Hello My Chicadee

Ok, I know, enough of the birds already right? Well, I couldn't resist. This little girl was feeding her chicks in a birdhouse down on our Cherry tree. Again, shot with the wonderful Nikon 70-200 2.8 ED lens...such magnificent glass, and the clarity and color are great. Not too bad for hand holding without a tripod! And if you have ever watched these little creatures...wow are they fast...you'd better have a fast lens..
J

And a Wren I found pecking around on a dead Pine tree...hopefully eating termites.. :)

Happy Easter!! It's Resurrection Sunday

After church this morning we headed to my wifes families Easter get together. Once we finished there we went and ate supper with my in laws and I snapped a picture of this Cardinal as she looked to be watching the setting sun. I hope she enjoyed her day as much as we did! A copy may also be found on our web page at.. http://johnarnoldphotography.zenfolio.com/p756507911/h3922861e#h3922861e

Shot with D90 and a Nikon 70-200 2.8 ED lens; 

settings.. 200mm, F4.0, 1/60th shutter and ISO 640

Here's another... just above the feeder. Looks to be a finch? 

Shot with the D90 and 70-200;

settings.. 145mm, F3.2, 1/640th shutter and ISO 320

Ok....so here's some of the pictures from Spring Picture Day at MCCS...

Thank you so much to the parents who allowed us to not only capture their childs images, but also for letting us use them here!!

Did another panorama today

it was a good day for doing absolutely nothing...so I took 21 pictures and stitched them all together to make a backyard panorama.

A little wet spring day 'snapshot'...

You ever wonder as you sit and plan your day what others are actually doing? I mean, this little fella probably doesn't have a lot on his agenda today... just make sure he has food and thats about it. Wow, do we really have too much or what?

Ok, so here is a little bit about the 'Spring Picture Day" we did......

       I felt like I (John) had to write a little bit of how we did the photo shoot at out Church/Christian School...Mt. Calvary Baptist Church and Christian Day School, in Archdale, NC. I don't think some folks really realize all the work that had gone in to taking over 400 pictures, of which 100+ had to be usable for print. We started at 7am, or at least I did, Amy didn't arrive until around 8. I had some retakes of some of the kids that were sick when we did the first 'school pictures', and some of the teachers/coaches. Then it was on to the barrage of outside, naturally-lit, portrait style pictures. My wife, Amy, is very creative and came up with a spot literally right outside the church doors. She used some Dogwood 'clippings' to give highlights to the background and we fill lighted with a golden 42" reflector as needed. At certain times when the sun would peek out, we used a 42" sheer scrim disc to filter out the bright lights. When possible, most shot were taken at a wide open f2.8 to give a greater depth of field. Almost all shots were taken using the Nikon D90 hitched up to the Nikon 80-200 f2.8 beast that I have. All I can say is what a wonderful portrait lens that has turned out to be!
      We had to make just about every shot count as time was extremely limited and Amy wanted to get at least two poses from each of the 74 kids that were there that day. I free handed some, tripod the rest and flashed some with the Nikon SB800. When I get consent, I will try and post some of the kids, that aren't mine here for some examples.
God-Bless,
John and Amy
 

Mt. Calvary Christian School Spring pictures are coming....

Well, it's been a looooong time since our last post, but what free time I do have lately has been used on photo editing and producing. Here's one of our oldest son that we took during the Spring Picture Day at his school, Mt. Calvary Christian School.