She loved my sister and me as only a mother could, putting our needs before her own, feeding us, clothing us, hugging us and crying for us when we she was hurting for her kids.

She would make cool things for us, such as custom marble bags with our names on them.  This was one of my cherished possessions.

I stopped by and visited my mom today, sitting there, my feet outstretched on the grass.  I smiled as I remembered the happy times of years gone by.  I shed a few tears too knowing that I would only have memories of her, memories when I was but seven years old when I said, “Goodbye, Mom.”

I normally try to shoot all athletes at a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second or faster in order to stop their motion.  What I did in this experiment was to use a shutter speed of 1/13th of a second and pan the camera so that the runner was in the same position of the viewfinder at the beginning and the end of the exposure.  The camera moved quite a bit in that 1/13th, causing the blurring of background and the runner’s feet were also blurred due to their motion.  But, I got what I was looking for.

Do you like this artsy image?  Does the technique help to make the runner look fast? Click here to view a full sized image.

I was going through some images from a few years ago and ran across this one that I captured one summer morning in Julia Davis Park in Boise, Idaho.  The coolness of the morning brought out the haze in the air which added to the image.  Hope you enjoy it.

I like taking a different view of normal scenes. Here is another image of my wife walking along the river in Boise. I wanted to frame her with the darkness of the tunnel, so I positioned myself on one end, and her on the other, having first calculated the exposure. If I would have let the camera pick the exposure the subject would have been very much over exposed due to all the blackness of the tunnel. Manual mode is a great way to take control of the situation. Expose for the subject, then frame the subject.  The subject will look great.

I did a bit of enhancement after the fact using NIK Viveza 2 software to warm up the scene and to bring out some of the shadow details of the cement wall on the left.

After copying the image to my computer, I added a couple of filters from NIK Color Efex Pro 4, then made just a few more adjustments in Adobe Lightroom 3.

Last summer while attending Skip’s Summer School, I ventured out onto the strip to get some photos of the lights of Las Vegas.  I was having fun with my zoom lens on my camera.

My choice of exposure was such that I had 1 second to move the zoom from one end of its range to the other. If you look closely, you can tell that it only took a portion of that time to rack the zoom, as some of the buildings are very much in focus and still.

Next time you are out, try some not so normal techniques and see what you get.

Here is my favorite shot of the day, converted to B&W using NIK Silver Efex Pro 2 software.

Place cards set up for the reception.

The rings posed in a gorgeous bouquet.

Julia, putting on the finishing touches for her husband to be.

Mark, you have a beautiful bride.

Red, black and silver were the colors.  Nice choice, Julia!  Mark, you’re looking pretty sharp too.

Unity sand is a great keepsake and a beautiful part of the ceremony.

A little post wedding celebration time by Julia and her attendants.

What a handsome couple these two make.

Pictures are over and time to share a meal with all those attending the wedding.

Thank you Mark and Julia for the opportunity of being your photographer for the day. It was a real blessing to be a part of such a blessed day.