
Floating in Pink - D700, 70-200mm
We took a trip last week to visit my niece and see their new home. I always look forward to taking some photos of my great niece and nephew. While we were there we took a trip one afternoon to the local town beach. Hard to loose my great niece in the water with that pink float, guess what color her new room is…PINK is the word for everything. We had a great visit and got some good family shots. Here’s my great niece mugging for the camera…notice the pink polish on the nails.

Lilly Giggles - D700, 70-200

1000 Cranes - D700, 24-70mm
We went to Virginia last week to help some friends with their daughter’s wedding. It was held at a private house and the bride folded 1000 oragami cranes. Now I’ve done a fair bit of oragami in my day but I don’t think I could make a 1000 cranes. Continue reading ‘1000 Cranes’

Jingles Jerr Spurs - D700, 70-200
I know, it says “Cowboy Portraits – Part 2″ and the lead image is a boot…not just any boot. This is Jingles Jerr’s boot and spur, see the attachments on the spur, yes, they do jingle…you pretty much know where Jingle’s is most of the time. He was very gracious to take some time to let me get a boot and spur image.
More portraits in the complete post here…including Jingles. Continue reading ‘Cowboy Portraits – Part 2′

Sargent Hochbauer - D700, 70-200
I’ve been wanting to work on my portrait skills more lately and I got an opportunity to go to a local Cowboy Action Shooting group’s shoot this Saturday. Well the light was not the greatest, a good time to refine some lighting techniques to say the least… Continue reading ‘Cowboy Portraits – Part 1′

Cherokee Jon Slaughter - Totally Rad, After
I was reading some good posts on Tony Sweet and John Barclay’s blogs on using the Photoshop plug-in Dirty Pictures by Totally Rad. Well I’m always looking for good plug-ins and adding textures to images really appeals to me. Sooooo of course I went out to the Totally Rad site and took a look. Liked what I saw so I sprung for the plug-in. The image is from a session I did with a local Cowboy Action Shooting group and it seemed like Dirty Pictures was just what it needed… What do you think??? I’m liking the textured image a lot more…

Cherokee Jon Slaughter - Before Totally Rad
Here’s the image of Cherokee Jon Slaughter before he got the Dirty Pictures Totally Rad treatment. Click on images to view larger.

Sea of Yellow - D700, Lensbaby Composer
Shot this at home with some window light and an off camera flash using my Lensbaby Composer. Did some additional work in PS using Nik Color Efex 3.0 and added some fractalius filter to just the one flower.
The long range weather forecast actually had a 50 degree temperature listed on it…sure hope it wasn’t a typo.

Cherokee John Slaughter - Detailed
Just saw a really neat technique posted on Scott Kelby’s blog by his Guest Blog Wednesday person. It’s by Calvin Hollywood a Photoshop Artist located in Heidelberg, Germany. Calvin does some nice stuff and showed a technique he uses to add detail to his images, no he didn’t use any Topaz plug-ins, though you might be able to get the same or similar look using Topaz. His technique just uses PS, blend modes and the surface blur filter…I’m not going to repeat his info. Just go to the posting “It’s Guest Blog Wednesday featuring Calvin Hollywood” at Scot Kelby’s blog and view the video in the posting.
Click on the image in my posting to see it larger and check out Calvin’s neat technique…see you can do all this stuff without plug-ins or you can get some Topaz…
Sorry John, for making you look like a mean character but this image was screaming for this effect.

Letort Lawman and Lady
Some more images from the “Mid Winter’s Ball” photo-shoot, couples this time…all fine folks.

Professor Tinker and Saddie Silks

Sgt. Hochbauer and Dances With Toe Shoes

Jingles Jerr and Bonnie B Good
Some of the images work better in sepia but some of them really need color…as you can see in the “Jingles Jerr & Bonnie B Good ” image. Just wouldn’t be the same in sepia now would it.
No, that’s not their real names…it’s their alias/handle they use in the cowboy action shooting group.
Click on the smaller image to view larger.

Missy - D700, 70-200 f/2.8 @ f/11
Here’s another shot from the Mid Winter’s Ball shoot…this is Missy striking a pose. Did some post production work on this one using Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Silver Efex Pro.
Click on the image to view larger…

Cherokee Jon Slaughter - sepia

Tuscarora Slim - sepia
I’ve been wanting to do some character portrait images for a while … a friend does cowboy action shooting and they get together over the summer for the matches. Recently they had their “Mid-Winter’s Ball” at a local restaurant so I offered to shoot some photos of the group if they were interested. Everyone comes dressed in their finest cowboy outfits for the dinner and they looked great. I set up some lights and a backdrop and with a little posing assistance from Penny (one of the group) I had a good time and got some fun shots. These are a few of the images that I have processed…more to come later.
Here are the color versions of the images above…Click on the images to view larger.

Cherokee Jon Slaughter - color

Tuscarora Slim - color