Cherry Blossom Photowalk Weekend

Gonna be in the DC area early on Saturday morning? I mean, REALLY early?

If you're brave enough, and you want to come hang out with some awesome DC photographers, I encourage you to join the crowd meeting up down at the Tidal Basin at 5:30am on Saturday morning.

We'll be waiting for sunrise and trying to beat the crowds of tourists to capture this years blossoms. Last year there was a great turnout, and a lot of awesome photography.

You can find a bunch of detail on the official Facebook event page, hosted by Marc Benton and company.

You can visit the Flickr group page from last year to get inspired.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/early_morning_cherry_blossoms/

MM10 - Cool, Free Downloads

Today's MM10 is going to be focused on some cool, free stuff you should download to try out or incorporate into your workflow. Sorry in advance to my Mac readers, a lot of this is for the PC.

1) onOne Plug-In Suite 5, 30-day Trial - Download the award winning plug-in suite and see for yourself why it is one of the most popular sets of Adobe Plug-Ins available today.

2) Adobe Lightroom 3, Beta 2 - Want to see what all the fuss is about? If you're not a Lightroom user yet - see what Adobe has in store for you in the next few months. If you are a current Lightroom user, download and start to drool.

3) Photomatix 3.2.7, Free Trial - As you'll see when Jason Moore and I release Start to Finish Episode 2, HDRSoft's Photomatix is the tool for generating high-quality HDR.

4) RecycleNow - Yes, this makes the list. I like to keep my computer as neat and tidy as possible, and this application allows for me to set a scheduled task to empty the recycle bin nightly on my PC. Without it, I used to get gigabytes of garbage piled up in the bin, which slows down the machine.

5) Crimson Editor - Nerd Alert. As someone who does a lot of web design in addition to photography, Crimson Editor is a must. This free text editor will open and context color syntax from DOZENS of different programming languages... and it's open source. (If you know what that means, congrats - you're tech savvy. If that excites you - you're a fellow nerd.)

6) SyncBackPro, 30-day Trial - Download the backup software that has become the cornerstone of my backup routine and see how easy and reliable it is.

7) ImgBurn, CD/DVD Burning Tool - I despise the big, bloated CD/DVD burning packages that come bundled with most new machines or new CD-R/DVD-R drives. With ImgBurn I've finally found a small, reliable tool to get the job done... and best of all, it's free.

8) Dropbox - Want to share files and folders with friends and colleagues over the net? Dropbox has become my favorite, convenient method for doing so.

That's all for now gang... hope you enjoy.

How-To: Remove a Subject from Chroma-Key using Mask Pro 4.1

Want to snag a copy of the above video? You can download it by right clicking, here.

Another demo of the cool stuff from my buddies over at onOne... This time I demo how quick and easy it is to remove a subject from a chroma-key green background using Mask Pro 4.1. It really is amazing to see how this can be accomplished in minutes when I think back to the eternity it use to take me when I was doing it manually. Hope you enjoy. As always, I'd love to hear your feedback.

Just a reminder! Interested in buying something from onOne? They've given us a coupon code to share - TJP10 - to save 20% off everything in their online store.

Engagement - Sabina and Robert

As the spring wedding season continues to blossom, I had the chance to work with a really fun couple in the studio. We met Sabina and Robert at the Stonewall Bridal Show back in February, and just knew we had to get them in front of the camera. Thanks to both of you for giving us the chance catch some great studio portraits. Here's just a few of my favorites.

Nikon D3, 24-70mm (at 40mm), f/11 at 1/250s, ISO 100

Nikon D3, 24-70mm (at 60mm), f/11 at 1/200s, ISO 100

Nikon D200, 70-200mm (at 75mm), f/9 at 1/160s, ISO 100

Engagement - Lisa and Jeremiah

Had the pleasure of heading out on one of the first nice days in March with some awesome clients (and great friends!), Lisa and Jeremiah. We're going to be shooting Lisa and Jeremiah's wedding in May, so we wanted to make sure to capture some engagement photos ahead of time. First we headed down to old-town Warrenton (Lisa's hometown) and then to a set of train tracks back in Gainesville. All in all, we had a blast and the frames that came out of the shoot were excellent.

Nikon D3, 24-70mm (at 58mm), f/10 at 1/200s, ISO 100

Nikon D200, 70-200mm (at 125mm), f/4 at 1/500s, ISO 100

On a personal note - It was a gorgeous day, so I brought the old D200 along for the ride and enjoyed the heck out of shooting with my old trusty!