Flower

Flower
Originally uploaded by Christian Perello

ghnrtyn

April 02

April 02
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This is a lovely portrait of my wife taken by me.

Flower

Flower
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This is my attempt at trying depth of field. One of my first. Again taken with my canon S5 IS.

Family Kingdom

Family Kingdom
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This is a shot from when my family and I went to family kingdom amusement park. I achieved the effect that I was after. The blurring of the motion came out perfect.

Condensation

Condensation
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This is my first attempt doing macro photography. I shot this with my canon S5 IS. It had a great macro setting. I have received alot of compliments about this shot.

Pond

Pond
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This is a pond that I pass all the time on the hwy. Ifter a few dozen times of passing it, I finally decided to pull over and compose this shot.

Twilight

Twilight
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

I took this shot while I was at work. I wasn't trying to do anything. Just had to snap some shots for work. I think that there is alot of meaning behind this photo. It shows what i perceive as the heart of america. The working class. Without these people we would not have what we have. The executives sure as hell won't be doing this kind of work.

Sunset

This is a shot that I took on my way home from a photo shoot at the beach. I had to stop in the middle of the road to get it. Thank goodness there were no cars coming in either direction!

Forgotten

Forgotten
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

The title of this one says it all. I received one comment on this photo that hits the nail right on the head. He spoke what I was thinking. His interpretation was dead on.

Pro User says:

Wonder what kind of stories the folks who used to live there could tell.
Kids working the fields. Up before dawn maybe.
Cutting grass with a sickle. Playing chase with the dog and hide and seek with your friends.
Thousands of stories never to be told.
Old house lived a full life and now retired. Waiting on the end to come.

Great capture.

Abandoned

Abandoned
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

There are some really cool things that you come across in the country. Especially old stuff. I don't know how many times I drove by this location without even giving this building a second glance. But since I was doing photography, a started to look at things differently. I was noticing the art in everything. I think that in this shot, it was just interesting. I can't really place where my thoughts were when I shot this. But looking at it now, it looks sad. just left there as a memory of when it was used.

candle light

candle light
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

I was learning about dramatic lighting and candle lights etc. I was just messing around when I took this. And I have to say, to this day I am still impressed with this photo. I actually have it framed and hanging up on my wall.

South Carolina sunset

South Carolina sunset
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

And here we have my first official sunset. I thought it was beautiful. I was on my was to pick up my kids after work and had to pull into a parking lot to take this shot. This was taken without a tripod. I was trying as hard as I could to not shake!

Christmas

Christmas
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

Even now I like this shot. At this point I had watched some videos on youtube about shutter speed and all that great stuff. The main thing that I learned was that if you slow down your shutter speed you can let more of the ambient light around you into the camera. And of course I had to use a tripod. I tried it by hand a couple of times first till I realized that a tripod had to be used hehehe.I don't remember what the settings were exactly for this shot. But im sure it's on my flickr page. The one thing in the shot that I always seem to be drawn to, is the little snowman in the top right of the tree.

Foggy

Foggy
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This picture had a purpose behind it. This is from my first flickr group that I joined. The group was about taking a snapshot of something on your was to work. Well it was really foggy one morning and I was driving along, when I saw this spot. I thought it was pretty cool that the trees were lined up and disappearing into the fog. So I kinda thought a little on how to get a good shot of this. And what you see is the final result. I changed it to sepia and it looks really good. I was kinda proud of myself for this shot. At the time it wasn't too bad.

MaKaylah Perello

MaKaylah Perello
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

And here is my oldest, MaKaylah. And another attempt at a head shot. Wow was I really that bad hehe!

Christian Perello

Christian Perello
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

And oh boy!!! This one looks like a mug shot. I was trying a headshot. Of course I still had no idea what I was doing! Again everything looks flat and dull.

Maggie

Maggie
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

Here is a shot of my youngest daughter Magdelina. She just loves the camera. I did her no justice with this shot. It was very flat. Nothing seems to be popping out at you. And I tried my hand at a vignette. Of course, at the time, I though wow, this came out awesome!!!

Autumn leaves

Autumn leaves
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

In this shot, I really don't know what I was thinking. I just thought that the leaves were a pretty color and decided to take a shot. As you noticed I framed the subject directly in the center. I haven't heard of the rule of thirds yet hehe. There is not even an attempt to frame the leaf..

Christmas

Christmas
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

Here I have my first attempt at taking a Christmas shot of my children. It looks horrible in my opinion......and yours too probably! The main thing that is noticeable in this shot is the lighting. The lighting is so poor, even with the pop up flash. You can't even notice that the lights on the tree are lit. This would have came out better if I raised the ISO a bit, and had a slower shutter speed to catch more of the ambient light. I was still in the fully automatic phase of my photography. My thought was, if it doesn't come out good in automatic, it will not come out good in any other setting. Boy was I wrong!!!

