Richtpt's Photography

Light Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Sunday night I decided to show the kids how to paint with light on digital photos. I turned all the lights off, handed them flashlights, setup my camera and told them to wave the flashlights around when I told them. They looked at me like I was crazy, but when they saw the result they loved it and wanted to do more!

Here's one photo I did showing them how to write words.

Of course that lead to this being done by Riley. What else would you expect a 9yr old boy to write? LOL!

Taking down the Christmas tree

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 22:56:00 +0000

It's finally time, Christmas is over, the tree must come down. The Boy Scouts pick then up to recycle but we keep ours up too long. So we have to cut it down & put it in our yard debris bin. It's actually still very fresh! We put it up after Thanksgiving & use a mixture of 1 cup of 7-Up to 1 gallon of water. Works great!

Restarting my Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 05:32:00 +0000

2012. A new year. At the start of 2010 I tried to blog more and post a photo a day. That worked for about 5 or 6 months and I got burnt out. No one seemed to be reading my blog - or at least commenting - so I didn't see much reason to blog. Between Facebook and Google+ I didn't see much reason to have a separate blog.

But I think I'm going to try again. Christmas 2010 my wife bought me a very nice Sony a55 dslr that I'm enjoying a lot! I went to a one day class learning how to use it and now feel quite comfortable shooting in manual! :) A group I'm in on Facebook is doing a weekly photo challenge - photos starting with the letter "A", then "B" the next week, then "C", and so on. I'm going to rename my blog to "Richtpt's Photography", post those photos here (as well as the Facebook group), some others I like, and maybe even any tidbits I find helpful with photography & photo editing (not that I'm great, just like to share).

To begin things here's the "A" for the week, I call it "Aftermath".

This is after our New Years Eve party. I corrected the color in Lightroom but then decided I liked the look straight out of the camera better so I left it.
Manual
f/4.5
1/25 sec
ISO 3200
45mm
no flash

Also, here's a photo from before the party began, Margarita's ready to be made.

Manual
f/1.8
1/40 sec
ISO 400
50mm prime
no flash

My wife bought me this prime lens for Christmas and I'm really loving it! I like the bokeh look plus being able to lower the ISO to get less grainy. It takes some getting used to not being able to zoom in or out, but I'm finding it fun!

SO, that's my restart of my blog! I hope I can post some interesting stuff that people will like! Thanks for dropping by!

How My Wife And I Met

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 30 May 2011 03:28:00 +0000

I've told this story to many friends and people over time, but I think it's time I put it down for everyone to read because it's so cool!

It was 1992. I had been through many girlfriends, all failures, and I had decided I was going to be single for the rest of my life. It was actually quite empowering. I was finally relaxed, enjoying myself, not worrying about what women thought about me anywhere I went. I decided if THEY were in ME then THEY would come talk to me, I wasn't going to approach them. I finally was enjoying myself, not caring what anyone thought. I was actually quite happy and calm.

Christmas came around and I exchanged gifts with my friends. I opened mine which was from all of them. It contained a newspaper and a fifth of whiskey.

WHAT?!

Them: "Look at the newspaper." Me: "This is the personals." Them: "Look at the one we circled." Me: "This is a guy." Them: "Keep reading." Me: "This is ME!!!!" They said it was November, they were out wine tasting and after several winery's they decided they needed to find me a woman. Not just any old woman, but a wife. There were already three voicemails left and the fifth was for me to get up the nerve to call them back. LOL!

So I listened to the voicemails. Two I called back, left messages. The third sounded like she called EVERY guy in the ads! "Hi. My name is xxx. Your ad looked awesome. Call me back." I didn't call her. No one every called me back.

In the mean time, my soon to be wife had actually sent a LETTER with a photo! One problem. My friends used their PO Box as the address. They only check it ONCE a week, and had checked it the day BEFORE her letter arrived! D'OH! She thought I wasn't interested. When my friends finally checked their PO Box, they opened the letter and called me saying, "You HAVE to check this one out!!"

I went to their house, read her awesome letter and saw her photo. WOW!!!! She was HOT!!! I told my friends, "There's no WAY she'll be interested in me!" They got on my case to call, so I went back to my place and called.

