2014

2014 turned out to be kind of a big year for me. I left my temp job to freelance full time, had my work published in a book,  got married, moved into a house, and just last week I became a godfather.

Those are just the bigger events of my life from this last year. For all of the smaller moments and memories, I look back through the photos I’ve taken this year. That’s where all the tiger hunts, bike rides, fashion shows, travel, events, and quiet afternoons reside.

(Left to right) Me, Phil, Laura, and Joe,

As summer arrives, Max must defend the apartment from ever-fiercer insects.

This has to be my favorite photo of the day.

I actually tried to get all artisitc and shoot this at a slow shutter speed to get the motion of the water. The ducks stayed as still as one could hope.

This shot was a bit of an accident. He was just helping me test the lights, and we got this. I dig it though.

I found a split tree while were hiking and wanted to emphasize the textures in post using high contrast black and white.

Fezzes are cool.

 This is what I love to do more than anything,  the love and support of those closeto me, as well as everyone I’ve met through the site, is what lets me keep doing it. I can’t say for sure where I’ll go in 2015, but I have some big plans in the works. So, keep an eye on the site, and we’ll go together.

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Outrunning Winter 4

Since I’ve been uploading GoPro images from my bike trips so often, I’ve started to look for alternate routes to keep things from getting too stale. I didn’t have much time to explore, but I did manage to explore a new way to and from where I work. First, I went through some back roads behind the country club and then I found a new vantage point for one of the Twin Lakes behind a local tavern. On the way back, I found a middle route between the short and long ways home.

Bugs Everywhere!

I was tying up a tree for a neighbor when I noticed said tree was infested with these yellow caterpillars. Fortunately, they just seem to be munching on the leaves, and not doing any major damage to the plant.

The Football Stadium

The right clouds help make pretty much anything better. This is my old high school stadium over at Theodore Roosevelt in Kent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out For The Evening

Karen and I went out for a walk before I took my friend out for a driving lesson. Don’t forget to check the captions.

Six Month Retrospective

Wow, it’s been about half a year since I started this site. So, I thought that a quick retrospective would be interesting, so I rounded up a handful of some of my favorite photos thus far. I have a ton of ideas I want to try, unfortunately, life has a habit of getting in the way. I hope that the best is yet to come.

This is probably my favorite trace design conversion that I’ve done all year.

I tried my hand at typography. I think that the Arabic went well with the design.

Jordan and I got to take over a local Harley Dealership for about an hour.

I wasn’t allowed to take my DSLR into the Lindsey Sterling concert, so I shot what I could on my camera phone and edited it on the way home.

I was inspired while I was juicing to take a stab at some more comedic still-life stuff.

I took this as a nature shot, and ran it through an InDesign filter. I wound up using it on a business card design.

Putting the GoPro on its ‘Time Lapse’ setting and attaching it to my monopod quickly became one of my favorite tricks. This man doing Tai Chi was actually someone I had already met when I was doing a story on a local retirement community being convicted by their new management. I shot this when I was out on a photo walk with some new students when I was helping to run a workshop at the university.

I got more into nature photography over this last year. I feel like there’s only so much I can do with my low-end telephoto though.

I went with my friend Alyssa to the cherry blossom festival. Going to DC and back within 24 hours was a bit of a challenge, but the road trip was worth it. DC is one of my favorite cities to visit.

As I practiced more, I got better with this InDesign trick.

I lost track of how far I walked on the day I shot this. Totally worth it for some of the photos I got that

Another shot that I didn’t think much of, but got plenty of attention.

I shot a lot of photos to help out a music promotions class over at Kent State. The Electronic show was a great place to shoot shutter drag shots.

I didn’t think much of this when I shot it, but it’s been an absolute favorite of my friends and family.

Jordan shows up in a lot of my favorite shots of the year. She’s a fantastic model, great to work with, and I am so bummed that she moved so far away.

My friend paisley shows off one of her corsets.

The quality of what I can do with my cell phone camera continues to surprise me. It’s fantastic to have when I can’t carry my full DSLR.

New Tricks on an Old Photo

Since I get two entries for the This Week in Photo landscape contest, I decided to submit this along with my other entry. I felt that the original needed a bit of retouching to really competitive though. This photo below is the new piece that will be submitted to the contest.

If you enlarge the before-and-after image at right, you can compare the two photos. There wasn’t really anything too major done. I just increased the contrast, nudged up the saturation, brought the shadows on the mountains in the background down a bit, and cropped the clouds out of the top. I think that these minor changes came together to produce a much stronger photo overall.

I Entered a Contest

I entered this panorama I did a while back into  This Week in Photo’s contest. The theme this month is landscapes. Go check out the link, there are a ton of amazing shots entered into the contest, so I really don’t think this guy here has a chance. Still, it’s worth a shot, right?

Shooting on the Job

Working three jobs doesn’t always leave much time to shoot. But, since one of my jobs is landscaping, I can sometimes snap a few frames with my camera phone as I go. I shot this one while trimming, edited it on my phone during a break, and then uploaded it via my WordPress app.

This View Doesn’t Suck

Karen and I took the day to ourselves and went for a hike. After climbing all the way to the top of the outlook, we stopped to take in the view, and grab a few photos. After all the more elaborate shooting and techniques I’ve been practicing lately, it was nice to just do a straightforward photo to upload.