View Camera
I have been trying to figure out a way to hook a digital back to my Toyo VX125 4″x5″ view camera for the past year, but just haven’t been able to come up with a cost effective solution short of buying a $30,000 digital back. I don’t use it enough to justify that cost. So [...]
Mad Cow
Once again bored in my studio and looking for something to do, I grabbed a cow skull that my daughter Emily had left in our office. I came up with the idea of putting some lights in the eyes and nose to add some drama to the picture. Since my lights pretty well stay set [...]
Levi
I was hanging around my studio today, working on the boring stuff – scanning and indexing old film, working on my marketing, doing some work on our magazine. Got kinda bored and I wanted to take a picture of SOMETHING. Most days I bring my dog Levi into the office. Well, technically he is my [...]
Fast Lights and Roller Derby
This past Saturday I had the opportunity to photograph roller derby with my new high speed Einstein flash heads. My daughter Emily “Suzi Uzi” Murray was playing for the Victory Dolls all-star team against an overmatched opponent from Arkansas. I have always wanted to photograph derby with powerful high speed studio strobes. I have used [...]
Film – The New Cool
Funny how things come back in style. Recently several young photographers I know have really gotten fired up about shooting film. They talk about the look that film gives them, how you can’t recreate that in Photoshop, they love the manual guesswork involved in exposures. Kodak Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Two recent events brought film back [...]
America in Color 1939-1943
I recently saw these images at the Library of Congress and just fell in love with them. They were taken by photographers employed by the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information during the time before and during World War II. These are some of the few color photographs taken of rural America. I love this [...]
Drag Racing Parts
This weekend I photographed a couple of parts in the studio for Tombo Racing. These highly reflective objects are very difficult to photograph since they reflect everything in the studio. For this Hays racing clutch component, I hung the object on a piece of safety wire inside a white shooting tent. I used a black [...]
Cafe 501
A few weeks ago I needed a picture of Cafe 501 for my wife’s real estate blog. I arrived right before sunset and shot this photo hand-held on my Nikon D3s. Pretty simple shot. I used Photoshop to clean up some stray power lines to make it a little cleaner. A tripod probably would have [...]
Photographing Children
I don’t photograph a lot of children, but periodically I will have a reason to photography a child in my studio or on location. Over the years I have learned the most important thing when working with kids is to figure out some way to distract them and try to get them to think about [...]
Fall Tour of Southeast Oklahoma
After a long, record hot Oklahoma summer, I unexpectedly had a weekend free right as the fall colors were exploding in Oklahoma. I decided to take a relaxing tour of one of my favorite areas, southeastern Oklahoma. But this time instead of riding my motorcycle – my favorite form of transportation – I would take [...]