expecting a philosophical, introspective monologue here I bet.  Nope, I’m looking for someone who goes by ‘me.’  They left me a message on a couple of buildings telling me I’m beautiful.  It’s such a rare and awesome compliment I feel the need to track them down. They’ve always signed, ‘says me.’

So if you know ‘me’ send me my way.

And if you know where these structures are I’ll buy ya a beer.

Big fish, small pond.  Small fish, big pond. How about someone else’s pond?  I met with a potential client sometime ago who said, “we have some projects that would be appropriate for a local photographer.”  This idea that ‘local talent’ is somehow compromised is short sighted and ridiculous.  Especially here where I live in Jackson Wyoming.  The talent around here is off the hook.

So I began to give this more thought, where does this idea come from that bringing someone in from another place is going provide a better product.  I’ve worked for clients in Hawaii, Turks and Caicos, countless places in Europe and all over the US.  Yet I may not be good enough to work in my own town! I wondered how I could dispel this myth, how could I break this down and make it clear that talent is right here.

Then I realized, I don’t want to dispel this myth.  If someone wants to hire a photographer from New York or Los Angeles and they think that makes them a better photographer, fine.  Perhaps there’s someone in New York who wants to hire me because I’m not from New York!  I certainly appreciate my clients who fly me around the world and country to take pictures, I can only imagine someone is pretty psyched to come here to Jackson to make a buck.

In another post I’ll be sure to talk about the benefits of hiring local talent.

I spent time with my Friend Ron while visiting California this past November.  We took a ride through the Oakland hills in his 66′ Mustang, stopping take some pictures. Every once in a while I meet someone who inspires me.  Well this guy inspires me to put my best forward.  So humble and unassuming I’m sure he has no idea what a great impact he has on anyone who gets to know him.  I’m happy and thankful to call Ron my friend.

High Dynamic Range imaging is a very useful tool when it comes to working with images that have a great diversity of light to dark, I just don’t like the results.  Simply put a camera just can’t see from shadow to bright as well as the human eye can.  One of my goals is to create images that look as good as the actual scene, and sometimes better.  Take a look at the first image below, this is what the camera sees.  When in fact the human eye sees this and the incredible views of the Grand Tetons out the window.  One solution is to use the built in function of HDR in the camera or take multiple images at different exposures and use one of many available softwares to combine the images using HDR processing.  This can yield good results in some situations.  For many situations, such as a log home where there are extremes from light to dark, the results are not great.  And certainly not up to my, or my clients, standards.

I also use multiple exposure to create the image in this situation but through a very different process.  Here’s how it works.

This first image is simply the available light and an exposure for the inside of the home.  Obviously this does not do justice to what this home has to offer.

In this image I have used lights to bring up the exposure of the interior walls surrounding the main windows to match that of the outdoors.

And here is the exposure where I’ve done the same with the side room windows.

This exposure is simply to make sure I have all the windows without my lights reflecting in the glass.

Here we are blocking the glare from hitting the table in the foreground.

The Photoshop work required 7 layers, 5 of which had masks and yielded a 1/2 gigabyte file.  It’s a fair bit of work but when the goal is an exceptional photograph that truly reveals the space it is so worth while.  This is a situation where digital manipulation creates an image that is more like what the eye sees.