More SPCA

My photo display has been a big hit with visitors and employees alike at the Richmond SPCA, so I have been continuing to add more photos as pets get adopted. Below is the latest batch of awesome animals, as well as a little behind the scenes video showing some of what it takes to get the final product. More to come...

Back from Vacation

So it's been almost a month since my last post and the major reason for this is that I have recently returned from a cruise in the Caribbean. It was a blast and you can expect to see lots of photos soon, but I am far from being done looking through them all. I will most likely be posting a few at a time as I get them processed, instead of waiting and posting them all at once. To hold you over until then, here a few snapshots from Belle Isle this weekend when my sisters came to visit. Also featured is Piper, you may remember her from a few posts back and she is still up for adoption at the Richmond SPCA. She is so awesome and hopefully will find a good home soon.

Runnin Wild in the Streets

So the big news of the week is that we have a new member of the family. Upon returning home one day we heard meowing coming from the parking garage, and after investigation found that there was a kitten living in the drain pipe. Shawnee ran to the SPCA to get a trap and after a few hours we had successfully gotten the kitten into our apartment bathroom. Long story short, after a week of quarantine the kitten has been given a clean bill of health and is now a permanent resident. So with that said, I would like to introduce to the world our new gang member Cara.

At first she was very scared and alone after fending for herself.But she began to warm up to us pretty quicklyAfter another week she now has full run of the house and is best friends with Oliver. You can expect to be seeing lots more of her.

SPCA

I have still been working on donating photos to the SPCA, and things are pretty much together now. This week I am going to finish figuring out the best way to display the photos at the shelter, and I have ordered my flyer's for them to give out in their adoption packages. I really hope that having the pictures hanging up will help find homes for some of the animals that have been there for a long time. Heres a few of the photos from last week that I am having printed, most of these guys are still at the Richmond SPCA for adoption at the moment, so if one jumps out at you visit www.richmondspca.org and give the little guy a home. I will have another post later with other updates and photos from a new camera!

Panoramic Tests

Shawnee and I were down at Belle Isle again this Thursday with another dog from the SPCA, and I decided to try something new. I have read a lot about how great the new picture-stitching automation in Photoshop CS3 is compared to the older versions, but had yet to ever give it a try. I have to say that everything I read was true and that stitching these panoramic photos together worked almost flawlessly, with only a few touchups needing to be done manually. I want to do some more of these soon with more carefully planned compositions, and print them large to hang in the apartment. Not only does this process give me the ability to get a much wider angle of view then even our 17mm lens will allow, but it also makes the end result so much more detailed. These pano's all consist of between 5 to 10 photos shot with a 10 megapixel camera, which creates an end photo that in essence simulates a 50 to 100 megapixel file and gives much more detail then simply cropping one photo to panoramic proportions. It is hard to show this off on the web, but I have included one of the photos a second time at the end of this post with a 100% crop to try and give you an idea of how much detail is in these. Thats enough tech talk for now, enjoy the pictures.

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A little longer than expected

Well this isn't exactly the next day like I had said in my previous post, but here is the other photo from my shoot with Shawnee at Belle Isle. I planned on doing some extreme post-processing on it throughout the week but ended up liking it enough the way it is, so I left it alone. I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out.

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On another note, I'm happy to say that I am going to be donating photos on a regular basis to the Richmond SPCA where Shawnee now works. As an employee, she is able to take animals for the day when she is not working to give them time at the park, etc. I thought this would be a good opportunity to have some fun taking photos of the animals, and also to hang some prints up at the shelter as another incentive for individuals to adopt them. The SPCA thought it was a great idea and we are going in tomorrow to go over the details with them. I am planning on making a print on metallic paper of each animal that I photograph and letting the new owner take it with them when they get adopted. I am excited about this, and hope it will also get me started in doing some other pet portraits for people in the area. This is Piper, whom we spent the day walking with at Belle Isle after her photo shoot last week. Look for lots more to come.

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Shawnee's Belle Isle Portraits

One more philosophy paper to write and the semester will be over, and then its time for Summer! Hopefully I will be getting a lot accomplished. I would like to put all of my free time towards my photography and getting my business going, however from the number of prints I have sold lately it looks like I will be needing a real job for the Summer. I have new business Moo cards on the way, and hopefully I will be putting them to good use and getting some new clients. If not, you can expect to see a lot more photos of Shawnee. Here's a few from Belle Isle yesterday, I used natural light and a reflector which is a change for me from my usual studio lighting setups I love so much. I've got one more to show using the ring flash that is my favorite, but I'm trying some different post-processing on it so you'll have to wait until tomorrow.

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Scary Oliver

This weekend for me will be filled with school work and preparing for finals. Hopefully after next week I will find lots more time for some photo shoots, I'm preparing to start doing some artistic pet portraits for people around Richmond to add to my portfolio. Not much else will be going on the next few days, but here is a picture of Oliver I did real quick last night since the background was up after Shawnee was done with her shoot. Scary Halloween kitty.

More Critters

Shawnee and I took an outing to Belle Isle today to enjoy the nice weather, and it seems that most of Richmond had the same idea. We finally found a spot without too many people, and I proceeded to look extra nerdy taking more photos of bugs while she laid in the sun. The macro is fun, but the depth of field is always so shallow that focusing on anything moving is a pain. I promise my next post will contain something more exciting than caterpillars, but for now check these out.

Maymont Macros

To celebrate Shawnee getting a job at the SPCA today, we took dinner down to Maymont Park for the evening. I used the nice weather as an opportunity to play around some more with the macro lens attachment we purchased recently. For the amount we spent, it works surprisingly well.

Hello

In an effort to keep the world updated with my photography I have recently redesigned my website, and as a part of that created this blog. In the past there have been great lengths of time and many many photo shoots in between updates to my site, and this blog is my effort to change that process for the better. I will be doing my best to post here regularly with new photos, behind the scenes, and other things of interest that have up until now fallen through the cracks before seeing the light of day. Check back often, and I hope to be hearing from you all soon.
-Josh