Steve Peterson Photography

Sam's Senior Session... was AMAZING!

2013-05-24T19:05:00.000-06:00

Every once and a while you get to take pictures of a truly magnificent person... I had the pleasure to take senior portraits for this senior Sam:

If you would like to see the full set: StevePetersonPhotography.com

The Leonardo (Da Vinci Exhibit)

2013-01-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

My wife and I had a free night last week so we went to a museum, The Leonardo (Salt Lake City, Utah) has been hosting a Da Vinci Exhibit so we went to see it. I love Da Vinci, he was such a great inventor, painter and more. Here are some pictures of the great Da Vinci exhibit and The Leonardo exhibits.

See the full set of photos here: The Leonardo
See what else is available at The Leonardo

A great camera bag give away!

2013-01-04T14:56:00.001-07:00

Check out Nicole Young's (Nicolesy) blog she is giving away a new Lowe Pro bag, well lowepro is giving the bag away but through Nicolesy ;)

I have had the Fastpack 350 for 2 different camera's (with gear), three different laptops, over 2 years of shooting and travel and have absolutely loved it, I've recommended it to a number of people. I know at least 3 (that's a lot) people who have bought and love the Fastpack 350 but I'm growing out of it and would love to get the rover pro series of bag to move into.

Here's the link: http://nicolesyblog.com/2012/12/28/holiday-giveaway-lowepro-rover-pro-45l-aw-camera-bag/

The Bag: http://www.lowepro.com/rover-pro-aw

Theocracide! New and upcoming book.

2012-12-30T23:47:00.000-07:00

If you want to read a great book and you want to get the kindle edition before the print edition comes out go get it here:Theocracide.

Sharks and Reefs

2012-09-28T15:45:00.000-06:00

While in Las Vegas you should check out the shark reef in the Mandalay Bay. It has one of the best Jellyfish tanks. see a full set of photos here:
StevePetersonPhotography.com

The Great... Great Salt Lake... Buffalo!

2012-08-31T17:09:00.000-06:00

Pictures from Memorial day (I'm a bit late to post them) but here they are:

See the full set here: StevePetersonPhotography.com

The first day of school!

2012-08-28T13:31:00.001-06:00

My kids were so excited! I remember school a lot different when I was a kid. I really love that my kids love school.

See the full set here: http://smu.gs/PpudS1

Sandy Hot Air Balloon Festival - 2012

2012-08-10T10:53:00.001-06:00

The Sandy Hot Air Balloon Festival is going on today and tomorrow (August, 10-11, 2012)

See a sky full of hot air balloons at the 2012 Sandy Hot Air Balloon Festival. The sunrise balloon launches happen both mornings. The first wave launch at 7:00 am and the second wave at 7:30 am (wind and weather permitting) at Storm Mountain Park, 11400 South 1000 East, directions. Bright Eyes Coffee and Smoothies will be on hand to provide morning breakfast fuel for everyone.

On Saturday evening, the festivities move to the South Towne Promenade in front of Sandy City Hall, 10000 South 173 west with the balloon glow beginning around 8:00 pm. Tasty food choices will be available for purchase by Surefire Pizza, Tropical Dreams Ice Cream, Snowie Snow Cones, with hamburgers, hot dogs and hand-cut fries from Expo Foods. Enjoy an evening of entertainment on the festival stage with Utah's own bluesy and folksy band The Folka Dots. See more about them here.

Bring the whole family to see the balloons fly and at dusk on Saturday enjoy food and entertainment and the glow of the balloons in the night sky.

Some pilots may need volunteers to help crew their hot air balloons. Come early, find a pilot that needs help and experience the thrill of helping crew a hot air balloon.

Also, take pictures and video at the festival and enter our photo/video contest for your chance at winning prices. We will award 1st, 2nd and 3rd place plus a Mayor's Choice and an award for video. View rules and enter the contest here. View the 2011 photo contest winners here Sandy Balloon Festival photo contest.

Happy Shooting!

You can see the full set of photos here: http://smu.gs/OPQurI

:Steve

Some one buy this for me (or click the link): Canon 22.3 Megapixel EOS 5D Mark III Digital SLR Camera Body - 5260B002AA (Google Affiliate Ad)

Hulk cake...

