A Crazy Dude I Know........

Here is a link to a blog that my good friend just started. I met him at a summer camp a few years back and he is one of the coolest dudes I have ever met!

He taught me how to do almost all types of fire arts, including poi, staff, and fire breathing. Now I am starting to master all of the techniques and skills it takes to become a fire art performer. He is also from Australia.

So check out his blog, he now has a job with Cirque du Soleil doing stage tech. You really cant get much cooler than that, seriously.


http://danielfulloon.wordpress.com/


-Kellan

Studio compilation

Well I haven't ever posted any of my studio work before so here are a bunch of different shoots that I have done.....

I have done so many with friends and family that there is just so much work that I haven't ever gotten around to posting. I'll start of with Winterball and end with just a regular practice shoot. My friend and I got hired to do portraits at Winterball back in January. We didn't have any studio equipment and barely knew how to do any portraiture work. It turned out very well considering we had never touched any studio equipment before. With the help of a neighbor and Jessica, we pulled it off. My neighbor had worked doing portraits with Sears and Jessica had done a bunch of studio work with Amos, so she knew everything better that we did.

Unfortunately I lost all of the first portrait shots but here are a couple from Winterball.......

The first one was a little bright but it looked good, all of them turned out great though.

I do so many shoots so I'm only putting up the best. I did one with my sister a while back which turned out very well. I really like doing close ups on people's faces. It makes the shot have some feeling and emotion. I've gotten pretty good with doing those kind of shots.....

This is my sister, I tried to get a solid black background. This is when we had only the muslin black and grey background. Its really cool to get half of the face totally dark and the other half lit very softly.

This is one of the more recent shoots I have done. I had just gotten the solid black and white backdrops and a new backdrop stand. I had a friend come over so I could experiment with the new equipment. I didn't have time to use the solid white one so all of these shots are just with the black backdrop.

During this shoot I tried to focus on highlighting a part of the face but having it blend into the rest of the face. Just like the Sun, i guess i could put it that way.

Tried to do the same thing.

This one is just a regular head shot. This one is also by far my favorite.

it is really nice to have the solid backgrounds, it makes it so you don't have to worry about completely taking out the background, as in setting up the lighting a certain way. Sooooo much easier.

These are all of my favorites but more are to come soon....

Please, any comments or advice are a huge help to me and my work.

-Kellan

Russian River

This past weekend was an epic weekend with no limits. My family along with a couple of friends took a trip up to the Russian River for a couple of days and just went all out on craziness and fun. We went up early Saturday morning and came back late Sunday. Its amazing how much you can do in 36 hours..........

One of the first things we did when we got there was we went to explore the banks of the river. We were determined to find a massive cliff to jump off into the water, and of course after about an hour of looking we found one. The only way to get to it though was to swim across the river to other side and climb up. The water was freezing, probably in the 40's. We were able to reach the other side and jump off from the highest point. It was basically like jumping into a frozen lake without the ice. That's why we only did it once.

This is the cliff we jumped off of, all the way to the right. Had to get a running start to get out to the middle of the river.

After freezing our asses off we went back, took a shower, and had a bite to eat. We stayed the night in a little cabin in the middle of a Redwood forest. Its an amazing place and the trees are massive. The crazy thing about really thick forests like the one we stayed in, is that it is dark all day long. You cant tell what time of day it is unless you go to a place where there are no trees. Its definitely very unique. I took a lot of shots in the forest but also ventured off to the river where I got some fantastic shots.

This is some of the moss that grows in the forest. Since it is somewhat on the coast, it is constantly raining or is really foggy.

When I went to the river to shoot it was around the time of dusk. The light was amazing. The river is kinda hidden by the trees so that the light goes right over the top casting light all across the banks of the river.

This is when the Sun was just going over the trees, giving everything else a golden color.




Both of these shots were much later in the evening. I was able to get the reflection in a little stream that was feeding into the river.

I spent that last few minutes of my trip at a little lake that was a mile away from the banks of the river. It wasn't very windy so I worked on some reflection shots. I was extremely intrigued with a little bridge right on the end of the lake which produced a perfect reflection. I haven't really had a major chance to work with reflection before but I think these shots turned out rather well.

I tried to get the reflection of the trees behind the water lilies, too bad there weren't any flowers on them. Turned out rather well though.

