363/365: New Lens (Cup)

 

 

362/365: God’s Country

The old saying is “Home is were the heart is” and although if you were to ask me were my home is I’d probably say Stillwater because that’s were I live and the place I love, my home is truly were this old pond sits along side the green pastures.

Shell Knob has been and will for always be the place that I call home, it was where I was raised. I don’t make it back to Shell Knob except for maybe once or twice a year, but when I do I like to go out to the pastures and just sit and listen for a while.

Through my years as a photographer, and more with this project, I’ve learned that sometimes you just have to sit and listen to your surroundings. Even if I have my camera hanging around my neck, I just let it hang and I just listen.

It really allows me to clear my head, and helps me take better photos from time to time.

Today I went to that place which is always calling my to my heart, so I decided to show some photos of home.

This pond is on my way home, and is a place that is near and dear to my heart. The lake with the bridge is from a spot up the road from a friend.

Nothing to special about how I took these photos, just wanted to share them.

Mitch

361/365: Stuck on the Farm

Today was not a good day. I woke up early with the thoughts of getting a lot done, and I started by pulling my car into my grandpa’s garage. I’ve been meaning to change my breaks for a while now, and today was the perfect day for it.

Once I got my car in the garage and the tires pulled off, I realized just how bad my car was out of alignment. I now have to replace both the front tires on my car, and although I’m really glad I found that out today, it wasn’t something I’m not looking forward to.

After finding out about the tires, I soon found out that someone had used lock-tight on caliber bolts. My grandfather and I tried for a good two hours to get the four bolts off, and we got three of them.

The last one involved a cutting wheel and a cutting torch. It also involves a day wait for the part to show up to the local parts store.

All the plans I had for the rest of the day kind of came to a grinding stop, and I got to hang out all day on the farm. I love the farm, but I planned on seeing some people and going to some shops that I needed to go to before I head back to Stillwater.

So this evening I decided to go for a walk through the woods that I used to play around in all the time. It’s not how I remember it, and I even had trouble finding the gate to go through.

The photos that I have attached are of the area of the grandpa’s farm were I used to have a fort and go out to spend time by myself. My little fort has been blown all over, but I did find the little ATV that I had out there.

I also found a nice deer stand right over the trail that leads you back into the woods, found out later it was my sisters boyfriends, but I decided to take a couple shots because I liked the light.

Hope everyone had a great day,

 

Mitch

 

 

360/365: Taking a look around

Today was a day of catching up. It’s not very often that I find myself in the Cassville area, so when I show up I like to visit that people that influenced my life so many years ago.

I got to thinking about it, and it’s been 6 years since I ran the town of Cassville and oh, how it hasn’t changed one bit. Actually there about to get a tractor supply company and a Casey’s General Store… their getting big time I know.

This town really is near to my heart, even if I do like to poke jokes about it. There are a lot of people from this town that allowed me to be the person I am today, and for that I will always be thankful for this.

While I’m in town there are a select handful of people that I have to stop in and see.

The house in the photo above is the Henry’s house, and back in the day I was stopping in and out of this house all of the time. Now a day I make sure to at least stop once a year, especially around the holiday season.

They have a beautiful house set back on a hill, and the roadway that takes you back to it is beautiful as long as there’s no snow on the ground.

While I was leaving from my visit I just had to pull over and take a shot of the house on the hill. I shot a 5 image HDR, just because we had and ugly sky and I wanted to find a way to make it better.

The second image tonight is of a tree at my grandparent’s house. While walking Wyatt I saw it, and just wanted to take it’s picture. I shot it on a tripod in bulb mode, and had a shutter of around 4 minutes.

Sometimes it’s hard being at home, a lot of emotion that I’d rather not share coupled on top of a 12 mile drive to get a phone signal just makes it a rough time, but then when I look around at all my friends and family that I still have in this part of the world, I understand why I do love coming home from time to time.

Kathy if your reading this, or any of the others Cassville/Shell Knob native who helped me become the person I am today, I just want to say thank you! If I haven’t seen you yet, I’ll try my best to see you before I head back to Stillwater, and if I have seen you I’m sure blessed that your still in my life.

Thanks,

Mitch

359/365: Merry Christmas from the whole family

Today I had grand plans of shooting something Christmas related. I just knew I would get something good from Christmas, but then I decided I didn’t want to ruin my Christmas experience fighting for that perfect photo.

So when my family celebrated today, I left the camera in the bag. That’s a hard thing for me to do, but there are sometimes it just needs to be done.

After opening the presents and hanging out with the family, I started looking for a photo to take. I had my mind set on Christmas, but then I sat down and started talking to my cousin.

I realized that she had her hair all curled, and had a cute little outfit on, and I thought what is Christmas all about?  Well for me Christmas, is all about family and so I told my cousin that I was going to take her photo.

I took her out to the cow pasture, and watching walk through the field in her heels was a little comic relief. I put in a part of the pasture with a lot of beautiful trees in it, I wanted the grey to pop out at ya and I also wanted the her hair to compliment the background.

