Bail Bonds, open for business!

I have driven past this place on the way home a few times, especially at night, and I've always wanted to take a moment to try and capture it.  So this night I decided to pull over and see what I could do.  Night scenes are always a little tricky and with the lights, passing cars (shooting across the road) it was kind of an interesting exposure balancing act.  In the end I did get what I was looking for. They kind of messed me up with the flood lights - those where new - but it still worked.

Bottom line, and moral of the story, when you see something you want to shoot you probably should stop and do it...  Before they add the floods!

Impromptu idea

I was trying some test ideas with my daughter Deanna when she decided she wanted to do this pose.  It was pretty amazing for me because he was like, "I'm going to sit here with my legs going like this and looking this way, take the picture."  I was like, "okay" and it was a pretty neat shot.

Camping...

I had the opportunity to do some night photography a few days ago. One of the themes that I wanted to explore was camping. Since we were going to be spending a few hours outside, in the dark, the idea came up early on about having a 
“camp fire” to hang around and stay warm while we were getting a few ideas shots. So, I was thinking, “hmm, so we’ll have a fire I just need a tent!” Luckily my wonderful wife Denise could remember where we put the thing and into the truck it went.

Once we arrived at the location and scouted a few areas, while the sun was still out, we went on our way to create the camping scene. I was pretty happy with the results and I’m hopefully that a designer will be able to incorporate some of the images that were created into their next killer design!

On the technical side night shots are a bit more complicated that normal shots. For one your internal camera meter just isn’t going to cut it (unless it will resolve multi-minute exposures). So most of the shots that night were 3 to 5 minutes at F/8 with the camera set to ISO 200 (the native for my Nikon).