I spent Saturday morning on a sixth grade field trip to Salt Lake City’s Hogle Zoo. While it’s always great to have the opportunity to photograph interesting subjects, seeing the animals in captivity was a somber experience for me. Many of them appeared to be bored and depressed. The orangutan featured in today’s capture is one example of this. He seemed to be very uninterested with the whole zoo scene, spending his time motionlessly staring at nothing in particular.

Canon 5D, Canon 70-200 f/4L lens with 1.4x extender – 1/50 second, f/5.6, ISO 160

dan · ger [deyn-jer]
-noun

1. liability or exposure to harm or injury; risk; peril.
2. an instance or cause of peril; menace.
3. Obsolete. power; jurisdiction; domain.

Canon 5D, Canon 70-200 f/4L lens – 1/1250, f/4, ISO 160

Last night as Michelle was exiting our front door she came across an uninvited guest on the front steps. The visitor was an approximately 20″ snake. Michelle rapidly re-entered the house and announced her discovery.

The girls and I quickly investigated. The snake was fairly docile and didn’t seem to care much about the attention. After an impromptu photo session, I safely escorted the visitor away from our home and into the field directly behind the house.

I am no snake expert (nor do I want to become one), but I did a bit of Googling and this appears to my untrained eye to be a Desert Nightsnake. If any of you snake-wranglers out there know for sure, feel free to chime in and either correct or support my analysis.

Canon 30D, Canon 70-200 f/4L lens – 1/125 second, f/5.6, ISO 160

Did I really light a dollar bill on fire (in clear violation of federal law) just to make this photo? Or is this image created using a bit of manipulation in Photoshop? You decide…..

p.s. Harley, you’re not eligible to answer :)

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens – 1/60 second, f/7.1, ISO 50

Canon 30D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens – 20 seconds, f/20, ISO 100

One of the people that inspired me to begin my blog is a tech blogger out of San Francisco named Thomas Hawk. Thomas is an extremely active photographer on both Flickr and Zooomr and pens a very popular blog at thomashawk.com. If you haven’t seen his work, I strongly encourage you to drop by his blog or his photostream and check it out.

It was after reading Thomas’ blog in 2005 that I became involved in Flickr and ultimately started LeggNet’s Digital Capture. Since that time I have followed his writing and photography on a daily basis.

Today’s capture is inspired by Thomas’ numerous self portraits taken in this style, including one last week that cost him a lens (but thankfully not his 5D). I took this above Draper Utah overlooking the Salt Lake Valley just after sunset. The best part was how peaceful it was as I sat waiting for the right light.

Links to Thomas Hawk’s Work:

Blog: thomashawk.com
Flickr Photos: flickr.com/photos/thomashawk
Zooomr Photos: beta.zooomr.com/photos/thomashawk

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens – 10 seconds, f/4, ISO 160

Old Country Mill, taken at This Is The Place Heritage Park on a rainy Saturday in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens – 1/125 second, f/5.6, ISO 50

This Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States. In honor of the holiday, today’s image is a portrait of the mother of my children – my lovely wife Michelle.

The set-up on this portrait is my standard simple arrangement:

I have a small softbox to the right of the camera for the main light. The fill light is provided by a medium white umbrella placed camera left and set at a power level one f-stop below the main light. A black paper roll provides the dark unlit background.

Canon 5D, Canon 24-105 f/4L IS lens – f/10, 1/60 second, ISO 100

For the better part of the past year I have participated in a Flickr group created by the New West Network, an online web magazine featuring information relating to the Rocky Mountain region. On several occasions the magazine has featured one of my photos on their main page. Through the participation in the group I have gotten to know their photo editor Chris Lombardi.

Chris recently started a new feature of the magazine called New West Images, a blog about western photography and photobloggers. I was honored this past week when Chris invited me to cross post some of my photographic tutorials from this site onto the blog. The first of these tutorials, one on the Rule of Thirds, was posted this past Thursday (view it here).

Please take a moment and check out the site. If you like it, go ahead and bookmark it or add it to your RSS reader. The folks at New West are great supporters of the internet photography community and deserve the support.

Links

New West Images: www.newwest.net/index.php/gallery
New West Images RSS feed: www.newwest.net/index.php/gallery/rss/
New West Flickr Group: flickr.com/groups/newwest
New West Network: www.newwest.net