This reflection was great! Perfect placement of the bridge and the lighting was terrific.

Well that's about it for this post. Those were the best pictures out of the whole trip. I am working on getting a couple new items, battery grip and a larger picture card. I ran out of space and battery on the first day, so i had to constantly charge and upload my pictures.

Feedback would be awesome! And thank you to everybody who reads and comments, it helps me a lot with getting my name out there and improving my work.

-Kellan

Canon 50D

Finally, I was able to get my own camera. I got a Canon 50D, it is so different than the xsi I was sharing with my friend. It is bigger, has faster fps, and much more. It just has so many more options and settings than the xsi did. I got it about a week or so ago and am still getting used to it. I have just been messing around with it and trying out the many settings that it has.

I got the camera in a package with 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 lens. The lens is just a standard zoom lens but works pretty well. It is a better lens than the other two that I had with the xsi. It is also a lot bigger and I haven't really gotten used to the size of it. Everything that I had with the xsi was smaller scale stuff but still worked just as well. I haven't really gotten over how much bigger this camera is. I know that it sounds a little weird but I haven't really had the opportunity to use more advanced equipment. Its a ton different but I'm liking it a lot so far!

I haven't taken too many photos with it so far because I'm trying to get a bag to keep it in so it won't get all busted up. But I have gotten some good stuff! These are a combination of around Piedmont and Tahoe Photos.......

I got the camera on the drive up to Tahoe, perfect timing. So I was able to use it a ton up there. The weather was ok, there were only a couple clear days, otherwise it was cloudy, foggy, or hazy.

This is a view of Mt. Tallac with a crescent moon around 5:45pm or so, 1/3sec, f/9.0 at 320 iso.

This was around 5:00pm, another view of Mt. Tallac, 1/640sec, f/18 at 100 iso. I thought the clouds looked really cool with the Sun reflecting off them.

These ones are just around Piedmont. I am really interested in flowers and up close kind of things with flowers.....

This is a plum tree in bloom in my backyard. Al the trees in Piedmont are starting to bloom showing spring is just around the corner. 1/100sec, f/5.6 at 100 iso.

It was a dark, cloudy day when I took this picture so I completely blacked out the background. This one is my favorite, it just turned out really smooth. 1/200sec, f/6.3 100 iso.

Well those have been my favorite so far. There will be plenty more to come in the very near future. If you have any advice or feedback on the shots that would be great. I just got the camera and any help is greatly appreciated and much needed!

-Kellan

Longboarding

Today was an amazing day! I was able to go out and shoot some good friends of mine longboarding. They have truly amazing skills. They are out everyday boarding and sliding and just everything you could think of, when you think of skateboarding.

Today their skating spot was the top of Piedmont. A lot of of the newly paved roads are at the top of Piedmont which make it the best place to skate, everything is a lot smoother and cleaner. Peidmont isn't the ideal spot to skate though because people complain a lot and the police come up and kick us out, which causes us to keep moving to different streets. The cool thing about being at the top of Piedmont is you can see the whole bay in the background, unfortunately today was hazy and cloudy so it wasn't the best view. But I got some really good shots, like the one below, processed it hella much, but it looks really good.

This is Syd and Evan sliding at the same time with the bay in the background but it was really hazy so I cut the bay out of the shot.

A few months ago when I first got the camera I was able to shoot my friend Syd in the same location. I was first learning how to use the camera and had a lot of trouble getting clear pictures. This time I had two other friends with me today, Tomio and Evan. I was able to get 4 times as many pictures as I had gotten before. I took roughly 600 pictures this time and they all turned out rather nicely. The camera that I have right now, the Canon xsi, has only a 3.5 or so, but it worked out really well considering how slow it is. Here are some of the shots I got......

Syd coming around a corner.


Evan doin a slide hanging way out behind it.




Syd coming around a corner, he was trying to do some slide where you would do a 360 and recover going down the hill, crazy shit.

Tomio coming around a corner at like 30 mph, he was goin hella fast!

These are some of my favorites. I processed almost all of these pictures because it was really sunny and hazy making some of the pictures rather bright and washed out.

This is Tomio doin a slide down the second hill after the cops came. It was a good hill and had some good angles. I processed this shot a little and it ended up looking really good.

Evan doin a huge slide. I processed this shot a lot but it looks really good.

