Cosmo is our 14 year old Russian Blue cat that we rescued from the shelter when we were first married. We had gone to several different places looking for just the right cat and ended up going back to get her. We didn’t notice that her cage was even occupied as she had hidden under the newspaper. She remains to this day pretty shy. This photo shows that a bit as she half conceals herself behind the lace curtains in our bedroom.

This photo was taken in 2005 when she was only nine. She is much thinner now and does not get around as well as she did back then. The toll of having to put up with 4 boys and their friends for the past eight years has been hard on her.

I don’t know how long she will be with us but I’m glad we have this photo of her in her prime to remind us of what she was like.

This image was shot in 2008 behind the scenes of a video shoot that my company was producing. The video was promoting a contest where people would win briefcases full of cash. These are the briefcases the men are holding. These guys are waiting for their cue to rush in and get into a stretch limo or something like that. If you look closely you can see that they are handcuffed to their briefcases.

I took this shot because I liked the repetition of the men in line and their contrast to the light background they are facing. The image tells a story of these guys going to work day after day in a boring, vanilla, one-sizable-fits-all world and they look ridiculous. They don’t even realize that they are caught in this trap, just marching along to the beat of drum, unaware of the fate that waits for them at the top of the queue.

Or they could just be extras in a corporate promotional video.

I took this photo in April of 2007. A friend and I were on a magazine assignment in Birmingham Alabama. As we touched down in Alabama and checked our voicemail we found that the couple we were going to photograph pushed the shoot out a day which meant that we had a free day.

We spent the morning looking for information on what to see in the city. As we drove around (in our bright red PT Cruiser) we finally found what we were looking for at the Birmingham City Hall. We read some brochures and pamphlets. We read about the city’s significance in the civil rights movement and decided to go visit Kelly Ingram Park.

Reverends Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fred Shuttlesworth of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference directed the organized boycotts and protests of 1963 which centered on Kelly Ingram Park. It was here, during the first week of May 1963, that Birmingham police and firemen, under orders from Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, confronted demonstrators, many of them children, first with mass arrests and then with police dogs and firehoses. Images from those confrontations, broadcast nationwide, spurred a public outcry which turned the nation’s attention to the struggle for racial equality. The demonstrations in Birmingham brought city leaders to agree to an end of public segregation. In addition, they helped ensure the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Civil Rights laws. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Ingram_Park

After taking a few photos we noticed a tall, slender, homeless man watching us and edging his way closer to us. We walked over and began talking to the man who told us all about the park and it’s fantastic history. Although most of these stories ended up being more fiction than fact we enjoyed talking to him and appreciated his advise to avoid certain other men who were circling the park waiting to jump us.

After that we decided to drive down to Montgomery. Along the way we stopped at a Civil War Cemetary and took a few photos there. When we got there we visited the bus stop where Rosa Parks would not give up her seat, Dr. King’s church, and his home. It was an eye opening experience.

The next day we did the shoot and flew home but we took with us a deeper appreciation of Dr. King and the Civil Rights movement of the early 60s.

A few year’s back I took my camera on a family camping trip to Bear Canyon near Manti, Utah. I took a few shots of my boys playing on a dirt road. They were riding their bikes around the campground. While they were gone I would find interesting spots to take pictures and then catch them as they would come back around. This is one of those spots.

I don’t do a lot of B&W photography, but every once in a while I’ll try it out here and there. I remember trying it on this photo and instantly liking it. The contrast of shapes, textures, and hues made this one work for me. The lighter leaves really pop from the background.

I am interested in doing a lot more B&W photography soon. I would like to do some landscapes and portraits with that goal in mind. When I do I’ll be sure to post some photos here for you to see.

A few years back I was attending a Utah Photo Safari meet-up at the Downtown library in Salt Lake. We were just outside of the children’s section that is below ground level. We were messing around with off camera flashes and stuff when I was explaining to the group that if you push the exposure on your flash up a few stops and then underexpose your shot that you could get bluer skies and darker backgrounds in full sun situations. It’s a fun trick and can give interesting results.

I had everything set up as I had explained it and had my camera pointed up above the wall and toward the open sky when this homeless man happened to pop his head over the wall and look down at the group. I quickly took the shot not really knowing what I would get but it turned out well enough for my tastes.

I like how he has an almost god-like quality about him as if he were looking down on his creations. I like the clouds whisping around him. They almost look like wings and a crown. His eyes are hidden so you cannot see his emotions. His hands are hidden and mysterious. His face shines even though it is in shadow.

I like to call this a happy accident, but it also goes to show that good things happen to those who are prepared.

Trees reaching, water
Calming. Heaven and earth meet
In sweet harmony.

