Senior Photo Session

Today we had an opportunity to photograph Shakiyla Haugabook in her cap and gown. She is graduating at the top of her class with high honors and her family is very proud of her accomplishments. Here are a few of today's images that I liked best. We had such a great time during this shoot. We shot many images in studio with different backgrounds and then made it outside for a few before the rains came. Shakiyla has been in front of my lens a few times before and she is very comfortable with us and our style of photography. She is an attractive and lovely young woman and a pleasure to work with. I used a Nikon D3 with 24-70 ED AF-S mm 2.8 lens for all the shots.

June is Passport Photo Month

The Portrait Gallery will do your passport pictures. During the month of June you can get a 50% discount on passport pictures. Just make your appointment ( 283-0303 )and give the promotional code:

PAS-50

and receive your discount. This promotional offer is only valid for the month of June. Your passport photos are 100% guaranteed.

K-9 Fun

Yesterday I happen to stop at Gratwick Park in North Tonawanda and saw this man with two dogs. He was bouncing a ball down the pier and the dogs would chase the ball right off the pier an into the water. They were having so much fun I was compelled to stop and photograph this amazing display of affection and playfulness between this man and his dogs. I used the burst mode on my camera to capture the sequences of all the action. All images were made with Nikon D3 with 70-200 AF-S VR mm nikor lens.

http://www.pbase.com/g_muth/mans_best_friend

Click this link and use the slide show option at the top of the page you will be able to see all the action and see why I just had to stop and shoot this.

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Portraits & How to look your best for them.

Portraits are best when the viewers eye is drawn towards the face. Unless you choose your clothing carefully, it's possible for the viewer's eye to be diverted to the clothing. Here is a guide to making your senior session fun and your senior portraits...Awesome!

New Look

If you haven't noticed we are giving our studio a new look. We have added a new logo and changed our website. Wendy is working hard on updating pictures and changing our image. We are now The Portrait Gallery Niagara and can be found at : http://www.theportraitgalleryniagara.com/.

Along with the new look we are adding specials, discounts to preferred customers and many other incentives for you to make The Portrait Gallery your one and only photography studio.

Bird Pictures

We are back to work today. Hope everyone had a good weekend. We are in the process of trying to attract a variety of birds into our yard and it seems to be working. This week the hummingbirds have arrived. We have 2 feeders to attract them and have tried to landscape with the idea of attracting butterflies and hummingbirds. Also we have a finch feeder with Niger seed and a wild bird feeder with a wild bird mix. Once we get the birds coming on a regular basis we will be setting up areas with lighting and backgrounds to make our bird portraits. Trust me there is no money in this we do this strictly as practice and a hobby.

Happy Memorial Day

Today is Memorial Day and our studio is closed. If you are not too busy today you may want to check out my brother Robert's site on Flickr. He has traveled coast to coast and has some of the most amazingly beautiful prints from his travels. This latest image from Yosemite is an example of what I mean. Here is a link to his gallery:http://flickr.com/photos/89797490@N00/

Finished Retouch

This came out very well. We cut out the man in front with the stripped shirt which left us a big empty spot. First I replaced the background with extra background from the original print. Then I took another picture from the wedding event of the best man who was standing in the same stance as the gentleman on the end. I cut and pasted the best man then blended him into this image to replace part of the man on the end. The final print turned out great.

Retouch Project

Our request on this photo is to remove the man circled in the picture. He is in front on the left with a stripped shirt. No problem we do this all the time.

Isn't this the cutest baby you've ever seen? Well, maybe I am a bit bias because this is my grandson Nathan and he is just 2 months old and the newest addition to our family. We will be posting a lot more images of Nathan in the near future.

Taking a picture at high noon can create harsh shadows and blown out highlights in your photos. This picture was taken at 12:30 pm in the afternoon shooting into harsh sunlight. If your subject is close you can balance the light with fill flash, but when your subject is large like Niagara Falls that is impossible to do. So I used a technique called HDR ( high dynamic range ) in CS3 where I merged 5 images of various exposures of the same subject. By taking only the best part of each picture and loading that data into one photograph I can maintain shadow and highlight detail. This image was shot with a Nikon D3 at ISO 200, 1/500 sec @ f 11. Nine bracketed exposures were taken in burst made. Four under exposed and four over exposed and one normal exposure. I only needed 5 of the nine to bring out the details I wanted. I think this technique has merit and can be used in high contrast situations.

Another Finished Restoration

This cleaned up nice considering it was torn in to eight pieces. I carefully taped the pieces together and then photographed it. Document was then transferred into CS3 and rips were cloned out. Dust and spots retouched. The contrast and color saturation adjusted. Our client should be very happy with this.

Finished Restoration

Well so far so good. Here is the finished product of the one of our restorations. It took a little longer than expected because I got a lot of dust spotting even though I sprayed it with condensed air before photographing it. After examining the original the spots are permanently on the print, so they needed to be removed later. The two people were cloned out in CS3 using various methods like the clone tool, patch tool, etc. We then used pieces cut and pasted from a duplicate copy to restore the background. Photo was then adjusted for contrast and color saturation and now needs to be printed. I think it turned out well.

Pieces of Eight

This next picture is the real challenge because it needs put back together. It has been torn into eight pieces and will be needed to be pieced together and then retouched, We have never tried to do this before so it will be a challenge. I will post the results when it is finished.

Photo Restoration

This picture was brought in for restoration and retouching. The client wants the two people in the background removed from the picture and the picture cropped with better composition. The picture isn't in bad condition so the retouching should go well. Removing the people may be a problem because we will need to replace the background, Hopefully we will have enough edge background to accomplish this by shifting it around.

Competition Prints

Tuesday night was our monthly dinner meeting for PPSNYS ( Professional Photographers Society of New York State). We had speakers from London Wolfe Studios in Altoona, Pa who gave very informative talks on getting your studio noticed, hence the reason for this blog. That was one of their suggestions to get to know people and meet prospective clients.

All the meetings consist of dinner, usually a speaker and a print competition. One of my submissions scored an 86 by the judges and took second place. I shot this image on opening day ( May 3, ) at Fort Erie Race track on very rainy day. Nikon D3 with 70-200 AF-S VR, ISO 800, 1/500 sec @ f-4.

Welcome to our NEW Blog site.

Hello,
My name is Gary Muth and I am the owner and photographer of The Portrait Gallery of Niagara. Our studio was established in 1983 and has been serving the western New York area for 25 years.
I am starting this blog to help us communicate more effectively with the public. We plan on updating our blog on a daily basis and hope to keep our friends informed about our business and the business of photography. We also will be personalizing our lives into our blog and wish to make many friends and clients.
Our blog is open to any topic and and will be educational and interesting for everyone. thank you for coming and we will be looking forward to hearing from you.