Welcome to Michael’s Blog!

Mala Wharf Part II

05.31.2012 | Photography

My good friends Warren and Kearstin are visiting from Idaho with their 4 children, and Warren’s brother Ryan, joined them. Ryan just finished his scuba certification this last weekend, so I thought I would take him out to the Mala Wharf in Lahaina for 2 morning dives. There was hardly anyone there, (no other divers at all) water clarity was good, about 40+ feet, but they were doing some work on the dock and there was a lot of falloff in the water which made it cloudy on the surface.

Its been over a month since I last dove, but I am starting to really dial my technique in for underwater stuff. I even decided to go with a smaller pancake type lens, a 28mm 2.8, simply because that focal length is just about perfect for general purpose use, and it is much smaller, lighter and cheaper than my 24 1.4. I think I am a fan of it. I mostly shoot in RAW, on Manual, and use my strobes for just a touch of fill. You can actually see the color difference on the turtle pic between light fill (Turtle) and Ambient light (Ryan).

I am also really starting to play around with color balance and intentionally tweaking it to get some different looks, including an “aged” look, (see turtle in cave).

Ill be posting tons of more pics soon. Here are a few of my fans from this morning:

Pima Air & Space Museum + Boneyard

05.30.2012 | Photography

If you either live or are visiting Arizona and haven’t already, absolutely take the time to check these 2 places out, especially if you are a photographer. They have so many different types of planes it is just ridiculous.

The Pima Air and Space Museum is made up of several large hangars, with a couple hundred planes parked outside that you can walk around and inspect up close.

The ‘Boneyard’ is on an Airforce base, and you tour it on a bus that you cannot exit, so all of those photos where take on a bus through a window. There are probably several thousand military planes there in many different states of storage, repair or salvage. I took a quick walking tour of the main Hangar, then rode on the Boneyard tour, then came back and rode on the Pima Shuttle tour for the outdoor planes. I think I spend about 7 hours there just looking, taking pictures and walking around. An absolutely fascinating place.

All images were taken with a Canon 5Diii and a Canon 24-70 2.8L . Nearly all of the indoor images that look ‘Painted’ were done with Michael Andrew Paintballer Pro ® – ‘Grenade’ – Preset . It took me about 20 seconds to process all of them using that set. (For some reason, Paintballer makes KILLER images of Planes parked in hangars). If you either live or are visiting Arizona and haven’t already, absolutely take the time to check these 2 places out, especially if you are a photographer. They have so many different types of planes it is just ridiculous.

The Pima Air and Space Museum is made up of several large hangars, with a couple hundred planes parked outside that you can walk around and inspect up close.

The ‘Boneyard’ is on an Airforce base, and you tour it on a bus that you cannot exit, so all of those photos where take on a bus through a window. There are probably several thousand military planes there in many different states of storage, repair or salvage. I took a quick walking tour of the main Hangar, then rode on the Boneyard tour, then came back and rode on the Pima Shuttle tour for the outdoor planes. I think I spend about 7 hours there just looking, taking pictures and walking around. An absolutely fascinating place.

All images were taken with a Canon 5Diii and a Canon 24-70 2.8L . Nearly all of the indoor images that look ‘Painted’ were done with Michael Andrew Paintballer Pro ® – ‘Grenade’ – Preset . It took me about 20 seconds to process all of them using that set. (For some reason, Paintballer makes KILLER images of Planes parked in hangars). Back at Pima Air & Space….

Afghan Box Camera Technique

05.29.2012 | Photography

A big thank you to Glen who sent this article in. We are a bit spoiled with all of our fancy dSLRs and smart phones that we constantly snap images and don’t give it a second thought. I personally saw these Wooden Box Cameras in action when I lived in Russia, but I didn’t know this is what was going on behind the scenes. Holy cow, talk about resourceful! The commentary, diagrams (and intermission ?!?!) were interesting- whomever put this together knew exactly what they were doing.