2012-07-24T15:57:00.001-06:00

Percolator

New camera coming...

2011-09-23T11:32:00.000-06:00

I have been obsessed with film camera's for about a year now, and have a number of 35mm camera's I've been using. I just won a TLR (twin lens reflex) camera from ebay, I hope it works :). The new camera has a 120 film size back so I ordered some film from the internet it's really the only place to get film much anymore, I know there are some local shops that carry it but 5 rolls of film for $19.00 is pretty good (I think). I need to start doing my own film development that is what I need to get next. I wanted to try a few different types of film, so I went to photoshop and have been playing around with a few filters. I know they are digital representations of what the qualities of the film that makes it unique, but I settled on the Kodak 400 T-Max film, if the post processing is any indication of the output from the film I'm pretty excited. When I shoot some film and scan I'll post the film photos so we can have a little comparison :) Here are my digital test shots.

Right out of the camera, nice and smooth

After applying the Kodak 400 T-Max processing

Split view for easier comparison

Weird Al Yankovic

2011-09-15T16:00:00.000-06:00

Weird Al Yankovic is a fantastic performer! I saw him about a million years ago and was hooked for life. With the release of his new album Alpocalypse (go buy it, it's awesome) he has a 2 month tour going on right now (link). I got tickets for my family which include me my wife and our three kids (ages: 7, 6, 4). The kids have been listening to the music for a few weeks now and pretty much know the lyrics by heart. The concert was amazing Al hit all the hits from the new album and a bunch of hits from previous albums. The best part was watching my 4 year old bouncing up and down singing the songs at the top of his lungs, then at the end of the show they wanted to go to the next stop of the tour. Al if you ever see this, I just want to say thanks for such a great concert and show, and you now have three life long fan's in my kids!

You can see the whole set of photos here: StevePetersonPhotography.com

Up up and away in a Beautiful Balloon

2011-08-16T10:44:00.000-06:00

Sandy City in Utah hosted a Hot Air Balloon festival on August 13, 2011. I have wanted to take photos of hot air balloons for a long time, but have had to be other places for the last few years (busy busy busy). This year I was able to attend and get some of my personal photography skills sharpened with a subject I have never shot before. I really had a good time and got some good pictures. There wasn't any clouds so there was very little reference when the balloons were in the air. I decided to switch focus and capture some small details and some balloon groupings, here you go (you can see the full set of photos here StevePetersonPhotography.com):

Shoshone Falls Idaho

2011-08-11T18:01:00.000-06:00

Two posts in one day :)

In June on our way home from Washington (not the Cannonball run), we stopped at the Shoshone Falls. Its a bit out of the way, but it was totally worth it! There is a $3.00 fee to get into the overlook area also very worth it. The falls are huge and flowing really fast right now from all the run off. This is a collage of 4 photos stitched together. You can see/buy the print here: StevePetersonPhotography.com

Click the picture to get the full size image is 3909 x 1024 (the low res one, the full res one is 9169 x 2402).

Cannonball Run from Salt Lake City, UT to Seattle, WA

2011-08-11T11:24:00.000-06:00

My wife and I drove to Seattle, we left Thursday morning and got home Saturday night, to pick up our niece and nephew for a few weeks of summer visiting (we have a lot of fun with them when they are with us). The following images were captured by the Museum of Glass we didn't make it before they closed (6:00pm) but the exhibits outside are so amazing! I went into capture trance mode filling up my memory card before I realized there was small details I needed to capture and went into macro mode, the details were hypnotic, you have to see this place. We got there as the lights were coming on right after dusk and I think it was the best time to be there, less people and individual lights for each sculpture. The exhibits are behind glass (no kidding) and the glass at the top of the walk way was a little dusty picking up some light causing the image to be a little less detailed then I would have liked, that was the only thing I didn't like about shooting here at night. See the full set of image here: http://smu.gs/oJPHj5

http://www.museumofglass.org/

on the side of another piece of glass.

apartments

my niece calls these glass sculptures "bags" :)
hollow creations of amazing color and light.

small details of the actual museum

attempt at street photography ;)

What cropping can do for you!

