Canon 5D Mark II DSLR

I came across a very interesting snapshot of a spec video shot by Ken Arlidge using the Canon 5D Mark II. It seems the revolution is here so to speak.

In his words: "The results were remarkable and it is clear that this camera is a viable tool in the business of making television commercials."

Ken Arlidge is obviously a pro and knows how to shoot motion. While many of us may not be as adept as he this certainly can open up possibilities for us doing video personally and/or professionally.

It really is a beautiful piece of work he has done. I only wish all Coke commercials were this enjoyable.

Coke "Bottles" Canon 5D MKII test/spec spot. from Ken Arlidge on Vimeo.

Keith Don't Go

If the title to this post doesn't ring a bell it is the title to a song by one of my favorite musicians, Nils Lofgren. He has played with E Street Band, Ringo Starr, Neil Young and has countless solo albums out there. If you are not familiar with his solo work check it out.

But I have already digressed. I admire the work of Annie Leibovitz but what this is about for me is Keith Richards. He defines Rock and Roll. Who would have thought he would me hanging around with Louis Vuitton luggage. I would have guessed more likely an old duffle bag but what do I know.

Anyway there is some cool lighting Annie does here, I just have to wonder, with both of them being such high profile people what the vibe was in that room. I bet it was way cool!

You Suck at Photoshop #5: Select Color Range

If you haven't seen any of these videos let me just say they are FUNNY.

Whether you know the process covered or not you will get a laugh watching Donnie walk you through various Photoshop techniques.

I think there are a series of 20, all funny and for those new to Photoshop informative.

New Website Up!

I just spent the last week doing what I thought would be a fairly easy task, updating my website. That was not to be the case.

With a lot of time on my hands, my arm still in a sling, one thing led to another and the end result is that I completely redid my website. I added new images, which would have been easy enough but I decided to complicate this by going back over hundreds of older files looking for images I had not used for one reason or another.

Then since so much of my existing web imagery was a couple of years old and feeling like I know a LOT more about using Photoshop now I thought it wise to start from the original RAW file and re-edit almost every image.

Turns out I am really glad I did both. The downside to my new knowledge is there just seem to crop (no pun intended) up those images that I can spend infinite amounts of time on playing with variations.

A good example is this image. I shot it six months ago and before finally saying, “okay this is it!” I must have started from the RAW file 25 times at least. I have a new appreciation for landscapes and photographers that shoot them.

Then I decided to change the type face of my header. I thought this would be quick and easy but I turned it into a full day of looking at type faces on what seems like every website that has them. Good news is I learned a lot about type...man there are some awesome type faces out there...there are also some really weird ones to put it nicely. Towards the end my eyes started to glaze over and at one point I even considered this, well for about a split second.

Probably a good decision since I don't want people to think of me as the chain saw photographer as a friend of mine put it.

I am using http://www.sitewelder.com/ as my host company and I can't say enough about the good people that run things there. They are amazingly fast to get back to me answering any questions I have and are also great about tweaking things for me when asked.

Here are a few other new photos I added: