Gabriel Konkle Photography

I just finished the 20 pics I was working on for my co-worker’s boyfriend, Brandon, and I have to say, I’m a bit proud of them . They’re more dark toned, monochrome than most pictures I do for folks, which is a welcome treat. Don’t get me wrong. I love doing the sunny happy pictures, but when I first picked up a camera just for the sake of photography, it was at night. My shoots were almost exclusively at night for a bit. So I felt like this was more of a throwback to my old photography, and I very much enjoyed it. I hope you will, too.

Before I post the pictures, I did want to alert you to an important update going on regarding my rates. I figured out during the editing process for these pictures that I was calculating the hours I was working on pictures grossly incorrectly. In result, let’s just say I may as well have grabbed a job a McDonald’s rather than do photography. I am updating them, and they are raising to adequately represent the time I put in my photos. Right now the rates are still being adjusted, so please do email me (via Contact page) to get the correct rates, rather than assume the Rates page is correct.

Anyways, I’ve talked too much, here are the pics:

Finally posting the maternity pics I got edited for my brother and sister-in-law. I plan to get some more of these finished atleast within the next week or two. They are definitely much too long in the coming.

Enjoy.

So, the wife and I have really been getting into the Steampunk aesthetic. (Click for reference.) I discovered it recently after following the tor.com blog during their “Steampunk Month.” For both of us (my wife and I) we found that we had always been in love with this style, but never quite had a name for it. Now we’re going all out steampunk. Our ebay watchlist has peaked at about 90 items in the past couple weeks. Pocket watches, gears, cogs, old keys, old suitcases, corsets, leather jackets, goggles, aviator hats, and cool boots are all getting shipped our way. My wife is even going to start creating and selling some steampunk jewelry. We’ve really dived headfirst into it.

As a result, we decided quite early on that we were going to do a series of Steampunk photoshoots at various locations. We are very excited about it.
But alas, shipping takes so long, and many of our steampunk items are lost in the crazy, maniacal world of sent mail. So, a few of my wife’s items came in and I snapped a few quick shots from our home. Here are the finished products. Not quite as steampunk as we’re planning to get (especially considering the location) but they were pretty fun to take.

Now, I’ll keep you posted about when our real steampunk photoshoot is complete. We’ve already discovered a perfect location (with steam engine train and all) so all we’re waiting on is the USPS.

So, a couple Sundays ago, the wife and I went to the Denton Square for some Ice Cream and picture taking. It was a lot of fun, and I started snapping a few pics while we were lounging around on the lawn. Here’s what I ended up with.
I’m still using those actions that I recently downloaded, tweaking and adjusting them to work for my needs. Comment and let me know what you think of this slightly different style I’m doing on my photos. A bit more heavily edited, but I think I like it.

So, I did some re-edits of old pictures this morning. I wish I had all the originals, but my old hard drive died along with all of the originals. Just gives me an excuse to go out and take more pictures, I guess. Give me a comment, tell me what you think. I’ve been starting to use Photoshop Actions ever since a photography convo with the author of the Peek Thru My Lenz photoblog. I used some actions on these old photos, and tweaked them a bit afterwards. I liked the effect on them very well, I think I’ll be using actions alot in the future.

So, we’re going to be going on a short little Oklahoma trip soon for some rural black and whites., Until then, I decided to throw up some random funny pictures of my cat before I get on to some more serious ones. Hope you enjoy them. I’m considering posting them on LOLcats.

So, I was doing some editing today and finally got around to editing some older pics… from a couple of months ago. I do this alot, I’ll take pictures and never see them again until one day when I’m browsing through my pics and go, “Oh! That’s a neat little pic there, I should edit it!”

I need a better system.

Anyway, here’s the pics. They are mostly from Florida when the wife and I went there in August. I tossed some pictures of ducks in for some good measure, though. Hope you enjoy them!

If you were wondering, the little quote up there means “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” It’s the Italian title of the film, which was released a year before it came out in the US. I would have just put the English quote up there, but my internal aversion to cliched quotes and sayings kicked in and took over. I do realize that now instead of being cliche, I’m just a nerd, and I’m ok with that. Anyways, on to the topic!

I was talking with a friend earlier today about Photoshop and how it’s used. The good and the bad. We had a good little chat by text on the issue. It brought to memory all my old Photoshop wrecks from my early teen years, from the flowers on acid stage to my duochrome obsession. Not to mention the stormy cloud background on everything days.

Let me explain. Back before I held a camera to do anything else but take cheesy Myspace photos, I was a Photoshop stud. That’s right. If you were looking for a master, it was me. Joking aside, I did think I was a pretty good Photoshopper back in the day. Many-a-time would you see the “Photoshoppin’” status on my Myspace or on my many Instant Messenger away messages. And what did I create during those awkward teenage years? Take a look for yourself!

Backgrounds were my specialty, I’d have to say. I’d create weird distorted cloud-things, stick a color overlay on them, maybe stick a picture or two inside the clouds for special meaning, and call it a day! Take this sad compilation below, for example.

I would take a misshapen cloud-bubble-background-thing that I created and just overlay color after different color to see what would happen. You are only seeing 4 out of 10 in the series. Be glad I didn’t force you into the whole 10.

I also did some very…odd edits of things. As you can see:

So, anyways, back to the topic at hand, I’ve obviously changed my philosophy on Photoshop. When I first started picking up photography, my approach to Photoshop was the same as it had been in the above photos: wacked out craziness that I thought was “cool.” It’s been a very gradual and very consistent decrease in my usage of some of Photoshop’s features. I now only consistently use 3 tools. Curves, Hue/Saturation, and Smart Sharpen. I use a 4th occasionally, vignetting. I do have to stick a disclaimer out here, though. I do extensive tweaking with my raw files before I ever bring them into Photoshop. My raw edits normally fix contrast, exposure, sharpness, and white balance issues.

That aside, my editing process has been cut down extensively. I let the camera do more of the talking than my software. I think the most important change in my editing process was realizing that the photo was the art, not what I did to that photo afterwards. So now I ask myself when I’m editing, “Is what I’m doing enhancing my photo, or just distracting from it?” I think that’s an important question that all Photoshoppers should ask themselves while in the digital darkroom. Don’t let your eager fingers detract from the simplicity, the elegance, or the natural beauty of your photos. Nothing’s wrong with making a cool picture look cooler, but know that it’s very easy to go from “cool” to “over the top.” Shock value only goes so far.

So, this very long post gave me the idea to start doing a weekly “Good Photoshop vs. Bad Photoshop” segment to show how to do Photoshop right and how to NOT do Photoshop. Maybe it’ll stick, maybe not. We’ll see. In the meantime, have a gander at some more of my old pre-photography days. The ones I’m actually a tad bit proud of are first, and the laughs are below them. Looking at all of these makes me very glad for the passing of time. (By the way, “hallowed” was a band I was “in.” I was the only member. Wow, this is a very embarrassing post. I’ll have to keep these to a minimum.)

Ones I’m somewhat proud of

Laughs

So, this is my first post on my new photoblog. I plan to be updating this pretty regularly as my photography comes and goes. Check out my “Portfolio” page to see my best pictures (in my opinion) so far, and to comment if you like. If you’d like to get in contact with me for photography chat, for a gig, or for anything else, check out the “Contact” page.

I expect my next post to be pretty interesting, because I’m planning a short little highway roadtrip up to the ruined roads of Oklahoma. I’ll be posting up images and other such things afterwards. In the meantime, I’ll toss you a bone of sorts. Here are some pics of my cute little cat, Eko, hanging out on the bathroom counter.