Eye on the Prize

Here is another one from the round up on the James Ranch. Time for a lunch break from editing. I've only got a couple more dozen images left to process. Whoo Hoo! God's blessings upon your day, chris This image was created with a handheld Canon 7D MkII and a Canon EF-S17-85mm lens at 17mm. The camera settings used were AV mode, ISO 400 F 5.6 at 1/1600 th of a sec.#TeamCanon

One From the Round Up

Editing images from a big photo shoot can be a big chore. About three weeks ago I photographed a cattle round up on the James Ranch near where I live. It was a long, fun, all day affair and I took a lot of images. This is one of my favorite images so far. I've got about a quarter of them left to process. God's love and blessings upon your day, chris This image was created with a handheld Canon 7D MkIIand a Canon EF-S17-85mm lens at 30mm. The camera settings used were AV mode, ISO 800, F 16.0 at 1/640th of a sec.

Round Up Part one

Last Saturday I discovered that I don't function very well at four fifteen in the morning. My alarm went off and I didn't even move. Lenore had to wake me up. I pretty much dragged myself out of the house and onto the road. The first hour of the drive up to Island Mountain Ranch was pretty easy driving north on Highway 101. After turning off Highway 101 onto Bell Springs Road the rest was mostly pure dust for two hours of one lane roads a I was following one of the cowboys rigs into the ranch. I hung back as far as I could but there is a maze of roads once you turn off of Bell springs road onto the Adanac ranch and I didn't want to get lost. At one point we did hold back too far and we missed a turn and got lost. With a little back tracking we figured it out. The sweeping views of the Eel River were spectacular. We arrived at Island Mountain Ranch with out any fanfare. There were quite a few cowboy rigs scattered around on the pastureland below the corrals with the most common rig being a fifth wheel livestock trailer with a good sized pick up and the requisite cattle dog. The group of cowboys I was with got right to work unloading their horses and jumping right in helping to separate the calves and unbranded cattle from the rest of the herd. Following that they were selecting about ten calves at a time into the branding pen. Here a team of two riders would rope the calf. One mounted cowboy was the header and one was the heeler. Once they were roped the ground crew of two to five people would rush in to push down the calf so that it could be branded, dehorned and castrated if it was a male. We worked until one before heading up to the main ranch house for a generous lunch. I had a fantastic time photographing the event. Part two tomorrow. God's love and blessings to all, chris All images created with a Canon 7D and a Canon 28-135 IS lens

Kickin' Up Their Heels!

A sure sign of spring is the colt that was born last week on the ranch in the pasture below my photoblind. It's amazing how fast colts are up and around. God's love and blessings to all, chris

Sign of Spring

Yesterday I got to see a wonderful sight.One of the mares in the pasture next to my photoblind foaled. The little girl was sticking fast to her mama and fallowing her all over the pasture. It's amazing how quickly they are able to get up and around being only one day old. God's blessings to all, chris

Previsualization

Before I even clicked the shutter with this image this is what I had in mind. I previsualized what I wanted as the end result and here it is. I asked my friend Israel to pose his horse in front of the Skunk Train. This morning I finally found the time to process the image the way I had it pictured in my mind. First I converted it to B+W . Next I added a sepia tone. Following that I added the texture of some peeling paint to selected parts of the image. The next stage in the process was to erase some of the edges and add some sepia around the edges of the frame. The last and final part of the process was to add some light areas to the image. I'm really pleased with how the image turned out.
God'ss blessings to all,

chris