Brittney

This beautiful girl is my girlfriend Brittney Kinnas. She came from Massachusetts to visit me in California for a weekend and I took some pictures of her. We almost weren’t able to see each other because the Marine Corps is a pain and never tells us anything until last minute so when she already had her flight I was supposed to still be out in the field training for a large portion of the time she was down. Fortunately some things got switched around and it ended up working out. I hit up some key Southern California spots while she was out here like Huntington Library, San Diego Zoo, and even went on a hot air balloon ride. It was pretty awesome. This photo was shot with a Rokinon 85mm f/1.4 lens and was minimally processed in Photoshop CS6. All that was done were curves and levels adjustments and some dodging and burning. Hope you like the end result.

Brittney

Sunset Cliffs

Pictured here is Sunset Cliffs. This is in Southern California near San Diego. It is a beautiful stretch of cliffs that run along the coast for miles. I have wanted to go for a while and finally decided to venture out and see how it was. Turns out it was pretty amazing. I found a little path that went down to the beach which consisted of what looked like mostly locals. Right off the beach you could climb on the rocks and go even farther down where no one was. This, of course, I did. There was this large rock pictured below which I believe is called bird rock, for obvious reasons, that was just off the shoreline that I knew would make for great pictures. I had the time so I figured I would try different angles and filters so I slapped on the big piece of welders glass. It was the middle of the day and it was cloudy so I knew there wouldn’t be a glare and the picture would probably turn out fairly decent but I didn’t expect such great results. This is a 30 second exposure that was taken and later brought into Photoshop CS6 to edit. I replaced the dull colorless cloudy sky with a better one I had in reserve and corrected some of the colors from the green welders glass makeshift filter as well. Hope you like the end result. If you have any questions about the welders glass filter feel free to ask.

Sunset Cliffs

Steven

Introducing Steven Feusi. This is my buddy from the Marine Corps that was willing to let me take some pictures of him. We had some time off after work so we went out back near his car which happens to be a sweet red Chevy Nova. He was super embarrassed because I had him dress somewhat nice and we were around the barracks where we live with people walking around but it still worked out. It was his first time in front of the camera for a shooting session so being a little uncomfortable is understandable. I can imagine how awkward it must feel with someone just staring at you through a lens. This picture was shot while he was sitting in the front seat of his car with the door open. The light was awesome because it was in the shade and the sun was behind him so I barely touched this photo. All I did was brighten his pupils a bit and take away some blemishes. The new lens makes such a difference for portrait pictures. It’s amazing. I suggest to anyone who is serious to take portraits to go out and get a 85mm F/1.4. It gives it that soft professional look.

Steven

San Clemente Girl

This isn’t actually a photo I took but I wanted to put it up because my buddy Steven had taken it and I helped with the editing. Unfortunately my friend didn’t catch her name so I can’t say who this is exactly but he spotted her while we were hanging out at the beach. I was teaching him how to use this new 84mm f/1.4 lens that I bought and he couldn’t help but want to take this girls photo. He went over and asked for permission and she was kind enough to say yes. The clouds were covering the sun at the time so it made for a real nice filtered light which accentuated the natural beauty of the girl. He did a great job with the actually taking of the photo considering he has minimal experience with photography. You can find my friend who took this on tumbler here. His name is Steven Feusi, Hope you like our collaborative efforts at making a photo. And thank you to whomever you are San Clemente girl.




San Clemente Girl

Red Sky

This was taken at Corona Del Mar beach near Laguna, CA. A lot of processing went into this one because I didn’t initially like how the sky looked so I replaced it with another photo that I had in reserve to use for just that purpose. I initially started off by combing three exposures into an HDR in Photomatix and brought the result into Photoshop. From here I masked through the better parts of the various photos until I came out with what I wanted. I then cut out the sky and replaced it and multiplied the sky layer on top so it looked like it reflected on the water. From here the rest of the processing was all fine adjustments here and there. Hope you like the result! Let me know what you think.




Red Sky

Japanese Shack

This is an old photo that I took back while I was on deployment in Okinawa a little over a year ago. I was going through some of my older photos and never got around to processing this one so I decided to give it a shot since I hadn’t taken any new photos this weekend. This is situated right outside of Shuri Castle in Okinawa. This is made up of 3 JPEG images that were combined into an HDR in Photomatix. I took the HDR and masked through the original layers to keep the better parts of the photos and processed the whole image in Photoshop CS6. Hope you like it!




Japanese Shack

Teddy & Maryam

This photo was for one of my friends that I met in my unit while in the Marines. His girlfriend Maryam had come down to visit him and they wanted to take some couple portrait photos. We decided on taking them at San Onofre beach which is right on base. These two were great to shoot because they looked great together and assisted me a lot with holding the reflector when it was need. In this shot I used a silver reflector to bounce some of the direct sunlight back into the shadowed side of their faces. Fortunately the sun was coming close to setting so it wasn’t as strong. This is a RAW image file that I processed in Photoshop CS6.




Teddy & Maryam