2011-03-18T16:27:00.001-06:00

Cropping an image can make or break it. This is a photo I took because of the color and the texture, but wasn't sure the way I wanted it to look post processed, I love both of them but one has a little more dramatic look. I think it works both ways, which one do you like better?

GiSTEQ PhotoTrackr Mini DPL900 - GPS tracking device - 2 MB

Behold the power of Black and White!

2011-02-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

I am in love with Black and White photographs! Here are some examples (in my opinion some great photographs on their own) that are amazing in black and white. The two in Vegas - the Bellagio and Ceasers Palace have been HDR processed into Black and White that's what gives them the painted ethereal look. I put them side by side for reference, comment if you like the color or black and white one better:

Stones at the end

2011-02-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

I was looking for something to shoot today at lunch. I didn't know what I wanted to shoot but I knew I wanted to shoot something with texture, weather and bokah (blurry backgrounds). So I grabbed my camera put on my 50 f1.8 and headed out in search of something interesting to shoot. I ended up in a little cemetery in Draper (the head stone of the baby broke my heart:

Telling a story with a sequence.

2011-02-11T01:39:00.000-07:00

When taking pictures sometimes I find myself hitting the shutter really fast and getting a set of images that naturally group together.

New Year, New Party

2011-01-04T15:50:00.000-07:00

Every year we, my family, has a massive party. People everywhere, food everywhere, movies, games it's amazing, I find its really difficult to pick taking pictures over making party fun. I was a little late on picking up the camera but when I did:

When you are trying to take pictures in the dark you need to have extra light, bring in the strobe (or flash) but you need very quick response from your strobe. So it's like a very fine balancing act trying to keep the images looking real and nature with enough light you can see the subject. I used my Gary Fong LightSphere to do this.

Tip: when using strobes, don't point the head of the strobe directly at a person (unless you need to) bounce or defuse it someway to make the light nice and soft.

Happy New 2011 to all of you!

See the full set of photos here: http://www.stevepetersonphotography.com

Get a LightSphere here: Gary Fong LSUCLOUD Lightsphere Universal Cloud

Tim and Lori

2010-12-21T12:03:00.001-07:00

I did a shoot for a family, Tim and Lori and their kids:

They were really fun, I had a great time with them. See all the memories here: http://www.stevepetersonphotography.com

Ten Tips on capturing a optical illusions.

2010-12-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't been a very good "Blogger" in the last two months and I apologize. Please forgive me. I'm going to try and write an entry at least twice a month for now.

As all of my readers know, or will know in a few seconds, I always carry a camera with me. I was going to use that as my tip (again) but you all know that, so no need to bring it up.

The image above was taken by the salt flat turn off near Wendover,UT.

Make sure you have a really good spot, move if you need to, where you can see the illusion with your eyes, if you can see it you should be able to photograph it.

get as close as possible while getting the full optical illusion effect.

Try to get something in the photograph to define what you are looking at. This image is a mountain floating in front of the mountains in the far background and between the sky and salt flats (no questions).

If you are trying to capture the "water in the road" illusion make sure we know it's a road, not just a weird shiny blob of stuff.

Use the longest lens you have, most optical illusions are really far away from your camera so try to reach out as far as you can, this was shot at 205mm on a Canon 40D (1.6 crop put the length at around 328mm).
Crop the image. If I didn't crop this image it would be a lot of blue and a lot of salt and not as interesting as what I was seeing.
I don't normally add the vignetting in my photos (I think it's a cheap overused trick by photographers, I think it distracts from the image and doesn't make it look more "professional") but the image and hood added a little corner vignetting so I added it back in.
Try to keep the white balance as true as possible. The brown stuff in front of the "island" is actually salt and looks very white in some places this particular place it looks brown when you are standing out there.
longer exposure will help you get the detail you want, I took this photo while holding my camera, if I had a tripod (Bad Me, must put one in all my vehicles) it would have allowed me to get more detail and make it even more dramatic.
Experiment with your camera and settings, if you take ten of the same image you will have ten duplicates that need to be sorted through, change the ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture.
Change your lens and go really wide to get some extra creativity.
Have fun, if you get frustrated, you are probably doing it wrong.

This post is brought to you by a Bee Gees song Islands in the Stream (link).

