Neighborly Session

I had the honor of photographing our neighbors before they left for their next duty station in Texas. Here are some shots from the session which I just put on my website as well. The flower shots with Jill were actually taken after the session. We were saying our goodbyes and I saw the flowers across the street and begged her to pose for a couple more shots. Those turned out to be some of my favorites that day.

Lesson learned: The session's not over until it's really over. If you have an idea, act on it.

Painted Rock

I took some time by myself to go out and photograph some scenery the other day. It was a great chance to try something besides portraits and I was able to photograph one of Fort Irwin's most recognizable landmarks, the Painted Rock.

This image is an HDR composite of 3 exposures over a 3 stop range captured in RAW format. My tripod was positioned as close to the ground as possible (~6-12 inches high) and I was using a polarizer filter on the front of my 24-70mm L series Canon lens at about 24mm wide.
My better shots seemed to be the ones where I was shooting at a very wide focal length and as close to the rocks as possible. I would have liked to get a bit higher to show the mountains in the background a bit better as well. I definitely have a long way to go before I'm good at landscapes, but this sure was fun to do! It's absolutely gorgeous out here.