Easter Sunrise Service

Took a bunch of photos a few days ago at the Easter Sunrise Service.  We got up real early in the morning so we could drive to the Pueblo Reservoir before the sun came up.  We set everything up, and pretty much just enjoyed the sunrise over doughnuts and coffee.

While everybody probably was enjoying it quietly, I was running around like a mad man snapping as many shots as I could while the sun was most colorful!  I think I got some pretty good shots.  It took a couple days to go through them all in Lightroom (adjusting all the settings--exposure, contrast, saturation, shadows/highlights, etc.) but when I got them all done I was really pleased with the results.

See what you think below!

March--Family Photos, etc.

A lot has been happening this past month, both for my photography and my life in general.

Probably the biggest thing right now is, I just got my full driver's licence!  It's been a very long process, but now I have it and will be driving around as soon as I get a working car.  I was also supposed to get my motorcycle endorsement the same day, but we had the wrong paperwork, so it will have to wait a few days until I get the paperwork to them.  Once that happens, I'll be able to legally ride my own motorcycle on the streets!  (of course, I'll need to get the bike licensed and stuff...)

I've also been busy working on some projects for Thunder Road Ministries.  This year, when we are at Sturgis, South Dakota during Bike Week, we will set up Kidz Zone again.  But this year the theme is a spin off of Pirates of the Caribbean--instead, we'll be going as the Pirates of the Galilean!  Dad asked me to create a banner for it.  He gave me his idea, then asked me to put it down on a graphic.  A few hours later I had photoshopped the above photo together, and asked Dad what he thought of it.  We went through a few rounds of refinement, but after it was all done, Dad was very pleased with it.

Now that my brother has a baby, his wife is taking a lot of photos of her.  However, they wanted me to take some official photos before the baby got too big, so we went out one day and took the photos.  The results are in the slideshow below.  It was pretty difficult to work in the bright, unfiltered sunlight, but I made do with what I could.  I think it came out pretty well.

I recently went through a lesson in flash photography in my photography school, and it really made me want to dig out my old flash unit (it was actually Dad's before he gave it to me) and try my hand with the flash.  But, after taking both the camera and the flash to Best Buy to see if they knew what was going on, I found out that there was an issue:  The camera is too new for the flash.  Before, when I was using a Canon Rebel T1i, it was compatible.  But when I upgraded to the T2i, they cancelled support for a lot of the older flash units, mine included.  So now I'm looking into buying a new flash unit.  I don't want to lay down a whole lot of cash for one, but it is an important tool, especially in things like portrait photography.

Here's the slideshow...if you like what you see, please consider me the next time you need portraits taken, because I'd love to try to work something out!

Baby Pictures

Now that I'm the uncle of Josh's and Mrs. Emily's new baby Natalia, I thought I'd post some photos I took of her.  These came only a few days after her birth--she's already grown so much that she looks different!

I have to admit, I especially like that black and white photos (okay, they're slightly brown tinted; gives them a warmer look, in my opinion).  I've never really taken baby photos before, but I think they came out okay.  I'm looking forward to taking many more photos in the future!

February, 2013

School's been coming along well.  I've gotten a couple different assignments, things the school says it's good to practice.  The most recent thing I've worked on was in a lesson on artificial lighting.  I set up a miniature version of my studio with my lights and backdrop and all that, then photographed stuff while re-positioning the lights as needed.  For the water photos, I asked my sister, Emily, to help drop the food coloring in and stuff.  I think the results were pretty sucsessful, but you can see for yourself below...

Also, I threw in a couple different experiments as well.  Just a bunch of photos from around the house.  We got the flowers for Valentine's Day, so I felt obliged to photograph them as well!

Army of One--special effects in Adobe After Effects

Army of One from Zachary Hubbell on Vimeo.

This is a short clip I made while experimenting with adobe After Effects. I actually shot the footage a few years ago, know what I wanted to do with it and knowing how to do it--but, unfortunately I did not have the right equipment at the time, so the computer froze up before I could make any serious progress on it. Now, however, I have the equipment and was able to do it in a short amount of time.

