Opening House Grand Opening | Paxman Photography

How was your weekend? Ours was fantastic and crazy busy. We had our open house event and it was great to have all my family here. Plenty of friends from town and from the Pinetop-Lakeside Chamber of Commerce.came to help us celebrate and check out the new location we've worked so hard to get ready for opening. So now it's official, we're here and we're open. We're open from 10 am - 5 pm Monday - Friday and on Saturday by appointment. The studio phone number is 928-367-PICS (7427). _________________ Much of the rest of our weekend was spent moving my parents out of the house I grew up in and into their new home. I don't typically post images that took with my iphone but I really like how this panoramic turned out. What do you think?

Can you make Google do this?

My new headshot, kind of.

For whatever reason Arizona is really relaxed about updating your license. Until today the picture on my license was the same one taken when I got my learning permit when I was 15 years old. I got a letter in the mail a few weeks ago letting me know that if I didn't update my picture, my license would be suspended. Also I have to renew my passport for a wedding abroad coming up this summer and thought that a suspended license would reflect poorly on my passport application process.

So I put on a good shirt and drove all over creation to find a DMV today, and the above image is what I got for my $4.00 renewal fee.

Merry Christmas

Didn't get around to sending anything out in the mail this year.
Merry Christmas!
Thank you to all who have been a part of my life and or a part of my business over the last year.

Twittering...

Does anyone else twitter?

A bunch of So.-Cal photogs got me into this. Have you heard of it? TWITTER is like micro-blogging. You can do it from you phone via text message and it can automatically post on to your facebook or blog (have you noticed it over there in the right hand column?) and so it is much more convenient than blogging.
FOLLOW ME! http://twitter.com/chrispaxman

It's the newest thing. Sign-up, hook your phone into it, and twitter, twitter, twitter. I try to update mine a couple times a day and I for sure send one out whenever I add to my blog.

Random Friday night.

- The Pecans: I think the days of photoshoots at the Pecans sales office are gone. They have closed the community gates and posted a "NO PHOTOGRAPHY" sign out front. I know alot of my fellow photographer friends check my blog so just wanted to spread the word so you don't get suprised when you show up for a shoot and have to scramble to get somewhere else(like I did tonight) while losing precious sunlight.

- Robbed: Yeah I got robbed on Wednesday. It's very unsettling to know someone has been chillin in your crib :(




-Blister: November has been SO busy! We're only half-way thru and I am NOT kidding when I say I have a blister on my shutter-release finger. I'll take and post a picture shortly.

Time waster...

You may have noticed that I throw random stuff into my blog from time to time. Here is another one of those time wasters that I know you all love.
Face your manga
http://www.faceyourmanga.it/welcome.htm
Is a site where you can make your own cartoon of yourself or whatever. It is pretty cool...they let you pick your the size and shape of your different features and color and style of your clothing and accessories. Check it out! The one I made I posted above. If you make one. post it on your blog and then leave me a comment so I can go check it out!

Random Thursday...

Hey I just wanted to hit up the blog with a bunch of random stuff thats been on my mind.

-Day job.
I have changed my work schedule at my day job at the University of Phoenix. I am at the office at 6:00am at the latest (I've been coming in early to do Overtime) and off by 2:30pm. I wanted to be able to still go out and do photoshoots in the good light which is coming earlier everyday. So yeah I am fully aware of how dark it is outside at 4:30am.

-November is full.
I am booked for November. If you are wanting to do Christmas card pictures or something lets see if we can do it the first week of December to get them out in time.

-I'm a Mac.
I am officially changing religions this week. I am going to be ordering a 24" iMac. My PC is slowing down and it is taking FOREVER to edit images in there.

- Gas prices.
Why isn't anyone throwing a party? Price of gas has dropped over a dollar a gallon? Are we all so negative to just brush that aside? Why is this not as big a deal as when it went UP a dollar a gallon? It's the media's fault.

Location, Location, Location

My friend Julie sent me this article at work the other day and I thought it was interesting. It lists the top 5 places in the valley to take pictures.
http://phoenix.about.com/od/wedphoto/a/photospot.htm
In summary here are the Top 5:
1. Papago Park.
2. Scottsdale Civic Center
3. Tempe Townlake
4. The Superstitions
5. Freestone Park

The cool thing is that all of these places are on the east side pretty much. Out of these 5 I have only shot at Tempe Townlake.

