Enhancements

It's great to start out with a beautiful image, play with it a little and give
it a whole new look. Here is a "before" and "after"....

Old West

Trying some new techniques, I thought this image would be fun to fade and distress ;-).

Andrew

We've photographed Andrew since he was one year old. He is now a senior and his images
gave me the inspiration for this composite.

Nicci

We opened our studio in 1975, the same year Nicci was born. She has been a wonderful model
for her dad since the very beginning. This image was taken in Cortez in an amazing abandoned area that is covered with colorful, creative graffiti. Nicci is still a great model!

Mom & Son

Wess recently photographed a high school senior, the youngest of three children in her family. Her mom and older brother came along to the sitting and Wess caught them goofing around, having a good time.
I played around with the image a little and I think it really captures these two free spirits.

Plainsman Spirit

We recently had a great time photographing the Enid High School varsity cheerleaders for a fund raising calendar. It was fun designing the two totally different images. The girls are selling the calendars for $10 at all home football games. The proceeds will be used for regional and state competition expenses as well as uniforms.

The Other Side

Here is the back cover for the DCI program. It was a challenge to

use a less than adequate image of Mr. Costello and make something usable.

Copy Cat

Lauren found a really neat ad in Teen Vogue and asked me to try to duplicate

it. Here is our result (using only Photoshop Elements and a mouse, so not

quite a good as I would like).

New Techniques

Just a couple of new things I put together using some techniques I learned from Dave Cross -

what a great teacher.....

Fun stuff

Here is a new image I've been playing with, combined a photograph Lauren took with a photograph I took of her.

New Images

I'm going to try to post new things I'm working on in Photoshop a little more frequently. Here are a few of new ones that I enjoyed doing. One merged multiple images to create the final product, one experimented with vignetting, and one is a promotional piece I created. Fun stuff!

Our Broadmoor Adventure

Just got back from an amazing five nights at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. We've always wanted to stay there, but never even had the courage to check on rates. Thanks to our dear daughter, Nicci, the stay was FREE!


We served as full-time nannies while she oversaw the Resort Management Conference. This is an amazing hotel and the staff treats everyone like visiting royalty. We had a wonderful time with Gabriel visiting the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Manitou Springs and reading LOTS of books!

Here is my Photoshop image of the resort.

My Brain Hurts!!

Attended a great Photoshop seminar in Oklahoma City on Tuesday. The speaker, Dave Cross, is amazing. Useful information presented in a humorous way. It's hard to know what info to use first!

Huh?!?!?

If you're not a classic television junkie, the "Kung Fu" grasshopper reference is probably meaningless. However, it is meaningful to me as it relates to the pursuit of understanding Adobe Photoshop. It appears to be a lifelong journey to explore what's possible and to pursue a mastery of the program.

Before I took on the retouching duties for our studio, The Grays Professional Photography and Digital Art (http://www.wessgray.com) two years ago, I was intimidated to say the least. But the studio had gone completely digital, and it was time to put fear aside and dive in. Fortunately, there are some really good instructional resources out there, and within a few months, I was retouching all the images that Wess was creating.

It's certainly been a challenge and have learned more in the last two years than I could have imagined. What's really amazing to me is that it's possible to take a whole new direction after age 50, so we should always leave ourselves open to learn new things and tackle new challenges.