While I realize it is pretty limited, has a few technical issues and is very short, I think it's pretty cool and is a start to learning After Effects!

By the way, you may notice one guy actually lands a blow!

General Update

Well, things are still going on, slowly but steadily.  I've been keeping at it, working my job and studying my materials from New York Institute.  As always, seems like time just moves on at the speed of light, while I'm just trying to keep up...

However, there are a few things of note I should share.  For one, I now have a motorcycle that works at the house!  This has been a long journey, as Dad and I have tried several times to devise a plan to get the bike down to Colorado all the way from Wyoming.  But finally Dad was able to find a person who shipped it, and although it cost quite a bit, it was worth just having the bike finally!  So now I just have to get my licence...

Got a couple new post-production tools--the first I got was Windows 8.  Windows 8 probably isn't an investment most people would make--especially since I was already running on windows 7.  However, I've had to help Dad with his new netbook that has windows 8 on it, and we just built a custom PC running the same operating system, so I was able to get familiar with it very quickly.  In addition, my computer was really starting to give me a hard time.  It took a very long time to start up, and it felt like the last time I knew I needed a new laptop.  But before I bought Windows 8, I wanted to see what I could do with what I had.  So I backed up all my files on the external hard drive and reformatted my computer completely! --Or, at least, that's what I tried to do.  But apparently Toshiba puts their factory reset feature onto a separate hard drive partition, and I had to boot it in some weird thing to get to it, press f6 for 2.7 seconds....you get the idea.  After lots of research, I couldn't find the answer to my problem.

That was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back, and I decided to just get Windows 8.  I knew I'd love the new features and that it had a way faster start-up time, which is exactly what I was wanting.  On top of all that, Microsoft had a special deal going on that would end at the end of the month, so I bought it at a pretty cheap price for a new operating system.

So, that was one thing that's making me feel electronically proficient this month.  But another thing happened just today.  I was in a second-hand thrift shop looking through the electronics.  Usually you can't find much for electronics at a place like that, as it's generally too old or missing a part, or something like that.  But today I found a Wacom graphics tablet for $20!  Granted, it does look like an older model, but it still functions the way it's supposed to.  I've been looking for one of these for a while now, but the near-$100 price tag at sellers like Best Buy have always driven me away.  But now that I found this, I can happily say I can draw a curved line on a computer.

What's great about these graphics tablets is that they work with programs like Photoshop and Illustrator to let you hand-draw edits in a photo.  This can come in help when I'm making detailed retouches on a photograph or designing a flyer or something. It's nearly impossible to really write letters with a mouse--try it, you'll see what I mean.  But being able to hand write on the tablet makes it easy (even though there's a little getting used to it)...

Also, thought I'd mention I'm going to the Summit Ministries Student Conference.  It's a two-week course that basically teaches about the various major worldviews that most people believe in.  I've been planning on this for some time, as many of my friends have gone and they really enjoyed it.  I think it's a cool program--you can check it out on their website, if you'd like.  They also offer college credit, which I'm thinking I might need in the near future.  Dad and I have been talking about going to college recently, what I might do in it, what jobs it might help me get, how I could pay for it--for now I'm just in the research stage, but I'd like to be sure I'm ready for it when I decide to start.

Anyway, that's how things are going for me right now...excited to see what happens in the coming months!  I'm about 2/3 of the way through the New York Institute of Photography training now, and am enjoying it a lot.  Also, the 168 Film Project, which I helped with last year, has been moved to the Spring/Summer time frame  so I'm excited for that, even though it's going to be an extra wait.

Wintertime photos

Here are some photos from my latest photo shoot   Nice thing about this one was, it was all in our back yard!  I love days like this, where I can just go outside and shoot in outstanding beauty.  I've been doing my schoolwork with New York Institute of Photography, so I was able to use some techniques I've learned.  I just recently sent in my test photos, which ends unit 1 out of 6...things are coming along well!

If you see a picture and you would like a print, let me know, and we'll work something out.  You can email me at:

spideyclick@live.com

Hope you like it!