A redesign, and other news.

Well, my website had started to bore me, so I redesigned some things and pushed them live today. Ive restructured the galleries, deleted some images that I didn't like, and put up a new banner. Ive also added some new images today. I like it a little better now, hopefully you do too!

It's been a little while since I last checked in here, so lets play catch up. Ive been pretty busy, and have several new things to report. First, the keywest trip went well. I didnt get as many pictures as I thought I might would have, but it was still a fun trip. I also finally got my printer in, and can now offer prints. In addition to the printer, I also got some new gear, the biggest of which just arrived last week- the new Canon EOS 7D. That's right, a second camera body!

Ive also been working on a brand new project lately that I'm excited to talk about today. I was approached at my job about decorating the walls of our office with my photography. Our office has been recently renovated, and so the walls are still pretty bare. The idea came up to decorate the walls with photographs of our county. Having been offered the honor of supplying the photographs, I got right to work traveling and photographing different places in the county. You will see some of these shots showing up in my galleries. I've supplied about a dozen 13x19 prints for opinions so far, and the feedback I have gotten has been nothing short of excellent. Hopefully soon you will be able to find this photography on the walls in my office. I am honored to have been given such an opportunity to display my work.

As mentioned, I have a new toy to play with as of last week. The new EOS 7D SLR was only released in the past month. I had been looking to purchase a 2nd body for a little while now. I am so glad I held out for the new 7D. I still have a lot of testing I want to do with it, but I have been extremely impressed with this body thus far. It is a remarkable piece of engineering, and one that is going to compliment my photography a great deal. That brings my equipment up to 2 SLR camera bodies, one back up advanced point n shoot's and 4 SLR lenses. I was adding up how much I had dumped into this hobby the past year, and was shocked to see that ive dumped right at $7,000 into equipment so far. This month marks almost 1 year that Ive officially been into photography.

In addition to the new camera body, I also now have my printer and can officially offer prints for sell. If you happen to want a print of my work, please feel free to contact me on my website here by using the "contact" link on the main menu. I can offer prints as large as 13" x 19". All of my prints are printed on the highest quality photo papers and with Pigment based inks that should last well over 100 years without fading. I can also assure you that the print will, at the very least, look as good as the image does on your monitor. I can supply sample prints if you are local.

Well, Fall is in the air, and that means it's one of the best times of the year to do outdoor photography. I have several little adventures in planning for the near future, so expect to see gallery updates all throughout Fall and Winter.

Happy Halloween! Be safe this halloween season..

The bombs bursting in air. . .

Well I am a little late on this update, but its here nonetheless. I have finally uploaded some shots from my 4th of July photo shoot. You can find them under the "Events" gallery. I went to the firework show in Tallahassee, FL this year. It was a pretty good show overall, and I had a great time capturing it.

This was my first real attempt at Firework photography, and it definitely was not perfect. I used a similar technique that I have been using to shoot lightning lately. The whole shoot was done in bulb shutter mode, so that I could control the shutter manually. Everything was shot off of a tripod and using a cable release shutter control. I stuck with a wide angle lens as well. The hardest challenge I think is to try and capture the full explosion of the shells, while keeping it all in a crisp clear focus. I was using shutter's of over 5 seconds at times. I kept my ISO around 400, and aperture's around F8.0 seemed to yield the best results. I hope you enjoy my first attempt at this venue. I will try again hopefully on New Years.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I am planning a trip to the Florida Keys in August. I am hoping to do a lot of shooting on this trip, and will likely have a very large update to my galleries when I return. We have a lot of fun things on the agenda for the week I will be down there, but at the top of that list of course for me is the photographic opportunities. It will be my first trip to the keys, so I'm looking forward to it.

