Worried about the future?

Don't worry about a tomorrow,
When you have a today.

MOVE!

The beauty of bicycle riding is that one day you will see a big mountain and climb it. You will never be the same.
Move your legs and you will move your mind...

Larry Witham, An American in Cannes, France

What happens when you stick four Colombos and yellow lab coats in a hospital?

...You get the loudest room on the floor...
Nick has been in the hospital for two weeks, and he is supposed to come home in a few days.


And yes...we were wearing those yellow coats backwards. We were getting strange looks from the nurses.

Sharpening & Adjustments

Most photographers do not sharpen their images enough. They are almost afraid to sharpen.

You should do your extreme adjustments [to taste] down the stream of your work flow.

Sometimes when I open up an image, I just want to dive in and make my creative adjustments. But I need to follow the correct work flow.

Levels
Curves
Hue/Saturation
Other Adjustments [to taste]

More edited Joshua Tree images

I am considering some images to put in my museum. So I am playing around with with some of my favorite Joshua Tree images

High Contrast


Infared

Night shots of Joshua Tree

It was dark. It was windy. It was cold. It was scary.
All I had was one flashlight and thirty seconds exposures to run around and shine some light on some rocks I couldn't really see.

Curves

The purpose of curves is to rationally set the range and midpoints of the red, green, and blue chanels.
The more you guess on your curves, the more you hack up your histogram.

Joshua Tree Landscapes, edited.

Here are the Joshua Tree "after" photos.

Oldies, but goodies.

I called my friend, Maria, because I have not heard from her in a long time. And she asked if I still had some of her photos from a photo shoot that was over a year and a half ago. Surprisingly, they were in stored away in my external hard drive. So I edited some.





I eventually sold this guitar^^^ to buy a lens.

Russian DVD!

My 2008 Russian slideshow DVD should be ready to be mailed to you by Saturday! Email me your address and I'll mail you a copy (unless you live near my hood). If you liked last years DVD, you are in for a real treat because this one is way better.
Bring your kleenex.

I got my photoshop password and I am gonna sit down after the DVD is complete and hammer out a lot of images this weekend. Stay tuned for next week.
Same blog time.
Same blog channel.

Happy 9/11, I guess. I really don't know what to say, except that my friend Eric is still serving in Iraq. (marine corps)

Histograms

I don't give a crap about what your image looks like on your monitor or LCD screen, if your exposure is off and your histograms are not properly set,
your image is going to suck.
-Clay Spada.

Joshua Tree landscapes.

No editing software yet...So I guess I'll just have to post some unedited for now, and I'll do some before and after images later.




I am facinated by dead plant life. 100 year old dead trees look so cool.


After the sunset, it got cold and I set up camp. I was still on edge from my encounter with the rattle snake, and I was rushing to set up camp before the sun light went away. But I didn't camp in a designated campsite...I just put my tent behind a big boulder near the rocks that I was planning to shoot some night landscapes. I thought it was going to be hot, so I didn't bring a sleeping bag. Turned out to be about 60 degrees at night...it was an uncomfortable night.


This shot is from the top of a mountain in Joshua Tree. Mile and a half hike, up hill...

Joshua Tree on the motorcycle.

On Labor Day weekend, I rode out to Joshua Tree National Park on my motorcycle, which I have never done before. I thought it was supposed to be hot, but it rained off and on, and it was overcast and a cool 75 degrees. The rain made the soft dirt roads hard enough to ride my bike on. So I rode WAY into the heart of the desert to places motorcycle bandits shouldn't go. I think the rains and cool weather brought out all kinds of wild life. On the trail, I saw some strange rain measuring funnels. They seemed out of place, and NEEDED to be checked out.
A rattle snake saw me as I walked near it, and rattled at me. I hate snakes. And I immediately yelled, "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD" over and over, jumped straight backwards and started looking for snakes everywhere else, as if they would suddenly be under every bush or come out from their ground holes. Needless to say, I was freaked out, and I was paranoid all day. My brother said I probably have a phobia of snakes.

After I gained control over my wild imagination, I slowly went back to check out the rattler to try and take a picture. I found it, and after watching it for a minute, I was too scared and stayed only on the trail.



I am waiting for a code to install photoshop on my new computer. So I won't be editing any images until then.

It's a new dawn... It's a new day...

I have been blogging for about a year now. Part of the reason why I update my blog is to show that I shoot A LOT, and this blog is a place I can load my images so people can check back whenever, instead of me constantly emailing you or forgetting to put you on the email list. I should have started this blog TWO years ago!
In my opinion, I ALWAYS produce quality work. But this IS NOT by any means a "professional website." This is where "The Actual Joey Himself" can share my random stories of my travels and journeys, other artists or interesting people, cool local events and galleries, interesting quotes and maybe a funny joke here and there. The stuff I find interesting. Photography is a way of life, and how one sees the world is reflected in their work. I am one curious person, and I like to show how I see the world. And that is my motivation to shoot and blog.

I don't obsess about blogging everyday. I think if I did stress on a daily blog, I would spread myself too thin and go out and look for stuff to blog. That would make my blog a little too random. That is what Wikipedia and You Tube are for.

The only thing I am still debating is to add a catagory called, "Words I Hate." (Behoove, discrepancy, and the new pop culture saying "You know what I mean"...)

With the idea of blogging about me, I got this bad boy in the mail yesterday.
24 iNcher iMac. Apple and my credit card company love me. I think I need a new desk.

Exposures

In my digital photography class, I am learning a lot of technical information and new stuff. The teacher says a lot of cool ideas and sayings that I think are blog worthy.

There is no such thing as 'what you see is what you get' in digital photography.