It was New Years Eve. I called. "Hi, is Marci there?" "NO!!!" "Um, ok. Can I leave a message?" "Yeah, I guess!!!....." (Think extremely pissed off and not happy with me AT ALL!)

I was like, "Oh great, this is going over wonderful. Oh well, I'll give her my info anyhow only because my friends would kick my butt if I don't." "My name is Rich and she answered my ad in the Willamette Week..." "OH WAIT!!! Let me get a pencil!!!!!" Her tone suddenly changed from "You're a freaking jerk and I want you dead to OH, you're THAT guy!! You're ok!!!"

I gave her my number and hung up figuring I wouldn't hear anything. A little bit later she called. She was at her parents house. We talked for THREE HOURS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We hit it off amazingly well, everything in common! I was thrilled!!! Her mom finally said, "Um, I don't really expect anyone to call, but someone might. So can you HANG UP ALREADY?!" We said we'd talk again soon. I couldn't believe how awesome that call went and how great she was!

The next day came and I wanted to call her back asap. But I had a tendency to jump in with both feet and ruin things. So I decided to wait a day. Later that day she called me!! Another three hours on the phone!!!!

We decided to meet for lunch, I told her, "I've seen you and you're amazing, but you haven't seen me. If you are totally repulsed and can't wait to get rid of me, lunch is only an hour." Ya, I had a lot of confidence in myself, huh? ;)

Lunch almost didn't happen. I was working downtown, she was in NW Portland. We decided to meet by the Fred Meyer in NW Portland. It was a great idea, except she went to one corner and I went to the other. Completely opposite corners!!! We kept walking around trying to find each other, but missing each other for about 20 minutes. I finally decided she wised up and didn't want to see me so I waited for a bus back downtown. Staying in one place long enough paid off, she finally found me!

We had an AWESOME lunch. One hour turned into TWO!! After lunch, she drove me back downtown to my job. She parked in a loading zone and we were saying bye. Over, and over, and over. We ended up kissing only to be interrupted by a mounted police rapping on her window saying, "You can't park here." D'OH! That was funny!

She was over at my place for the next two nights. Things were going amazingly well, it was just right. I told her, "You get off work before me and are always at my place before me. Instead of you sitting in your car waiting for me, here's a key to my place." Now women think one thing about this, but I'm a nerdy/geeky guy and I was just thinking it was stupid for her to sit in her car when she could go into my place and relax. HONEST!!!

Two weeks later she decided she needed to get her own apartment (she was living with her sister). She invited me to have dinner with her parents, which was cool, though I wasn't quite ready to meet them. At dinner I said, "You know, you're over at my place all the time. Instead of you paying $500-$700 for an apartment you'll never be in, why not just move in with me? AND if you want, you can pay half the rent, which would actually help me because I over extended myself at Christmas." Again, a nerdy/geeky guy being logical, not smooth or anything like that. So she moved in.

You know how they say when it's right you just know it? Well, that's what happened, very quickly. I just knew she was THE ONE. There was no effort, no trying, nothing. It just WAS. I have a hard time explaining it, but people who've felt this can understand and relate. All the other times I thought I KNEW I had the right one and worked hard to make it right, yet they were all so very wrong. This time there was no effort, no trying, nothing, it just WAS RIGHT!!!

Six months after we met I proposed. Oh, and at four months I KNEW she was THE ONE, but decided to have some fun, so started playing down the talk of marriage. By the time I proposed she thought I was no longer interested. ;) I had wanted to propose, but I'm different, a little off center. I can't just be at a restaurant or a park and get down on one knee, open the ring box and ask her to marry me. It had to be different. The billboard had been done. TV was blah. I couldn't come up with any ideas. Then it hit me.

I was in a band at that time (a fun thing, I still had a day job). She had been to many performances with us and was VERY tired of being pulled up on stage. She said, "I'm done, do NOT EVER get me up on stage again!" That's when I knew how to propose. I told the director to pull her up on stage no matter what, that I was going to propose. No one else knew. He pulled her up for one of our songs, she protested a lot but finally came up.

