Driving home from seeing the incredibly talented Annie Walker, I saw Dan Hagerty painting an incredible mural on this building. I stopped at a red light and was watching, and we ended up having a quick little convo while I was waiting for the light. As I drove off, I kept thinking about how awesome the mural was a what a nice guy Dan was, luckily I had my Fuji with me, so I decided to turn around and go snap a few shots of him doing his thing. Bonus golden hour lighting. All shots edited with snapseed on my ipad and and applied a vintage filter and brought the strength down to about 25%.
I had an incredible time shooting today with my dad, as always. We went to his good friend (and now my friend) and unbelievable photographer Bill Fortney’s His Light workshop at the railway museum. I was, BY FAR, the youngest guy in attendance, but it was such a privilege to be around such great photographers. I was so thankful for the opportunity to spend a little time with Bill in particular who is such an encouragement and ALWAYS talking about his love for Jesus.
This place was a bit of a gold mine for me and my style of shooting. There was lots of symmetry, textures and we had some great light to work with too. Bill’s work shop focused on HDR images and although I didn’t have the chance to attend any of the classes, I did learn how to bracket for HDR. This first shot is a combination of 9 images with the Fuji XE-1. I didn’t really have any programs to process HDR, so I downloaded the free trial of the Nik software HDR efex pro 2….hey, you do what you have to do! I’m really pleased with how this turned out.
This next image is of “snake” who was patiently waiting his turn to shoot one of the rail cars. I saw the natural light coming in through the window and was able to capture this moment. I’m learning more and more that your have to be ready to take the shot at any time. Moments like this come and go so fast. I did the post with Nik’s photo efex 4 adding filter 28 in the nostalgic film effects.
I love shooting with people who are as passionate (and probably more passionate) about photography as I am. I have so, so much more to learn. It’s and awesome journey to capture.
The University of Georgia has a beautiful campus. I remember the first time I walked through the campus I couldn’t help but notice how many buildings had beautiful pillars. Not only that, but all throughout Athens, there are literally pillars everywhere! I’ve been taking a few shot of the pillars every time I go to Athens, and I was really happy with the way this one turned out.
This shot was taken with the Fuji xe1 and the 60mm. 1/210 F5.6
I celebrated my 32nd birthday on the 10th by going to Chattanooga, TN with some of the best people that exist. We went to revisit Foster Falls, a 60ft waterfall that I had “found” just a week prior. But it made such an impression on me that I wanted to bring my friends to experience this breathtaking place. We definitely encountered some rain on the way there and, well, pretty much the whole time we were there. But we just soaked it up (pun most definitely intended), because what would an adventure be without some randomness.
As we rounded the amazing bend on 75N that overlooks Chattanooga and curves in through the city, God blessed us with some intense clouds! All iphones out (except the driver…which happened to be me;)! They were instagramming, vining, and facebooking these beauties. My buddy Scott, who went to school at Covenant college in Chattanooga, took us to this gorgeously run down building which was a perfect addition to the already frightening scene. This is not a normal edit for me but I felt like this needed some extra “eery” to it. I used the detail extractor in Photo Efex to make the scene come alive a bit more which gave it almost a bit of an HDR feel. But anyway…LOOK.AT.THOSE.CLOUDS!
And in ironic stark contrast of the previous picture, here’s a fun portrait of one of my best friends Annie Walker who makes the most beautiful and most delicious cakes you’ll ever taste in your life. Go check her website out and then do yourself a favor and order a cake for no reason. Or, better yet, just find a reason to celebrate something. 
Friday, February 15, 2013 Posted in Portrait
This is my roommate and my good friend. He is an incredible videographer and started a company called Southern Lights Productions a while ago, and they’re doing some beautiful work. He is hilarious and always willing to share an encouraging word he heard from The Lord. I’m thankful and blessed to know him.
I’ve been working on a project for the last couple months called My Athens. It’s a 2 week long event that is celebrating the city, people and culture of Athens. I’m helping with the Instagram portion of the show, creating some buzz, and will ultimately be helping to curate the a gallery show. More details to come. But I’m also going to be showing some of my personal photography throughout the event. So, I’ve been heading up that way about every other weekend right now to capture the beautiful city.
Athens has a really great small town feel to it and the locals are really nice. The people who have been there for a while absolutely love their city. My roommate Thomas (who you’ll see pictured below) and I were walking around Sanford Stadium wishing we could get inside to take some shots on the field, when we may or may not have noticed a maintenance gate open. Then, we may or may not have looked to our left, and then our right, and then walked straight in and onto the field. At first we were hurrying trying to shoot everything we could, but we noticed people noticing us and they didn’t seem to mind us being there, so we just acted like we were supposed to be there. I was really excited about how this shot turned out. The post processing was a simple black and white conversion on the large jpeg with the Snapseed app on my iPad.
A little later Thomas and I found a parking deck to climb on top of and there was some incredibly still water resting in there…a perfect time for some reflection.
I’m still LOVING my Fujifilm XE-1 and I’m finding myself using the 60mm more often than the 18-55mm (which is also outstanding). Think mirrorless my friends, it’s where photography is going.
Took off pretty much spur of the moment Friday due to a spikeball tournament being cancelled, leaving an open weekend. So I figured I’d go spend a little time in Nashville with the folks. We had a great time even though it was short. Here’s a few shots from Saturday.
This one was my favorite from the weekend. I love symmetry and I thought the light and colors were beautiful in this shot.
I know this is a little out of focus but I wanted to post it anyway. 
Here’s a quick shot I snapped crossing the street…pretty much a no looker since the light was about to turn green. I thought the light was great coming down through the street though.
On my way home from work I had the urge to take some photos, so i called up my friend Dan who has an awesome loft downtown. I was there in 5 minutes and we were on the deck in 15m, shooting away. As you can see, we had some fun experimenting with zooming while shooting long exposures. I took the “butterfly” picture into Photoshop and mirrored the image. I appreciate a good abstract every once in a while.
I’ve been using Color Efex 4 by Nik software for my editing recently. I find it has fairly intuitive UI, although some of their filters are pretty intense. You’ll probably see me playing around with a few different editing styles, and as always, feedback is appreciated.
by Aaron Coury
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