Harvest Hoedown

I love my church.

Every year we have a huge bar-b-que event out in the sticks at Lupton's Boggy Bottom. What an awesome location , and the food is amazing. It's a great night to hang out, play with your kids, meet new people, eat amazing food (did I mention I love their Bar-b-que?) and just be one huge family. Of course I made certain I made as many photographs as possible while there. Here's the slideshow. Enjoy!

Orlando Portraits

One of the things I do as often as possible is to spend time with other photographers. I find these times to be refreshing and challenging at the same time. I think the Bible calls it "Iron Shapens Iron." I come away from these with a renewed excitement about photography and new ideas to challenge my creative vision. I get together with a gorup of photogrpahers from central Florida almost every month and there is a group forming here in the Brandon/Tampa area that my prove quite good as well.

Last month the central Florida group met in downtown Orlando for a night portrait shoot. I brought a large, experimental light source that I love to use for that shoot. I spent most of the night lighting for others, but did manage to pull my camera out for a few. Here are some of my selects.

Monique

I had a very unusual shoot recently. A Sweet Sixteen Party. A very good friend called me to ask if I would be interested and whie I was still making up my mind she handed the phone to Avis. Avis is one of the most excited people I have ever met. She ads energy to everyone in the room and I was hooked by her personality. I had to meet this family.

This was an amazing and fun day. I love being a photograper. I am blessed to be a part of the best days of so many people's lives. Sometimes I have to thank God for what I do.

To see some of the selects from Monique's party, go to the slide show at www.mccrystalimage.com/mussio or by clicking "Monique" upove - the title of this post. Enjoy!

Runing Like Crazy

This as been a busy season for me lately. One of the big things that has set me into hyper busy mode was my decision to go back to Mac. I've been a PC guy for a lot of years and it is proving to be a steep learning curve. More than anything it is an unlearning curve. I am having to unlearn all the habits I developed trying to use PC's ad their weird ways of doing things. Software that is simple is hard to use when youare busy looking for a harder way to do something than the engineers designed.

I have to say I'm loving the new system. My MacBook Pro is running faster than the desktop system than I have been running. There is a lot to learn and new paths t get from A to B. Overall I'm very gald I made the leap back to the platform that made me fall in love with computers in the first place. My college room mate from my freshman year introduced me to Photoshop 1.0 on a Mac and I was sold. I stopped using my manual typewriter right then! (Yes, I was still using a manual typewrite then... I'm a bit stubborn)

Blake High School

Last week I had a chance to visit my firned Linda at Blake High School. She has been teaching Photography there since they opened. I've been in and out of that classroom for most of those years teaching lighting and helping with critiques etc. I love going there. The students are amazing. I have seen some unbelievable art come from the students in that program. My visits always leave me inspired and challenged to do more and better work. I get a refreshing peek at how my work as a photographer began.

I spent time with a small group of advanced students talking about portraiture and lighting. These are areas I love to teach. There are so many simple and creative options for lighting and studio work. Very challenging and exciting. I love to see the ideas start to spark while I'm talking and photographing them. It reminds me why I love this so much...