My parents are the best. I feel that way because they are amazing people who have raised a large family in today's day and age by example. Never did my parents have to explain themselves with any kind of 'do what I say, not what I do'. How many people can say that? Their constant sacrifices have earned them the love and respect of everyone who knows them.

They are moving back to Sweden this week. We wish we were moving there with them. If we could set up shop over there for the next three years the long winter is the only thing that would hold us back. Even the winters would be endurable knowing they would be near by to go drink mint-hot chocolate with by a fire.

My mother's birthday was this past week and we could do little more than call and sing to her. So I went back to the portraits I shot of them a little bit ago and re-processed my favorite. Happy Birthday, Mo. We are so excited for your next adventure and look forward to hearing all about it.

My sister has been wanting to update the profile pictures on her blog for a while she packed up the family and brought them to us. We had so much fun doing these for them.

This top picture was for the top banner for her blog. We had stretched the kids attention spans to breaking point but we wanted to get one more "fun" shot. We have been collecting hats and props for just such an occasion. Even though I had to cut off the oldest sisters left arm, I still love this picture. We gave them hats, told them about where to stand and then started shooting. The one dressed as a pirate made and held that face for a solid three minutes. The Cutie in the white dress has a Sushi Roll hat that was made by our good friends who just moved to Malta. It was their Halloween costume.

My brother in law is an officer in the Navy and my sister has always wanted a nice picture of him in his uniform. So we did that too. It was super fun and we can't wait to do it with others.

I think there may be a bit of a niche one could make focusing on Online Profile Pictures. Everyone has a blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc and the 'take a picture of myself in my bathroom from an arm's length' profile pictures are not only communicate all of the wrong ideas to viewers, but they are just crappy pictures! So call or write if you want to look your best for your internet peeps! Anyway, we love these shots of this family. Pure joy.

I've spent this last week trying to get through some more shots from Japan. I am mostly done with the regular size images but still have plenty to do. I have been working on some panoramas as well. This is the latest and greatest. It is from a very small island 30 minutes from Hiroshima called Miyajima. It is one of the 'Three Views in Japan". We only went out for a couple hours but decide it would make a fantastic weekend getaway. You are all invited, of course.

This place is famous for several things, one of which is this huge red/orange Torii, or Shinto (sometimes Buddhist) gate, in the water between the island and the mainland, and the temple built over the water (to the right in the picture. Click on the "View On Black" below to see it larger.

View On Black

We like the night life.... We like to boogy.

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I have all kinds of excuses for not posting, but I will spare you. I would like to share some pictures from our recent trip to see family up in Connecticut. It is was a terribly fun trip. The weather and the company could not be beat.

We have four nieces there that we can not take enough pictures of.

For every little walk Sho would take the reflector and tell me to bring several lenses "just in case". Of all the cute pictures we took Sunday afternoon, this may be my favorite. Sho was coaxing photogenic smiles out of the girls with Japanese candy and treats. It is also how we got them to run back to the house with us.

I still have not come close to finishing the shots from Japan. Someday... Someday. Fall is coming earlier than we would have liked, but we will be ready with camera in hand.

I was just so happy with this one that I had to share. This is a stitch I just made from shots at the Memorial Lantern Floating Ceremony we attended in Hiroshima on August 6th (the day the bomb was dropped). It was an incredible sight that I will never forget. Many many more pictures to come.

In answer to your requests, here is a Before and After of a candid I took of my wife while we were hanging out one Sunday afternoon in Osaka with friends.

The first shot is straight out of the camera... well, I had to compress it from the RAW to a jpeg , but this is as I took it.



It is a nice picture. If it wasn't it wouldn't be worth keeping let alone fixing up. The shadows are nice, but not great, the color balance is too yellow and, her eyes (the focus of any portrait) are too dark/shadowy, just to name a few things that keep it from being a 'great' picture. So I ran it through Adobe Lightroom. Keep in mind this is a very quick edit (maybe three minutes) and Lightroom is not my choice for doing detail work like skin and eyes, but I wanted to show you the kinds of detail work I typically would like to do. A portrait that I really take time on can take well over an hour to process. The idea being to make it perfect without looking fake. Good photographs are a lie you never doubt for a second.



That being said, this picture now looks fake. As is, I would not put this on our website, but if I took more time in Photoshop with it, it very well could be one of my favorite shots of my wife. She had just cut her hair and was wearing a new dress and I thought she looked hot to trot... but I digress...

Her skin now looks like porcelain, which is bad, but like I said, this is just to give an idea of an 'edit'. Her eyes POP a bit more now and the big shadows are more pleasing and less distracting. If I put this in color right now it would be bright red. I changed the color temperature to red because it softens shadows and creates an overall pleasing feel in black and white.. Back in the glory days of film you would've had to put a red glass filter on the front of your lens and shot with black and white film to get this effect.

Questions? I hope you like this. It may not be a great example, but an example none the less.