Oh hai der

One of the perks of living with pets.  Always a curious subject.  :)

When news breaks...

...everyone has a preferred news source, even if it doesn't quite fit your "role."  :P

Another 4th of July celebration!

Happy 4th!

Nothing better than friends, good food, beer and fireworks to celebrate our nation's birthday!

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Sunset

Sunsets this time of year are always awesome... and to think, this is just the view out the back window of my apartment.

The whole gang

Church

2-man lift

Blog Migration update

So, I took a few laps around the internet pool, and found crap for sites for hosting. If I want to host, it's best to have my own server, otherwise I pay through the nose for garbage service. So, here I am back on blogger.

I'll update this site as I can, and I'll try to keep them mostly of photos. Nudge me if I'm not posting!

Thanks,

Ash

Blog migration

In the following days I'll be migrating my blog to my website, and my new blog will take the place of my website. I'll be transfering posts from this site there, and moving all updates to it.

Full customization is the main reasoning, not to mention ease of access for myself. Feel free to post questions and so forth. I'll do my best to get back here to answer them.

Here's a pic to go out on from the 2010 Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk I participated in, in DeKalb, IL.

More!

Below you'll see a picture of my good friend Lucas. I was stationed with him in Las Vegas and ended up rooming with him and another friend Lloyd for a majority of my time there. I had the good fortune of being sent to the East Coast for DINFOS and Lucas just so happens to goto Virginia Tech now days. Well I had an assignment that consisted of portraits and expressions. I hung up a blanket, set up a couple of SB-800s and had him pop a squat in front of the camera. I've got probably 30 photos of him acting completely goofy. Which is great for memories sake, but I won't post them up here just for his sanity. :)

After returning from DINFOS I found our headquarters building being torn apart for construction purposes. Apparently they're remodeling the first floor. I was over there knocking out some paperwork and thought I'd grab the camera to shoot some of the construction. Unfortunately there wasn't a whole lot going on. None of the shots were really newsworthy or important. But I really liked the one below, could be better, could be worse, but cool nonetheless.

If you're following me on twitter you probably heard me talking about getting a Justin Clamp from Manfrotto, unfortunately I need it this week, and wound up running to the local camera store and making my own. In the end it cost more than the Justin Clamp itself, but I get a few more pieces that I can use later on for other projects out of it. But below you can see it, and as you can probably tell, its incredibly useful for any kind of lighting you might want. Instead of relying on having someone hold the flash, or sitting the flash on a surface that could possible get into the photo, now i can hang it from the ceiling, mount it to a chair, or whatever else I feel like mounting it to! :)

More to come!

As promised!

Part of our training that we took part in while at the Defense Information School, there was a block (section of training) that focused on Combat Photography. This is the one thing that I actual crave, and want to do. My name will always be in the hat to goto a "hot" zone to take photos. I know my mother would probably cringe to read that, but it's definitely what I've always wanted to do.

Below are some of the photos I took during one of our exercises. Obviously we used paintball guns, instead of the real thing. But it made it quite a bit of fun. It was probably a good 20 degrees outside, it had just snowed the night before and we were going on approximately 4 hours of sleep. Wish I could do this all the time! :)

^ Lindsay High - she just has some killer eyes... can't help but shoot 'em!

^ one group stacking to breach a building. Low light inside and no use of flash for obvious reasons, and we don't have high quality low light cameras (**cough** D3's - Are you reading this NGB?) :P

More to come!

Back from Maryland

Well, I'm back from Maryland, and I was unable to keep posts going on the blog, mainly due to being busy and lazy during what free time I had. Through the next couple of days I'll be postings updates with pictures from my time at the Defense Information School.

Overall it was a good experience, and I feel I walked away learning some things. The first couple weeks were a wash (stuff I learned in college) but understandable, you have to start with the basics so that everyone is on the same playing field. Thankfully, the instructors kind of let me break free of the mold they were keeping everyone in and allowed me to experiment using a ridiculous amount of equipment. :) I checked out 3 flashes, stands, umbrellas, a nice wide-angle lens, and a few other miscellaneous items.

So here are a few photos from the course!

All 3 of the above images are recreations of works done by Joe McNally. One of our assignments was to create a reproduction, and since I admire his work so much and aspire to be like him, naturally, I wanted to create a challenge. Now, they're no where up to par with his, but for the most part, I'm happy with how they turned out.

More later :)

ILEAS Training

Last week my brother had mentioned having me come up to Belvidere today to shoot their Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS) training. ILEAS is basically a bunch of different officers from local police departments that specialize in emergency response for riots, terrorism and other similar situations.

I arrived at the park that the training was taking place at approximately 9am. They were already in formation, and they were launching smoke. So, unfortunately I missed the shots of the smoke. But was still fun to watch! :)

The day consisted of them running drills, so they could practice their formations, and then a tour of the mobile command post and then the PD Helicopter showed up. They took their commander up (I believe that was his title - maybe chief - either way...), so that he could see the formations from the air, and see just what kind of vantage point the helicopter crews have. They mainly stayed above 500 feet or so, so no real close fly-by's. Just on landing and take-off.

All in all, it was pretty interesting to see that side of things, and get to chat with a few of the guys. Maybe they'll give me a break if they pull me over now... ;)

So w/out further ado - here's a few pictures from the day!

The rest of the photos (well the ones I felt fitting to post) are available on my Flickr site. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ashbell79/sets/72157622032176692/

Meteor Shower

So tonight there was supposed to be a meteor shower. I took the time to go outside of town and sit in a spot I know that light polution is a minimum. Unfortunately, the moon was out in full force (not a full moon, but still, quite bright), and that detracted from any shooting of the stars that I could possibly do. Then of course, I'm to the point I definitely need to upgrade to an FX camera, since my camera has a max bulb time of 30 minutes. Also, my sensor heats up after about 5 minutes of collecting light, and gets burn marks on the corners of the image, so not quite what you'd want when shooting stars.

The meteor shower turned out to be quite weak, I maybe only saw 10-15. So instead I took the opportunity to do a little more testing with "painting" light on the scenery. Meaning, I would open the shutter and stand off to the side and flash spots I wanted to highlight, and then "paint" items with an LED flashlight to give off a blue effect. Not quite to the point of my liking, but I'm progressing with this technique, and its still something I'm exploring and hoping to get better at.

So below are a few of the shots from tonight for you to check out. Post your comments/critiques. I'm welcome to suggestions as always!