Blue

25 Oct 2014•Photography

There’s some debate in the Wong household about who took this photo. I claim that I took it. Everyone else says that Nathan did.

Regardless, it’s one of my favorites and it’s one of the few photos that I’ve had printed big. We have this in a 24×36 inch canvas hanging in–wait for it–Nathan’s room.

We were out for a walk along the East Bank of the Willamette River in downtown Portland, Oregon. It was late in the afternoon and the light was hitting the water perfectly when I noticed the reflections. It was then that Mike/Nathan took this.

Are We Done Yet?

25 Oct 2014•Devyn, People

This one very well could have been called “Are YOU done yet?”

Another one from the archives. This one from 2010 and Devyn’s sixth birthday party. She wanted a Fashion Show theme, so I busted out the lighting gear, borrowed a backdrop and set up a mini photo shoot in the family room.

Of course, I had to test my lighting setup, so I enlisted Devyn to help me. Needless to say, it took me several tries to get the look that I wanted and by the time I did, Devyn had just about had it. But not before I got this shot.

Warner Mountains

24 Oct 2014•Places

Warner Mountains.

I’ve been going back through my archives and I rediscovered this photo that I took back in May 2009 while visiting my mother-in-law in Lakeview, Oregon.

I really like this photo. Especially the clouds. I used a color correction technique that I learned from my friend Vincent Versace to remove the color cast that you normally get when shooting clouds–they’re full of water so they tend to skew a little bluish.

But if you add a Threshold layer in Photoshop, you can identify the parts of the image that should be white and black. You then use a Curves Adjustment layer and set the white point and black point of the curve to the white and black points you identified from the Threshold layer. With that simple technique, you can get clouds that look like these.