A success

I belong to a BNI Group that meets every week in order to promote word of mouth referral advertising. Today was our special visitor day. It was wonderful how the members came together to bring visitors to our meeting. Not only did we learn what others have to offer in the world of business they were able to learn about us as well. The members in my group have become a valuable part of my advertising team as I have also become a part of their team. If anyone is interested in being part of a word of mouth referral organization please feel free to contact me through my web site. The pictures found below were taken form my I phone. Not my best work but I think you can get the picture.

Words are not enough

How does one say thank you to our service men and women. Today it was my pleasure to photograph Josh. We can say thank you but words are not enough. We need to pray and support our men and women. During today's session a man came up to this young marine to shake his hand. This was an elderly man that said welcome home. This elderly man said he was a Vet and thanked this young man. I am proud to be an American and proud to see the response to our men and women from fellow Americans. Josh, it was a great honor to photograph you today. Thank you for your service!

Quite an Honor

I was reading my email just 2 evenings ago and to my surprise there was an email from the Professional Photographers of America. It was wonderful news! One of my Loan Collection images has been chosen to be published in the national magazine that is sent out each month. My image will be featured in the folio section of the magazine. I just can't stop smiling, this is quite an honor.

This image was photographed on a very cold foggy morning with natural light. the color of the branch of eucalyptus had faded as it was now winter and was practically dead. I used PhotoShop to enhance what color was left by increasing the saturation of the individual colors till it was to my liking. In order to increase the effect of the texture of the plant and the near frozen droplets of water I would make small changes using the unsharp mask feature and repeated that process untill it was to the desired effect. The background mat was created by using the original image on its own layer and applying the gausine blur filter to greatly soften the image then adding a texture filter that resembled a bumpy leather. This created a nice background image with the same color scheme. I added a small drop shadow to create some depth to the image and finished the image with a thin line of a complimentary color around the image.

A friend of mine told me about this technique so I thought I would try it. Too bad the glasses were not new. I am definitely going to buy some nice specks. Thanks for the tip Joan! Too bad you did not mention it before your daughters session. If you want to meet me some time that works for both of us we could do this for you. Lets talk.

Thomas

Glen's Video

Todays session in the park

Images From the Weekend with the Hughes

The pictures tell it all. Great friends, great food, great place at the lake and the best weather ever. A special thanks to the Hughes family.

Uncle Bud...

Well Today I had my sessions at the park then I called Uncle Bud to check on him. This is something I do every few days. If He has not heard from me he calls me to check on me. Because of this we usually talk every 2 days.

When I called him today he told me that the Theis farm by his house had tomatoes everywhere. He told me he would show me where it was if I had time to come out there. I went to his house after my sessions in the park and drove him to the farm.

When we got there I decided to photograph him as well as the produce stand. I had a blast. I also got a bushel of tomatoes and came home to make salsa and spaghetti sauce from scratch. Yum Yum!!!

I can't believe I did that!!!

Anything for a shot. That's my M.O. Today I was photographing downtown on the landing and it looked like rain. My client had an umbrella in her car. The great thing is that the umbrella matched her cute little VW Bug. I planned to return to the car when she changed into the outfit that would match the car. We discussed that we would use the umbrella at the car for some fun shots. We walked our way down to the river front and at that point she laid her umbrella on the ground nearby. We continued our session and I noticed a family in orange shirts also nearby taking snapshots. It was not till we finished by the river that my client went to pick up her umbrella and she said,"where is my umbrella?" I remembered the family in orange just next to us so I looked around the corner and there was a woman with the yellow umbrella. I walked up to their group while they were taking some more snapshots of the family on the statue. I walked between the person with the camera and the family on the statue and said, "excuse me I saw you had our umbrella and I would like to have it back." A woman said "where was it". I said "it was just around the corner on the ground". At that time another woman lifted her hand and gave me the umbrella. I said, "thank you". Then I turned away and began to walk. The woman shouted, "you should not have laid it down". I guess that she figured it was hers as she picked it up. I wanted to say you should not have stolen it but I just kept walking away. My heart was beating so hard. I can't believe I did that!!! It was important that we had the umbrella so we could get the shot with the umbrella and the car. Well all's well that ends well. See the shot below.