My wife Debbie suggested that I should start a blog. She's pretty smart. In fact, I've learned over the last 32 years that she's usually right. Whenever I do what she suggests, I tend to be happier. So, I'll give it a shot.

Please let me know what you think. Feel free to send me an e-mail at craig@craigstocksarts.com

First, a little about me. I actually started my adult working life as a photographer. I worked at the Pekin Times for four years, and then at Rembrandt Studio for another two years. It was a lot of fun, but it sure didn't pay very well.

So, when Deb graduated from nursing school, I went back to college and got a degree in mechanical engineering, and then went to work at Caterpillar.

Now, nearly 30 years later, I'm nearing retirement. And once again, I'm caught up in photography. I now do weddings, portraits - pretty much whatever clients want. And, I still do quite a bit of photography for myself.

I also love to design and build stuff. Over the last 10 years, I've been able to assemble a pretty good shop - equipped for both wood and metal work. I think I've migrated toward metal work since it seems to allow me more creative freedom. I can bend, cut and weld metal into shapes I could never attempt with wood. Metal work is also a lot easier on my wood dust allergies.

So, what have I been up to lately?

December

It seems that I'm getting more and more requests to do image restoration work, especially combining older photos to include deceased relatives into more current pictures. Sometimes the pictures are such that it's reasonbly easy to combine them, but frequently they're so different that it's nearly impossible to create a believable composite. There's also the challenge of striking a balance between too realistic and too ghostly.

Below is an example from a recent customer (used with their permission).

December

Since returning from Jekyll Island, I've been so busy with sittings that I haven't had time to "play" with my photos from the trip. But, during a recent break in the action, I started experimenting with self-publishing using Lulu.comIt's a very easy to use on-line service that you can use to publish anything from books to calendars. I've created a calendar from the photos from Jekyll Island. You can see it here.

December

I've now retired after 30 years at Caterpillar. Well, actially semi-retired since I'm doing more and more photography work.

To celebrate my retirement, my father and I took a golfing trip to Jekyll Isand for the first week of December. We had great weather. Since sunrise and suset are not good times to play golf, I took my camera to the beach for some photography fun as well. You can see some of the photos here.

The photo below is the sunrise on the morning we left to head home.

October

We had quite a trip the past weekend. We went to Burlington, Iowa for the weekend along with my parents, my sister and brother-in-law. Why? My folks lived there for five years, and that's where I was born. It was a time of family remembrances - where they lived, worked and played.

As it turns out, the hospital where I was born has been turned into an office building, but the old maternity ward is now a restaurant with a gorgeous view of the Mississippi River. We ate supper there, and were lucky enough to have a booth along the window.

The photo below was taken from our booth. I simply set the camera on the window ledge and used a long exposure.

September

Our three grandsons (Caden, Colton and Chase) were here for the day on Saturday. They love playing in the woods, and kept themselves busy for quite a while working on the fort, digging a fire pit, climbing trees, and generally having a good time.

By the end of the day, they were pretty muddy, and I couldn't resist a quick stop in the studio before they hit the showers. I think the pictures also capture their individual personalities.

A few weeks ago, I posted a photo of a nearby corn field just before sunrise. Well, Hurricane Ike rolled through the Midwest last weekend and dropped about as much rain in two days as I've ever seen in Illinois. And, since the corn field is along the Mackinaw River, portions were flooded.

The picture below was taken just after the river crested. The day before, the lowest points of the fence were complete submerged. The photo is actually a composite of six individual frames that were merged in Photoshop to create the wide angle view.

If you know Deb and I, then you know that Deb is a volunteer on the Delavan Ambulance squad. They recently put their new ambulance into service, and the chief wanted a good picture of the new rig. He had just spent several hours getting it spiffed up for the Delavan Fall Festival parade and fireworks, so it was a good time. This is the final result, after a fair amount of retouching in Photoshop.

Compare it to the original image shown below. They were leaving to take the ambulance to the fireworks show, so it was still pretty early in the evening. The light inside the cab is from a radio-controlled flash I placed on the center console.

Actually, turning a daytime photo into night works pretty well for a vehicle. Had it been dark, we wouldn't have had the reflections that allow you see the shape and details on the ambulance. If you examine magazine and advertising photos of cars, you'll see reflections of large white light sources- and it's those reflections that allow us to see the shiny object. In this case, the sky was my light source.

