I have also been working on my art prize project for a competition in Grand Rapids Michigan. This contest draws over 1700 artists from around the world and has a first-place prize of $250,000 and I am one of the artists that will be in it this year. What is even cooler than that, is that 3 of my brothers have also entered this contest this year, so we have titled it the battle of the brothers.

I’m looking forward to blogging the next few weeks both from Photoshop world and from our price. This should be an interesting month coming up and if I’m lucky I could be $200,000 richer, ha ha.

Here’s my entrance for our prize. It is a 60 x 40″ photograph that is printed on aluminum it will be displayed at the Green line gallery on Fulton and Avenue in downtown Grand Rapids. One of my brothers entries will also be shown at the scouring and my other 2 brothers projects are within a block so we should have a good time with this.

For more information please visit: www.FMoPA.com

Here is my entry for the show.

The second show I will be in is titled “Teachers Pet” and is being held at the Morean Arts Center in downtown St. Petersburg. I teach at the Morean and they decided that they wanted to show some of the instructors work with alongside one of their students work. I chose to show the photographs from the St. Petersburg shuffleboard courts as I am always taking my HDR workshops down there to photograph.

The student I choose was Dick Quigley. I have seen Dick develop as a photographer from the first time he took my architectural photography class a few years ago, thru his new work that he just completed from Ireland. Just before I got the notice for the show Dick had sent me a photograph he had taken in Ireland that I was really impressed with, so it was an easy choice to make when I had to select one of my students for the show.

For more information please visit: www.moreanartscenter.org

Here is my entry for the show

Here is my student, Dick Quigley’s photography.

Two years ago I was in Yosemite for a few days and the whole time I was photographing my thoughts were of how Ansell Adams would be photographing the subjects I was shooting at the moment. Adams was not just a great photographer, but he is also a technician in the darkroom and I always wonder what he would think of the digital world and how it relates to black-and-white photography today. He came up with the zone system and in reality we are still using that system today when we evaluate photographs, we are still talking about 11 zones, D-Max and about highlight detail in zone 10. These were all terms and ideas that Adams, through his books, taught the rest of us photographers how to evaluate our images.

I was wondering what Adams would say on how we evaluate photographs today as we nitpick every imperfection instead of evaluating the image for its artist quality. In a few of his images I noticed dust in the skies, something that we would not even think of allowing with our digital retouching today. This question has occurred to me before as I listen to how we evaluate photographs during competitions, and I sometimes think we lose sight of the artistic aspect of these photographs over evaluating them for their technical perfection.

I’m not saying that technical perfection creates a great image, but I sometimes think we lose sight of the artistic attributes because of the technical issues that are involved nowadays. I have a feeling that Adams would have embraced the technology and perfected his craft, but I do feel also that we as photographers need to work on perfecting our own visions and our artistic qualities of our photos.

Here are a few photographs from my walk in Ansal Adams footsteps.

Over the next few weeks I hope to show you some more images that I’ve been working on, along with some videos on how to refine some of your HDR images. I will be bringing back new stuff Fridays with some of the new pieces of equipment or software that I find that I think are interesting or cool.

Hope you like these images and you’ll probably be seeing more over the next few weeks.

Here is an excerpt from that article, I hope to get more like this:

In contrast, St. Petersburg photographer Randy Van Duinen (included in Paradise Lost/Paradise Found) uses cutting-edge technology — HDR, or high dynamic range, photography — to produce images with a strikingly different flavor of history. Crafted to evoke the graphic style of vintage Florida postcards, Van Duinen’s pictures capture mom-and-pop businesses, like The Sands Motel on Treasure Island or the Coney Island Diner in downtown St. Pete, in bold color and surreally crisp detail.

The neat trick of HDR photography, which Van Duinen stretches to its creative limits, is that it lets shooters merge, in the computer during post-production, different versions of the same image taken at higher and lower exposures to light. For example, in “Lounging at the Sands,” the technology enables Van Duinen to capture not only the motel’s blazing yellow-and-white beach chairs and umbrellas, but also the face in shadow of a man peeking out from behind a motel room curtain.

Of course, the technique wouldn’t be worth much if Van Duinen didn’t bring a good old-fashioned artist’s eye to each composition and the careful calibrating of colors and textures in the images, which possess a distinctive painterly quality. A long-time architectural photographer by trade, Van Duinen was inspired to start documenting bits of old Florida after moving from San Francisco to Clearwater Beach (before settling in St. Pete) nearly a decade ago with his wife.

“We were seeing things of Florida just disappearing, part of the cultural history just being developed away,” he says.

To read the whole article go to: Creative Loafing

As I was teaching an HDR workshop this weekend and was out shooting with the students, I started talking about making sure you explore the area that you’re photographing. What I mean is just don’t point your camera at one area and assume that’s all there is, take a moment and look around and explore the area around the corner.

As it turned out I needed to take my own advice. I was showing the students how to do an HDR photograph manually with a seven stops; I was photographing in the locker room of the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club for this photo. I had taken a couple other shots in this building and thought I had covered everything that I wanted, but as it turned out I was sadly mistaken. One of my students had set up a camera in the bathroom that I had not even taken a look at, as I was showing him how to shoot the HDR photograph manually I realized that this was the shot for this building.

Now a shot in the bathroom is not something I’d normally photograph, but this particular bathroom had a lot of character and as an HDR image I knew I could bring that character out. I have found out that while I teach other people to photograph I also learned a lot from them and sometimes see things from her point of view that I normally wouldn’t. So in the end I guess I need to take my own advice and explore around the corner for an image that I might’ve missed. I think looking around the corner is good advice for taking a photo, or for living your life and see more of the world.

Calling it “the best shot I have taken in my lifetime,” world-renowned photographer Peter Lik has sold his first million-dollar photograph, which he calls One: a fleetingly beautiful nature shot captured on the banks of the Androscoggin River in New Hampshire.  The purchase amount for this work places Lik in rare company.  The buyer, a private art collector represented by Joel Ehrenkranz of the law firm Ehrenkranz & Ehrenkranz LLP, completed the purchase in December and asked to remain anonymous.

Taken just after dawn, amid breathtaking New England fall foliage, the photograph resembles an Impressionist painting more than any nature photograph.  Says Lik, “I will never forget this morning for the rest of my life.  It was calm, and the scent of the fall forest filled my lungs.  The mist cleared, and a magical reflection in the river briefly appeared   White birch trees, black trunks, a kaleidoscope of foliage combining to reveal an illusion of three dimensions.  I pressed the shutter – once – and then the scene vanished with the morning breeze, never to be seen again.”  The single opportunity, the unity of the elements, and Lik’s oneness with the moment and nature, inspired him to name the photograph One.

Here is a link to see this beautiful photograph.

Here are a few photos from the opening.

My brothers the next day