Flashback Friday: The Cup

This flashback takes us back a couple years. The Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup. Ryan, a member of the team, was able to spend a day with the Cup, as each of the players who win the Cup has the opportunity. A public event earlier in the day raised money for the Obie Harrington-Howes Foundation. I had the opportunity to photograph the celebration at his family's house. I was intrigued by the awe that children and grownups alike exhibited while studying the Cup. (The Cup has names of every player of Stanley Cup winning teams of past years engraved.) A few months later, Jess and Ryan were engaged. Their E-session was a lot of fun! I'm excited about their wedding coming up in July.

Flashback Friday: Beach Sunset

Here is another one taken with the Canon A80 back in 2005. It seems that everyone with a camera and a shutter finger feels the urge to photograph sunsets. Seriously, Americans alone must spend tens of thousands of clicks every clear night. Yet most of us are disappointed the first time we try. The sun is much, much, much, much, much, much, much brighter than everything surrounding it. It throws off the meter of the camera and everything else is severely underexposed. When adjustments are made, everything else may be exposed correctly, but a large, boring circle dominates and everything else loses detail. One day I realized that perhaps it's typically not in my best interest to include the sun in the frame when photographing sunsets. (As a good general rule, it's best not to include the main light source in the frame.)

This was my first photo to be published in a magazine: Milford Living.

(Click to see larger.)

Flashback Friday: Hand Abstracts

This one goes waaayyyy back. I think it was my first personal project with artificial lighting. My mother gave me my first camera (a compact digital: Canon A80) for Christmas 2003. These were taken in November 2004. It was a great camera for its time. The macro mode was outstanding for a compact. For this project, I used a 90-watt lightbulb inside of a common desk lamp in an otherwise black room. I used a tripod to steady the camera, but I had to hold my hand fairly steady to capture sharp images. Quite a bit of Photoshop was used during processing.

A fingerprint is capable of distinguishing between any two people, correct? A handprint must have at least 50x the information. That would mean there are at least 5 billion to the 50th power variations of handprints, right? If 1 billion to the 50th power = a '1' with 450 zeros after it, then 5 billion to the 50th power is quite the number. Any mathematicians here who can help out???

(click images to see larger)