Canon 28mm f1.8 Lens

I just ordered a used Canon 28mm f1.8 lens from a photographer on eBay. Look forward to using this lens for interior available light photography. It was highly recommended by other members of the Maryland PPA. I have used the Canon 85mm 1.8 and I love it; but it's too long for normal interior shots. I'll post some shots after I receive and try out the lens - most likely after Christmas. Wow - I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do.

Fashion Images

I just added a new link for fashion portraits from different runway and other fashion shoots. Most of the images are portrait images from different events that can be seen in the event sections of the web site.

Cheap Lens Hoods

I just found this website that supplies free templates for making cardboard lens hoods for all types of camera lens. It's http://www.lenshoods.co.uk/ This is great when you loose or bang up a hood and you want one in a hurry.

Caribbean Cruise

Last week, Kristie & I took a cruise to the Carribean aboard the beautiful cruise ship Carnival Destiny with WeDJ.com, a group of wedding DJs, videographers, and photographers. We attended several WeDJ.com marketing classes and photography workshops. Gary Kaplan, international award wining fashion photographer & wedding photographer, taught several short workshops on attitude for creativity and business and Photoshop overlays and filters.

We had the honor to dine with Gary & his wife Ellie in the fantastic Destiny Galaxy dining room. We hung around a bit during the trip and tagged along for a wedding dress fashion shoot and I took a few pictures while he was shooting. I really thank Gary & Ellie for their advice and assistance in helping set up Brittany for the photoshoot. They not only supplied the wedding dress; but Gary also applied her makeup, set up the initial poses and worked with WeDJ to obtain the model, permissions, and releases. The trip was fantastic and hanging with Gary & Ellie was not only a great learning experience, but great fun as well. They're a little crazy like us. Here's a link to Gary's blog - some really impressive and expressive images.

Here are a few pictures from our trip. Slide show of some pictures from the cruise are here

Atlantis, Bahamas


Signing the Shells, Bahamas


Bacardi Building, Bahamas


Carnival Destiny, Grand Turk

A few Images from the Bridal Fashion Shoot

New York City Day Trip Collage

Here's a collage image from my New York City day trip images with a little different presentation.

Added an Amazon Associate Link to the Blog

Just added an Amazon Associate link to help support this blog. All proceeds from purchases on the Amazon links below will be used to help  keep this blog updated more frequently. Thanks for your support - George

Pictures from the New York City Day Trip

Well, here's a few pictures from my New York City Day Trip. It was well worth all the walking. More can be seen at http://georgeskeptonphotography.com/nycdaytrip/

New York City Day Trip Photoshoot

I joined a group of photographers for a day bus trip to New York City. Set the alarm for 2:30AM , caught the bus at 4:15AM so we could catch the early morning light in New York. Got to China Town about 7:30 with the smells and sounds of the Chinese markets opening. Watched a TaiChi group at one of the local parks, walked to Foley Square, the Law & Order courthouse for a group shot and more pictures of the Federal building benches and of the skyscrapers. Then we walked to and over the Brooklyn Bridge and back, taking a few nice pictures along the way. On the way back, about 3,000 "Live United" marchers for the United Way poured onto the bridge towards Brooklyn. We survived the stampede. 

Went to the South Street Seaport where a bicycle for a day festival was held. Took more pictures of the people. Had lunch, then walked to Wall Street, caught a subway and headed for Central park. Walked through the park to Shakespear's Garden, Belvadere Castle, The Boat Lake, Belvedere Terrace, Wolman Rink, Poets Walk, and back to China town via the subway. Caught the bus and headed home. A lot of fast paced walking and sightseeing for the day. 

A great trip and a great overview; but not enough time to really study and capture the places in photographs. I'll have a few photos up shortly.

P3 News & Reviews Online Magazine

Just added a new link to my Helpful Photography Links for Brendan Cavanaugh, President of P3 Imaging Inc. for his new P3 Photographic News & Reviews online magazine. Take a look for some neat reviews. Good luck Brendan. 

Professional Remodelers magazine photoshoot

Just finished shooting 2 evenings of award dinners for the Reed Business Awards Dinner for Professional Remodelers magazine.  Awards were presented to many of the top home remodelers in the country at McCormick & Schmicks restaurant and the Sheraton Inner Harbor, Baltimore.  

I'm looking forward to be published in their magazine.

City Docks, Annapolis

Joined up with a shutterbug group early this morning (6:00 AM) at the city docks in Annapolis, MD to capture some sunrise pictures. Even though it was a really overcast morning with no visible sun, I knew there was still a sun behind the clouds - we just couldn't see it. I had a feeling I could get the sun in my images using some forensic processing that really digs into images and pulls out unseen details and colors. 

