This is one of those places that I always drive by in Austin but never took the time to shoot… Finally, one day the clouds seemed right for the kind of shot I wanted, so I pulled over to make it happen!

My son Ethan hits the soccer field every Saturday morning. Yesterday I grabbed this one of him sitting with his friend Zach, who I coached last year. He’s a good player that responds well to a bit of good coaching… like most kids, methinks… However, this year I am happy to be behind the lens rather than behind the lines.

Here is Ethan out with his friend on a hot summer Texas day. It was a good water fight for dad to keep a distance with the 200mm VR to capture the action and stay dry.

I spent a steaming hot Saturday at the hot rod show in Austin… there was so much to shoot… I hardly knew where to begin! I figured you couldn’t go wrong with one of these red numbers…

Here is Isabella at Ethan’s piano recital. I don’t remember exactly what she wanted at the time, but she probably got it.

This is the coolest music store in the world! It’s called “Wild About Music” and it’s right in the middle of downtown Austin on 6th street. The store has everything on its various levels and I can’t even begin to describe all the memorabilia and music-themed goods inside. Be sure to have a look if you are ever in the neighborhood and you’re a music fan!

You can visit their store directly at this link.

I finally got through editing some of my backlog… as you can see from this Christmas shot taken at the Driskill in Austin. I thought it was so cool, I just had to upload it today.. even though Christmas seems a bit far away! 🙂

This was shot in downtown Austin on a cool day (not like today!)

This weekend I went to the Hot Rod and Custom Car show here in Austin. I ran around with my tripod in hyper reflective HDR heaven… the more of these I do, the more I see the world in HDR! 🙂

I was contacted by John Polk at Alpha Lee Fireworks here in Austin on account of that fireworks shot that somehow ended up in the Smithsonian — it turns out his company shot those things off. He invited me down on Saturday night behind the scenes of their big fireworks show here in Austin.

John mentioned to me that the fireworks shot got a lot of people he knew interesting in HDR photography… and they all were visiting my HDR Tutorial – cool!

I brought Ethan and we got there about 2 hours before the show. He took about half an hour to show us around the trailers, the shells, the wiring, the firing board, and everything. It was very cool and interesting, especially since I have shot so many of these things to see how it really works backstage.

He then granted Ethan and I up close and personal action while we sat right by the trailers. We wore earplugs because we were so dang close… I used a 10 mm, so you can see the launch point as well as the peak of the explosion here.