I was sitting inside all day today being depressed that the gorgeous spring weather we've been having was gone and it was raining. Seriously, I've had enough of overcast skies and rain and snow! I want summer, green grass and golden sunsets to shoot pretty pictures in! But I looked out the window and saw the streets all glimmering and shiney and ya know, I thought it was really pretty. And I wanted to take some pictures. Luckily I have great friends like Ashlee who will, at a moments notice, come out and shoot with me in the cold rain. I really had a blast spending an hour making portraits with her on the side of a busy road. It really was a gorgeous night. 








While we were shooting this nice man came and handed Ashlee her umbrella back (it was sitting on the sidewalk)... and then he almost kissed her... Gotta love strangers on the street! 





Mandy was kind enough to come along tonight and shoot with Ashlee and I. I always LOVE shooting with Mandy, she is an absolute blast to hang out with and an extremely talented photographer! If you haven't check out her page before you should jump over and give it some love HERE , and if you need a photographer that is AMAZING with kids, look no further. 


As always, thanks for stopping by! If you or someone you know needs a photographer, jump over to my website at WWW.ENDLESS.PHOTOGRAPHY and shoot me an email. 

If you're interested in learning more about how to create images like this, I teach classes and one on one mentoring, and I'd love to hear your questions and comments!  

I love learning and practicing new photography techniques and tricks. Recently I've been really working on practicing my macro and product photography skill set. Sometimes making the perfect photo to showcase a product can be a lot harder than expected. I recently purchased some plexiglass sheets at the recommendation of a fellow photographer and friend, Bethany Reed, and have been practicing and working with it. Today I was working with the wife and I's rings to nail down a hard, shiny light. I really love the way they turned out and the gorgeous shine of my wife's ring. I'm glad a year after I got it she loves it like it's brand new! Here are the results of today's work. 




Thank you to Jerricks Fine Jewelry for such a gorgeous ring, if you're in need of an engagement ring, stop by their store! 

Don't hesitate to contact me or visit my website if you have any questions or comments! 

Mike  Johnson
435-764-4241
Endless.Photography

Nate and McKell had such a beautiful wedding last weekend! I am always honored to be able to attend so many wedding and experience such a beautiful moment in these couples lives. It was absolutely wonderful to meet these two, and get to know them over the past few months and then follow their every move yesterday and watch the smiles and laughter on their faces. They are perfect for each other, all their friends and family said it, and I couldn't agree more. Such a beautiful start of their lives together. 

I'm so bad at blogging! I get so behind sometimes! I have been so busy and there are some incredible things coming this year for Endless Photography, and some of them are already happening! I had to take a moment tonight though and share some images I made with the Utah Night Owls Photo Shoot's Club  a few weeks back. Some good friend of mine and I drove down to Midway Utah to see these incredible Ice Castles! Seriously they are awesome! They are built of pure ice, no internal supports, and grow to over 40 feet tall! The owners of the Ice Castles were kind enough to let our group of photographers come pack into their castles for a night and capture some amazing images. I met some great photographers and had a chance to spend some time shooting with some date night couples wandering through. If you get a chance, I'd highly recommend you check out the Ice Castles before they melt for the year!

This morning I woke up bright and early to work with HollieKay and Christy on some fun (and freezing!) portraits! Hollie was absolutely brilliant and it made my job a breeze! 




Thanks for stopping by! Follow us on Facebook , or jump over to my website to see my complete portfolio!

Happy New Years! I hope everyone had a great celebration! I wanted to post a quick blog sharing some of my favorite images from a shoot I had on the 30th with the beautiful Mikayla. She is always a blast to work with and I owe her for freezing to death and letting me make some amazing images of her! I'm so excited to see what new people I'll meet this year and new things I'll learn! Thanks for all the support last year and let's do great things this year! 




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This is my good friend Cindee shooting with Mikayla. She was a great help on the shoot and it was way fun to teach her a few tricks and new techniques. If you're ever looking for helping with your photography, or want to learn how to make better portraits, don't go anywhere else. I'd love to get you started or help you make the next step in your photography.

I loved shooting with the Hamilton family this past week! They were so much fun! And I'm so excited for their son who is leaving on his mission soon (I seriously miss my mission so much and my wife has to put up with my repetitive stories all the time). But they were such a fun family to spend a short time with, and I've never seen so many hand warmers in my life! That's a nice mother who brings a hand warmer for each pocket for the whole family! As usual though, enough of my rambling, here are some of my favorite images of their cute family.

The wife and I had the day off together and spent the day baking cookies... ok, she baked cookies while I played with the cookies :) 'cause ya know, I like cookies and I like pictures. Anyway, here are two of the images I created today that I really like.

I hope everyone is having a great Christmas season and not freezing too much! I have a way cool technique that I wanted to share with you, something I've been trying to figure out for a few months and I think I finally nailed it. So let's go over the basics of how to get a clean, detailed cityscape shot.

HD-what?
First off, what is HDR? HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. Basically it's taking multiple exposures at different values (light to dark) and then combining them later in a photo editor. HDR is very useful in certain situations because you may have an extremely contrasted scene, where your whites and blacks are far apart. Without HDR you would have to either blow out your highlights, or loose some of your shadows to complete black (side note: this is not a bad thing, it really works for some images). But HDR is when you take an over exposed photo, a properly exposed photo, and a under exposed photo and stack them in a software. Like I said, it works for some images and not for others. Personally I think this technique is fantastic for night shots of cities. So let's go over what I did to make this image:


Basic Setup 
This shot is of downtown Salt Lake City Utah. To set of for a shot like this, I would recommend getting as high up as you can. For me that was about 10 stories up. Then you're going to want to set up your tripod and camera, compose your image and find a medium exposure. For HDR's I almost always set my camera to matrix metering and simply balance out the exposure. Since you're on a tripod I would recommend a small aperture and low ISO, this shot is at f/10 and ISO 100.

Hint: I always adjust only shutter speed to insure a clean depth of field and low ISO noise.

Bracketing
After setting up the image and finding your exposure, you need to take a least 3 photos (the image above is 7 exposures). I start at the dark end and work up. So after finding the medium exposure I went down 3 stops on my shutter speed and snapped an image, up a stop, snap an image, up a stop, you get the drill. The exposures on this image ranged from 0.4 seconds to 12.0 seconds.

Hint: I use my histogram to find the lowest exposure that has detail in the highlights, and then keep using that histogram to find the highest exposure that is getting detail in the darkest area of the image, that way I know that I have detail throughout my image.

Editing
After you've taken your image, you'll need to stack them in a HDR software such as Photomatix, Nik HDR Effects Pro, Photoshop, ect; personally I use Photomatix. Once stacked tweak the settings/presets until you find a combination you like and presto! You have an HDR cityscape.

If you have any questions or want specific details on my editing, post a question in the comments below!

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Thank you and Merry Christmas!

This is my favorite time of year, when the snow starts to fall and people start to put up their Christmas lights and the tree finally goes up. I have always loved Christmas, the feeling of love and joy that Christmas brings is so refreshing in a world of stress and sad stories. One of my favorite things about Christmas is the time we get to spend with families, and the love that is felt as we laugh and give gifts to each other. Being a photographer, these times are some of my favorite to try and capture those special moments between siblings and families. But snatching those moments up and keeping them forever is never as easy as we think! Our camera never wants to cooperate, and the kids never sit still long enough. But there are a few tricks you can use to help you save those moments for years to come to share with family and friends! Read below for a few hints and techniques!