Early Morning Excursion

I got out early this morning to play a little golf but it was to cold, FROST DELAY! So I decided I might as well take advantage of the early morning light and take some pictures. So after a quick breakfast I headed to Phoebus.

I had recently gone to the Eastern Shore and seen an exhibit of wildlife photography so I wanted to try my hand at it. I remembered these fishing boats out by Fort Monroe close to were I live.

While dodging traffic on the bridge next to the boats I got a couple of shots off. The image above is one of them.

Below is a photo of a tree out on Grand View beach. A friend and I shot had shot some video on this beach a while back and I had always wanted to go back and shoot some stills. The clouds and light were not as good this day as the day we shot our video but it is still and interesting scene.

Hwy. 60 Revisited

I was messing around with this photo that I have posted earlier as a black and white and I cam up with this look. It was a run down building and I wanted to give it a more grungy look. So I changed the Black & White adjustment layer to overlay and it gave it this darker dirtier feel.

Originally when I took these photos the sun was low in the sky and I wanted to play with lens flares and then when I first processed them I didn't like that idea and I went to black & white. Now I have ended up back in color. It is good to revisit shoots and see if you can see anything new later down the road.

The Door

Back in May of 2007 I was sent to Groton Ct for work. I got into town the day before my meeting so I went over the bridge to New London. I went to the downtown area and found a pub to get something to eat and a few pints. The downtown area was very interesting to me. I live in a flat suburb so the geography of a “Small Northern town” is intriguing to me.



When I saw this door I was thought it would make a great photo. When I got back home and looked at it I was less excited about it. Know looking at the photos over a year later I like it again.

My Photosynth

For those that haven't heard Microsoft has a program called Photosynth that takes a collection of picture and puts them together in a virtual 3D world. And it’s free. So I gave it a go and it worked fairly well.



Navigating the 3D space takes some getting used to but not too difficult. If you don't figure it out you can just press play and it will go through all the photos. I could not find a way to add more photos to an existing Synth, thus the two versions of the same title. It would be nice to have a way to link photos that the program doesn't figure out. But that might be very difficult to do on the programming side. I think it is amazing it does what it does. So give it a look or even a try. Just upload some photos of a place or think and it does all the work.

What is it about portraits?

I don't take many portraits but I got a chance a while back to go with a friend of mine, Chad Nance, while he interviewed the Mayor of Richmond Doug Wilder. No fancy lighting just natural light.



I don't know if I don't take portraits a lot because it is too much pressure to get someone to sit for you and then if the photos don't come out then I have to share my failure with someone else. Or maybe I just don't like people that much or maybe all my friends are boring looking. I would like to start taking more though, its good to have goals.



These shots I just took while Chad was talking to the Mayor, I think they came out good.

On the road again

I actually took these photos before I took the on from the previous post, I just revisited them today. I took these off of Hwy 60. When I originally took these the sun was coming up over the dark building, it is red, and I wanted sun flares. editing them today I came to the conclusion that it didn't work, it was a waste of time; thank goodness for digital. No wasted film. Who knows I might come back to these photos in a month or two and want sun flares again.


I shot these in color and did the post in photoshop. This building (above) is bright red so one day I might want a bright red building and I have the RAW file to go back to and get the red back. I used to love to shot black & white film. Back in the "old days" of film you had to be able to see the image in black & white before you took it. Know you can either not worry about it or try to see in color and in black & white to figure out how to compose it and get the lighting right.

Route 5

Route 5 is an alternative route to HWY 64. I drive it a lot to get off the highway and to see some country. I am always looking for something to take pictures of while driving down Rt. 5 this is an example of one of those times. This sign was out side an abandoned store. I like rural and dilapidated subjects to take pictures of, the suburbs are to boring. And unfortunately I live in one of those areas so I have to find these areas while I am on the road.
I took this image in to Photoshop and tried to give it a "grungy" look to go with the look of the sign it self.

COGfoto coming soon...

COGfoto will be a photo blog with, hopefully weekly if not by-weekly, posts of photos and the story behind them. I am hoping this will encourage me to take more photos and better ones. Please comment, curtique, and/pr give any other insight on the photos posted here. I hope to get some photos posted this week.