Last week was SkillsUSA and some of the people from the Coeur d’Alene photo department went down to Boise, ID for the State SkillsUSA competition. Though no chapter members placed in the photo competition, my brother and I placed first in the promotional board contest and other chapter member Brittney Price placed third and got elected for state office! Even though none of us placed in photography we all had fun and really. We had to shoot a theme, urban decay and that was a little bit of a challenging topic to shoot but I had fun with it. After the competition my brother and I looked at the competition winners from DPChallenge’s challenge for Urban Decay and almost every single photo within the challenge was HDR. The winning photo (http://www.dpchallenge.com/image.php?IMAGE_ID=839628) really got me. I was really wowed by it for sure. That is what got me inspired to try some HDR myself. I have never done it but my brother Scott has done it quite a bit and gave me a little tutorial. I used Photomatix and that was really easy and I really liked it. We had to turn in 6 final images from the hour shooting and 25 raw images. Here are my 6 finals and some others from SkillsUSA:

Now here are my HDR images, the first one is my first trial and the second one is my second trial. I really do not like the second one as much, It didn’t turn out nearly as well, but I figured I would post it. My inspiration for this project was Enzo Maisano, he doesn’t have a website but he was the challenge winner for the Urban Decay challenge on DPChallenge. Here they are:

Also here are some fun shots I did of Josh Monteith biking down town:

I usually try not to do buttshots but I like the buttshot for this photo mainly composition wise

And Here are the rest of the weeks shots:

Thanks for viewing,

-Steve

Spring break 2010 was a good one. I got to spend relaxing time with the Mother in Arizona. I came to the conclusion that Arizona is one of the most photogenic states I have been too along with Massachusetts and New York. I have never done a whole lot of desert photos, so I was really looking forward to shooting cacti. Cacti are super cool to photography, I had a lot of fun with that. Sunsets were pretty fantastic in Phoenix/Scottsdale and at the Grand Canyon. I really enjoyed that.

But I didn’t just shoot landscapes, I shot a little bit at a rail jam put on by Summit Northwest Ministries and that was a very good turn out. Everybody was having fun and it was all around a good time. I rode the whole rail jam and only got a few great photos but I had fun with that. I really love shooting rail jams. I like it a lot more than mountain shooting, why? It is a lot more social and a lot easier to ride and shoot. I don’t do a whole lot of mountain shooting, but when I do, I like to just dedicate the whole day to the photography and not the riding. Here are the jam photos:

It was after the jam that I went to Arizona so I thought that posting the trip photos after was an appropriate way to post. Something that I never got out to do was shoot a great desert photo, a photo with just nothing for miles except a tumble weed and curve of the earth. I really wish I could have gotten out to do that because I was excited to shoot desert photography. I guess the Rattle Snake danger was high up in the danger ratings so I didn’t feel like getting hit by a snake over spring break and ruining my trip. I hope to go out to the desert again in the near future. The Grand Canyon was a place that I hit also on the trip and WOW, the Canyon that is Grand is really GRAND. Haha. But I was trying to get some shots of the canyon that weren’t just normal Canyon shots because every nature photographer has been there and has probably gotten the same shots that I was going to get. So I really tried to make all the photos really my own and shoot a little different than other photographers. I had a lot of fun at the GC, and the crazy thing is that there was snow there. Weird huh? I got up really early one morning to shoot the sunrise, but it turned out to have too many clouds so I never got a great photo. Wasn’t worth getting up at five in the morning. There are a lot of photos but just take the time and view them please. Here are the rest of the shots:

I started noticing that a lot of my horizon lines are off, but what ever, I’ll live right?

Thanks for viewing!

-Steve