Awe struck

I have been extremely bored with my daily routine lately. So yesterday I decided to get out of the house, drive up the mountain and take some pictures and just enjoy the fresh air. I was supposed to shoot my cousin's engagement photos this weekend but he had to cancel. So I decided to practice a little bit and experiment so I'd be ready next weekend (maybe.) 

I went to one of the places I was going to do the shoot at (near the Snowbowl ski area) and made some self-portraits. Since I don't have a remote trigger for my camera, this invloved a lot of running back and forth and setting the timer, realizing I stood in the wrong spot, closed my eyes, etc. Needless to say, I got tired of the charade after awhile and was considering packing up the strobes. Then the wind blew my umbrella over and broke it, so I had no choice. 

I took a few more pictures without any flashes and then decided to just sit under a tree and enjoy the sunset that was about to take place. The slight breeze and 70 degree weather made it all perfect. The smell of the pines around me combined with the beautiful show of reds, blues, and oranges in the sky above me put my mind at ease. 

I moved to Flagstaff for this exact moment. I wanted to be in the pines, in cooler weather and free from the smog that clouds the cities. In that moment I remembered the freshness of all those things upon first moving here and wondered how I could have all this in my backyard and never enjoy it...

The first photo above is/was an attempt to capture how small I feel when looking at the bigger picture, the one below was along the same lines.

Anyway, I managed to get some decent shots, but I think the best part was watching the sunset without a lens framing my vision.

This last photo is an HDR image, which means it is three images combined (one overexposed and one underexposed) to creat more detail in the highlights and shadows. I really like the way this turned out. It was the image I had in my head for my cousin's engagement photos. Only she would be leaning against the tree staring at him with him over top leaning into her and staring into her eyes.... woulda been good! ;)

Lastly, real quick I experimented with overpowering sunlight with two strobes into an umbrella a couple weeks ago. I really like the dark blue it gives the sky. This was the best of my experimentations.

All these pictures and more on my flickr