The life and times of Aspen Road Images

Back in the Black Hills again!

2010-08-12T23:05:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile! My family and I are in a state of transition for the time being. I've been staying with friends and family in Colorado while my wife and kids are at her family's place. It's tough but we'll get through it. I'm currently looking for full time work in Colorado. Right now is not the best time for that as you probably know.
We traveled to the Black Hills for a small family reunion. My father and sister in-law set us all up in a sweet house. It was an awesome time. We traveled through Spearfish Canyon and made stops at the fish hatchery and Roughlock Falls and Bear Country USA. The Black Hills are a great place to visit and I recommend it to everyone.


© Aspen Road Images and Thomas O'Donnell all rights reserved

Here's another image that I took of the falls.

Let me know what you think. Please feel free to stop by my site if you haven't already done so:

www.aspenroadimages.com

Have a great day!!

Google Google google...always changing things. Good, Bad, and Indifferent

2010-07-08T01:20:00.000-05:00

A while back I wanted to update my blog and bummed to find out that in order to upload photo's I had to utilize
a google web album for photo storage. In the past you were able to link from another site - a smugmug site to be specific. This was a real convenience for me - not having to watermark another photo. Just adds another item to my to do list - Thanks Google.

Sorry for that. I had an awesome experience this past 4th of July. My wife and I have moved from Texas and are back in the Colorado/Wyoming area and love it. We made it into town just in time for the Gillette fireworks display. I was fortunate enough to have my wife watch the kids while I photographed the city fireworks display.

Here's another image that I thought came out well. This was towards the end of the show. The settings that I used were f16 with a 3 second shutter speed. In order to keep the fire work blasts from over-exposing I put my hand over the lens after about 2 seconds. This kept the fireworks from burning (over-exposing) out.

I hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July - I know I did!!
* all images are copyrighted - www.aspenroadimages.com

Spring has Sprung, and I've finally found some time to blog!

2010-04-21T21:12:00.001-05:00

So it's that time of year in Texas when everyone gets all jazzed about the blue bonnets. We took the kids up to Fredericksburg, TX. about a month ago and the winter was too cold so the blue bonnets were delayed. So we still took some photographs of the kids and our family. It was a nice spring day. So one shot that I really did think turned out great was this shot taken at the Wildseed farm in Fredericksburg, TX.

The other picture I really liked was of the red poppys in the background. I was able to capture those and add some post photo vignetting (Below).

Blast from the past! Wolfcreek Colorado and the Spanish Peaks

2010-02-26T22:15:00.000-06:00

[major digression] The other night it snowed in Central Texas! I guess it's been a while since the last time that happened. The girls and I built some snowpeople (men, baby, etc...) my oldest made big snowballs (please don't take this the wrong way~) and said they were Dinosaur eggs. That night I felt motivated to go shoot some photo's up in Georgetown proper (downtown) and I did. Not really snow photos but still pretty cool none the less. I haven't done a post production on those yet. I had some old tasks to complete mainly emailing some photos of the kids from my daughters preschool Christmas presentation. While I was doing that I noticed an older photo that I took on the way home from one of our annual ski (Boarding) trips to Wolf Creek. On the way home we had caught up to a storm that was hitting the Spanish Peaks just West of
La Veta, Colorado. This photo was shot with a camera that my dad had loaned me. It was a Canon Rebel with a 70-300mm lens and probably iso 400 film. I decided it looked better black and white. I also framed it up.

Look for the Georgetown photos in the next few days. Thanks for stopping by and viewing.
This print is for sale on my site: www.aspenroadimages.com

In The Beginning...

2010-02-20T21:48:00.001-06:00

So how did I come up with the name Aspen Road Images? Previously I had an account with shutterpoint.com
and one of those photos had become the highest ranked photos thanks to some viewers. My wife and I went back and forth with names and finally came up with Aspen Road Images. Fortunately the domain was also available. I liked the name because it has somewhat of a lux feeling to it (think Aspen CO.) The following year I was able to register the name in Colorado. I was mainly interested in selling fine art prints but that never really happened although lots of people commented on them. Below is the image that was one of the "highest ranked" on shutterpoints site. This version is the business card idea that I had. The picture was taken in the early evening just outside of Cripple Creek, CO.

Going back in time Italy revisited

2010-02-07T11:32:00.013-06:00

Here's a three photos that I merged using photoshop that I took while visiting the tomb of the unknown soldier in Rome. Tweaked this somewhat in Adobe Photoshop CS4 (trial)

This last week I've been going through the Italy trip pictures and post processing them (trip dates: 8/23/09 - 9/6/09(ish). I went through the best of the best when we got home but quickly became frustrated with the lack of PC memory and the time it took to work with the raw files. Since then I have purchased some more memory from Discount Electronics here in the Austin, Tx. area - they are awesome for Dell stuff. Also really enjoyed the free trial of Lightroom 2 from the Adobe site. I know I've said this before but it really is a great application. It even makes quick masking of photos a breeze. Seriously! I'm hoping to make the plunge with this application ASAP. It's like Picasa only a thousand times better.

Before:

slight adjustments in Adobe photoshop CS

Same photo modified using Adobe's Lightroom 2.
Desaturated and masked the clouds a bit

Just another quick post - Ad that was in The Dropout

2010-01-23T00:12:00.000-06:00

Here's the ad that I designed myself in about 10 minutes for a new startup magazine in Austin called The Dropout. If your into cycling you should stop by and read up on the Austin bike scene. I got the idea for the 2 dimensional framing from Andy Williams smugmug COO, be sure to check out his site - great work. This past issue, their second, had a big article on the custom bike show which took place in Oct. 2009. I took the photos for the spread. Good people and a good time. I must thank them for kick starting my push to kick Aspen Road Images in to gear. I've had the name for a while (2006) but haven't actually advertised for business/clients until this October. Thanks again to Scott and Leana!!

1st post of the new blog

2010-01-22T22:58:00.001-06:00

Wow. I've finally got around to setting up a blog. I'm hoping to document my current photographs. I hope that I can help others out as well with questions that you might have about photography or starting a business - I'm fortunate to have a Bachelors of Science from the University of CO - Colorado Springs. I've attended that last couple of Smugmug user group meetings here in Austin and the speakers have been great. Very informative. Jason St Peter has been running the group and kudos to him for taking it on. Also need to thank Smugmug for sponsoring such an event/group. Last nights speaker was Kevin Vandivier who spoke about some very key things lacking in photography these days - effort. Always look for different angles/perspectives. I'll admit it. I'm guilty.
Looking forward to speaking more with him in the near future. My latest photo op was in Glen Rose, TX. the family and I headed up there for an overnight trip. It was a great time.