Photo Of The Day

This is an HDR photograph I did recently. The scene is a wooden walkway over the water in  the Japanese Gardens located in the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis. This was a 3 bracketed exposure and then processed in the NIK HDR Pro software.

Clicking on the photo will open it much larger in a new window so you can view it better.

Memories of Elvis

Elvis Presley may not be alive and well, but his memories live on due to his amazing music. There are many individuals who do Elvis impersonation shows, and I have seen quite a few of them over the years. Go to Vegas and you may see several at various clubs or theaters there at any given time. Fortunately the St. Louis area is blessed with one of the very best I have ever heard. Steve Davis does an amazing job recreating not only the music, but every little nuance and detail of the life of Elvis Presley.

Steve tours nationally and does shows from small productions to his full blown band with several acts, backup singers , and a complete horn section. January 8th is the birthday of Elvis Presley. Every year Steve does a big production show at the Pageant Concert Hall in St. Louis. A few years ago I agreed to photograph his concert. I had never photographed a big concert in a venue like the Pageant and I was very apprehensive about doing a good job for him. I learned very quickly that concert photography is extremely difficult. The lighting is a nightmare with everything from intensely bright white hot spotlights to near pitch black darkness. The activity on the stage is frenzied at times and requires a pretty high shutter speed to freeze the action. This requires constant adjustments to your camera settings to try and get the best exposure.

I am issued an all access pass, so this allows me backstage to photograph before the concert starts and to scout good shooting locations before the start of the concert.. I photograph from every angle and location possible to give him a broad range of photographs to choose from. This is a big concert and runs over 2 hours long. The Pageant is a great venue, and when they pack'em in will hold about 2400 people. During a concert like this I will shoot about 300-350 photos

Steve not only has superb vocals and sounds like Elvis, but he has the look, mannerisms, and whole Elvis persona to make his show very special. His interaction and involvement with his fans help make his show so special. Sadly I do not get to enjoy it very much as I am concentrating so hard on the photography.

 

My enjoyment comes when I sit down in front of my computer to edit the images. I turn up the Elvis music and try to make my photographs look as good as I possibly can. I shoot everything in RAW format. This allows me to make adjustments to the photos in Adobe Photoshop that would not be possible if they had been shot in jpeg format. It takes me far longer to process each image from these concerts, but so far I have been pretty happy with the end results. I shoot all of them in color, but certain ones I will convert to B&W when I think it would look better that way. Steve has used many of my photos for his  merchandise and advertising.

So if you are in the St. Louis area around January the 8th, 2010, this is a show I highly recommend. If you see this big funny looking guy running around with cameras taking pictures, it will probably be me. Don't laugh, just stop me and say high.

http://memoriesofelvis.com/

City Skylines

Photographing city skylines at night is a real challenge if you want to get a really good photograph. First you need to find a great vantage point to create a good composition. Then you need just the right light to balance your sky against your foreground, and not blow out all the lights. Since I have always done these with just one shot, it is a matter of shooting several shots as the sky gets progressivly darker. You can make adjustments in Photoshop or some other editing program, but you can only fix so much. The big thing in digital photography is now HDR. This stands for High Dynamic Range.  In simple terms, you take anywhere from 3 to 7 exposures and bracket with over and under exposures. This captures all the detail in the brighest lights, and all the detail in the darkest shadows. This data is then brought into Photoshop and it blends all this data together to create the image. There is a seperate software called Photomatix that processes these tpes of merged files even better than Photoshop does. I have the software now and have just started experimenting with this type of photography.

Living very close to St. Louis gives me a good skyline to practice on. These are long exposure shots were a tripod and cable release are mandatory. The worst thing about these are being down on the East St. Louis riverfront after dark. A nasty crime ridden place. I have observed river rats bigger that small dogs.

Here is a skyline scene I did of Nashville TN. from my last trip there. I was on an old bridge that had been converted to a bicycle and foot traffic only bridge. That is the Cumberland River that winds around the city of Nashville. I had to wait for the sun to get down far enough below the skyline to bring out the colors and cloud detail. These really are about patience and timing.

This is a panoramic scene of the Chicago IL. skyline all the way out to the end of Navy Pier. This is 12 vertical photos stitched together in Photoshop. I had never tried to do one of these at night. I was in Chicago for a seminar so I went out to the Adler Planetarium and shot it from there. I waited until the sun got down to the left side of the photo, but you can see the dramatic falloff of light across the city as the sun is now below the horizion at this point. I felt it was OK for a first attempt, but I need a lot more practice. If you click on any photo they will open in another window so you can see them a little better.