August

As I was making coffee a few days ago, I realized that we had all the right ingredients for a gorgeous sunrise. I grabbed the camera and tripod and headed off to a nearby corn field. I wasn't disappointed.

July

My wife's niece, her husband and their new baby Jacob.

July brings one of summer's high points - the 4th of July. We have a tradition of getting together with my parents' neighbor's family - kind of an extended family reunion. It was our turn to host the get-together the year and we had nearly 40 people at our house.

Of course, you have to have fireworks on the 4th. And, if you're a photographer, you have to take pictures of the fireworks. The one below is one of my favorites. You can see more here or from my Gallery page.

Fireworks are easy to photograph if you know the trick. Simply put the camera on a tripod and set the exposure to leave the shutter open for 10 to 30 seconds or so. The streams of light do all the work. (By the way, you use the same technique for lightning. Since fireworks tend to be very yellow, you'll get better colors if you use a tungsten white balance rather than daylight or auto.

I also added two off-camera strobes to give the photos a little more dimension. In this photo, one of the strobes is behind the group of people on the right, and the second strobe is behind the folks on the left. I also added tungsten CTO gels to the flashes to balance the color of the flash to the color of the fireworks.

I didn't do much post processing in Photoshop. I cropped and adjusted the brightness and white balance, but that was about it. The only exception is the first photo which is actually a composite of two images.

June

We've started to branch out into video demonstrations of photo techniques. This is our first effort. What do you think?

May 25

It's time for another of the series on my toys - both old and new. This is my first real camera, A Kodak Instamatic 104. It's the first one I got specifically because I wanted to be a photographer.

The Instamatic 100 was introduced in 1963 and was a huge hit for Kodak. The camera was small, tough and very portable. It also introduced the new 126 format film. The negative was about the same size as 35mm, but was in an easy-to-load cartridge. The film advanced by ratcheting a thumb lever instead of turning a knob, so you couldn't advance the film too much or too little..

In 1965, Kodak had just come out with the new 104 version. The big improvement was the flash cube - four little flash bulbs inside a plastic and foil cube that rotated to a fresh bulb each time you advanced the film. You could say it was the world's first point-and-shoot camera.

Sitting behind the Instamatic is my current uber-camera, the Canon 1Ds Mark III. Photography has made a lot of progress in the last 43 years. Of course, you can't really compare the 1965 entry-level consumer camera to a modern professional digital SLR. But, pretty much any current digital point-and-shoot camera will produce results dramatically better pictures than the Instamatics from 1965.

About the picture. The photo above was taken in my studio. Both cameras are sitting on a sheet of Plexiglas resting on a black table. The background is gray paper lit with strobe with a blue gel. The main light on the cameras is a small strobe shooting through a white umbrella. The rest of the lighting comes from white reflectors surrounding the cameras to create the reflections. The final image is a blend of two exposures, one focused on the Instamatic and one focused on the Canon.

May 18

I carry a photo of Deb in my wallet. Every time I get out money or a credit card, I have her picture front and center. Recently, it was time to update the picture, so we did a quick head and shoulders photo in the studio.

Everyone's portraits can benefit from some retouching - even beautiful people. The bright lights in the studio (even with soft lighting) generally aren't very flattering. And with modern, high resolution digital camera, you can see every line and pore.

After a little retouching, the character of the person is still visible. And hopefully, the photo doesn't look artificial.

Check out the before and after below by rolling your mouse over the picture below. It's the result of fairly basic portrait retouching. Her skin is softened, and her eyes look brighter. I also added some diffusion so that her hair and shirt weren't competing for attention.

May 12

This post is a little bit of a departure from the past few. 32 years ago, Debbie and I asked our good friend Jim Mathews to take our engagement picture in the Pekin Park. (The clothes and hair styles scream 1975, even if I didn't tell you.) At the time, I was a staff photographer at the Pekin Daily Times, and Jim was the Chief Photographer. Last year we got the idea to go look for the same tree, and create the "after" version.

