Sometimes Connor gets tired of having his picture taken and just stares at me looking very annoyed.  That is when his toy takes his place and I get to shoot something that doesn’t constantly move.  Key light is through an umbrella and the blue edge light is bare.

Connor is walking down our back steps in to the back yard.  He is lit with two lights.  One is through an umbrella to my right.  The second is bare and at the bottom of the steps, pointing up at him.  Nice hat!

“Surely there aren’t any monsters under my new bed!“

Connor is almost two and a half and he has a new brother on the way.  I figured that it was about time to move him out of the crib and into a bed.  I found some great plans and went to work.  Modified slightly because I wanted a railing.  It’s actually a little snug for a modern crib mattress, but it still works.  I would make a few minor adjustments if I were to build it again.

All shots were taken with two off-camera flashes.  I have lighting descriptions on various flickr pages: Naked Furniture, Monsters, Morning Light, B/W, Froggies.

I make periodic self portraits with Connor and myself.  I took this one partly to test out my new second speedlight.  I have the main one pointed through an umbrella in front of us and the second one is on the floor behind me.  You can see a little bit of blue light on my shoulder from that one.  I’m also wearing my new Star Wars apron – taking a break from cooking.

Welcome the the Third Annual Flaming Pumpkin Festival!  It’s always nice to end Halloween with a nice flaming pumpkin…. or pumpkins.

My favorite shot of the night is the one above.  He was  a very small pumpkin with a very large mouth.  Buy prints of him HERE.  Makes a great gift!

I added one element to the photography this year.  I had a wireless flash positioned to the right of the camera with an orange gel to keep the color nice and warm.  I didn’t use it on every shot – see right.  I also had a continuous light behind the jack-o-lanterns gelled blue to illuminate the smoke.

The pumpkins are filled with flammable materials and sprayed with generous portions of lighter fluid.  – Don’t try this at home.

Year Two

Here’s last year’s victims!  More pictures in this post: prestonpro.com/photoblog/2010/11/08/flaming-pumpkin-festival

Year One

My first ever flaming pumpkin.  I loved this guy, he was HUGE.  Here’s a multi-exposure shot from before the burning: prestonpro.com/photoblog/2010/01/09/great-pumpkin

Here’s a trip to Seattle’s Gasworks Park with Connor.

Here’s a nice stock photo of some bills and change.  I made it all in one exposure (no photoshop) using a long exposure and an off camera flash.

The 2011 Seattle Zombie Walk has come and gone with another world record.

It’s now the end of October and this weekend’s ZomBcon has reminded me that I never posted about this event from July!

The record was successfully broken with 4,522 registered zombies.

Here’s a small collection of some of my favorite shots.

I shot the zombies using 50mm and 24mm lenses in natural light. Click on any of them to zoom into the large size.

If you spot yourself, send me your info so I can get you a larger copy.

Zombie walks on Wikipedia.

From a recent trip to the Seattle Arboretum.  The shot above is available for sale at redbubble.com.

Connor climbs onto our log table on a sunny day.  He’s lit with a softbox to the right.