After the song was over I quickly grabbed a mic and her, not letting her leave the stage. I said, "Hey Bill! I kinda like this one! She's cute, I like the way she moves, the way her butt wiggles, you know they say good things come in small packages!" (I'm 6'3" she's 5'3".) "Can I keep her?" He turned to the band and said, "I don't know. What do you think band?" The band was a little confused because they knew we were dating and the audience thought it was just part of the show. They said, "Sure!" I replied - and had rehearsed this in my head a FREAKING LOT - "Really? Well in that case..." But it came out very clearly on the video tape, "Really? Well shit, in that case..." D'OH! I turned back to her, got down on one knee, pulled the ring out of my pocked, opened it and said, "Will you marry me?"

She kinda freaked and said, "yes" but it wasn't very loud and me being the showman said into the mic, "I'm sorry, they didn't hear you" then pointed it back to her and she said very loudly, "YES!!!!!!!" It was so awesome!!!

A year later we were married and have recently celebrated 17 years together! It's been a great time and every day I'm amazed someone as awesome as her is still interested in me!

So that's how we met and got together. It's a fun story that I love to tell, but decided I'd share it with the world. Hope you enjoyed it! :)

p.s. I just re-read this to make sure I typed it all correctly and got all choked up remembering everything! Man I'm silly! ;)

Water Bottle Rocket

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:18:00 +0000

Last week I was at Camp Ireland, a great Cub Scout day camp (meaning we didn't spend the night). It was a ton of fun, the kids really had a great time. They played games, built stuff, shot bb guns, did some archery, learned about nature, and shot off water bottle rockets! They take a 2-liter soda bottle, fill it almost all the way up with water, turn it upside down on this pvc pipe, put a pin in to hold it in place, then use a tire pump to fill it with air - they pump it to 60 psi. Once it's pumped, a scout pulls the pin out, the bottle shoots into the air leaving a trail of water and getting the scouts wet as they try to catch it, which they love. Some went higher than others and some got stuck in the trees. I'm going to suggest they let the scouts do this twice during the week next year as it's something they really enjoy. Might have to find plans to build one of these and do it at a den meeting. ;)

Communication Tower

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 16:59:00 +0000

Saw this while out for a walk, a lone communication tower against some cool clouds.

Green at the End of the Tunnel

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:54:00 +0000

This is a bridge that crosses hwy 26 going to (or from) the Sunset Transit Center. I liked this perspective, played around with it in Lightroom and came up with this. Took out most of the color except for the trees, and turned the clarity all the way down.

Trees & Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:14:00 +0000

I was out for a walk yesterday when I saw these trees all in a row. I thought they looked cool with the neat clouds and blue sky in the background. Just a basic photo for today, but don't worry, I have more tilt shift and brewfest ones coming. ;)

Brewfest Tilt Shift

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:55:00 +0000

As I've said, Tilt Shift photos work best when you take them from above and from a distance. In this case I held my camera up as high as I could to get the photo, then thought I'd give it a try in Photoshop to see if it would work. It did! A little different perspective on the brewfest. Now I wish I'd gotten one like this of the people pouring beer. Next year!

Mmm... Beer...

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:06:00 +0000

A mug full of awesomeness from the Oregon Brewers Festival!

I <3 Beer

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:01:00 +0000

I got this shirt from Old Chicago (they have these little beer tours and when you complete them you get a t-shirt). When I saw it I knew I had to tie-dye it and wear it to the Oregon BrewFest! Riley took this photo with my Droid Incredible. I should have stood somewhere else instead of with the bright sun behind me. Can I claim the beer as an excuse for not thinking the photo through? ;)

Oregon Brewers Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:11:00 +0000

Each year in July is the Oregon Brewers Festival. There are about 70 beers on tap from around the country, celebrating all kinds of wonderful microbrewed beers. It's a ton of fun! And unlike what some may think, there is rarely anyone getting too drunk, rude, being jerks or anything you'd think of when mixing thousands of people, a hot day, and beer. In fact, it's a VERY family friendly event! There are lots of people there with their kids, it's just a really fun time where people are friendly and we get to sample some amazing beers! Here's a server pouring me another great beer!