About the pictures. The "before" picture was taken on 2 1/4 format film with available light only. It was an overcast day with a little light rain. The print we've had hanging on the wall has faded quite a bit over the years, so this was scanned from the original negative. (If I hadn't had the negative, I could have scanned the print and restored the color in Photoshop.) The "after" picture was taken late in the day. While the light in the trees came from the setting sun, we were in a shadow. The main light was an umbrella strobe high and camera left. There were also two strobes behind us left and right to create the rim light effect.

May 3

This picture has a lot going on. In 1964 when I was a Cub Scout, I won 1st place in the Pine Wood Derby. And that's my grandson Chase (also a Cub Scout) with my winning car. Actually, my Dad won first place, since I never could have built the car without him. We spent hours cutting and sanding. Then we took the car and some lead weights to the grocery store to check the weight. We found the combination of lead weights plus car that was just below the maximum weight, then melted the lead and poured it into holes in the bottom of the car.

My two younger grandsons, Caden and Colton, are looking on from the background. The red car is actually a race car (Legends of Racing series, 1937 Chevy) that I converted into a roadster for the boys to play with. The original race car was powered by an 1100 cc Yamaha motorcycle engine, and was capable of 140 MPH. The converted car is powered by an old golf cart engine, and can only make about 20 MPH.

About the picture. It was taken with an extreme wide angle lens which created the exaggerated perspective. I also stretched the perspective further in Photoshop. The photo was taken a little before dusk. There were a total of four strobes used. One camera left bounced in an umbrella, and one camera right facing the race car. Both of those were gelled with a CTO gel to make the foreground warm, and the background blue. There were two other strobes, to the back left and right of the race car, to create highlights. I also used a split neutral density filter to darken the sky a little more. Other than stretching the perspective, very little was done in Photoshop.

April 30

It's been quite a while since I've posted an update. I've got a number of new images in the series. The subject of the next one is cars. The two Corvette toys in the foreground are Matchbox type toy cars from the late 1960s or early 1970s. Each one is about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long. The Corvette in the background is my grown-up toy. Though it's not visible, the license plate is CES TOY1.

Once again, this picture required some work. The two toy cars are sitting on a piece of clear Plexiglas which creates the reflections. They're on a table about 100 feet from the real car. I used a 200 mm telephoto lens which tends to compress the distance between the objects. Since the picture was taken at dusk, I also used some strobes to light up the toy cars and the Corvette.

April 6, 2008

I received some feedback from my mother. She thought of a few other things that she was equally happy to see end. She mentioned something about smelly chemicals in the basement darkroom, and the time a friend and I used the bathtub to develop some color slides. I really don't know why the bathtub episode would have been a bother. We didn't finish until 2:00 AM since we kept running out of hot water, and I'm pretty sure everyone else should have been in bed by then. (By the way, my mother creates fantastic jewelry - visit her web site at www.maxessoriesbywini.com.)

I promised the next in the series. Sometime in the early 1960s I received a really cool telescope for a present. It was solidly built with two extensions, and had a tripod. The magnification isn't marked on it, but it's probably about 2X magnification. Quite a bit has changed in 40+ years!

A little bit about this picture. It was taken on our back deck, about 9:30 PM a few days ago. And yes, those are really the stars that were there. I did blend two separate exposures - one for the stars and one for the telescopes. I also did some work in Photoshop to make the stars stand out more clearly.

April 1, 2008

I've never been able to decide if I'm flexible, or indecisive. I think the difference is one is the ability to consider new information, while the latter is the tendency to reconsider old information.

Either way, here's a different view of my Saf-T-Saw. I can't decide which I like better. Any comments?

March 31, 2008

I've started a series of photos that I call Toys and Tools. The idea was inspired by my very first power tool that I recently discovered in my parents' attic. It was called a Saf-T-Saw, and it was designed to cut out styrofoam designs. For the photo series, I've tried to capture both the toy, and the modern tool. In this case, a rather substantial table saw.

I don't remember for sure when I got the Saf-T-Saw, but probably sometime around 1960. I can clearly remember tracing onto styrofoam sheets, and then cutting out the design. I also recall that the styrofoam sawdust made quite a mess, so I'm sure my folks were glad when all the styrofoam was used up.

Since I said this was the start of a series, you can safely assume that I have other old toys that would love to pose alongside the real thing. Check back soon for the second installment.