Desktop Background – February 2012

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Michael Vujovich
Fire in the Sky

Fire in the Sky

Wow! What a crazy month it’s been. I can’t believe it’s already February. Here in central Illinois, the snow and blow finally showed up and then disappeared again; I wish it would make up its mind so I can stop flipping a coin on what to wear each day.

A lot has been going on in the past few weeks. I’ve finished remodeling the first floor bathroom in the new house and I’m wrapping up the edits on Lindsey’s maternity shoot from a few weeks ago. I also started teaching at my alma mater, Bradley University, in Peoria, Illinois. I feel so blessed to be able to cross “teach a college course” off my bucket list, only four years out of college! It feels a bit weird to teach a course that only five years ago, I was sitting in myself. The students and I are getting along famously and I’m having a blast imparting what small wisdom I have gathered in my life so far to them, even if it is only about web design and working with clients.

I am looking forward to slowing down (do things ever actually slow down?) and being able to snap some photos on a more regular basis soon. I have plenty of personal projects I’m working on and I hope to continue pursuing my different conceptual shoots as well. I am also starting my applications to fine art fairs for the summer art season so stay tuned to the Events Calendar and the blog for more on all of that. I would love to see some of your smiling faces out and about this summer!

Enough about me… how about that photo? Pretty sweet, huh? I think so.

I snapped this a few years ago right outside the front door of my apartment building. My old apartment had a small wooden bench with black steel hardware that I always found fascinating. When the massive snow and ice storms hit the past couple of years, I would slip outside, brave the elements, and snap a few images around the yard and parking lot where I lived of the snow and ice.

This image remains one of my favorite “abstract” images. The way the sunset light hit the ice was amazing. I’m not going to lie; there was a bit of Photoshop magic here, adding some contrast, playing with the white balance to bring out the orange, selective coloring to “pop” the purple color, and of course, a nice faux-lomo final treatment to make the whole thing “grungy” and textured. Overall, a very “cold” and “icy” image to go along with this… umm… 55 degree… ummm… winter? Spring? Something? Bueller?

Like always, there’s a load of sizes available for download. Enjoy!

Please Note: I’m trusting all of you with these images. They are copyrighted, but I wish they didn’t have to be. With that in mind, please use them for their intended purpose and please don’t “steal” them; stealing is bad. Thanks!
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Tuesday Viewsday V

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Michael Vujovich

On Sunday night, the fiancé, her parents, and I headed over to Bloomington, Illinois to catch Thompson Square, Darius Rucker, and the always-awesome Lady Antebellum. Simply put, not many bands who are still active today rock as hard as they do. Caitlin and I have seen Lady A perform three times; it would have been four, but it was rained out (first show Lady A ever had to cancel too!).

If you couldn’t tell already, I’m obsessed with music and Lady A ranks right at the top of everything I feel is good and right with music. They give me hope that rock and country will one day live in harmony together and that the future of country music is not losing sight of its roots.

Lady Antebellum also holds a very special place in my heart. See below for the story.

All We’d Ever Need

All We'd Ever Need

All We'd Ever Need

As you may or may not know, both Caitlin and I are musicians; we actually met at a band rehearsal. When we decided to start singing together, we worked up “Lookin’ for a Good Time.” After we started dating, we quickly found out that we were both obsessed with the band. I found out that Lady A was playing at the Sangamon County Fair near my hometown so I knew I had to take her. I love surprising Caitlin and I was able to keep the entire thing a secret right up until we walked into the fairgrounds and she saw one of the concert posters; the look on her face and total excitement are still vivid in my memory.

Aptly titled after one of my favorite Lady Antebellum songs and the one they were performing at the time, I shot this image during that show. Combining my passion for photography and music, I had started shooting live concerts and musicians/bands only a year before. Most music photographers will tell you that a great venue is half the battle when it comes to good images and I knew that Sangamon County Fair was pretty wide open in terms of setup. The stage was big and so was the grassy field where we were standing.

I snapped this shot with my 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6. That lens didn’t have auto-focus or vibration reduction as I couldn’t afford it at the time, but I still wanted to shoot concerts. I’m happy to say I’ve upgraded to the AF/VR version of this great Nikkor lens in 2011; I’m still pretty proud to say I “cut my teeth” on that lens. Living without auto-focus and vibration reduction in a low-light situation definitely made for steadier hands and a quick shutter finger.

Even after many more concerts, this remains one of my favorite live music photos. The connection between Hillary Scott and Charles Kelley can easily be felt. Anyone who has been to a Lady A show can tell you that those two have a very deep, electric connection when they sing together (and no, they aren’t romantically involved… at least, not with each other). The look in Hillary’s eyes is amazing and the stage lights only add to that electricity.

The Proposal

Like I said, Lady Antebellum holds a very special place in my heart. Not only did Caitlin and I sing a Lady A song as our first duet (and many more after) and see them as our first concert together, but this past August at the Illinois State Fair during Lady A’s opening song, “Our Kind of Love,” I asked Caitlin to marry me. She was upset that she couldn’t concentrate for the first half of the band’s set, but she said yes.

We haven’t missed a Lady Antebellum concert in central Illinois since we’ve been together and we probably never will. They have been, and always will be, “our” band.

 

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Tuesday Viewsday IV

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Michael Vujovich

Here we are again… another week down. We are almost to the end of January already and I barely remember New Year coming and going. Sheesh!

The weather continues to be bipolar in nature – one day in the 50′s followed by a day in the teens with snow. As for me, I’ve been chugging along with the remodeling at my new house. I put the final touches on the new bathroom this evening and then it’s on to the living room where I’ll be [hopefully] conquering my first hardwood floor. We’ll see how that goes.

For this week’s image, I decided to go with something to tie in with the weather we’ve had.

Out the Back Door

Out the Back Door

Out the Back Door

I shot this photo back in 2008 during my first year working at my new job. As I was leaving one night, I noticed the way the air was a very purple/blue tint with the coming snow storm we were about to have. I walked to the edge of the loading dock behind the office where I work and saw the glow of the orange lights from our parking deck.

With the contrast of the purple and the orange, I had to snap a shot. I pulled my camera from the bag, put on the 18-55mm kit lens I had at the time, and snapped a few images. I am truly amazed this shot came out as clear as it did being a hand-held photograph. When I got home and loaded up the image, I was pleasantly surprised at what I had. In case you were wondering, this image has very little post-processing edits; I think I boosted the Saturation just a bit to make the entire thing more vibrant.

I shot this image shortly after starting down the path of a professional career in photography and it was one of the first images where I remember actually seeing a landscape and wanting to capture it with my camera as it looked to me exactly. It was also one of the first images I remember taking my time to line up the shot, check the composition, and truly CREATE the image.

What I love about this image is the colors, of course, but also the composition. The leading lines in this image are really great; the walkway on the right, the hillside sloping from foreground to background, and the parking deck levels flowing from left to right all point toward the central focus of the elevator shaft. I also love the silhouette of the tree on the right side and the slight haze that the falling snow caused around the globes of the sulfur lights.

All in all, this image is truly “winter” to me.

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