Vows Renewed

Harold and Mary Boorne celebrated their 50th anniversary on Saturday. The family had a wonderful party at Banchetti's Banquet Hall in Amherst where the anniversary couple renewed their wedding vows. We were fortunate enough to be chosen to photograph this happy event for them and had a great time doing it. Afterwards we photographed many different family groupings and some candids at the party to give them a great selection of images to remember it by.

Holy Cow !

Today's economy is nose driving drastically. People are cutting their budgets to make ends meet. Gas prices are sky rocketing, along with food and utility costs. No one knows where this will lead us, except maybe the poor house. We are constantly hearing stories about how newlyweds can't afford the rising costs of a wedding. Articles in magazines on how to save, save save. We believe that every new bride deserves a great wedding and great wedding images. So The Portrait Gallery has slashed its wedding prices to give every bride the opportunity to get the best wedding memories possible. Check out our new pricing at:
http://theportraitgallery.homestead.com/Weddingpackages.html
and see the savings.

Time is running out!

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.

Is bigger better?

I took a field trip today to shoot some tree swallows. I borrowed a longer lens because I wanted to see how it compared to the 70-200 ED AF-S VR Nikkor lens that I had been using. These images were shot hand held with Nikon D3. I used Nikkor 300mm ED AF-S f.4 with 1.4X Kenko Teleplus pro 300 lens. On a full frame senor camera like mine this combination gives me 420 mm which is a lot more than the 200 mm I am used to. I was very impressed with the results and feel I didn't lose much resolution at all. I did notice the lens is slower focusing and it takes a little more patience to get sharp images.

Baltimore Oriole portrait. Today finally produced results. Our subject co operated nicely with a pleasing pose. I measured the ambient light and set the meter accordingly. I than added fill light from camera right and rim light from behind to add background separation. Nikon D3, 300 mm plus 1.4 TC.

Nate

Nathan and his parents stopped by the other day and I caught this expression. You can just imagine what his thoughts are here. I think , " Grandpa, I own you "

Today I moved the feeder closer to our blind and I am starting to fine tune how I want to portray this bird. Morning light seems best for this location. Today the male dominated the feeder and I grabbed this quick shot of him. Click on image to enlarge.

Today we moved the feeder closer to our blind. It didn't seem to bother our subject. I took this image today with my D3 and 70-200mm ED AF-S lens racked out at 200mm. I used f-4 and 1/1000th sec. because originally I planned on getting the bird in flight but today he was too fast for me. I shot EV -1 to make sure I didn't overexpose my highlights. I then post processed in Capture NX2 using Jason Odell's wildlife post processing technique.

Baltimore Orioles

Here is my first attempt to capture a Baltimore Oriole. Our feeder, in our backyard has finally attracted a male and female. I think they have a nest in a nearby woods. They have started coming to feed this week. I didn't want to get too close to this bird while it feeds until it gets comfortable coming around. I will be posting better images soon, but for now I am happy to see them. Image taken with Nikon D3, 70-200mm ED AF-S VR, from about 35 feet away.

50th Anniversary

Today the Gedeon Family celebrated their parents 50th anniversary at Antonio's Restaurant in Niagara Falls. We did some group portraits and had a great time with the Gedeon Families. The one above shows Mr and Mrs Gedeon with all their grandchildren. A wonderful and sentimental shot. The kids crack me up, each has their own individual personality, and everyone wanted to ham it up. Everyone had a great time and I am sure it was a most memorable occasion for all who attended.

IR Photography

This is an example of infrared photography with a digital camera. The image is of my backyard in June. It looks like it snowed last night but it didn't. This technique was achieved by using my camera in manual mode. I set the ISO to the highest setting 25,600 and the aperture at 2.8. I then set the shutter to 1/2 sec. I used the monochrome setting and added R-72 IR filter to the lens. Camera was steadied on a table and image was post processed in Photoshop CS3. Quite a cool effect for a summer time picture don't you think? Shot with Nikon D3, 24-70mm ED AF-S.

Another finished restoration

Update on the restoration we are doing. The completed project is finished and I think if came out well considering the lack of resolution we had to work with. We brought back a lot of detail with Photoshop CS3 and adjusted the contrasts in layers. We then cloned out most of the scratches and color tinted the photo to match the original tone. The edges had to be cropped slightly and the image was re sized to 3.75x3.25".

Nathan's Photo Shoot

Nathan had his first photo shoot this week. He is three months old and such a wonderful baby. We used several changes of clothing and shot many different poses. These are some of my favorites from the sitting. We hope to have Nathan back many times. These images will make a great start for baby's first years baby book.

New Restoration Project

Today's challenge is interesting. Our client would like these two pictures restored. The pictures have been seriously neglected. They are sun faded badly and do not have much resolution. Fortunately our client wishes to keep the images the same size as the originals 3.75 x 3.25".

The pictures have been coated with wax. I have no idea why. It may have been a way of preserving images back then, but I have never heard of this method. Also, someone has crossed scratches across both images like a tic tac toe game. They appear to have been matted and framed so the outside edges are a higher contrast than the center of the image. This could be a problem or could be a blessing. One, it will be hard to match the two contrasts so we may crop it out a bit. Two, it may help us because it gives more insight to how the original image looked. Either way this will be a project.

Gettysburg

As you walk the battlefields of Gettysburg you can see the contrasts between the slaughter and horrors of war and the majestic beauty of the Pennsylvania countryside

Haunted Bridge

This is Sach's covered bridge in Gettysburg, Pa. We made a quick trip to Gettysburg over the weekend and had a wonderful time. So much history and such a beautiful area. The bridge is said to be haunted by three confederate soldiers who were hung from the bridge after retreating from the battle of Gettysburg.

CTO gels

CTO gels are useful tools to have around. Basically its an amber colored gel for over your flash to change the color temperature of your flash. This image above, we set our camera white balance to incandescent light and added a cto gel to our flash from camera left. This created an interesting effect on our flower.

I am doing some interesting bird studies in my spare time. It takes quite a bit of patience and the proper equipment to capture interesting bird images. Here is a tree swallow in flight. A beautiful bird with metallic blue colors and white breast. The extreme contrasts of colors and the speed of this bird make it a challenge to photograph in flight. Shot with Nikon D3 with 70-200 ED AF-S VR Nikkor lens.

My grandson Nathan.