Washington D.C. #1

Since there are so many photos from my trip to Washington D.C. I will have a couple posts, each with different pictures. I'll start at the beginning of the week and slowly move to the end of the week. For the first day we went to a few places but the three places that were my favorite and I have a lot of pictures from are, The Library of Congress, The Supreme Court, and Arlington Cemetery. All three places are extremely old and have so much history to go along with them it would take me forever to tell you, so I'll just stick with a couple of facts.

So, every single building that you go in has security guards and metal detectors. It is extremely irritating to have to go through one even if you want to just go to the bathroom. I guess they just don't want anybody to blow stuff up. Anyways, if you take any shots near the security checkpoints or of something that they don't want you to take pictures of, they will make you delete all of the shots you took.

A lot of the shots that I took are architectural, because the work was just amazing.

This is the Library of Congress. I wasn't able to get inside the actual library, I even tried just walking in and they talked to me and told me to leave and that I wasn't allowed to be in there. So of course they followed me out of the building and made sure that I left. All of these shots are outside of the library. It was an amazing place, all of the artwork and decorations were absolutely incredible.They kinda look like one of the sample images from the Canon tilt-shift lenses. Somewhat of the same style, i guess.

The Library of Congress had so much detail in every square inch of the whole place. You can really see it in both of these shots.

Here are some of the Supreme Court building. It isn't decorated as extravagantly but has some amazing features. I was laying on the floor for some of these, but then they kicked me out. I got escorted out by security guards. I got some great shots though!

The beautiful ceiling of the Supreme Court entry way. Everything is made out of marble.

This is a spiraling staircase that is in the Supreme Court building. The stairs are actually carved out from the wall, not just stuck onto the wall.

Arlington Cemetery was by far one of my favorite places that we went to. It was just absolutely beautiful and peaceful. The graves of soldiers and many other people just went on forever out into the distance. They never stopped going, it was truly amazing. We went in early evening when the Sun was setting and I got some good shots with the graves, but one of the coolest parts of the Cemetery was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

These are from the Tomb of the unknown soldier. These are the guards who guard the tomb 24/7. The change the guards out every half hour.

A couple shots of the thousands of graves that are in the whole cemetery. The graves seriously went on so far in the distance you couldn't see the end of them.

Well that's the first day of my trip. We had a lot of the activities planned for the first day, so the rest of the week slowed down a little bit. I'll have the next post on my trip up soon. Any comments or suggestions would be great!

Thank you to everybody who looks at these posts! And also if you want to see anymore from these sections of my trip, please let me know.

-Kellan

Fire Arts

Soooooo many pictures to go through. So I just took a trip to Washington D.C. and am still sorting through the thousands of pictures I took. I will start with some stuff that I took before my vacation.

So, I am really into fire arts and fire dancing. I have even performed a few times in front of large audiences. Some of the stuff I do is...... staff, poi, devil sticks, and fire breathing. For this post I have some pictures of staff, fire breathing, and poi. All three of these are the most popular and well known. Some of the shots are just standing still and some are with the movements and spinning the fire.

The spinning and movent shots I have done before. You just set the exposure for a couple of seconds and the flame trails just fill the whole screen. Thats the easy part, and I have been doing those shots for a couple of years. Here are some from the past and present. Charlie, my friend, has been spinning fire with me for a few years.

One of the more recent ones. A shorter exposure making look darker. This is my friend Charlie.

Charlie spinning again. A longer exposure, a little brighter than before.

Here are some shots of something new I tried. Since I have a few studio lights, I set one up outside with just a modeling light setup, no flash. I was trying to light up just the person with out seeing the background. Usually you cant see the person when they are fire spinning, all you can see are just the flames. For the first time trying it, I think they turned out rather well.

First shot we did with the studio light trying to just light up the subject. Charlie is spinning for these two.

A little later, more of a flame but the subject is still a tad blurry.

After getting used to the lighting we tried a few a little darker. You can still see the background a little. This is me for these two. Charlie took both of these shots with me in them. Thank You!

Well this is one of the last ones that we did, the background was almost completely blacked out, but I reached my goal with all of the ratios of shutter speed and what not.

Also here are some really cool shots of Charlie kicking a can of gas. We managed to light half of the garage on fire, and some of my lawn in the backyard.

Thats all for this post. I have a couple more posts that will be coming really soon, they are about horse jumping and Washington D.C., two things that I have never shot before. Any comments or suggestions on this post would be great!

-Kellan

Big Basin Redwoods State Park

This past weekend I went camping at Big Basin. It is a huge redwood grove that spans for miles. It has waterfalls, tons of plant life, and it is just a beautiful place. This was the second time I have been there, I had gone a couple years ago but never had a camera. I had my 50D to shoot with, obviously. I had over 1000 shots but I picked the best ones.

While I was there I went on a 12 mile hike out to a group of waterfalls that just kept going, there was one after another, and they just didn't stop. I spent more time on the last one that we came to over all of the other ones because it was the biggest and was more beautiful than the others.

This was the first waterfall we came to, it was one of the smaller ones.

A small little river stream that broke off from the main river.

This is the huge waterfall that we came to last. I spent most of my time shooting here.

Just one of the sides of the big waterfall. I really like all of the ferns that grow around all of the water. They make it seem more wet and almost tropical in some ways.

There was such a diversity of plant life and habitats that it was impossible to get them all in just one day. I am putting up some of the best shots I got, I just had soooo many to choose from that I couldn't put all of them up.

This was a really cool plant with huge leaves that collect water. Since it rains so much it has huge leaves to collect water instead of drawing a lot of water from the ground.

I also tried some new stuff that I had never done before. It was Seth who inspired these shots, I remember looking at his website and thinking, hey I could try that. What he did was he had a really long exposure and then moved the camera in a spiral while its shutter was open making it look hella crazy and spirally. So I tried that but with moving up and down and side to side.

These two shots were definitely my favorite from the whole trip, I don't really know why though. All I know is that they look really cool!

Well that's it for this one, more will be coming in the near future. Any comments or advice is greatly appreciated! :)

-Kellan

Crab Apple

Alright......, so I haven't posted anything in a long while. So I am going to have a bunch of small posts on all of the different pictures I have taken over the last couple of weeks.





This post is on a Crab Apple Tree that is right across the street from my house. It is now spring and all of the plants and trees are in bloom. I walked out of my house one morning on my way to get a bagel and some tea, and this tree just caught my eye. It was a rather cloudy morning but there was a break in the clouds. I ran in and got my camera and this is what I got.........



I especially love flowers and plants. Especially really close up so you can see all of the details. I don't have a macro lens so i just make do with the ones that I have. They work really well for me right now, but I am slowly starting to acquire new and much more advanced equipment. Its a big change from what I used to shoot with, I'm still trying to get used to it.





Anyways back to the Crab Apples, this tree is a huge tree and I only really focused on one part. Just one little branch and then I tried some stuff that was a little higher up. The tree was up on a ledge, and I couldn't get too close to it so I tried my best to zoom in and get wide angle shots. They turned out really well. These are five of 400 shots that I took. They are the best, of course.
















One of the things that I'm not sure whether I can change or try and overcome is when you focus on a subject up close and you can only get a small part of the subject to be clear and in focus. I really noticed it in these shots for some reason. I guess I just never really noticed it that much before............



This is one of my favorites.


Well that's all for this post, I'll try to get a bunch of stuff up in the next week or so. I just have so much to go through, and look at. Anybody with comments or advice please post them, everything helps!


-Kellan

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