Sky

Sky
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

Well It's been a while since I posted anything on my blog. So it's time to play catch-up!!
I am gonna show a time-line kind of. This is from the begining of my photography to present. You will see my progression as a photographer. And this will show that if you stay dedicated and practice, anyone can become a great photographer. Not that I am saying that I am great, but I have come a long way from my first shot.

Conway Art and Music Festival

Well, today was the Conway Art and Music Festival.........Well it's Actually still going on. It was pretty enjoyable. We got there around 10:30am. They were still setting up a lot of things. They had many different types of vendors. Food vendors, Clothing, Art, etc....There is only so much time we could spend there till the kids would start to get rambunctious.They had a stage for some talent to get up and sing. This is one of the girls, shown above that went up stage. She was pretty good too. I was told her name, but I have such a bad memory, I forgot right away!!This is one of the other girls,shown above, that performed. As you can see she was being introduced.Now the picture that you see above is my favorite. It reminds me of back home in Jersey. FUNNEL CAKES!!!! I felt like I was down the shore again. It was so tasty......especially with all that powdered sugar!
My father-in-law would have a field day with the Polish Sausage!!

All in all it was a good time. I would have liked to stay there just a little bit longer. But, again the kids!!!lol

There are some other pics that are on my facebook.

Well, I was walking around downtown Conway today. And decided to take some shots around the Riverwalk. It was such a beautiful day out that I had to sneak away from work for a little while. While I was shooting, I came upon a bench. For some reason I had to stop and gaze at it for a bit. For some reason I felt drawn to this area. Maybe it was cause my feet were tired and I wanted to sit down.........nah. There seemed to be a sadness surrounding the area. A lonely bench.....A building behind it, old and tired. That is my best interpretation of what came to me as I was picking the best way to capture my feeling of the moment.
Time never sleeps for anyone. It's just the way it is. The image that I have captured will remain alive long after time has taken it away from us. To me this is beauty, art and a look into the past, present and future.

I want to create. I want to be discovered. I want everyone to see the wonderful work I can create with my photography. Anyway, enough with the sappy stuff!

I will try to post one blog weekly. Not to sure what I will be talking about. But it will be something. Hopefully it wont be to boring.

Today I will just talk about the equipment that I currently have. I know it's not the greatest latest stuff, but it works for now. Actually I think it works pretty damn good.



Ok so the camera that I use is an Olympus Evolt E500.
In my opinion, it holds it's own. Even though this
is my first DSLR I love it! I'm not going to go into
the specs or any of that stuff. If you really want to know, just google it. All I will say is that is is 8 mp.

The lense that I currently own( shown above) is the lense that came with the camera. A 14-45mm 3.5-5.6 Zuiko
Digital lense. This lense is pretty good for being a
kit lense. The sharpness is not excellent but it is pretty good. I just ordered a new lense last week
off of amazon. The 40-150mm 3.5-4.5 Zukio Digital Zoom Lense.
I bought this lense so I could do some sports photography and outdoor portraiture with a nice depth of field. The 14-45mm would be awesome for real estate. the 14 mm is wide enough to capture an entire room and then some. But when I am doing portraits I always wish I could zoom out just a bit more. And now I will be able to.





Now when it comes to external flashes, I don't have nothing spectacular. Its just....well I just took a look at it and realized that it doesn't even have a name brand....it's an (82ABSZ)

It works just fine. It was under 100 bucks came with 4 rechargeable batteries a charger and a dslr cleaning kit.... Not bad if I say so myself. I have had it for about8 months and have not had any problems with it at all.

I also recently purchase the cactus v2 wireless flash trigger and receiver for like 25 bucks. They work for what I need them for at the moment. When I can afford it though, you better believe I'll be purchasing the pocket wizards.

I also have two studio strobes. the are 180w/s delicay strobes with two stands and shoot thru umbrellas. I have had them for about 7 months and have had no problems with them what so ever. They work perfectly.

So thats really all I have so far. You don't need much equipment to start out taking good pictures. Just the basics. And I seem to be doing ok for now. Of course once I start advancing in my photography I will be purchasing more professional equipment. Anyway, Thanks for reading my blogs and look for more to come.

Website

Make sure to visit my site at www.caportraits.net

Monkey

Monkey
Originally uploaded by C&A Portraits

This is a picture that I took yesterday of a small monkey at the zoo. I didn't bother to see what kind this little dude was. He was kinda cool just chillin there. It's like he was just posing waiting for me to take his picture.