Buckshot’s Blog

the jeep, resting in the shade after a few trail rides

enjoying the jeep some more!

My new “get me to new photography locations” vehicle  (and get me back and forth from work too!)  I took it off the pavement for the first time today, (a nice easy dirt path!) I had so much fun I almost completely forgot to take photos

finally got to shoot one of these!

One of my old lenses, a test subject for a new flash I just received, to replace the one of my older ones that kind of blew up a few weeks ago

a photo of the whipple supercharger on my mustang

Took some Infra Red shots in Death Valley (and other places around the area), these are batch converted, I’ll go back and adjust the colors later to be consistant with each other.

pulled out the old infrared 10d yesterday, forgot how much I enjoy using it! 

All of the blood and wounds are fake, but if you get queezy very easy you may not want to click on the images for larger views.

4×5 Speedgraphic with Stroboflash and Adox Ortho 25 film, developed in Rodinal 1:50 for 6 minutes.

And here are some digital shots.  The digital shots don’t seem to be quite as ‘authentic’ looking as the film shots, I think this has alot to do with the lighting though, since for my digital shots I used off-camera flashes instead of a camera-mounted flash.  I think that makes them look a bit more ‘theatrical’ than the single flash film shots.

More digitals to come.

continuing my experimenting with flashes, the silver paint on the Subaru responds very well to the flash hits!

So my latest direction in photography is off-camera flash photography!  This is starting out just with digital, but I will probably use some of the techniques on my film work as well.

Here’s a few of my test subjects, small subjects done for the ease of learning the settings, I’ll move up to larger test subjects soon

Here it is, it’s the last few minutes of 2008, and today was the last day of the old Method studio building.  Here are some of the things I’ll miss:

And my last meal in the building, was satisfying

here is a typical before & after comparison for alot of my digital shots.  The original I process from the RAW file flat, and then give it the snap in contrast that it needs in Photoshop, mostly global changes, with a few local areas.  Some of the changes are subtle, some are more obvious.

A friend’s Dodge Challenger, out on El Mirage!  first three are digital, last two are 8×10 Arista EDU 100 film

What an interesting day!  The first 1/2 of the day El Mirage was just like it usually is, hot, windy, and dusty!  After we grabbed a bit to eat and noticed that the sky was getting filled with big dark clouds. When we came back to wait for sunset, a strong wind must have come by and blown all the dust away.  At first we thought the lake bed was wet once we got out into the middle, because we were seeing a reflection on the ground!  (A reflection up close, not a mirage off in the distance), but the lake was bone dry, and completely void of the dust that is usually on top of the hard surface!  The ground must have been so sand-blasted that it was smooth enough to shine a little, it was quite surreal.  You can see the shine in a few of the images here. Also uploaded one real good shot showing the mirage, where the lake bed got it’s name from

stopped for a rest during a nice ‘happy birthday’ drive in the mountains!

beautiful clouds this afternoon! Hiking with the digital this time.

A very cool looking old school motorcycle! I like it! First shot with Canon 1Ds2 and 85/f1.2 lens, 2nd shot with an Anniversary Speedgraphic 4×5

I’ve never seen anything like this, so much color! No smell from the flowers at all, and no bees, butterflies, or other critters usually associated with flowers (accept for a few lady bugs). With the lack of smell and the super blue (and cloudless) sky, it was like a dream! I also shot some 4×5 Velvia 50, but in retrospect I think velvia will be way to saturated for these bright flowers! Heres some digital shots:

digital photos from a hike through the Mojave’s Red Rock Canyon area.

I’m sure this looks exactly like everyone elses shot, but hey… who cares

Here are some digital shots of the Mojave Desert, film scans to come later.

Went out shooting on Mt. Baldy this weekend, lots of snow! Here are some quick digital snaps, film scans will come later when I have time.

Some recent hiking & camping images

I had trouble restoring my old blog, so everything was lost. I’ll be posting up some images for the next few days to catch the blog back up. Sorry about this!