I've been lax on my blog this past month, but I'll be posting all my recent shoots during regular updates in January.
I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season! Erin and I will be with her parents and family on the 24th, 25th, and 26th (I created this post on the 23rd). Here are photos of another family outing from this October. Erin and I went with Erin's parents and her brother and family (including his wife, Jodi, and their sons, Bryce and Brendan) to the Dallas Aquarium.
The Aquarium is an interesting place - I was expecting just fishies, but it also has birds, crocodiles, bats, and other critters, too.
I completed a personal project I set for myself this fall. I photographed the State Fair of Texas in time-lapse! I've had the urge to do some time-lapse photography this year, and the Fair provided the perfect opportunity.
This video is set to HD. You'll probably have to pause it for a while to let it download. If you're impatient to see it, just click on the red HD icon to switch it for a faster download. Below the video, I'll write about how it was created - for those who are interested in the technicals.
For you fellow camera geeks out there, a few cameras (like mine, the Nikon D3) have an 'interval timer' feature (it's also called an intervalometer). Basically, you use the camera's menu features to set it to shoot every x number of seconds by y number of exposures. Then, you let it go. The Nikon's fastest interval timer setting is every 1 second, but I figured out how to rig the camera to shoot every 1/2 second.
Each of the scenes in this video were recorded from 1/2 second intervals to 3 second intervals. 24 exposures compose one second of video. I shot over 15,000 exposures to work from! Because HD video doesn't need a lot of megapixels, I photographed images at the D3's smallest image size as normal quality JPEGs.
Each of the images were then batch processed in Photoshop to crop them to the 16:9 HD format and enhance the saturation and exposure a bit. They were saved as 1920 by 1080 pixel JPEGs.
Then, I compiled them using just Quicktime Pro ($30 from apple.com). It's a very simple program, but it does a beautiful job at time-lapse imagery. The problem, though, is that it won't do transitions (like you see in the above video). I first tried making Quicktime clips of each scene, then put them together in Final Cut Express. The problem was that the second-generation Quicktime movie result was clearly inferior in image quality to the first-generation clip. So, I created an action in Photoshop to transition the scenes and re-save them as JPEGs. All 10,895 separate JPEGs were then put into Quicktime Pro at 24 images per second, I added the music from the soundtrack of 'Amelie', and then exported it as a 1280 x 720 HD Quicktime movie (using settings suggested by YouTube).
Phew! Well, it was fun to do something completely different.
BTW, I jokingly subtitled this, 'How to Shoot Video with the Nikon D3'. But, only a photographer will find that humorous.
I photographed the Naaman Forest Color Guard at Crowley Park in Richardson in early October. The second photo shows Natalie Myers, Christine Anderson, and Emily Sires - I photographed all three for their senior portraits. The last one is something a parent requested and I thought would be fun for this blog - the girls are wearing their Halloween outfits.
Jeremy Powers and Lacey Blowers were wed on September 18, 2009 at the historic Old Red Museum in downtown Dallas. It's a beautiful and interesting venue with plenty of room for large weddings. Jeremy sang to Lacey during the ceremony, and he did a great job. We photographed the majority of their formal portraits before the ceremony so they could go right into the reception.
I've photographed the State Fair of Texas in time-lapse, but I'm still working on those. In the meantime, here is a time-lapse test of Ibiki at our studio!
The week before this year's print competition, Richard Sturdevant invited myself and Jim Welborn to help him with one of his competition prints. He was photographing a cowboy re-enactor - Kip Turner. Kip's actually a real-life cowboy - he wasn't acting much. Also, we photographed Ralph Miller (he's wearing the grey suit). We travelled to Buck Creek in Glen Rose, Texas, and hoped it wouldn't rain (it did drizzle a bit).
Long story short, Richard's print from the shoot won the Best of Show at the SWPPA competition, and it helped him win the other big prize - High Print Case for the competition. He did alright, I guess. You can see his image here.
This past weekend, the Hickory Street Annex hosted a wedding and reception in the upstairs event space. Sadly, I didn't photograph it, but I did see this guy outside my studio after the wedding was over. Apparently, the groom is a special effects sculptor. He had placed the dinosaur in the middle of the dance floor!
