Creative Peaks Photography

A Little Magic!

jmirro — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:55:21 +0000

I have been playing with Photoshop layers. The slideshow running below illustrates some of the results.

Home Theater

jmirro — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:36:03 +0000

We recently did a shoot of our friend’s home theater. It’s Amazing!

Images From the Amazon

jmirro — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:45:52 +0000

Here is a slideshow of some of our Amazon images. Go to www.creativepeaksphotography.com to see our full portfolio.

Picture of the ?

jmirro — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:40:57 +0000

This week we had an assignment photographing food, in particular, baked goods. After working for about six hours arranging, lighting, and photographing a whole bunch of food I have a lot more respect fo the people who style and photograph food for magazines. It’s very difficult.
Here’s what we learned:
Lighting is crucial. Shadows can either work for you or against you. We had two lights with us and at times I felt like that wasn’t enough. The challenge was to get the food looking natural without hot spots and to keep the image looking like we didn’t use a flash. Which we didn’t, but incorrect positioning of the lights would cause harsh shadows making the image appear as if it were artificially illuminated.
Next came the background. I can’t tell you how many shots captured something unwanted. Or an unwanted glare on a surface.
I’ll add more to this as time goes on. One good thing though… I got to eat some of the props!
The image here is one of our better ones. To see the whole collection go to:
http://jmirro.zenfolio.com/p363705967

Featured Location – Wyoming

jmirro — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:18:28 +0000

Once or twice a summer since 2005 we have been making trips to southern Wyoming and staying in campgrounds in our motorhome in either Rawlins or Rock Springs. From there we travel north in our car into the Red Desert to look for and photograph the wild horses that roam freely on BLM land. We have seen a dramatic reduction in the numbers of horses we find so we hope our photographs will help preserve this American legacy. To see our complete portfolio go to: http://jmirro.zenfolio.com/p263561199

Just for Fun

jmirro — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:42:18 +0000

I couldn’t resist doing this in Adobe Illustrator.

: Santa and the Moon

Picture of the ?

jmirro — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:20:19 +0000

A few nights ago we waited outside on our back porch for the moon to rise. We knew about where it would clear the pine covered crest of the mountain behind our house. I liked the idea of having the pines silhouetted against the bright moon. Linda got this one. It’s a good image, but we knew we could do better. I was looking for something a lot crisper. The image was captured at f5.6, 1/125 sec, and ISO 100 using a 400mm VR lens mounted on a tripod. I can’t tell from the meta data whether the VR was off. Since the lens was on a tripod, it should have been. In order to improve the shot we decide to do it over again the following night from a more stable surface. We think our back porch, which is elevated one storey, could have been adding a little vibration. Unfortunately, when the moon rose the following evening, and we were set up on a more stable surface, it was behind some very high thin clouds, so we didn’t take any shots. We’ll have to wait until the next full moon.

Changes for improvement: More stable surface for tripod, ISO set to 200, f stop set manually towards the middle of the range of the lens, make sure VR is off, and get out of the wind.

Full moon rising over pines.

Sony Play Station 3

jmirro — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:50:49 +0000

We just bought a Sony Play Station 3 and I wanted to pass on that this is a great device for photographers who have a Hi Def TV in their homes. When coupled with a media server, like TVersity, which can be downloaded for free, all your images can be displayed in Hi Def on the TV right from your computer files. It affords a great amount of flexibility. Mine will display JPG, RAW, and TIFF. There’s no need to convert all your images to JPG and no need to copy them to disc or a memory stick. And BTW, you can also play games and Blu-Ray movies. In fact, the movies look better on the Play Station than on my original Sony Blu-Ray player.

Picture of the ?

jmirro — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:58:21 +0000

Every January, the town of Breckenridge, Colorado, hosts an international snow sculpture contest. Each team starts with a 12′ x 12′ block of snow that is packed together by volunteers who stomp the snow down in wooden forms. The teams then have several days to complete their sculpture. Here’s an example of a completed sculpture:

Printed a Large Format Image and Learned Something.

jmirro — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:06:41 +0000

Yesterday I had one of my large format images printed for the first time. I wanted to see the detail. I was very pleased. However, the file I gave to the printer was a JPG of 13MB. The printer suggested that the next time I bring a TIFF file with a bit depth of 8 because it will give me more dynamic range, especially with the grays. I just re-saved my original PDS file as a TIFF and the result was an 83 MB file. I’m guessing there’s a lot more information there. So… next time to the printer I’ll try the TIFF. The image I’m experimenting with is located here: