Urban, a Self Edit, and some Filters

It's been a great last 2 weeks, I had the oppurtunity to shoot a ton and most importantly I was finally able to walk and the leg is healing up good.

On top of shooting I've been trying to get better at editing video so I got together all of my ski footage from the spring, summer, and fall and put together a self edit. I'm skiing so I didn't shoot any of the video(except for the point of view) but I did all the editing and I feel like it came together nicely:

Essex Prescott Spring/Summer/Fall 2010 from Essex Prescott on Vimeo.

Urban, it's been way too long since I've shot urban. It's been way too long since I've shot even snowboarding. Shooting snow definitely brought me back to when I first picked up a camera. I got my first rebel 4 years ago for one purpose, to shoot action sports. I told myself I would never shoot anything like landscapes or people, funny how things change. Anyways it was great to get out there. Shooting urban is all about your flashwork and thats probably my favorite technical aspect of photography, using artificial sources to light a scene exactly how you want it. On top of that no two urban spots are the same and you can get fairly creative with the compositions so all and all it's a really good thing.

Here's a few images from 2 different spots the week before Christmas:

(Thanks to Mike Miller for clicking this one off, it was a bit of a danger zone for a broken leg):

I've also been trying to step up my landscape game and change it up so I've been doing some shooting with neutral density graduated filters. All I have to say is that if you shoot landscapes these are a must, it's a little difficult to get used to and learn when they're good to use but when things workout... wow. It's completely changed the way I go about shooting just because of the ability to shoot into the sun with definition in the sky and the foreground. I had been trying to do this somewhat in post production but it doesn't come close to using these filters.

An afternoon with the nd grad filters:

And finally if you get the chance check out what Nimbus is doing. It's accompanied with some great photos too: http://www.newschoolers.com/ns/content/readnews/id/3629/