MBeck Photography

I have obviously been on a slight break from photography.  Between my career and my family (wife and 2 kids) I simply have no time anymore.  And to be quite honest, I am rarely anywhere interesting or worth taking photographs.

But that changed on the 4th of July this year.  I went to an amazing party at a friend’s house.  They had a great fireworks show at the end of the party.  And I took my first set of fireworks pictures ever.  Hope you enjoy them.  I thought they turned out quite nice.

So this is one of the more entertaining photos.  And this is straight from the camera, no editing or tricks.  I had my camera on a remote shutter release.  I held open the shutter and used two LED keychains to “draw” in the air with light.  It takes some practice.  You have to do it all backwards so that it shows up the right way in the camera.  And you have to do it all with your ‘mind’s eye’ to picture where you are drawing, since you don’t see what you’ve drawn until the picture is done.  Hope you enjoy, this one was lots of fun.

 

So the first version (white background) of this photo received a lot of goof feedback on my Flickr stream. The only real negative feedback was from those stating it would look better with a darker background.

I agree completely, and had thought of this even before taking the original. But I only had white materials.

Well today I went and found a tile warehouse and got a few pieces of black tile and marble. With it I was able to get a dark background, and a slightly reflective surface. I think it turned out great.

This is a great little tool.   It’s my home made lightbox.  It cost me about $7 to create.  With some basic supplies from your local Wal-mart you can easily isolate images.  Here’s a few test images I did in my new lightbox.

Let me give some credit to the brilliant people over at Strobist for the design ideas for my seven dollar lightbox.  I didn’t make it exactly to their specs (mine ended up a lot larger) but other than the size, all the credit is due to them.  Appreciate it, and love your blog.  It is now bookmarked.

I’m in no way a superstitious person. But this was so incredible I had to take a photograph. It took me a while to get the time, and idea, of how exactly to represent the thoughts behind this. So I hope this works out as I intended.

The backstory: Since the first ultrasound I have always referred to my unborn son as ‘my little alien’. OK, not always, the very first sonigram I actually called him my little peanut, as that’s about all he resembled back then. But from then on out I said he looked like an alien in there.

So two days before my wife gave birth earlier this month, we were out to lunch with my mother. We went to this great Chineese place near my mother’s house. At the end of the meal we all checked our fortune cookies. As I opened mine I gasped in amazement. And at that same moment, my mother opened hers, and she too was amazed.

I saved the two fortunes in my wallet. My son was born two days later. It took me a few weeks to even remember I had them in my wallet. So here they are, hope you enjoy. My fortune is the one on top, my mother’s the bottom. Tell me that is not the most odd thing ever? These are NOT photoshopped.

This entry will be a little different than normal, as the subject does not rotate around photography. So please excuse me while I express my joy with the arrival of my newborn son. Here are the events of his birth:
8:00 am – Trisha and I are admitted to the hospital
11:30 am – After tests, paperwork, and other procedures, the Oxytocin drip is started to induce her labor
1:30 pm – Trisha is 4cm dilated, and her water is broken
1:45 pm – She is administered her first pain meds through IV, as the contractions get excruciating
2:45 pm – The first dose of pain medicine wears off, another dose is desperately needed. Trisha is holding on strong.
3:00 pm – The pain is now unbearable, Trisha gets an epidural
4:30 pm – 7cm dilated
5:15 pm – 9cm dilated
5:45 pm – Trisha is ordered to start pushing. Even with an epidural the pain is excruciating as her face turns purple. She continues pushing, never missing a beat as the doctor makes her hold and push 3 times for 10 seconds each. Trisha never messes up a single push.
8:30 pm – The baby’s head is almost crowned, but after hours of pushing, a little snip is required as Trisha cannot push much longer.
8:31 pm – My hero … my wife … manages after hours of excruciating pain and hard work gives birth to our son!!!

And here is my newborn son, Jason Marshall Beck, born 11/15/2006 at 8:31pm EST weighing in at 6lbs. 15.3oz. and 18″ tall.

As I am sure you all know, time is hectic for me. We’ve only been home from the hospital for roughly 3 hours so far.  My wife and baby are sleeping, so I took some time to share these two pictures with you all. I can promise you, that you’ll grow sick of him soon, as the pictures start flooding in more and more;)

So we took a trip to Amicalola Falls, GA. We brought our two nieces, and nephew, and of course our daughter. The falls were great. My legs were completely sore, and I realized just how out of shape I am. Anyways, got a few good pictures from the trip.

A good friend of mine has been teaching me to fly his helicopter.  We take it up to his mountain house about 6 miles south of the TN, NC, and GA border.  Then we ride the 4-wheelers around for a while.   The place has a huge dozen acre field with a pond in the center and then numerous mountain trails through the woods.  While riding around the pond I thought I’d take a nice photo of his log house.  It looks great!  And the inside is just as nice.

Just practicing a few Macro shots.  Found these flowers in the yard and thought they had a nice detail to them.  If you look real close, there’s a spider on the yellow one.  Can you find it?