2012 Presbyterian Hospital Invitational Criterium

Last night in Charlotte, NC I attended the Presbyterian Bicycle Race.  It was a hot night, but the cycling was hotter.  I had a lot of fun trying to capture the essence of what racing is all about, the crowds, the speed, the color and the night all within a single frame.  


Tracking cyclists coming out of a turn 40 ft away traveling at 30 mph was very challenging.  I did capture some very sharp images using flash, but they were very boring.  They lacked emotion.  Sometimes a blurred image is much more interesting than a sharp one.  The keepers were shot at 1/15th or 1/30th of a second. I love the results.

Sunflowers, and more sunflowers!


I few weeks ago I had a portrait session with the Charlotte Portrait Photography Meetup Group.  We had an early morning shoot scheduled in SC, about a 30 min drive from Charlotte.


The fields were in full bloom and so was the sun.  It was close to 90 degrees at 8AM.  The models were great and looked amazing even in scorching temps.

My Canon 50D is finally fixed! (I think)


This past March I sent in my beloved 40D for repair.  It was well out of warranty and the repair would cost about $250.  Canon has a great loyalty program and if you trade in your broken camera, you can upgrade to a refurb at a greatly reduced price.  So, I thought, why not upgrade to a 50D?  I would get 5 more megapixels, higher ISO capability and a high rez LCD screen.  I was psyched.


My camera arrived and I took it on my first shoot.  The images on the LCD looked amazing, I was in love, until I uploaded them to Lightroom.  I noticed noise at iso 100.  I had never noticed noise on my 40D.  I thought maybe I needed to adjust my settings.  I went back through the manual and made some adjustments and went on another shoot.  The result was the same.  The noise was very slight, but it was there.  If I had not experienced the great images I had gotten from my 40D, I might not have noticed.


I sent the camera in for evaluation.  I was a little surprised to even have an issue.  I mean, this was a Canon Certified Refurb.  It should have met "new camera" specs when I purchased it.  7 days went by and I received my newly repaired camera.  Canon said the focusing mechanism was out of register and they had made some adjustments.  Great, I thought, now I can love this camera too!


Wrong!  The images were greatly improved, but there was still noise at ISO 100.  I thought is it just me?  Am I expecting too much or am I crazy?  I met a friend for lunch and we swapped 50Ds so I could do a comparison test.  My results were pretty much the same as before.  I can still see noise!


So, I sent it back to Canon for another evaluation.  If they said it met their factory specs, I was going to sell it or trade up to a 7D.  I was not too happy to have to send it in for another check.  7 days later my repaired camera arrived and after doing some tests and shoots, I DON'T SEE ANY NOISE at ISO 100!  Yeah!  Canon said it replaced "defective components."  I wish they would say exactly what they did.  Anyway, I think my camera is finally fixed.  (I hope)

Topaz ReMask 3

This past week I downloaded a 30 day trial copy of Topaz Remask 3.  Wow, what an awesome program!  If you need to mask hair from an image this is a pretty easy and quick program to use. It is only $69 online and it can be used as a plug-in with Photoshop Elements 9 for $80 online.  Elements is a very robust program at a very affordable price, but it is lacking in masking features.  Now using ReMask I can do a lot of the same things I could do in Photoshop CS 5 and save over $500!


Here is a sample of an image I created using Elements 9 and Remask 3.

Edited Image

Original Image