Longs Park, Lancaster, PA

I met up with my friend Joel to get my cameras hand strap that I lent him back. While there, I figured what the heck? I'll take some shots. It was a beautiful day with a bright blue sky. The ducks and geese were around hanging out and just waiting to have their pictures taken.

So, I got a few overall pictures and some of the fowl just hanging out. Then, something spooked them (probably Joel and I) and I got some fun shots of them flying away. I have to say that Longs Park is one of my favorite places to photograph. It's just beautiful, no matter how cold and windy it was. :)

Check out this beauty.


Some birds taking off. Actually they were heading away from us, so yeah, it was probably us that spooked them off. They were beautiful though.

Pic of the week. Happy Valentines Day!

It was a terrific Valentines day which started off with giving my wife her gold rose that I picked up. Along with a 2'x3' V-day card. Followed by some family time walking around the mall and checking out some deals. My wife got me a gift card for Lids (the hat store) since I lost my favorite UNC hat and needed to replace it. We then were lucky enough to have grandparents watch Alexa while we went out to dinner at the Olive Garden. I love the Tour of Italy! It's my fave, mmmmmm! As we were leaving OG, it had just started snowing. But these flakes were the biggest flakes I've ever seen. They were at least 1-2 inches in diameter. Falling in what seemed to be blizzard fashion, without the wind. So, we slid into Barnes and Nobles for some coffee, tea and to check out a few books. We then made it home in time to read a bit to our daughter and sit down to enjoy a movie. But not any movie, "our" movie, Serendipity. The movie has a special meaning to us, it's very similar to how we met and came together. Anyway, enough with the sap.

I'm posting the picture below of Philly because I took it on my trip with my friend Tim down there while lying to my wife. I told her I was going to help someone move while the whole intent of the trip was to buy her the gold rose from Steven Singer Jewelers. Tim and I haven't been down there together for a long time. We went to college down there together and it was like old times. Anyway, enjoy the Philly skyline from a bridge above the Schuylkill River. Have a good week.



By the way, a little more story about this picture. The picture, like I said, was taken on a bridge over the Schuylkill River. However there was a 7ft high chain link fence up that I had to stretch my hand and camera up over to get some shots of the city. Needless to say I almost dropped my brand new C5-D2 over the fence. Luckily I had the strap wrapped around my arm enough to prevent that. :) I'll do just about anything to get a shot I guess.

Lancaster Co Photo Meetup.com - Lighting Seminar

This past Saturday I was honored to help teach at a lighting seminar run by the Lancaster Co. Photo Meet Up group that I'm involved with. Along with my friend Brian who help run the show, Joel who did a great slide show presentation and some teaching. José, Brian and John who all did some teaching as well. We had about 30 people show up to gain some knowledge about lighting techniques as well as set ups.

Each station had a slightly different theme/setup. There was a set up with a blue background, hot lights and gels. A single light set up with a black background. A multi light set up with an orange background, and an industrial wood shop background with a 4 light set up that was run by a lot of Pocket Wizards. There was one pocket wizard on the power pack running the lights and about 8-10 extra PWs that everyone was snapping with. And since the models that we got free for the shoot were women, guess where all the guys ended up at one point. Needless to say it stayed pretty tame, we didn't want to offend anyone since there was good mix of people there. The setup that I was in charge of was a 2 light setup dealing with the effects of strobes/flashes and ambient light. It was going great, I brought my laptop and tethered my camera to it so everyone could see what I was doing and what was being affected when I changed my settings.

After I got a bit of shooting in at a few of the other stations I grabbed one of the models and a couple students and we walked the halls of the high school we were occupying. We took a few flashes and I was showing them how to do the same thing I did using the strobes with their own flashes. It was a great time and I'm looking forward to next months Meet Up.

School girl set up in the hallway with the hall lights brought up using ambient.


Single light set up on black background.


This is the 4 light set up in the wood shop.


This was a great set up and easy to move around the model to get different angles.


Finally in the hallways of the school. We used two flashes off camera right to create this interesting lighting with a little ambient in the hallway down the right side.

Pic of the Week!

This week I have an assignment for my photographers at the Magazine. I give out a monthly assignment to keep the creative juices flowing. This weeks assignment was Black and White. I have to admit, I was having some trouble with my creativity this past month, simply because of all the meetings I've had, as well as the wedding show that I did in January. Well, I had seen some smoke pics of a different flavor, and thought I'd give it a go for my assignment.

I wanted to keep it simple, so I simply used a black wall. Then set up two cold lights behind the smoke on 45º angles. Then put GoBos between the lights and the lens. I had a small candle sitting on a table and had a friend light the candle and then quickly blow it out. The smoke feathered up nicely. We tried it a few times, and this was my favorite. Have a great week!

Twitter! And the Pic of the week.

OK, so I've finally broke down and joined Twitter. Feel free to follow me there, my name on Twitter is MivillePhoto. I'll be talking about everything from my daily tasks, political notes and fun web sites, to photography tips, tricks and so much more! I hope you all Tweet with me.

Finally, below is the pic of the week. I had some fun studio time shooting a lens of mine. Converted it to BW and cleaned up some dust that I didn't catch in studio. Processed in Lightroom 2.