I made a few small changes, as promised, to how the website looks a few weeks ago. Hopefully everyone will find the new look to be an improvement. I will always look for new ways to improve my website, and am always tweaking little things behind the scenes. I still get questions on when or if I ever plan to offer my work for sale or prints, and the answer to this question is still yes. My original goal has not changed in this regard. Its more a thing of priorities right now. The printing equipment I am looking at is quite expensive, and I am also looking at upgrades to my camera equipment. I definitely plan to have this all up and running fairly soon however. By the end of the year I should have all this done, and be ready to really push my photography to the next level.

I havent mentioned this until now, but I do have a personal myspace that is mostly used for my photography. I would invite you to check me out there, and even add me as a friend if you'd like: www.myspace.com/timthigpen. Until next time!

Summertime!

Well Summer is here again, and the temperatures are hitting 90+ everyday. Ive just gotten back from a short trip to the beach, and have uploaded some brand new images from the trip. A mixture of both Wildlife and Landscape shots. Ive still got a couple more I will be uploading tonight or tomorrow from this trip. In case you are curious of the location, it is out around Alligator Point here in the Panhandle of Florida. Make sure to hit the Wildlife and Landscape galleries to see the new additions.

I have a big trip in the works for August, in which I will be spending roughly a week in the Florida Keys. You can expect a major update when I return from this trip. I plan to do a lot of shooting in the Keys.

I also want to once again thank everyone for their feedback, and welcome anyone to feel free to drop me any questions or comments you may have. If you are a fellow photographer, feel free to drop me a link to your site and let me check out your work as well. I am planning to start linking some of my fellow photographers websites from my blog as well in the near future. Ive met some great photographers from all over the globe, and I'd like to network with them and share their work here for everyone as well.

Expect to see a few minor changes in how the website looks soon. I'm thinking of changing a few things around a little. It never hurts to change things up every once in a while. So, Until next time!

Happy Mothers Day!

Just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone, especially any mothers who may be visiting, a happy mothers day today. Hope you all have a wonderful day.

A quick update on things- I havent been able to get out as much lately and do as much photography, unfortunantly. Im also still working on getting my printing and other things purchased to really take things to the next level. I dont feel too rushed though, as Im also still doing a lot of learning about photography along the way. Ive seen a lot of photographers lately who buy their first camera, and immediatly try to jump out and start trying to play the role; offering all sorts of services that they have zero experiance in. Some still dont even understand the full functionality of their camera, much less any knowlege on lighting, composition, and setting up a proper shot. I have been careful, as a fairly new photographer, not to get ahead of myself. I get asked a lot when Im going to start doing this, or start doing that- the answer to all of it is simply "when I'm ready". I like to do things right when I do them, and have it meet a level of quality that I would be willing to sign my name to. With all of that said, I do plan to start taking these steps soon.

I have been doing some work though behind the scenes lately. I am working now on preparing some 100 pictures for my aunt, from their wedding. Each Picture has to be touched up one at a time, so it will take some time to do all of the ones they requested. Fortunantly, as mentioned, im still working on getting the printer purchased, so I cant print the pictures yet anyways. Aside from that ongoing job, I am going on another trip toward the end of this Month, to Epcot at Disney, in Orlando FL. We will see what I can get out of the trip, so stay tuned for updates on that.

I did update the urban gallery with one new photo the last few days. It is of a beautiful Methodist church from my trip to St. Augustine, FL. Be sure to check that out.

The New Blog

Well, the new blog is finally live. It was done a little differently than I had originally expected, but this will still work out a lot better than the old way of doing things. The blog looks very simple right now, but I will be working on fixing that the next few days, so bear with me. I am going to also look into importing the old blog posts into this one. I just got the blog up tonight so havent had time to put a lot of work into it, so expect it to change over the next few days.

The new blog is of course just an integrated blog from Blogger. This means of course that you can now leave comments on my posts if you would like, among other things. I am hoping that these new tools will help make the blog on my site more interesting. You can expect to find a lot of activity here in the future; Ive got a lot of little ideas for this portion of my website that I plan to put in place over the next several days, and weeks. If you happen across the blog here, feel free to leave your comments. Ill get to work on fleshing the new home out soon, but for now, welcome to the new blog!