We rented a Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye Nikon mount lens for our D300 back in August from the fantastic folks over at BorrowLenses.com. Amazingly fast shipping and above & beyond customer service. Highly recommended! These are some photos of the awesome Austin toy store, Toy Joy!  This store was one of the first things that enticed me to migrate to Austin and remains one of my favourite places in the city to visit. It’s on the corner of Guadalupe and West 29th St on the edge of the UT campus. Please check out their website over at http://www.toyjoy.com! I know you’ll have fun!

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We had massive storms in Austin today. It rained all day long and I walked around downtown all day with my socks soaked. Have I ever mentioned how much I love having dry socks? I do. It’s fantastic. Anyway, it rained. Hard. I had to work late too and that’s never fun. I’m glad I did today though because had I rushed home the way I normally do, I would have never gotten the glimpse of a rainbow on my way home as the clouds were breaking. When I first saw it I thought “oh cool, a rainbow.” I wasn’t particularly thrilled about it and wasn’t planning to photograph it. However, I kept watching as I drove further south on Mopac and watched in amazement as the rainbow grew brighter and changed position with my perspective as I traveled. I knew that I couldn’t pass up the shot when I approached an overpass reaching over the highway. I exited and impatiently hurried the unreasonably slow driver in front of me out of my way and made it to a place where I could park my car. Grabbed the camera and tripod and started shooting away at what turned out to be a double rainbow reaching directly into the city. I took a few shots and I guess people saw me on the road below because more and more people started coming up to the overpass to take photos with point and shoots and camera phones. On my way home I stopped and grabbed a few photos out on Southwest Parkway that I plan to publish in the next few days. Hope you like it!

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I started working on this image about two weeks ago. It was one of the first ones I chose to edit from the Republic Of Texas Motorcycle Rally set. I toyed with it for a while and couldn’t really settle on a style that I liked. When I’m first choosing a shot to morph into a final photographic piece I try several different styles until I find a treatment that really speaks to me. This can be a difficult process and can take anywhere from 15 minutes to several weeks, as is the case with this piece. I finally came back to it this morning and decided to publish it on the blog. I finished the minor editing and loaded into WordPress, but kept struggling with a title for the piece.

As I was writing this blurb I was listening to Audioslave’s self-titled album and then it hit me. I Am The Highway
played and I knew what to name this piece. It was taken on June 11, 2010 on Southwest Parkway in South Austin, Texas.
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Hello everyone, Amanda here again! So, Gabe has been talking lately about how it irritates him when people claim to hate HDR because it isn’t ‘pure’ photography or some nonsense. I’ve been thinking about it more and more as he brings it up, and I still can’t understand their viewpoint. These photography ‘purists’ as they are called have quite a negative view towards the post-processing of photographs. There seems to be some sense that a truly great photographer should be able to take pictures that are absolutely amazing straight out of the camera, with no need for post-processing. This is the purist’s opinion. But the problem with having an opinion about an art form (which photography most certainly is), is that no two people will be the same artist or share the same vision of ‘art’. No two photographers will take the same picture, even if it is of the same subject. Because photography is an art form, the question is not how immaculate of a photo you can create with a single click, but rather, what kind of amazing final image can you present to the viewer after extra work in the dark room (or nowadays, the computer)? Without post-processing, HDR images would not even be possible, as they require a program to stitch together multiple different exposures. The sorts of things that an HDR image can capture, that a normal lighting photograph can not, make a huge difference in the overall light quality of the photograph. HDR lighting is more ethereal and glowing. It provides a more magical feeling, giving reality a surreal edge. As a photographer, having this kind of power over light in a given photograph is exhilarating, and really enables the artist to create his own, personal and unique art. Below is the unedited (no post-processing) version of the above photograph. Which one do you like better?

This horse lives just down the road from us in a nice green pasture with a couple of cows. I saw him standing under a tree one day last week on my way to work and I had to stop and shoot a few frames. I followed him around the outside of the pasture and finally got a clear shot near some trees. I feel like all he’s missing is a horn to look like a unicorn! Amanda put these awesome colours together on the edit.

Talking Shit About A Pretty Sunset

Originally uploaded by whitehotphoenix

Blanketed opinions that I’ll probably regret soon…

April 26, 2010. Bee Cave, Tx

source: http://www.whitehotphoenix.com

See more great colourful macro stuff over at http://www.whitehotphoenix.com!

Sorry Mario.

Just a quick one today. Don’t have much time. This is an older photo called “Outer” taken at Sol’stice garden store, dripping springs, texas.