Valentines Special 2013

valentines13It’s that time of year again, Valentines Day is right around the corner.  This year MSP is offering standard portrait mini-sessions, Standard portrait covers classic and creative portraits.

You may choose the location within 50 miles of my office in Byron for your mini-session any time between February 2nd-14th.  Additional travel fee’s will apply if your location is outside the designated area.

Shoot time is unlimited, though in general, mini-sessions are short in duration and often do no consume too much time.

Your images will be viewable within 14 days of the mini-session, depending on your creative editing requests and volume of response to this offer.  A private digital gallery will be created and emailed to you with password and your print proof book order will be placed.  Once the proof book reaches my office it’s packaged boutique style and shipped to you.

Use your digital image gallery and print proof gallery to help guide you in your print product purchase choices. Of course, I will always be available for selection assistance if requested.

MSP has a $300 minimum order requirement, which includes the session and prints. The mini-session allows you to purchase more prints while saving money on the session at the same time.

Your print order is required within two weeks of receiving your print proof book to qualify for print packages (savings).  Orders placed after the two week time frame are restricted to á la cart menu.

Bookings must be made no later than Feb 2st.

Latest available session date for mini-session price is Feb 15th.

A non-refundable booking fee of $45 is due at time of booking.  Your booking fee will be applied to you balance of $45 due at the time of the session.

Maximum people per session is two.

High-res / full size digital copy CD’s available for $210, which includes:

All five high resolution images, full size as well as common print ratio’s versions, for each digital copy, labeled for easy crop-free printing.

Images used for for social media purposes must contain a provided copy with MSP copyright information.

Images are supplied on a custom printed CD with a custom printed CD case.  Shipped to your home in boutique style and shipped to you.

Click here to download the MSP Rates PDF.
Side note* It has been reported to me that google drive wont let you scan the file previous downloading.  Please note I scanned the file previous upload and it is clean, also for any additional peace of mind you can scan the file with your own virus protection before opening it, which is when the damage would take effect were a file infected.

First Attempt: Fail

Found via google search for Geminid Meteor shower 2012.

Unfortunately I was unable to capture the meteor shower that peaked between 2-4 am this morning.  I got to see it with my own eyes at least, but it seemed that each time one flew by my camera was processing it’s previous image vs. recording.

For me it wasn’t meant to be this time.  I had a feeling my timing would be off for my first go at capturing something like this.

Did any other first time shooters have any better luck?  Let me know, post your results!

Anyone have any results from this morning’s awesomeness?  Please share!

Don’t Miss the Geminid Meteor Shower

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I have been looking forward to this for awhile now, about a month ago really when I saw this graphic pop up in one of my science feeds on FB.

“Earthsky.org reports viewers can begin to watch the Geminids starting at 9 or 10 p.m. on Thursday. The peak will likely be between 1 to 3 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 14. That’s when the shower’s radiant point is highest in the sky as seen around the world.” – from the Fenton Patch.

I have some office work to do tonight but plan on setting my camera up in my backyard.  We have clear skies here tonight and I live in the country so I have a nice night sky view without distracting lights.

Please feel free to leave your photo’s the shower in the comments!

Stay tuned hopefully for photo’s of the Geminid Meteor Shower from MSP.  I will try my best, it will be my first go at capturing something like this.

Bokeh Filters, bringing back ’09.

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Bokeh filters were a popular photography trend in 2009, they aren’t as commonly seen in every day photography use and so the effect has kind of fallen to the side.  Those who remembered it forgot about it and with the members of team photography growing; so grows the amount of people who know nothing about it.

So I’m bringing it back and I want to share with you how to enjoy them cost efficiently.  Though picking up a set of bokeh fitlers or a bokeh filter kit is always a plus.

DIY Bokeh Filters

First let me start out by saying that the cardboard option depicted above is much more difficult to perfect than the thick black paper method.

  • Trace your 50mm filter ring or end of lens onto thick black paper or cardboard.
  • Cut circle out.
  • Draw a shape onto the cut out circle, preferably in the center.  Free hand is awesome if you can achieve it, I wanted a more reliable shape so I used a stencil I printed off the internet.  If you use a stencil I suggest taping it down to the cut out circle so it doesn’t slide on you as you cut your shape out.
  • Use an exacto blade to remove the shape from your circle.
  • fit circle paper at the end of your lens.  With the paper it should fit inside the filter ring with a little trimming.  If you used cardboard use scotch tape to fit the filter to the end of your lens.  Make sure there is no light leaking to the lens from the edges of the filter.

Shooting Tips

Find a far away light source.  The farther away the more break off shapes you will have from one light source.  Bring light source out of focus, making your focal point closest to the end of your lens.  Find large light sources or large clusters of light sources.

If you tried this out because of this blog or on your own accord please reply with links to your own creative images using bokeh filters!  I would love to see them.

The bokeh image featured in this blog was my first shot, hand held from my car.  I suggest a tri-pod for ultimate results.  Thank you for your time, please stay tuned.

Free & Open

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This could be the future of the internet.  What affects the internet, affects our phones and how we can use them and the features we pay so much for.

To find out more about what is happening in these events and how our future use of the internet could be drastically changed, visit the following links.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home

http://www.google.com/intl/en/takeaction/whats-at-stake/

Monster Bash in A2

 

The Violin Monster is preparing to head off on his winter journey; this year this will also mark the release of his first CD.

He is throwing a CD Release party in Ann Arbor, MI.  For the FB event page click link.

 

Join him in celebration or stay tuned for MSP coverage of the event.