To capture the most dynamic range for helping get more details across the exposure range, I took three exposure bracketed images using a tripod and combined them in Photoshop HDR. The resultant HDR images werent that impressive since the cloudy lighting was pretty flat. They needed further tonal and contrast processing with Photoshop and additional filters to capture the details. 

Here are two of the images. Even if they are not purist photography, they do truly represent what was photographed, just with a little more detail and colors that the human eye or camera could not normally see with the heavy overcast. There is no cloning, no special brushes, no manual  dodging or burning - just pure computer image analysis and processing.

Capturing the Sunrise - City Docks, Annapolis

Sunrise - City Docks, Annapolis

Time to update the blog

It's been a long time since the blog has been updated. Have some updating to do and will backdate them to get a true chronological order of things. My last blog was Jan 30, 2008 - so everything between then and today has been backdated.

Theres a new MySpace page for George Skepton Photography to share my photography and services with a larger market - http://myspace.com/gskeptonphotography. If you're a Myspace person, please sign up as a friend - let me know you found it through the blog. Here's the Myspace slideshow - some of the models from Baltmore's Fashion Week.

3D Journey

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Went to see the 3D version of Journey to the center of the Earth with my niece, Julie. I promised to take her to the movies before school started. I thought the 3D effects were fantastic with great videography and CGI. The story line was just ok; but it was well worth seeing.

Rick & Deb Ferro Seminar

I attended a Rick & Deb Ferro Selling Portraits seminar at the BWI Shearaton. They are fantastic speakers and successful. I picked up some pointers on turning digital photographs into digital paintings, some new product ideas - I'll talk about these later when I start adding more product lines to my business. I picked up a few marketing affirmations too - keep my blog updated at least twice a week to ensure the search engines stay up to date (this was the incentive to update my blog) - join a formal business networking group - I have a few in mind - reformalize my goals and expand my product lines.

Baltimore's Fashion Week 2008 - Day 5

Baltimore's Fashion Week 2008 day 5 was fantastic. I photographed the models using off camera flash that gave me a bit more modeling of the models, better emphasizing details and allowing different lighting patterns, as opposed to shooting the models straight-on on the runway. You can see the pictures at http://georgeskeptonphotography.com/baltimoresfashionweek_081508/

Baltimore's Fashion Week 2008 day 2 & Workshops

Baltimore's Fashion Week 2008 day 2 was fantastic. I want to thank Sharon Nixon the fashion show organizer who did a fantastic job of publizing, getting local support, and pulling the entire week together and Jeff Butler who did an excellant job of assisting and keeping the photographers on track.

I attended a short workshop on fashion photography by Roy Cox - one of the local hi-end fashion photographers and a short workshop on modeling hair and makeup by Tim Coburn - another hi-end fashion photographer.

Between workshops and the fashion show, I checked out some of the archiecture of the War Memorial building where the show was held. It's a fantastic older building with all marble interiors.

Heres a few runway images of the models during the show. http://georgeskeptonphotography.com/baltimoresfashionweek_081508/

Four Days of Learning

Hi Everybody - it's been awhile again. I attended the Maryland Professional Photography Association (PPA) 2008 this past weekend - Friday thru Monday with 4 great speakers - Hanson Fong, Mark Campbell, Jamie Hayes and Mary Fisk-Taylor. Learnd some about studio work, flow posing, work flow, high-end glamour photography, and high-end marketing. I don't know how much will stick or how much I can apply about the marketing when the Hayes and Fisk team charge $300 for a studio portrait session, $125 for an 8x10 print, $1000 for an oil-touched 16x20 photo, and hope to average about $3000 per studio session. They partner with businesses like Saks, Mercedes Benz, and other high-end businesses in the Richmond area hoping to capture that type of clientel. If you are reading this, I have to assume that you are in this class of client. Just kidding. Like our photography and your life, our prices are real - for real people.

I submitted a print for competition and earned a merit for show exhibition along with a lot of other photographs from some of the best photographers in Maryland. My image didn't quite meet the judges standards for size, presentation, mounting, and lighting. However; I take great pride in the merit and a few comments by casual viewers. Some though it was the best photo in the display exhibition. Just a note - prints made for competition aren't normally the prints that clients buy or those that regular viewers appreciate. I have to learn more about the PPA judging game and start shooting images for competion besides shooting just for clients and for myself.

Enigmatic Elegance

One of the neat little things I learned was about lightness perception explained with an illustration of the Koffka Ring. Gray is a standard used in photography for exposure control and is the most predominant shade in black and white photography. Click here for a short demo of when the same shade of gray can be seen as a different shade of gray.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year