Wild Island Tilt Shift #3

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 19:58:00 +0000

I know, you're probably tired of these, but I had fun with them and had to post one more. :)

Wild Island Tilt Shift #2

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:36:00 +0000

Another image I played around with in Photoshop to make a fake Tilt Shift. At first I didn't like it, but coming back today, I actually DO like it! Sometimes you just need to give yourself some time away from the photo. ;)

Wild Island Tilt Shift

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:40:00 +0000

I saw some really cool Tilt Shift photos today and remembered you can make fake ones with Photoshop. It works best with photos where you're looking down on a scene, so I decided to try it with some I took from Wild Island Adventure Park in Reno. It's really, REALLY easy to do. This one turned out pretty good I think, though I need to work on it a little more. I like this effect, it's fun and can transform an ordinary blah photo into something really cool!

Sunset On The Drive Home

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:14:00 +0000

We left Reno around Noon and by the time we got almost home, the sun was setting. It was really pretty, I liked how the sun was just below the horizon but still lighting up the sky and the clouds. Took this while driving. I never quite know how good pics like this will turn out because I'm trying to drive and not get us in a wreck more than take pictures. ;)

Dump The Water Bucket

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:33:00 +0000

In one of the kids areas is this giant bucket at the top. It fills with water then tips over dumping water all over the play structure, which the kids all love and wanted to get under. The whole cycle only takes about two minutes, though it seemed longer when I was sitting in the water watching the kids play. Again, this is at Wild Island Adventure Park in Reno, a great place!

Nice Rest Area

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:02:00 +0000

Just east of Susanville on the way to Reno is this really nice rest area. It's very clean, quite big, and has some really nice trees next to it. I've been at many where you have to hold your breath while trying to go fast and forget about washing your hands because the water doesn't work. Not this place!

View from the Pool

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:37:00 +0000

The Silver Legacy pool is up about 10 floors or something from the street, outside. It's got a nice view looking at the mountains and some of the skyline. This is three photos I stitched together in Photoshop CS5.

Cool Clouds

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:54:00 +0000

Saw these cool clouds while driving to Reno around Mt. Shasta on I-5. When I saw them I thought they would look good after some additional processing in Lightroom. :)

Another Wild Island Panorama

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Here's another panorama of Wild Island. I climbed to the top of one of the slides that was about in the middle of the park and took 20+ photos, then stitched them all in Photoshop CS5. This does a good job of showing almost all of the things you can do at the water park. There's the lazy river on the left, the wave pool in the middle, one of the kids area way back to the right, the slides we went on a lot next, then the other kids area way back there. There's two more rides that you can barely see on the far right, the slide I was standing on was blocking most of it. And it was nice that it wasn't too crowded, you didn't have to wait in lines for very long. We're definitely going back here next year!

Maddie Coming Down the Water Slide

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 17:49:00 +0000

Maddie just LOVED the water slides! I swear that girl has no fear! As an added bonus, when we were at the Wild Island water park in Reno, she happened to turn 5 that day. An extra special birthday!

She can't swim well enough to go underwater, so the lifeguard would get a signal from up above that they needed to catch the person coming down. They would move in front of the tube and put their floaty thingy at the end so they could catch the person. They were all very nice and cool!

Reno At Night

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 15:32:00 +0000

My camera broke so I was using Marci's little Panasonic. Turns out it has a long exposure mode so I was playing with it to see what I could get. I would have liked it to be less bright, but I couldn't change any of the other settings. Still, I think it turned out pretty cool. This is looking out the window of our room on the 31st floor at the Silver Legacy looking SSW.

Mt. Shasta

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:20:00 +0000

Mt. Shasta and some very cool clouds on our way to Reno. I did some extra processing in Lightroom going for a HDR effect. I took this from inside the car while driving, which you can tell by the rear-view mirror reflection at the top. I should use Photoshop CS5's content-aware fill to remove that. ;)

Wild Island Panorama

noreply@blogger.com (Richard Uchytil) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:39:00 +0000

Another multi-shot photo I did of the Wild Island Adventure Park in Reno. Stitched in Photoshop CS5, it was a great place and a wonderful day!