Las Vegas

We just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. What a spectacular time we had. There is something to interest everyone in Vegas. We walked through 22 casinos and probably have 22 more to view. We went to four National Parks, one nature preserve, and one community park. We saw free shows at downtown Las Vegas, Sam's town, Belagio's, Mirage, Venetian, Flamingo, MGM, and Paris Paris. I have posted a few images above of the volcano erupting in front of the Mirage, the Fremont Street Experience light show in the sky, the balloon in front of Paris Paris, and the dancing waters of Belagio's. I will be posting more pictures soon from Red Rock Canyon, Mt. Charleston and the Valley of Fire. Click on images to enlarge.

New Show

New

Today we have started making mini slide shows for our clients. Wendy is creating some beautiful presentations and we think it will give our studio added appeal. Check out the video above and see for yourself.

Holy Macro

I am still working on macro techniques. This image of a fly with its tongue out was quite involved in the making but the end result was worth it. I used Nikon D3 with 24-70mm 2.8 lens racked out to 70mm and focus set to infinity. I added a 36 mm and 12 mm extension tubes and used the raynox 250 on the end of the barrel. This combination gave me a pretty good image but I still needed to crop to get the image I wanted. The full frame sensor of the D3 can withstand considerable cropping before the image starts breaking down. I used one flash off camera attached to a homemade bracket with an old Gary Fong lightshere for diffusion. I had strong window light from behind the fly to give it dimension. The fly is distracted with honey to keep him in the same spot until I could get some shots off. Click on image to enlarge. Oh yes, one last thing. I used a focus stacking image program, CombineZM to stack 3 images to get more depth of field.

Nathan Muth is now One!

My grandson Nathan came over for a couple of pictures. He is now one years old and cute as a button. He didn't get enough nap that day but I did manage to get a couple keepers. Including one of his clowning around at the front window. His parents promised to bring him back for more pictures on Sunday. The top three images were done in studio with four strobes. Nikon D3.

Ring Flash testing

Take two aspirin and call me in the morning, or in this case two ibuprofen. This image is a not cropped shot of two tablets of ibuprofen. I used a CD disc for the reflection. Nikon D3. Lighting is a nice wrap around effect from a ring flash.