an unplanned “mental health” break last weekend, I was back behind the camera this past Saturday as the ‘ohana ventured out into the snow for our first winter snow portrait session.

And with the nearly unprecedented lack of snow so far this winter here in Chicago, it’s been a long wait to get out there do a shoot like this. While we were only shooting for 15 minutes, we had a blast and there were a ton of images to go through and edit afterwards.

All told, it was a great time that I can’t wait to do again. However, less than 72 hours after we were blessed with all this snow, the temps jumped above 40, the rains came and washed it all away – literally overnight. Bummer.

Guess it’s time to stalk the 10-day forecast again.

52 to Two Project

The above photo and the two below were also included as part of my weekly 52 to Two project.

Half Snow Angel

In the Bushes

Photo Shoot Photos

In addition to the photos added to the 52 to Two project, you can also see the rest of the images from this shoot in the Winter Snow Portraits gallery.

View Photo Shoot

 

Here’s to wishing for the next big snowstorm and coming up with ideas for this week’s photo shoot as well.

– Kris

Outdoor Portrait [Photo]

Outdoor portrait on a relatively warm January afternoon.

Back Story

Back with another installment in my weekly 52 to Two project. And for being the 2nd week in January already in Chicago, there may be a post from me soon titled “Where’s the Snow?” But that’s for another time.

This past weekend’s shoot was outdoors with natural light, thanks to some unseasonably warm “winter” weather. We started at about 4:45pm – which was a little bit before sunset – and shot for almost 30 minutes. The light was still a little harsh in the beginning because there were practically no clouds, but once the sun went down behind the buildings behind us, the light was gorgeous (but changing rapidly).

We were out in an open field, so I took another chance to shoot with my 70-200mm f/2.8L again with all that extra room to work with. The shoot actually worked somewhat similarly to some of the shoots we took in Door County back in October, which was nice. I originally had hoped to continue on with the walking theme from last week, but by the time the light was perfect, he was already getting tired.

A few of the other images from this shoot can be found over at my Facebook page in the Photo Shoots – 2012 album.

Here are the other two images that made it into the 52 to Two image galley this week.

Playing in the Grass.

Beautiful Light

View all the photos to-date in the 52 to Two project galley.

View Image Gallery

 

Future Shoot

While this field is literally minutes from our front door, it was the first time we did a shoot out there. The only thing that was missing – especially this time of year – was the snow. You can bet that as I continue to monitor the extended forecast, we’ll be back out to the same place at least once to get some wintry goodness.

Until then,
– Kris

Unnamed Beach [Photo]

A small beach with no name between the airport and the ocean.

Update: One of my Facebook readers kindly identified this as Kanaha Beach Park – Mahalo!

Back Story

2011 was a great year for my photography in so many ways, I probably should have done a “best of” post before it was over. Instead, I spent some time going back through my collections in Lightroom and ended up looking at a fair amount of shots from my doors-off helicopter shoot back in August during the Maui Photo Festival.

So, after a little time here and there this past weekend, I finished processing a handful of new images that I wanted to share here at the blog and elsewhere:

After Takeoff

North Shore Sands

Ka’anapali Beach

Maui Windmills

More Images

If you’d like to see more images from this photo shoot, visit the Maui Doors-Off Helicopter ’11 gallery in the Photo Shoots section.

View Photo Shoot

 

You can also find more of my other aerial imagery in my Aerial Portfolio.

View Aerial Portfolio

 

Last, but not least, you can also buy prints of these images and others in the Above Maui print gallery at my online store.

Buy Prints

 

As always, I hope you enjoy the images and the beauty of Maui, and many thanks for the support.

– Kris

On the Move [Photo]

Taking a short break from walking through the hallway in our building.

Back Story

In addition to being the start of the new year, Sunday was also the latest edition in my 52 to Two project.

And it wasn’t much longer after last week’s photo shoot was over before I already knew what I wanted to shoot this week – our son’s new found skill of walking all on his own.

So after a week of watching him run circles around our condo, it was clear we didn’t have enough room to do a shoot for his walking talents. It would have been great to chase him around a park somewhere, but it was the middle of winter – that wasn’t going to happen. The hallway outside our unit was the best compromise we could come up with.

It was great having the extra room to use my 70-200mm f/2.8L lens again, and it turns out that extra stop of light was very necessary. The light in our hallway wasn’t as bright as I had thought it would be, so these shots were taken at ISO 1600 and f/2.8 using only the available light on the walls and ceiling.

View Image Gallery

 

The One That Got Away

I went to bed Saturday night envisioning a way to capture our son’s triumph over gravity in motion by deciding to shoot a composite of frames with him in full stride.

In order to go wider, I switched back to my 24-105mm f/4L lens, so I was already losing a stop of light there. Next, I had to dial down the aperture further in order of widen the depth of field, which brought me to f/10. To compensate for that, I maxed out the ISO at 6400, and well, the final result fell short of my expectations:

Outtake Image

I still like the concept, and am contemplating re-shooting this piece before walking becomes second nature to him. In order to pull it off, however, I imagine one or two continuous lights would be needed and that’s not in the budget this early in the year.

But we’ll see how creative I can be in the weeks ahead.

Craft & Vision [App]

A brief look at some of the great eBooks found in the Craft & Vision iPad app.

It was a series of a few events that led me to discover the Craft & Vision iPad App.

The first was joining 500px and seeing a lot of great black and white portraits posted there. That, in turn, was followed by playing around with the Snapseed iPad App and working with the black and white editor it features.

But that only went so far. It was this holiday dPS deal that featured the eBooks from Craft & Vision that led me to try out the app.

In their extensive collection of eBooks, the first two I gravitated towards – while on a new black and white kick – was “The Magic of Black and White” series (parts I and II).

The App

Although the eBooks on the C&V website are available as PDFs – which means you can read them anywhere – I decided to try out the iPad app anyway since that’s ultimately where I’d be reading these. I’ve been reading PDFs in iBooks and have purchased a few Kindle books for the iPad this past year, so I’ve grown rather fond of carrying my library with me and reading titles anywhere.

The App itself is free, and it lets you browse through the catalog and just purchase the books you like within the App itself. It has it’s own built-in reader – so yes, that’s a third place I know have books on my iPad – but I like the fact that the entire catalog is right there and I’m not searching or browsing through the iBookstore or the Kindle Store whenever something comes to mind.

Each book that I’ve looked at so far is nicely illustrated with striking photos and is very well written. I do miss having a bookmark feature in the App’s reader, but I’m sure that can be added in a future update. These books aren’t terribly long and are typically fast reads, so it’s not a deal breaker for me so far.

Magic of Black and White

Getting back to the two books I’ve purchased through the App in The Magic of Black and White series. In only a day or two reading through them and looking back into my own existing image library, I was inspired to choose a few that already fit the criteria that the books’ author was describing. I still need a little practice, but here are the early results:

Resting

Airplane

And there is always this image I created last year when our son was first born that still stands as my favorite black and white image that I’ve created to date.

Baby Blanket

Of course, these were from photos that I had already taken and not shot with the end black and white result in mind. However, now that I’ve gotten a little thirsty for shots like these, I’m sure one of my upcoming 52 to Two project shoots will focus on shooting a few scenes with a black and white vision.

Your Thoughts?

Have you tried the Craft & Vision app or read any of their eBooks? What’s your take compared to some of the other eBooks or authors you’ve read? Feel free to leave your thoughts below.