I was out in a local trail area called the Enduro Trail. Its part of the Kisatche National Forest area in Louisiana and its geared towards ATV usage. And this year the majority of the areas had gone through a controlled burn to “help” mother nature along. I’m not a big fan of controlled burns. Mother nature did just fine on her own before we came along to “help” out. Anyways getting off of my soap box the purpose of my trip was to get out of the house and take some landscape & HDR images as 2008 has been a slow year for me photographically speaking. Winter Mushrooms is the 1st HDR image I’ve processed out of the collection of photographs taken from that session and I’m loving it. The image seems to really stand out in its coloration without being surreal as so many images on the net seem to appear with the HDR technique applied to them nowadays. So yea, this is it. HDR applied realistically.

I recently had to travel to Charleston South Carolina for some family issues and while in town I had a few hours early in the morning to wander about the shore.  I took my camera with me and of the photos I took this is one of my favorites.

This HDR was generated using 3 exposures from a hand held Canon 350d.  Nothing fancy just having some fun with HDR.

The thing that bothered me most about hurricane Gustav was the fact that it turned out to be a big non-event.  I know that its good for the populace of Louisiana & Texas and such.   When days and dollars are spent on such an event you build this expactation of the raw power of nature being unleashed apon you and in the end, when that doesn’t happen there is this sense of dissapointment.  None the less Gustave did leave me with a few rare colors in the sky and for that I am gratefull.

I have this thing about snails…. I love them when their population isn’t exploding in my fish tank. This particular snail was a terrestrial type that was crawling up a plant on my porch. What makes this shot unique is that its one of my first shots using an off camera flash. As I’ve entered the world of the strobist I’ve had to start the learning curve all over again.

This duckweed was taken at Chicot State park at around noon. It was hot with no wind out but the photo demanded to be taken…

So here we go, round 3 with WordPress. I keep coming back to WordPress again and again. They must be doing something right. This image was taken at Chicot State park in Central Louisiana near Bunkie. A lot of photoshop work later this was the end result and I have to say I really like the dark moodiness of it.

At a recent event I had the opportunity to photograph a young christian band.  This is one of the images from that event.  Others will follow over time.   What made the series interesting is that the images were all blurry.  However when I came back to the collection some time later and got creative with the Photo Shop filters I came up with the settings you see now.   All in all I’m quite pleased with the end results.   One failed photo session brought back to life.

In early December 2007 I was to be found walking a small loop trail over at Raymond B. Diaz State Park in Eastern Texas. Much to my surprise I found a pair of water Moccasins. One was Male and one was female. This one decided to pose for me while the other (larger) one was running away.. I used the 300mm lens and had some distance between me and the critter before I started shooting.

“To The Steadfast And Loyal Infantrymen Of The Famous Fourth”