Any advice would be great, I am starting to go with them more and more to shoot them skating so there will be more photos in the near future of them.

-Kellan

A first for me......

Ok so I decided to change the name of my blog cause I am totally focused on doing my own thing, and also because it's my watermark..... But anyways this is a first ever post for me. I have been trying to get Photoshop for a while now but all of the copies have failed and have not worked. I recently discovered that one of my family's old computers has a version of photoshop 6 on it. I just started using it and am actually proud of some of the work i have done so far.....

I have always wanted to make a panorama of something. I got the motivation from Amos and a couple of his panoramas which are really beautiful. So I have looked through some of my sets of pictures I have taken recently and have found some that worked just perfectly. I took them thinking that some day I might be able to make something of them.

Here are the ones that I made today, they aren't perfect, but of course it was my first time trying all of this out and getting the hang of it. Also I didn't process the photos in Lightroom first so some of the colors are kinda wacko and don't go together, but they still look okay......

I used 4 shots for this one, 15 sec exposure f5.6 at iso 200. Besides the middle shot it looks pretty good. The Bay Bridge and San Francisco.

I used 7 shots for this one, you can see some of the lines where I put them together, not really sure how to get rid of those. Lake Tahoe from the top of Heavenly.

I used two shots for this one. Looking down into the American River from the top of Echo Summit.

These are two different pictures of the same thing accept the traffic lights are different colors. Stateline at Lake Tahoe, Harvey's casino on the left with purple lights

Well that is what I have so far, if anybody has advice or comments please let me know cause I need all the help I can get. I am just getting started with this and there will be many more to come.

If you get all the pictures together the right way panoramas are amazing.

-Kellan

Fire

My two main goals in life are to be a professional photographer and to be a firefighter. I am well on my way in both directions. This post will be on some of the firefighting pictures I have taken. For now they are only of equipment and the rigs that they use. I haven't gotten a chance to get them in action on a fire yet. Fires are incredibly rare around Piedmont and I am not familiar with all the surrounding fire departments.

I have spent a lot of time with the Piedmont Fire Department because I want to try and learn as much as I can about being a firefighter and EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). As soon as I get out of high school I am hoping to have half of fire science degree completed. Next semester I am planning on taking a Wildland Firefighting class. The class is mostly going to be about the technical aspects of wildland firefighting, ex. How to set a controlled burn, how to use different tactics to put out a forest fire not using water. Also some labs will be worked in at some point.

By the end of next school year I plan to have my EMT certification allowing me to work with AMR or some other company, basically all mobile ambulance units that dont work out of a firehouse.Photography for me will always be the same as firefighting. For me my photographing career has already started and I am already starting to lift off the ground and soar with it.

I have been at the Piedmont firehouse doing ride-a -longs, basically doing everything a firefighter does for a day for ex. going on calls and what not. I have had a bunch of opportunities to take pictures of the rigs and all the equipment. Here's one from a while ago....

This is a turnout jacket. Turnouts are the clothes that firefighters use when they are fighting a fire.

These are the different hose lines that are carried by the truck, they are color coordinated to show the width and strength the hose can carry, psi.

Now these shots are from a couple days ago when I ran into some Piedmont fire guys learning how to pump water through the truck. The truck carries all of the ladders and some hoses. The engine carries all of the hoses and pumps the water from the hydrant and usually has to pump water through the truck, the engine also has a huge tank that holds water. The unique thing about the Piedmont Fire truck is that it holds water in a huge tank and can pump water from a hydrant, the term for that kind of truck is a Quint.

This is a shot of the guages that are used to keep track of the pressure of the water coming out of the truck and also which line it is coming out of, hose or ladder.

Another shot of the guages.

The Tele Squirt 65, this is the huge ladder that is on top of the truck that is used to reach buildings and what not. It has a massive nozzle on the end.

The lights are guages to how full the the tank is in the truck or quint. The little wheel thing in the corner opens up the tank so water can go in or out.

Another shot of the guages. I was really intrigued with how they looked that day.

This was my favorite shot out of the whole day. I saw the reflection and just took a bunch of pictures of it. Looked totally awesome. It was wet on the ground from all of the water that was being pumped and it just gave it a kick.

-Kellan

Lightroom

I haven't really gotten into the editing and processing of pictures yet. I have Lightroom but am working on getting photoshop. I have started to play around with Lightroom more and more and have gotten pretty good at it. I havent ever liked to idea of taking away the real photograph and changing it, I like mine to be natural. But of course I like to play around with these programs quite a bit.

