Trash the Dress

I recently had the opportunity to again work with one of my favorite people to shoot, Raquel. Raquel always helps me get great images and on this project, she really went way beyond what you would expect from anyone. By the time we finished, she was completely covered in water, sand, and dirt, all just to help me make some cool images. Raquel, I thank you and hope you enjoy, cause I love how your images turned out.

Siants Training Camp

Saturday morning after I drank my cup of coffee, I decided to make a marathon trip to Jackson, MS and back, to check out the 2nd day of the New Orleans Saints training camp, and hopefully get Evan, my oldest son some autographs to add to his collection. I ended up piling Evan and two of his buddies, David and Jackson, into my little Honda Civic, and away we went.

Right after I filled up with gas and got onto the interstate, not a mile down the road, I was whacked in the rear end by another Honda, by a driver that wasn't paying attention to traffic on the bridge. A couple of hours later after the accident report was completed by Bay St Louis Police, we headed up the road to find some cheap Mississippi engineering, some clothesline cord and a few gator clips, which with duct tape and a glue gun, I can fix anything. Once I secured the right rear quarterpanel that was falling off, we headed off to Jackson and never looked back. The trip was a success and Evan got the autograph of Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, and the new tight end, Jeremy Shockey! What a trip! Hope you enjoy a few snaps from the trip. -m

Carpe Diem!

Wendy first contacted me a few years back about photographing her daughter, because she was looking for some beautiful black and white pictures and knew that I enjoyed photography and shooting people. I've known Scott and Wendy since youth basketball days and have watched all of those kids in basketball grow up to become young adults and teenagers. As often happens in life, time slips away, our lives get very busy and hectic, and things get reshuffled around as life throws us into many different directions.

Fast forward a few weeks back, Wendy contacted me again with her desire to have some pictures done, but she really had a renewed importance and really wanted pictures to capture Kelsey's journey into becoming a young adult, a teenager. During our shoot yesterday, as I chatted with Wendy and as I was shooting, I couldn't help but reflect on how often we take the stages of our childrens growth for granted and fail to really capture it in a way that we can look back on and remember the small details. Wendy seized the opportunity, although her life has been far from easy over the last few years.

Knowing Wendy's story and why these images are important, gave me food for thought to stop and evaluate my own life and cherish each stage in my children's development. As a photographer, I often fail to really shoot my wife and kids because I'm so busy shooting other people. Being married to a carpenter, doesn't mean the things in your house will be fixed, and so it goes with photography.

Enjoy a few images of Kelsey and take the time to grab your kids and go out and photograph them being kids. Before you know it that time will be gone!

How did it get so late so soon?
It's night before it's afternoon.
December is here before it's June.
My goodness how the time has flewn.
How did it get so late so soon?
~Dr. Seuss

The Bucket List!

I actually sat down by myself last night, with the kids playing video games back in their bedrooms and Robin out with a friend shopping, and watched a great movie called "The Bucket List." I had never heard of the movie but knew both actors and knew their work was always great so I decided to snag it from Netflix the week earlier.

What a profound movie, "Did you find joy in your life...and did you give joy to others?" In two simple but monumental questions posed during the movie, as they sat on one of the seven wonders of the world, what often get cluttered and confused in my life, became very very simple.

It's often easy to get off track worrying about schedules, time lines, activities, obligations, events, success, failure, or even commitments, but we often overlook our priorities, our relevance, our purpose! I'm afraid in my life I have a whole lot more work to do finding the true and lasting joy in my life, and more importantly, bringing joy to others. But my hope, my desire, and my goal is that when it's time for my bucket list (hopefully a long time from now), I will be a lot closer to answering both questions with a "Yes!"

Bike for Sale, What a Way to Go!

I've decided to sell my motorcycle, which hardly gets ridden, so I brought it down to the beach to get a few snapshots that I could use to help sell it. As I was heading to the house to get the bike, I thought, wouldn't it be nice to get a few cool model images with the bike before I let it go. I hooked up with one of my favorite models and a model that I've shot for the last few years, Amanda!

She was awesome and always helps create great images. She is getting so good and really hits the look and is very creative, which makes my job so easy! Hope you enjoy!

Taylor

I recently had a chance to get back together and work with a model that I had worked with a lot last year before she graduated from high school. Taylor was always highly motivated, focused, and hard working, and those same characteristics showed in her modeling career. To be so young, so beautiful, and most importantly, such a great person, the treat was all mine.

Taylor is presently attending Ole Miss, majoring in Economics, and maintains a 3.8 grade point average. I hope you enjoy!

What's Old is New Again!

I recently got an email from one of the first models that I ever had the opportunity to work with, her name was Keri, and she was so awesome to work with. A lot of years have passed and Keri moved away up north and I we just lost touch over time.

I was so delighted the other week when I got an email from Keri and I promised to update a few of the images that we shot years ago. I hope you all enjoy her, because she was so professional and was such a great model.

Photoshop Sandwich

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to take a little time today to share a super easy way to fix minor repairs on portraits that will work on any version of photoshop or photoshop elements; especially versions of photoshop that don't include layer masks. I like to call this technique, a "photoshop sandwich", because you create layers on either side of a correction layer (the sandwich), then erase the top layer with very low opasity for a correction to the image problem area. I know it sound kinda confusing, but here are two examples of how I use the "photoshop sandwich."

