Our first Smiles Across the Miles Event: over 300 USMC families served!

Hi Friends,

Some of you have been hearing about our new photo philanthropy volunteer venture: Smiles Across the Miles (www.smilesacrossthemiles.org).  Our mission is to provide free portraiture for the families of our deployed military to keep them in touch and connected with their loved ones who are risking all to protect our freedoms here at home.

What started off as a conversation between four local photographers and our connections turned into a phenomenal volunteer event on 12/16/09. Coordinating with the amazingly wonderful folks Pangea Corp, we provided free portraits to over 300 USMC families at Camp Pendleton in Southern California!

It was a long day, but boy was it terrific!  I’m especially proud of my Photoshop and Digital Photography students who made the trip down to Oceanside to shoot or offer assistance in any way they were needed.  They helped setup the studios, shot portraits, entertained kids, and were generally indispensable!  So a special thanks to Rosemary, Ted, Greg, Joseph, Brian and Norm!

We’re still processing images, so I don’t yet have access to all of the photos that were taken that day (only the ones I shot that were still on my cards when I got home), but the video above will give you a flavor of the day’s events.

Can’t wait for the next one!

Merry Christmas to all!

J

Masquer Ministries: New Cast Portraits

Hi Friends,

I’m shooting the dress rehearsal for Masquers’ new Christmas production: “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” tonight, but did some new cast portraits on Sunday.  Really happy with the way they turned out.  See the Animoto video above…

The Christmas production runs three nights: December 4-6th (doors open at 7:00 PM).  This musical, set in late 1941, is the story of faith, family and a nation of the brink of World War II, preparing to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace. The show features the sounds of swing, lush ballads and reenactments of classic radio broadcasts. As always our venue will be the lovely Candlewood Theater in Anaheim, just off the 91 freeway at East Street.

If you’re in the neighborhood, please join us, and get your Christmas season off to a wonderful start.

Have a blessed holiday season!

J

“I Left My Heart…” well, you know the rest…

Hi Friends,

Been a few weeks since I’ve posted.  Had a holiday boutique to prepare for, and a family vacation to the great foggy north…San Francisco: land of the Golden Gate bridge, dungeness crab, and sourdough bread. It’s been almost 18 years since last I visited San Francisco, and the last time I was there, I was in meetings, and didn’t really get to see much of the city.

To my surprise, it was only foggy the first morning we were there. The rest of the week was clear and mid-60’s. Perfect weather for all the walking and touristy things.

Anyway, a few shots from the trip…

The family at Alcatraz… wouldn’t let us spend the night…go figure:

The classic cable car:

Golden Gate Bridge (from Fort Baker, North side of the bridge)

Golden Gate Bridge (from Marin Headlands…lights of San Francisco int he background):

And what collection of San Francisco photos would be complete without the Bridge in the fog image?

The “Painted Ladies of San Francisco”… some of the most famous of the classic Victorians in the city:

Alcatraz – former accommodations for the likes of Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, and Robert “The Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud:

The view FROM Alcatraz… Seems a case of “cruel and unusual” if you ask me…

Cat in her Lolita attire:

Larger versions of these photos, and  more images in my gallery at: http://www.pbase.com…ck/sanfrancisco

Thanks for looking!

J

On Reflection – More Classics

My friend Booker (www.gourdsbybooker.com) is an avid car photographer.  He has a cool “blackout” technique in which he selects the car and either lowers the luminosity of the background or drops out certain parts of the car, for example, leaving just the chrome.  Hard to imagine, but really cool.

Well, inspired by Booker’s technique, I played around a bit with a couple images from the past few weeks…

1927 Ford Roadster:

Here’s the original, taken at the Laguna Beach Classic Car show:

Another great car…not a classic…yet:  the Lamborghini Superleggera:

Original was a shot of it parked in a friend’s driveway… cool car, but kinda boring environment.

Thanks for looking!

J

Hooked on Classics…

My friend, Booker, arranged for us to meet with Jon, a local classic car collector, this weekend.  I’ve photographed  classic cars at public events and typically there are all kinds of things that get in the way of making good photographs…power lines, trash bins, other cars, other people.  It was so cool to able to shoot in this private venue:  nothing but amazing cars in a beautiful setting!

I shot everything with high dynamic range (HDR) imaging in mind, though I found in post processing that not all of the images benefited from that process.  For those images in which there are cars in sunlight and shade in the same shot (like the first couple images below), HDR really shines…revealing detail in shadow and highlight areas.   I’d have had to sacrifice one or the other in a single-frame exposure.  However, HDR tends to enhance detail.  For some subjects, that’s great. For others, the extra detail actually detracts from the image.  So, as I was processing in Photomatix Pro and Adobe Lightroom, if I found that the HDR process didn’t give me the “look” I was after, I selected a single image from the bracketed sequence and worked with that one in Lightroom.

All images were shot with the Nikon D2x and Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 lens, available light, and post processed in Photomatix Pro and Adobe Lightroom.

Anyway, here are a few of my favorites…

1956 BMW Isetta (the Steve Urkel-mobile)

Other images from the session are on my gallery at:  www.pbase.com/haverstick/classiccars

Thanks again to Booker for arranging the shoot, and to Jon for letting us take up an hour or so of his Saturday morning!

Thanks for looking!