A lot of these are from the day that I shot at the Piedmont Fire Department because it was really bright and reflective.

These are my recent photos I've experimented with......

This image was in color and I messed around with the vignettes.

In this one I sharpened the image and changed the exposure and brightness. Before it completely washed out.

I sharpened and played with the vignettes a little. It was really reflective before.

I sharpened this image and made it less reflective before I played with the lens correction and post crop settings.

I took this picture when I was out with Amos. The colors in the sky weren't as vibrant before and I changed the sharpness.

Any input would be great cause I am really just getting started with this program and need all the help I can get.

-Kellan

Snow

I took a trip to Tahoe during winter vacation. My family owns a cabin in South Lake Tahoe. Our street is located in a very unique place. Our house backs up to thousands of acres of National Forest Land. Desolation Wilderness is about a mile to the left of our house and we have lakes in the surrounding area, small and large. You can walk for miles and be out in the middle of nowhere for days.





This is the view and part of the hundreds of acres of national forest land in our backyard. This is Mt. Tallac.







This was the first opportunity that I had to take the Xsi up to the mountains. Since I recently got the olympus I was using a point and shoot camera for years. I took around 3-4 thousand photos in a week vacation. I was able to travel a lot of places by snowshoe or skiing. there wasn't a ton of snow but about a couple feet so it was easier to get places. The only problem for shooting, it was cloudy everyday because it was snowing almost constantly. I got some pretty good shots though.






Before we got over the mountains and into Tahoe we stopped a couple of times. We first stopped at Lake Natoma outside of Sacraemento. The only reason we know about is because I used to row with Oakland Strokes and a majority of our races were at the same lake. There are all sorts of paths and docks that go up the lake and have some excellent picture opportunities. When we got past Placerville we started to climb up the hill. We take Hwy 50 into Tahoe because it shoots you right out to where our cabin is. Anyways we stopped at a couple locations, along the banks of the American River, and Bridal Veil Falls.



This is one of the trails that go along the banks of Lake Natoma.






Some berries I found at Lake Natoma, it had just rained.





A huge steel girder sitting on the side of the American River. It has been there for years.





When we stopped at those two locations it was dark enough that I was able to get the water to look really smooth with a longer exposure, about 1/20 f5.6. I have always thought these kind of shots look absolutly amazing. Its an unreal effect.

















I took this shot when I was sitting in the middle of the river, I tried many times to get the shot because it was so dark and I had the shutter speed at 1/5 f5.6 but it was also at 100 iso making it harder.








Bridal Veil Falls

Right after the river we started climbing up Echo Summit. I got these shots before we went up and over the mountain.



The fog that day was amazing, it was covering everything like a blanket. We got there jsut as it was breaking up.


This is looking down from higher up on Echo Summit. It is basically looking down to where I took the picture thats above this one.

On Tuesday I was able to make it up to Heavenly ski resort for the day. The snow was relatively nice and there was powder everywhere from the night before. It was freezing cold when I got to the top, around 10 degrees. It was sooo cold that they were making snow all day which was a sight to see, never seen them actually making it before. The really cool thing about Heavenly is that it is the tallest ski resort in Tahoe, around 10,000 feet. The other incredibly unique part of the resort is that it covers two states, California and Nevada. You are able to see all of Tahoe and if you just go over the hill you have a beautiful view of the valley and Carson City in Nevada.

This the view from the top of Heavenly. In the picture is Mt. Tallac plus most of the whole mountain range and most of the National Forest land behind my house.

This is an extension tho the picture above. The lake, West Tahoe, the Tahoe Keys housing area and some of Heavenly at the bottom of the shot.

I took these two the last day that we were there. My brother and I walked out on a dock in Camp Richardson which is a couple miles from our house.

This was the only sailboat anchored on the whole South Side of the lake. Pretty amazing to see only one boat....

During the winter all of the boats that are usually anchored up in the lake get taken out and wrapped with this plastic protection. They all get stored right next to the lake in this big area with racks for jetskis and then they just line the boats up in the middle like this.

I know its a lot of pictures but I couldn't choose just 1 or 2. I took a total of 4,136 pictures while I was up there. It was a really fun trip.

-Kellan