My list would go something more like this:

1. Mesa Arts Center
2. The Pecans
3. Tempe Townlake
4. Las Sendas
5. Agritopia

I have done most of my shooting at these 5 places. Where do you take pictures? -> leave a comment!!! I love checking out new places and I totally plan on checking out the other 4 locations listed in the article.

Stock, stills, and soda.

I mentioned yesterday that I applied to be a contributor on Istock photography. They have you fill out an application and actually submit a few images that will be individually reviewed for approval. I am pretty sure I have all the tools I need to do this (camera, lights, backdrops, strobe, etc...) but these types of images are really different from the location portraits I have grown comfortable doing. While I can't post the images I submitted for application I can post a few of the my other practice images.




So as you can see I was just taking pictures of whatever I could find around the house...but in other news I found these energy drinks at BigLots for freekin CHEAP! At a gas station it would probably cost at least $2.00 but if you look close you'll see I got these babies for $0.60 each, and i bought a whole freekin case!


Do you have something that needs to be photographed on black or white background? Let me know.

Crafty Crafty...

A friend of mine from Pinetop has been doing some really creative, custom craft stuff. I've been keeping an eye on her blog and saw something I wanted to order. She did a great job customizing to a theme that I wanted and it came out perfect. I know as a photographer I love to see where MY work ends up. It's in the living room right now but I want to hang it on the office door once I find a non-destructive way to do that...but here it is. You can check out Kacie's other items on her blog "Ladybug Lane"
Thanks Kacie

Lightroom

I got my copy of Adobe Lightroom today! Lightroom helps to color correct pictures. I've only been playing with it a little while but I am really impressed already, but I know I will probably be spending many a late night learning how to use it.

Painting with light.

My wife is such a good sport. She puts up with all my crazy ideas and models for me whenever I wanna try something new. So I've been reading about this technique called painting with light. If you're not into photography then the explanation is kinda boring ( ask me if you want more details)... In a completly dark room we opened the shutter on the camera for 20 seconds, then I come in with a flashlight and "paint with light" the areas I want to show up in the picture. So yeah Johnna had to sit still like that for 20 seconds. Fun huh?

Tuesday's something cool to look at....

Where do you print your pictures? Costco, Walmart, or Walgreens maybe? Well before you send your next batch to be printed (especially if they are pictures that I have taken!!!) take a look at where I take my pictures to get printed: MPIX or http://www.mpix.com/ .

They offer a HUGE range of print sizes and options. Their quality is superior and they are a professional shop but they welcome the consumer market as well. They cost a little bit more than costcos or walmarts and they have a $5 shipping fee I think but the quality is AWESOME!

-HAPPY PRINTING!!!!

brutha

This was the first week that I had my new 50mm lense and I was just lovin how sharp the images were coming out. My parents took all of us to Kabuki in Pinetop when we went up for Ashley's graduation and I snapped this shot of my brother, he usually tries to make a face when someone tries to take his picture but I think I caught him right before he got the chance.

Sumthin cool to look at...

Jill Greenberg is a photographer whose work I admired even before I knew who she was. A lot of the still shots featuring the host of the episode that you see on SNL when they break to commercial are usually done by her. She relies heavily on digital manipulation in her work and I love that about her. Take a look through her website http://manipulator.com . You may notice some of your favorite magazine covers and album covers are done by her.

Vacation

Well you'd think that we would have a ton of pictures to share from our fun little vacation but we really only took about a dozen. A couple that I wanted to throw up here are actually composite of 3 separate pictures that I took with our "point-and-shoot" camera and then "stitched" together in photoshop.

San Diego- The USS MIDWAY


The port in San Diego

2008...the time to graduate!

I just wanted to congratulate the Paxman Photography seniors this year and all of the other 2008 seniors I know! What an exciting time. We got to come up to Pinetop to see my sister's graduation and of course it was good to see old friends and to see a couple of my photographs in their video presentation.

Thank you President Bush

So I got my economic stimulus deposit last week and decided to invest in some glass. I also wanted to scope out the lighting for a shoot on Saturday so Brett and Erica met me @ the MAC (Thanks guys) so I could try out the new lens I got today, that I love, and that was worth every dime.

The first shot shows of how AWESOME the lens is because of how drastic the focus differences are.

A much better shot...

and a link to some more....

B%E Jpegs