Look at them racing away from the reception.

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

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'

Its probably going to take a few days for me to get things going on my end, round up my entourage and all that, but in the very near future we are going to go out on the town. This is your formal invitation to join me on your maiden voyage into HDR photography, your vision quest, walkabout, coming of age party, or whatever you want to call it.

All you have to do now is figure out where you want to go and when.

Here are your choices for where, we will figure out the when part soon.

• Mesa Art Center / Downtown Mesa
• Downtown Phoenix
• ASU Tempe Campus
• ASU Polytechnic Campus
• Old Town Scottsdale
• The airplane museum at Falcon Field Airport
• Somewhere else, you pick

I could have added a poll here to make it easier for you, but I’m going to make you work harder than that. Yes, you have to post a comment below. You will need to click on the ‘Read more’ link at the bottom to see the comments section.

Another thing, this is an equal opportunity event. If you have never taken a picture in your life you will be just fine. If you’ve been shooting for 20 years and just want to come hang out, that is awesome too. Everyone is welcome, just BYOC – bring your own camera.

Click on the image to see what this turns into.

keepin it steady

Since we established last time around that you either have or have not a digital camera that can handle manual settings, this time we need to figure out what you are going to do with it if you do have it. More specifically, where are you going to put it. Without getting extremely in-depth (just yet) about the why, suffice it to say that it is fundamental to HDR photography (for the most part) that you have a way to keep your camera completely still for more than one photo at a time. As stated so eloquently by Trey Ratcliff, ”unless you have the steady arms of a late-model Terminator robot” you’d better have a tripod so that you can handle something called ‘bracketing‘, which we will be discussing later.

Depending on the heft of your camera model you might have some issues to address. You are going to *need* a tripod to hold your camera completely still. Blurry pictures just don’t tend to command the awe and respect of your peeps the way that a razor-sharp, crispity-cracklin’ photo will and the fact is that the process of creating high dynamic range images will accentuate any blur, camera shake, or shifts from one frame to the next. So go forth, find a tripod, and keep it solid.

It is no surprise to anyone that has been involved in photography for any amount of time that this is no poor man’s hobby, relatively speaking. Having invested several hard-earned pennies myself I can say I feel your pain if you are one of those considering the investment.  But never fear, you don’t have to have the absolute newest, biggest, baddest camera setup to do this stuff. Let’s take a look.

The first item on the ticket tonight is pretty much a giveaway. You gotta have a camera. But what kind of camera? Nikon? Canon? Hasselblad? Think broader.

Simply put, you need a DIGITAL camera. Is that specific enough for you? Hope so.

Let’s just say you can give it a try with the camera you already have. If you have one of those big fancy SLR type cameras you have nothing to worry about. If you have something else, something smaller, just hold on for a minute before you rush out to buy something new. You might find that all you need to do is take a look at your instruction manual. Many recent models of consumer ‘point-and-shoot’ type cameras actually have the manual settings needed to shoot HDR.

I’ll keep this brief tonight because you might potentially have a big assignment here. So without any further ado, here is your new task:

1. Look at your camera. Go into the menu and find out what that little digital beastie can really do. What you need to find out is whether or not your camera can shoot in any shape or form of Manual mode. We will discuss the reason why just a little bit later, but before we can go on this is a very important step, it will determine whether you need to go out and drop some dough on a new rig. While you’re at it, figure out how to use the manual settings too!

Copyright 2009 Chad Westover

If you are new to photography, new to digital imaging, or just never got into HDR photography before but want to now then stay tuned. I will be shedding some light on the various tools and techniques required. Check back often for updates and/or follow me on Twitter where I will be keeping all my Tweeps up to date on blog posts (among other things of course).

In the meantime, your first assignment:

1. Look at the images below and see if you can guess which one is mine. This part will be easy, just find the one that looks like a 3^rd grader made it when compared to the others.
2. Go forth and browse. Check out the HDR groups on Flickr and find images that you think deserve to be called stunning and post them here in the comments. You will see that there are many different “looks” that can be achieved with HDR imaging and some may appeal to you more than others. There are certainly some that I like more than others.

Image via Flickr User 'MorBCN'

Image via Trey Ratcliff

Image via Erik Vanhannen

Image via Flickr User 'fatboyke'

Image via Flickr User 'fatboyke'

Image via Flickr user Christolakis

Image via Matthew Stewart

Image via Flickr user c-dub-ya

Image via Trey Ratcliff

Image via Flickr user werkunz1

Image via Flickr user werkunz1

Image via Flickr user janmichael127

Image via Robert Scott

Image via Flickr user EugeniusD80

Image via Flickr user Lutz-R. Frank

Image via Rick Harris

Image via Daniel Raphael Cooper

Image via Daniel Raphael Cooper

Image via Andrew Stawarz

Image via Flickr user stevoarnold

Image via Flickr user ecstaticist

Image via Flickr user ecstaticist

Image via Flickr user ecstaticist

Image via Flickr user l'etrusco

Image via Flickr user l'etrusco

Image via Flickr user poonomo