Tip: Today's tip is one that I'm not really that good at doing my self. Clean your sensor when you need to. The image above had a lot of spots that needed to be removed before I uploaded it. It took me a little while to remove all the tiny spots.

try one of these to help remove those nasty little spots.

Photographing an overly massive hole!

2010-10-01T16:13:00.001-06:00

Recently I took my family to the Bingham Canyon Copper Mine (40.53510, -112.15125 map link). This place is massive, you have to visit to fully appreciate it. How could I capture the massiveness of it and still focus on the details? First thing I needed to do was get a picture of the team in front of the massive tire that will hopefully give scale to the size of the hole:

Even though this photo appears to be a tourist snapshot (you can see other tourists lining up the shot on the other side) I tried to make it more like a portrait then a snapshot.

First tip: on capturing the massiveness of this hole was to walk around and see what was around, try to absorb the surroundings. While walking around I try and wax artistic, it gives me a chance to see things from a different perspective:

I saw this mine cart and was amazed at the texture and grain and wanted to capture it so I did.

Second tip: look to the left, right and get in close. When you butter toast focus on the outside and the middle takes care of its self, or so I'm told. This was my focus on this hole as well, in the left and right picture you can see a truck (one of the trucks the size of the wheel) that will hopefully give you an idea of the massiveness of this place.

Left: see the little trucks in in the distance?

Right: see the two trucks passing, pretty massive?

Close up: even though the mine is so big it also has a really amazing repetitive organized pattern.

Reminder: always have your camera with you (its like a record that keeps playing the same tune).

When was the last time you printed images? The more you print the more you will see and feel your images which I think makes you a better photographer.

The power of under or over exposed photos.

2010-08-06T19:34:00.000-06:00

Flickr

Tip: Make sure you have your camera with you at all times.
This is just a tip not necessarily one relating to this post ;)

When you are taking pictures of something else turn sidewards and around and to the other side to see what is around you. I was taking a few pictures of a temple and wanted to see what the road looked like in the camera, it was okay, but then I thought why not take one over exposed (to clip out the boring stuff like houses and clouds) and try to make it look like a ink illustration or drawing and BANG That's what I got. I like it, but it's been a long week and I'm sorta looking forward to a very un-eventful weekend.

To get these results:

crop and straiten your image to the desired size if needed.
open the image in photoshop (if its not already)
in the adjustments section add a Posterize layer and set the level really low like 4 (this will clump colors together sorta makes it blocky)
now add a Threshold layer you have to play with the settings it's really cool to see.
Save your image and share it with people on the web (like me, let me see your art work)

Note/tip: you may need to play with the Posterized and Threshold layers to get the look you like.

I want to help you. If you have an image you would like me to look at for corrections or tips send me a link or the image and we can talk about it.

Photography 101 tip: Eyes

2010-07-15T16:04:00.000-06:00

I think everybody who does Photography as a Hobby or a Profession at one time or another teaches someone how to use a camera or take pictures. I love to teach people about photography, we can share "secrets" together and get smarter together, it's amazing how it works.

Tip: when you take pictures of people, as a general rule try to keep the camera on the same level as the eyes of your subject. One exception to this rule, when taking pictures of women have the camera slightly above your subjects eyes. Another exception to this rule, when taking pictures of men have the camera slightly below the eyes. Try it, it's really fun.

General rule example:

Women:

Men:

I don't like to put pictures of kids on the web for safety and security reasons... but that being said here is a picture of my son taking a picture, great form :)

The mountain princess - Timpanogos HDR vs Tone Mapping vs Black and White

2010-06-10T00:28:00.001-06:00

On my way to work, I had to stop and capture this Massive mountain. To get the correct perspective I left the Draper Temple in the photo so you can see just how big it is. I find my self looking at it a lot when I drive and always looking for the correct clouds and snow (this is spring snow and has been a fantastic addition, it's all but gone now). This was a morning when I had to stop.

There has been a lot of HDR processing on photos as of late, I have been doing a HDR and tone mapping comparison. I'm not sure which one I like better. What do you think?

Tone Mapping:

HDR:

Black and White:

Let's Play a game: first one to comment gets a copy of one of the three images in 8x10.