I was in Fresno for a shoot and got back to the hotel room around 8:00pm with nothing to do. So I grabbed a map, saw Shaver Lake up the road a bit, and jumped into the rental car with my camera.

An hour and a half later I found the lake. It was dark and I had no idea how this was going to turn out. I pulled out my camera, my wide angle lens and my remote release cord and started taking pictures.

I kept thinking that some psychopath could be out there waiting for me to turn around then jump me and chop me up into little pieces. Scenes from the Friday the 13th movies I saw when I was a kid kept popping into my mind. I knew that I was going to be the dumb guy that goes off on his own to be killed by Jason in some horrific way.

I stayed for about an hour then packed up and drove back to the hotel without incident.

]]> http://kellybranan.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=163 1 http://kellybranan.com/blog/?p=157 http://kellybranan.com/blog/?p=157#comments Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:47:51 +0000 Kelly http://kellybranan.com/blog/?p=157 I took this photo just after I purchased my first 70-200mm lens. I was excited to try it out so I took it to Decker Lake (which is more of a pond than a lake if you ask me) over … Continue reading →]]>

I took this photo just after I purchased my first 70-200mm lens. I was excited to try it out so I took it to Decker Lake (which is more of a pond than a lake if you ask me) over my lunch break.

The 70-200mm is a fantastic lens. It is my go-to for event photography. It allows enough reach to get in pretty tight during presentations while giving enough room for full body shots and even small group shots from a distance. It’s relatively easy to carry and unobtrusive so you’re able to get great candid shots. I’ve even used this lens in the studio for portraits.

I use the 2.8 because the events I cover are usually fairly dark and I just love a good bokeh, don’t you?

Anyway, this rock was out in the water and from the looks of it was a popular hangout among the geese and ducks of tue area. I PS’d a few of their unsightly markings as they were a little distracting.

I like how the rock seems to float in the gradient blue, its heaviness lost in the etherial ripples around it. The detail of the rock is set off by the smooth water in which it bathes. The scale of the rock is lost. You can’t tell if this is a stepping stone or an island. Although I guess you know now, don’t you. The rock is doubled by the reflection below it. I had to get pretty low on the shore to show it off this way.

The sky was mostly cloudy so the water reflected the clouds while a bit of blue sky peeks in behind the rock. It almost looks like an asteroid floating in the blue of an unknown universe.

Overall, this image relaxes me. The calm blue of the water, the unmoving rock, the moss between them all balance out to a zen feeling deep inside of me. It’s a simple photo made rather quickly and without much premeditation. It just happened, and that’s usually when my best work occurs—when I get out of the way and just let it happen.

This was my first and only time to Upper Provo Falls. I had gone up with my family for some family photos and after we were done they let me play around for a little bit.

I scampered up and down the river to find just the right angle to show off the movement of the water and color of the rocks, moss, and surrounding vegetation. I finally decided on this spot which required that I lay belly-down in the river with my camera supported on an outcropping of rock in the water.

I tried several different shutter speeds for different effects but I liked how 300th of a second gave the idea of movement without completely blurring the water. As this was a sunny day and I wanted to preserve the highlights in the water I had to close the shutter all the way down to f/36 at 100 iso.

I really like the dark layered rocks of this area. They give a great contrast to the white flowing streams of the river. The moss and grasses add some nice color to the mix.

This is a reworked scan from a 35mm print. I took the original shot back in ’96 from the top of the Eiffel Tower. A friend had given a no-name SLR camera and a couple of lenses to use for a while. This was my first real introduction into photography and I was hooked. I don’t remember which lens I was using but I think it was somewhere in the 100-150mm range.

Several years ago I scanned in a bunch of old prints and I really liked this one. I happened to be reading an article on fake tilt-shifting the same day that I scanned this photo so I tried the process on this one. I still like the results. It reminds me of how Paris looked to me standing on the top of the Eiffel tower back in 1996.

I thought it would be fun talk about each of the images on my website portfolio. I’ll start from the back and work my way forward.

This photo was taken in May of 2008 and I was in Toronto to cover a corporate event. This was my first time in Toronto and I was really impressed with the city. I had a free day before the event so I wondered around with my camera. If you’ve ever been to Toronto you know that the CN tower is a pretty distinct feature on the skyline and I had taken a lot of photos of it. As I was making my way back to the hotel I saw the tower framed between the tall buildings. The sun was going down and bathed the tower in a warm glow while the buildings in the foreground were already in shadow.

I really like how futuristic the buildings look with their metal and glass and the warmth of the tower next to the blue sky. I also like the lines of the tower and the building leading your eye up while the shorter buildings bring your eye back to the ground.