I just got word that my engagement session with Jaime & Mark was featured over at The Wedding Lady Blog today. Some other great photographers featured on there as well, including my very talented friend, Amy DeYoung.

Congratulations Jaime & Mark – you two are ‘so hot right now’!

Every once in a while I get a request to do some prints for fellow photographers who appreciate the care that goes into what I do and the level of quality that results. I was contacted by Stephen Bonnau in Michigan to help him create some fine art prints for an exhibition he was putting together. They came out absolutely amazing, and I just wanted to share his work. Below are a few of the beautiful photographs I printed for Stephen – enjoy!

Straight from the camera. Looks pretty blah straight from the camera, doesn’t it? Not the beautiful sunrise we’d hoped for, but I exposed this to retain detail in the highlights of the image, and you’ll see that clearly in the final edit. As for the composition, I shot a lot of close-ups during the shoot but I needed to capture some great, wide, landscape shots. After all, when you’re shooting an engagement session in Oahu, Hawaii (or doing wedding photography in Hawaii, for that matter) you’ve GOT to show the environment. Otherwise what was the point of going somewhere exotic, right?

Quick edit for blog. In hindsight, I made this edit appear a bit too ‘cool’ (that’s blue in photographer-speak). When doing the initial passes on images, it just doesn’t make sense to spend an insane amount of time on an image as it may not make the cut to begin with, so here you have it.

After 2-3 hours of editing this one image. I’ve gotten pretty much exactly what I saw in my mind when I captured that plain looking thing you saw straight from the camera. So what do you think? Worth all the extra effort? (I think so!)

You always hear about people in NYC owning telescopes so they can [creepily] look in the windows of buildings across the way. So just for kicks, one of the shots I was constantly on the lookout for was a through-the-window ‘gotcha’ moment. Nothing dirty… I mean, I don’t really know what I was expecting to catch, but every once in a while I had to remind myself to look up into the windows as I walked in the streets of NYC. Here’s one such moment. About half a second later, he closed the curtain. I don’t think he wanted to be my friend.

Processing doesn’t get much simpler than this one. My custom Lightroom preset, Grayscale, Punchy started things off, upped the exposure by about half a stop, and played with the tone curve a little.

(I love shooting with Canon’s 200mm f/2.8L by the way… wish I had more reasons to use it day-to-day.)

I don’t know if I’m alone in this or not, but I really find this shot interesting. The lines, the shapes, the textures, the tones… they all combine to make something special to me. And maybe it’s the little boy inside of me that sees these rooftops like some sort of cool urban tree-house. I’m also fascinated with ‘the city way of life,’ as I’ve mentioned several times before.

The view from my back porch is a large, open field. With cows. The visuals in the city… the simple things that New Yorkers probably don’t notice or appreciate in the same way as I do… are 180 degrees from what I’m used to. And that’s one of the things that I’m trying to capture in my photos of NYC. The essence of the city. The simple elements that help define its character.

In processing this shot, I started out with my custom Lightroom preset Grayscale, Punchy. From there, I adjusted the color temperature, exposure, contrast, clarity, black clipping, cropped in just a tiny bit, and finally I made some very minor exposure adjustments in key areas with brush strokes.

As a sidenote, I highly recommend experimenting with color temperature adjustments when working in grayscale if you’ve never done that before. It might seem counter-intuitive to adjust color temperature when you’re not working in color, but it actually makes a huge difference in the tones. You can really make extreme adjustments when you’re not working with a portrait, as well.

I enjoyed the way that the cook was partially obscured by the slight reflections in the kitchen window. Look closely and you might see yours truly.

Processing started out with my custom Lightroom preset, Sepia 2, then I adjusted the tone curve, cropped, added clarity, and brushed in some slight exposure adjustments to even out the tones on his shoulder.

• Re-designing the Kurtis Kronk Photography logo
• Designing business cards
• Designing a custom print portfolio
• Making my first prints on the new HP Z3200
• Rearranging things in the office / doing some custom wiring

Any one of these things would be enough to keep me busy in addition to actually getting work done. But juggling all these things at the same time, you can probably understand my lack of energy to keep up with the POTD.

These things are all wrapping up soon, so I should get back on to schedule soon. Thanks for your patience!

In the meantime, here’s the newly designed logo. I wanted something very simple, understated, and easily adaptable to any medium, any color.

And a couple of the newly designed cards as well – a little background info: I’ve got 8 different versions of this card, each with a different photograph on the front and the name of that photo is referenced on the back of the card.

Note: I’ve since edited the email address in the business card, in case you’ve noticed my contact info is different than what’s in the design.

I’m not exactly a proponent of smoking – cigarettes stink, and they will, slowly and painfully, kill you. Nonetheless, there’s just something about seeing someone puff on a cigarette when they’re all alone in the streets of the big city. Absolutely oblivious to the world around them as they indulge in their selfish little micro-suicidal pleasure.

This was one of those shots where I had an opportunity to look at my subject for more than a split second – by which I mean I had like 3-5 seconds to observe. It’s surprising the impressions (maybe they’re judgments) you can take away from such a brief encounter.

In this case, I got the impression that this guy has seen better times. I could only guess what the specific circumstances are, but that’s half the fun (sorry, street-smoker-guy).

Processing for this shot started out with my custom Lightroom preset Grayscale, Portrait 2. From there, it got a little more complicated. This was a VERY high contrast scene, so I had to do lot to keep shadow and highlight details in check throughout. So I proceeded by adjusting the color temperature and then tweaking each color in the grayscale mix. Then tweaking it some more. Then I adjusted the exposure and tint a bit, followed by another color temperature tweak. Some tone curve adjustments. I rounded things out with a bunch of brush strokes to adjust exposures (mainly bringing exposure down on the subject to pull in clipped highlights), and then cropped the image.

As I’ve mentioned before, I traveled to NYC on this photo trip with some very specific ideas for images in my head. I knew there would be a lot of great opportunities I couldn’t possibly anticipate, but it really helps to be prepared.

This is one of those images I had in my head before the trip. Usually, the idea is loosely translated into the final image, simply because an opportunity will represent itself however it wants and you don’t get to pick placement of people/objects in candid street photography. But in this case, the end result is almost exactly what I’d imagined. Antonio was just in the right place at the right time for me.

To get this shot (and many others like it) I positioned myself on a street corner, leaning against the pole of a stoplight. In NYC, you’ll see a lot of interesting characters if you just chill on a street corner for a while. I mean, you can run about the city like a maniac chasing down interesting subjects if you like, but it’s much more enjoyable, and relaxing, doing it my way. And it gives you time to compose your shot carefully and anticipate the subject’s movement as they walk towards you on the street.

Processing, as usual, was done completely in Lightroom. I started out with my custom Lightroom preset, Grayscale, Portrait 2. (I’ll make this preset available for download soon.) I then added a graduated filter to increase exposure in the top of the frame, tweaked the grayscale mix, and then I brushed in exposure adjustments on the subject and the background for visual separation.

I was lucky enough to catch this courier just as he was putting on his helmet to make some more deliveries on his little Yamaha Riva scooter. Right before I clicked the shutter for this one, I chuckled to myself at the thought of Eddie Izzard (comedian) and the way he says ‘Ciao’ – which happens to be my informal title for this one.

Processing began with my custom Lightroom preset, Grayscale, Portrait 2 and then I proceeded to crop at an 8×10 ratio rather than a 2×3 ratio to get a bit closer and lose some empty, boring space. I used some brush strokes to add in some Clarity for better contrast in the midtones of the subject, and then I added just a little bit of sharpening.