If I have a portrait that has problem skin or I want to smooth the skin out some, I would duplicate the layer twice by using cntl J. Now I have three layers, a background and two layer on top. I would select the middle of the three layers from the layers pallette and from the filter menu, I would select the gussian blur and set the amount equal to about the megapixels of my camera. ie, 8 for a Canon 30d. I then select the add noise command and select a small amount of noise to give the blurred layer a little texture, probably around 2 or 3. Now I select the topmost layer of the three, or the top slice of the photoshop sandwich. I then go to the eraser tool and use a soft feather brush and set the eraser opasity to around 30% and flow to around 40-50%. Now on the top layer, I select the areas of the skin that need smoothing and I work with the eraser tool on those areas to slowly reveal the blurred portion of the image layer below. This technique really helps with skin but doesn't change the overall tonality or structure such as the clone or healing brush tools.

One more example with the same technique. I have a portrait that has way too much redness in the subjects skintone, but the rest of the images color appears good. I would duplicate the layer twice and then select the middle layer from the layers pallette and select the saturation item from the adjustments menu. I would select the color red from the pulldown and move the slider to -10 or until the red is better, again, all these adjustments are on the middle layer. Now as before, you would select the topmost layer and select the eraser tool with the eraser opasity around 30% and flow to around 40-50%, then work on the areas of the image that were way too red. As you erase the topmost layer at the red areas, you should see big improvements as your middle layer begins to show slightly through and your image should be significantly improved.

That technique can be used on all versions of photoshop and acts very similary to layer masks without actually have layer mask in your photoshop version, so give it a whirl and if you like the technique, pass it along to others that may benefit from this tip also.

Better Than Money Can Buy!

Friday night late, my wife informed me that Evan, my oldest son had to get up early in the morning to meet up with some great friends of our family for a week long trip to Panama City Beach, FL, and I was taking him! LOL! I figured, the earlier the more likely it would be me, so I was already prepared for the early morning tip to our friends house.

On Saturday morning, my wife and I both awoke early so we both decided to go with him to our friends house to drop him off and say goodbye because we wouln't see Evan at least for a week. As I was getting dressed, I knew how much I would miss him, even though he spends most of his time picking on his little brother lately. I knew I would miss him alot, but I also knew he was going to have so much fun and grow alot from the trip and was taking another step torwards becoming an independant young man.

The older and more mature Evan gets, the funnier and more personality that shows how great a sense of humor her has. As my wife and I were driving to the house, we were picking at each other as a married couple often does, especially when you've been married as long as we have. Out from the backseat, I hear Evan chanting just like in the TV show "Jerry Springer", "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" My wife and I both started to giggle and just looked at each other and realized how funny and cute that little stinker really is.

We dropped Evan off and visited for a little before the trip. We made sure everything was covered and the emergency type stuff was taken care of and we said our goodbyes to everyone, but especially to Evan. He said goodbye and took off on his adventure and looked forward to his week of fun in the sun in Panama City on the beach.

Fast forward to today! I looked at my phone this morning as I do every morning to see if there were missed calls or messages, and behold, there was a text message from Evan from last night, "Love You, Goodnight!"

Wow, what a great suprise and so valuable, now that is better than anything that money can buy!

P.S. This is a photography journal, so I will slip in a few pictures of Raquel. Raquel is one of my alltime favorite models and favorite people, who is so genuine and down to earth, she's awesome. You can see a model picture of her here!

I was proud of her at her graduation!

God's Grace

I casually go into my google reader every so often to catch up on the latest updates from some of my favorite websites and blogs and one of the first blogs that come into view was from a great photographer out of Newport Beach, CA, Mike Colon. Wow, what a post today that really hit me like a ton of bricks! So dead on and so perfect in its simple but effective message! Check it out here.

Then, today I went to have lunch at my favorite fast food restaurant, Chick-Fil-A, and came back to the office to continue with my workday, when I just had this feeling to google the restaurant founder's name, Truett Cathy, and it took me to his website. What an awesome businessman and Christian, and a true inspiration for building the proper foundation for a healthy and successful life, regardless of how much money you make.

I feel blessed today and God's grace shined upon me! -m

New Sharpening Photoshop Action

I just wanted to post an entry today to share a Photoshop Miracle Sharpening action that I have been working on all week. The action is designed for an 8mp camera file (30d) but can be adjusted to taste for larger or smaller files. The final result is on a sharpening layer that the opasity can be lowered if the effect is too strong. Also, this action is best used on a file that already has the noise removed and the skin cleaned and smoothed. My workflow includes Noise Ninja and Digital Airbrush Pro, with a little bit of Diffuse Glow. This action is a combination of a hazecutter (unsharpen mask) that I picked up in a forum, plus one of Dr. Brown's Sharpening Tutorials that I watched on his website. Hope it work as well for you as it does for me.

Miracle Sharpen Action

Derek & Amy

I just wanted to post a new blog about a wedding I shot last Saturday. Amy and Dereck were awesome and the wedding and reception was so much fun. I got to hang out with a bunch of my photography buddies and I'm sure Amy got tons of great pics. Hope you enjoy!