She stood in the shadow of a tree, and I had her back up just a little bit so I could get that beautiful rim light on the left side of her head. I then put up a soft box to the camera left and the little beauty dish I bought to camera right.

I had the beauty dish up at about 6 feet pointed down at her; it was about three feet away from her. I had the soft box right out of the frame, level with shoulders.

I hope that everyone had a blessed Christmas with their family and friendsl

Merry Christmas,

Mitch

358/365: Christmas Eve with the Family

Oh, what it would be like to be child again. This here is my cousin, Johnny, and he celebrated Christmas at the grandparents this evening.

Grandma’s Christmas is the best thing ever. My grandma gets everyone a lot of presents, and it’s just a great time.

Uncle Josh and the family had to celebrate Christmas a day early because they had the other side of the family to see, but it was nice to get to see the family and it’s always great to see the joy in a little ones eye.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas eve, and Happy Birthday Todd!

Mitch

357/365: Ozark Bridge

Tonight I’m hanging out in Sparta with Kendra and her family. Kendra and I headed into Springfield for a big part of the day to get some shopping done, and man was it busy.

I had brought the camera with me, but their wasn’t anything that really made me stop to take a photo of. There were a lot of things I could have taken photos of, but it would have been to much trouble to pull over to get the shot.

So this evening I headed over to the Ozark Bridge that is covered in holiday lights. It goes over the river, and the river was fogged over this evening. I thought it came together quite well.

The other photo is of my beloved dog Wyatt, chewing on his beloved bone. I’m putting this one up, because I liked the photo and because it was taken with my new photo toy.

Today while I was shopping I bought myself a little 8” beauty dish. I had gone looking for a bigger beauty dish, but loved how small and lightweight this thing was. I’ll probably end up getting a bigger one before to long, but I’m going to try and master this thing first.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday season.

Mitch

356/365: Nut Crackers!

Today Kendra and I made it back to Missouri, safe and sound.

It was a nice drive, but it was nasty overcast and I didn’t see anything to stop and take a photo of. There was a lot to take photos of, but nothing that I really wanted to stop on the side of the road for.

So when we got to the Fringer’s I had to look around for a photo. I’ve already shot a bunch of Christmas trees, so I wanted to do something different.

I decided to shoot the collection of nutcrackers. I like how their organized, and I used a flash to camera right and ambient light on the left.

Mitch

355/365: Impreza

Tonight I finally got to take photographs of my friend’s Subaru Impreza. It’s a beautiful car, and I’ve wanted to take photos of it for a while now.

With ten days to go on the blog, I look back and one of the shoots that I didn’t do was an automobile. Ya, I did the HDR of the bug and I did a shot of my car in the parking garage, but nothing that I’d really call a car photo.

So with Kendra and I leaving for home tomorrow, I gave Jessica a call and got some time scheduled so we could take some photos of the Impreza.

It’s a rally car so I really wanted to get it on a dirt road with some dust in the air, because I feel that is what it’s built for, and not so much a pavement car. That didn’t happen today though, because the sun going down at five ruined that idea and the fact that nothings green we decided to take it the parking garage.

Shooting a car is something I’ve never really done, and it isn’t as easy as it sounds. The Subaru was like a big blue mirror, and when a flash hit it directly it didn’t look very good. So I did a few different techniques.

I tried light painting, detail shots and stitching photos. I think I’m really going to like how the photo stitching works, but didn’t have time to get it done tonight because I’m packing to head home.

What we have here is a detail shot of the hood of the car. Jessica is holding a flash on a light stand directly over the hood. I have the flash angled back so that it doesn’t reflect back to the camera.

I’ll get some other shots of the car up on my Facebook hopefully in the next few days. I’m going to hope to get a lot of photos up on the fan page during the holidays.

If you haven’t liked my fan page you should head over to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mitchell-Alcala-Photography/215914671795173 and like it.

Mitch

354/365: Bike Under the Tree

Tonight I was thinking about what to shoot for the blog, and I noticed Marci sitting by the wall. Marci is going to the shop, because after my wreck I haven’t got her road ready again.

I’m going to take her down to the new bike shop in town, District Bicycle, and get her tuned up and back to road ready. I’ve missed riding her, and it’s probably not the best time to get her fixed but I’m hopefully we have some nice days in January.

She has a resting spot in my house, but I don’t pay attention to her most of the time but tonight I was getting her ready for the shop. So I decided to take her out the living room and take some photos in front of the Christmas tree.

Years ago my dad got me a mongoose mountain bike for Christmas. I look back now and know it wasn’t the best bike, but that is a Christmas I will never forget.

As a little kid coming around the corner and seeing that new bike sitting by the Christmas tree was just an amazing feeling.

So tonight I tried to recapture that event, it doesn’t have the same feeling but I do enjoy the photo.

I’ll give who ever can tell me how I shot this photo some bonus points J.

Mitch