What’s Gotta Stay

Newport Beach, CA.

Tags: sunset

Last night was the harvest moon, so I thought I would try and get some photos of the moon. Unfortunately the weather – and some other obligations – were not cooperating. As the moon came over the mountains it was hidden by clouds.

Before heading to bed near midnight I went to turn off the outside light; but, when I hit the switch it actually turned the lights on. It was so bright outside from the full moon I actually though the porch light was already lit. I went outside and saw this beautiful, bright sky lit entirely lit by the moon. So, of course, I ran inside and grabbed my camera and tripod.

Here are a few other shots of the sky, moon and clouds I snapped over a few minutes.

Camera info: Canon 5D Mark II. 70-200L 2.8 and 24-105L. Most shots are at 1600 ISO, f/8 and f/2.8, 10-20 second exposures.

Tags: night, sky

This last week I acquired some new (used) studio lights from a friend. I am excited to get to use them and understand how to improve my lighting with the new tools. Without doing much set up, I asked my daughters to pose for me to just see how much light they cast compared to my old, cheap lights. I was happy with the results.

Though I wasn’t trying to make any memorable portraits. I captured a few of my beautiful little girls that I thought I would share. Robyn above and Allison next.

Tags: kids, portraits

…A counter full of freshly canned peaches and a house that smells wonderful!

Ok, happiness is a lot of things, but this is definitely one of them in my book.

Tags: food, storage

I am continuing to take food photos for my wife’s ongoing recipe projects. Heather is testing, selecting and gathering up our family favorite recipes for a “best of” book to cook from. As she creates a new favorite recipe, she’ll prepare a plate for me to photograph to put in the planned book. Here are a few other recent photos from this project.

If you’d like to see the recipes for these and many other most excellent dishes, head on over to the “recipe” tag on our family blog: http://www.hallblog.com/search/label/recipe

Tags: food, recipe

It’s not often I get the chance to get out camping two weekends in a row, and even less likely I will get time to hang out with my camera late at night. This last weekend though I was able to spend three nights out with my family at Palisades Campground, just south of Manti, Utah. The very first night I was so enamored by the amazing, clear view of the sky that I spent hours out with my camera capturing various views.

We had a couple of neighbors that also joined us at the same campground. One family brought their nearly two year old granddaughter with them. We arrived late, so it was already dark, and when she stepped out of the car, she looked up and simply exclaimed, “Wowwww!” My feelings exactly.

Last week was a lot of fun with photographer friends, but the location we were at didn’t provide the wide, unobstructed view like Palisades had to offer. I shot every angle, with plenty of “throwaways” in the bunch, but several I was happy with. Here are a few of the keepers.

This is the view looking over the reservoir with Manti City providing the “rim light” glow behind the mountains.

I was fond of this shot how the Milky Way appears like fire coming off of the silhouetted tree.

On another evening, this was slightly earlier catching Twilight looking over the water. The reservoir levels were much lower than we have experienced in years previous because we were later in the season. The reservoir provides irrigation water for the nearby farms.

Finally one last view of the sky. This was actually one of the first I took that evening we arrived. You can barely see it, but about a third of the way down and in the middle, there is a shooting star. Yes Suzanne, I finally got a shooting star

Tags: night, stars

This last weekend I had the opportunity to enjoy camping with some photographer friends with the idea of relaxing, socializing, sharing, and generally looking to improve ourselves. It was a great weekend for me and I was happy to get to know some friends better all while doing some introspection. I look forward to developing my skills further and following through on some personal goals made.

Both nights I stayed up with a few night owls and made some night images. I confess that most of what I made looked pretty good on camera, but I found some serious faults when I got back and looked at the large on the computer. Good learning experiences even though there wasn’t a lot I’ll be showing online. I did take a lot of detail photos throughout the day, but I’ll decide later if those will appear in another post.

Half of the fun was the making of the photos, and some of the craziness that surrounded it. That’s one of those placement things though; you had to be there. Here are a few images made pointing the camera up at the sky.

I loved how we could see some of the Milky Way in this setting. We had to make the photos during the window of time after dark but before the moon started to come out creating too much ambient light. The moon was awesome, it just got in the way of a pure night sky!

This next photo was made as I was toying with different settings trying to get more of the Milky Way to show up. It all backfired because the stars were moving too fast (yes, I know we were actually moving) so in a short 3 minutes the stars instead looked like a huge meteor shower!

Don’t you love those orange trees? That’s entirely lit by the firelight. Amazing what a 3 minute exposure will pick up!

This next shot shows what happened just a few minutes later when the moon came out over the mountains. This is only a 30 second exposure, but look at all that light on the trees.

Finally, turning the camera toward the rising moon, I positioned the tripod so the moon was hidden behind a tree because it was so, so bright. Hiding the moon allowed me to capture the glow along with some stars in a way I was pretty happy with the results.

The weekend was exactly what I needed on many levels. Thanks to Everyone involved in making it awesome, both in planning and simply being there.

Oh, and yes Suzanne, you are a superstar! My photos didn’t get a shooting star, her’s did. I’m a loser

Tags: camping

I had the wonderful opportunity to be the photographer for Nicole & Brodie’s wedding process, from engagement & bridals to the wedding and reception. I am not a frequent wedding photographer, so I feel like I need to work extra hard to rise to the occasion each time. I feel blessed for being a part of their experience and share in their joy. This post is long overdue, but I thought I’d share a few highlights from the various shoots. I am going to break from my normally concise post format and put quite a few photos on this post. As a result you will need to click through to the post page to see them all.

I hope you enjoy getting a peek into their happiness from these few photos. You can see their full event page with many more photos.

Continue to the full post to see the rest of the photos

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Tags: bridal, engagement, reception, wedding

Serenity: repose – a disposition free from stress or emotion

This was the scene I enjoyed every night on my recent family vacation to San Clemente, CA. Pure relaxation.

Tags: beach, sunset

This last weekend I had the opportunity to return as a photographer for the “Big Blue Bash,” an annual event held by the Salt Lake Chapter of the Cougar Club. My good friend Kelly Branan invited me along last year to co-shoot, and we repeated shooting this event together. It’s always a pleasure hanging out with Kelly, and the BBB is a fun event at which to capture photos.

The event typically features a couple of current players, a recognizable past player and some coaching staff that each share their thoughts on the upcoming season. This year didn’t disappoint featuring Head Coach Bronco Mendenhall, Tom Holmoe, Chad Lewis, JJ Diluigi and Brian Logan. MC’d by Greg Rubel and Blaine Fowler. This is a great event for Cougar fans north of Utah Valley put together by Chapter President Brad Jensen.

Everyone was talking about the possible conference changes, quarterback possibilities, etc. The short answer is that no answers were given Lots of fun talk though.

I look forward to this event now and appreciate being called on to help document the fun evening. Here are a few highlights out of the over 400 images I shot that night, of which just over 300 were delivered. This night was yet another situation where I was very happy to have the ability to shoot at 3200 ISO to deal with the very low light conditions typical to this kind of event.

And of course I have to post one “shooting-the-shooter” of Kelly at work

Tags: byu, cougarclub, event