Urbex Alturas Packing Company

The term Urbex comes from Urban Exploration.

I was digging through some hard drives to find some fireworks photos for yesterdays post and I ran into these photos from 7 years ago.

I can remember this exact day, I was driving across Florida when I ran into this abandoned place. It was massive and I had go get in through a small hole on the fence. It turns out the building was empty, but it was still cool to shoot and explore for a bit.

After finding some old paper work it turns out this was a packing company from 1968. Crazy to think about what happened or why it closed.

What is even crazier is that I found these photos along with some other cool folders that I will be posting later on.

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How to take pictures of fireworks

Do you want to know how to take pictures of fireworks? With 4 July just around the corner I have put together some tips and tricks that will help you get that perfect shot this holiday weekend.

Fireworks can be lots of fun to photograph, but you have to know what you are doing and you have to be ready for the action.

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1. Scout your location. Get to the place you are shooting early and make sure you walk around and look at all the angles. It’s always best to do this when there is no body around even a day before.

2. Use a tripod. When you figure out where you are shooting from set up your tripod. Make sure nobody will be in front of it and make sure you have plenty of room around you, this way no one will trip over it or bump into it.

3. Use a shutter release cable or the built-in timer in your camera. This is very important as it will prevent you from having blurry or out of focus photos.

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4. Frame your shot. This is very important, you do not only want to shoot the fireworks but you want to tell a visual story. Make sure you include a landmark in your photos and make sure you are able to get all the fire works within your frame. You can test out a few different frames but make sure you are quick as the fireworks display can be over before you know it. Shoot wide.

5. Focus. This is a tricky one but it does not have to be complicated. What I always do is I focus on my land mark and make sure that there will be enough room in the frame to get the fireworks within my photo. This will guarantee that your land mark is in focus and that your fireworks come out crisp and fill the rest of your frame.

6. DO NOT USE FLASH. Make sure you turn off your flash, you want to create a nice long exposure effect and having your flash on will trick your camera into thinking it needs a short exposure. NO FLASH.

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7. Shoot in Manual mode. Make sure you are in manual mode this way you have complete control of your camera. This will guarantee you get the exact results you are looking for.

8. ISO. Shoot at a low ISO try to keep it at 100. The fireworks put out so much light that this should not be a problem. This will assure you have a nice non-grainy photo.

9. Aperture. This is personal preference like with anything else, but if you are shooting a landmark and want everything in focus make sure you are at F9 and up (I always shoot at F11). This way you will have a nice sharp image and everything will be in focus.

10. Shutter speed. This is the most important setting. Creating a long exposure will assure you get the nice light tracers form the fireworks creating a dramatic and compelling photograph. You can experiment from 1 second to 30 seconds. A very safe number is about 8-15 seconds. If you put your camera on bulb mode you can use your remote trigger to experiment allowing you to get that perfect exposure.

Most important of them all is to experiment and have fun out there. Happy shooting!!!

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How to Edit Real Estate Pictures Like A Pro

How to edit real estate pictures. lots of people seem to struggle with this particular topic. People often ask me: Edin how do I edit my Real Estate Pictures so they look nice and clean just like yours?

My answer is always the same. It takes a long time to develop your editing skills and style. Years of shooting and years of editing your photos will get you there. It is not as hard as you think, all you have to do is find your grove. Let’s talk about that. 

Finding your groove in photo editing is just like anything else. You need to exercise your photography editing muscle daily. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. 

How to Edit Real Estate Pictures Like A Pro

If you are just starting out and have no idea as to what you are doing, I recommend you download my Real Estate Lightroom Presets.  I decided to come up with an easier way to edit that I could have available to everyone. This particular Real Estate Lightroom Preset pack comes with a bonus video to get you editing like a pro. You can adjust the presets to suit your needs. In the bonus video, I teach you exactly that. 

I came up with this Lightroom Presets to make this easy for everyone, and they have been very successful. They are super easy to tune up to your own particular style of photography and they are super easy to use. I have designed and calibrated these presets only for Real Estate Photography.

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Here are some before and after photos.  You can see that the Real Estate Lightroom Presets make a massive difference in the images. Years of editing and practice are put into these presets. I promise you once you try these, they will be the only presents you will ever use for all your real estate photography needs. 

Here is the link where you can download them.

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Pure reflections

I love it when the elements come together and all I have to do is press the shutter. Of course part of it is being there at the right time, but when this happens it just perfect.

I shot this yesterday before sunset, and all though sunset was amazing, this is actually my favorite photo of the day. It was just perfect.

Check out the vid to see bts. Unfortunately I received a ticket as I was loading my car to leave. The reason “parking at a park after hours” Super lame!

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