Wanting to post

I've been so busy these past several day and have not had the time to post to my blog. I have just returned from Florida where I have been photographing the construction of a large bridge. Erik and I have shot some nice video and I will be posting soon.

It is really hard to keep up when your shooting a lot and your schedule is packed, I'm doing my best. I leave on Tuesday for St. Louis for another assignment, back on Thursday. I really hope to post the video from the fashion shoot of a few weeks ago, video from the San Diego shoot and now from the Florida shoot.

I'm not a Chase Jarvis with a staff of people to help me, I'm truly a one man band. When I'm not shooting I'm looking for new business, answering email, working on mine and my late fathers taxes, blogging and trying to have some personal time with my family. I also have two workshops coming up in Feb. which I am looking forward to.

I guess what I am asking for is some patience, new videos and more comprehensive posts are coming. I know that it is a self imposed pressure I put on myself, I just wanted to let you know what's been going on. DT

The image posted above is from my newly converted D-70 camera to infrared. I'll have a future post about that also.

If I Only Had A DOLLAR!

If I only had a dollar every time I hear; You should have been here.... or To bad you can't be here.....

I here this stuff all the time. It's very frustrating to arrive on location and hear those kind of comments when your there to shoot an assignment. For what ever reason, your there and you have a job to do and you deal with it. On some occasions you actually hear, "your timing couldn't be better...."

I'm currently working on an annual report for a construction company with projects all around the U.S. I started this project several months ago and we are fast approaching the deadline for photography. Thus far, we've shot in Yakima, WA, Ogden, UT, Salinas, CA, Monterey, CA, San Diego, CA (last week) and Key Largo, FL (next week). I still have St. Louis, MO and another location (somewhere?). I have to have all work completed by Feb. 16th and time is running out.

I may be forced into a timing and availability (my availability) issue regarding the remaining locations. The Key Largo project has been scheduled to coincide with the placement of a major support for a bridge that their building. In St. Louis, it's all about weather!

It's hard to forecast the weather, I've been using weather.com for my forecasting. I try to look for a large window of good weather and book ticket as far in advance as possible. With 3 more locations to go and only a few more weeks available, I may be facing less than perfect weather. If that becomes the case, I'll deal with it. Inclement weather can and has, provide wonderful opportunities to create dramatic images.

I'll attach a few images from last week in San Diego, CA. This location was one of those, "to bad you can't be here ...." times.





We did have nice weather for our shoot, but not the amount of active we would have liked. My client was contracted for site clean-up from the Southern California fires back in October.

I have a up coming post about a fashion shoot I had this past weekend. "Fashion" you say. Industrial Dave is stepping out of the comfort zone. Here is a sample from that shoot.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

My wife Debbie and I have just returned from a weekend trip to St. Augustine, FL. St. Augustine is a beautiful historic city and I would recommend visiting if you have an opportunity to do so. The city has a history dating back more than 400 years, the city was founded in 1565 making it the oldest city in the U.S. For more history of St. Augustine click HERE.

While in St. Augustine, my wife and I attended a ghost hunt at the St. Augustine Lighthouse. This was a perfect opportunity to test my new Nikon D-300's high ISO/low noise quality of this camera. It was also the first time I had used "auto ISO" programing in a camera.

The St. Augustine Lighthouse rises 165 feet above sea level and contains 219 steps. At the top, a first order Fresnel lens serves the beacon. The St. Augustine lens consists of 370 hand-cut glass prisms arranged in a beehive shape towering twelve feet tall and six feet in diameter.

I am totally thrilled with my new camera! Here are several other shots to look at from my trip.

Just having fun

Yesterday I had a chance to do a lighting test with Ian. I was shooting with my new D300 and my DYI ring flash. I'm really enjoying my new camera, little noise at higher ISO's (1240 ISO is no problem).

Anyway, the set up here was the ring flash in front of course and 2 SB-800's on stands just behind and on either side of Ian. The snow in the background was quite bright and I was forced to shoot at a higher f-stop than I wanted to. I suppose if I had used an SC-17 cord on the master flash, I may have been able to use high speed sync using Nikons CLS?

I also tried putting the above photo of Ian into a landscape and applying a "Dave Hill" post processing trick. There are two tutorials to look at if your interested the the process. The first appears on a flickr discussion group HERE. The other is located at talk-mania.com, this is more of a Gritty/Sandy type process.




I'm headed to St. Augustine, Florida for the next few days and will be unable to post during that time. I look forward to visiting with you on my return. DT