This past weekend I enjoyed the rare treat of escaping the heat of my desert abode, if only for a few days, and trekking up into the wild North. No, not Alaska or anything epic like that, just a little jaunt up to the Silver Creek valley and the towns of my youth, Snowflake and Taylor. Yes, that’s right. Towns. Plural. I don’t know why, but for some reason there are two separate, distinct, and highly individual towns that for all intents and purposes are essentially the same little town. Oh well, like I said, I don’t understand it but I will continue to differentiate the two hamlets because to do otherwise would surely invite the wrath, of at least part, of the indigenous population.

Anyway, to get to the point, this past weekend was the 24th of July. That doesn’t mean anything to most people, but the 24th of July is actually a state holiday. Now before you go all Wikipedia on me, I didn’t say it was an Arizona state holiday; it is a Utah state holiday. (see that? I just used a semicolon…correctly even…I think) Pioneer Day is a celebration of the Pioneers who came into the Salt Lake Valley back in the day. It is a pretty cool event, you should check it out sometime if you don’t already know. Why, since Snowflake and Taylor are both quite obviously in Arizona, do they have a Pioneer Day celebration? Well, basically those towns were settled by pioneers too; many of them the very same families that came across the plains to Utah originally. (Pretty sure a semicolon doesn’t belong in that last sentence)

To make a long story short, pioneers came, they settled, they ranched, they farmed and they had big families. Now in commemeration of all that (and because the chambers of commerces are keenly aware that the population of the town roughly triples) they tend to have an all out 4th-of-july-style shindig complete with a parade, a rodeo, a massive bbq, multiple high school class reunions, and activites for young and old.

Without further ado, I present the pinnacle of the celebration, the fireworks…

Do you know an outstanding high school student that is graduating this year? If so, how would you like to give them (or their parents) the gift of senior portraits?

For the month of January you can nominate the high school senior of your choice for a free senior portrait package from Chad Westover Photography. Read below for all the details.

You can submit your nomination by doing one of two things. Go to the Chad Westover Photography Facebook Page ( <- click right here or on the link over on the right of the page) and post the name of your favorite senior or you can simply post their name in the comments at the end of this post.

Nominations can be submitted for the entire month of January and during the first week of February a winner will be announced. We will be choosing the winner based on two criteria.

1. Random selection – we will put all the names in a proverbial hat and choose on at random.
2. Best Reason for getting the free pics – if you can tell us why your favorite soon-to-be high school graduate deserves it more than anyone else it might give them a little better chance of getting picked.

Free Senior Portrait Package includes:

• 2-hour photo session
• 2 changes of clothes*
• You can choose the location**
• Free prints***
  - 25 wallets
  - 8 – 5×7
  - 4 – 8×10
• CD with internet-ready digital images for sharing in email, on facebook, personal blogs, etc. ****
• Password-protected online gallery to share with friends/family where they can view and order their own prints *****

Ye Olde Fine Print:

* Bring your own clothes, I don’t think mine will fit a high school senior and really will not look good on a girl.

** The location must be within one of the following AZ counties: Maricopa, Pinal, Gila, Yavapai, or Coconino. Travel charges of no less than one meeellion dollars will apply for other areas. Just kidding, if you live further away we might be able to figure something out.

*** Additional images are available for a reasonable charge. C’mon, I can’t give everything away for free!

**** These images will be tastefully branded with a small Chad Westover Photography logo just like the images above

***** This one is pretty self-explanatory. I just wanted to put another line with 5 asterisks

Just a quick post with some photos from the recent Authority Zero concert hosted by Arizona State University as part of their 2009 Homecoming festivities…

If you want to learn more about low-light, action photography or concert photography in general, leave a comment and I might decide to do another post with a few tips to get great rockstar photos.

The time has come. The ballots are in, and the winner is Downtown Phoenix.

We will be meeting up Saturday October 10th at 9 am and going until people decide to leave. If you haven’t already let me know in some shape or form that you are interested in coming, no worry, there’s still time. Just send an email to chad [at] chadwestover dot com or send me a tweet @chadwestover or find me on Facebook or leave a comment on my Facebook Page or say it in the comments at the end of this post.

I also want people to be able to get some ideas before we go. Think about what buildings, objects, things you would like to photograph while we are there. The links below should hopefully spark your imaginations and at least give you an idea of what you can expect to see over there. I personally, am not very familiar with the area so these maps were really helpful:

I really wish I could embed this map here on the blog, but Google won’t play, so you will just have to click on this link to see a really cool map of the downtown area. It is a map of photos that people have taken and tagged to specific locations. If you click on any of the thumbnail images on the map it will open the picture up and let you see exactly what is there.

Also, if you haven’t heard of it before, you can use Google Street View to check out the city streets from the point of view of a driver on the street. Just click and drag for much digitally simulated navigational fun.

View Larger Map

And last but not least, here just one Flickr image that I came across. There’s a lot more great images where this came from in the Phoenix Architecture and Transit group, check it out.

Image via Flickr user 'timaz'

It has been a long time since I have updated my blog and I have been getting a little flak for it. So I decided to add not one, but TWO new posts today!! I know, the amazement and wonder might be a little too much for some people. Just try to remain calm.

I just figured out how to add my Flickr photos to a slideshow here on the blog and I though I would try it out. Have a look and tell me what you think. This batch of photos are from a trip to a local retirement home that I was asked to come visit along with a fellow photographer whose father lives there. We took pictures of any and all residents who wanted them and we will be giving them copies of the pictures so they can share them with family and friends. It was just kind of a nice thing we wanted to do to brighten the day for some of these wonderful people who don’t get as many visitors as they deserve. It really was a great experience to sit and talk with these folks. They are so incredibly nice and have so much to share. I was sad to leave. If you click on a photo within the slideshow it will bring up a brief description. I tried to explain a little bit of the story that goes along with each photo.

What is it about heavily-processed, unrealistic and over-saturated images that I like so much? I don’t know but I think that the explosion in HDR images on photo sharing sites like Flickr and others is a good indication that I am not the only one. What is HDR? It stands for High Dynamic Range and it is a term that describes a method of combining multiple photos (typically an image that has well exposed shadow detail another image that has well exposed highlights and somewhere between none and as many as you want in between). The purpose of combining those different exposures is to get the entire image properly exposed. Have you ever seen a photo like this:

The clouds look cool but the ground and everything else is underexposed. You could fiddle around in Photoshop…dodge, burn, levels, curves, all that jazz. Or you could bracket your shot and merge the exposures to get something like this:

I think it makes for a pretty nice effect. However, there are certainly those who like their ranges nice and low with no dynamic-ness. Yes, I made that up. What I meant to say is there are so-called purists who think that somehow making HDR images is like cheating on an exam or something. For example, a fine upstanding photographer by the name of Trey Ratcliff blogged about his finalist entry in the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest. This was his contest submission:

Read all about it on Trey’s blog, Stuck in Customs. By the way, if you ever want to learn anything about creating your own High Dynamic Range images, Trey can hook you up, he pretty much wrote the book.