Congratulations To Mike Leland PFRE Photographer Of The Month For October

Mike Leland of Tucson, AZ has won the October, PFRE Photographer of The Month award.

Update 11/2: I have to apologize, initially I said that this is Mikes third win of this contest. It's not, its his first. I mistakenly thought that Mike is the same Mike Leland that won this contest in Sept & Oct of 2011. He says he is NOT the same Mike Leland from Cairns, AU. The other Mike Leland has just disappeared.

Here are the first, second and third place winners for October:

1. #32 - Mike Leland - Tucson, AZ - Shot from a guyed mast with camera at 30 ft.
2. #8 - Alasdair McIntosh - York, UK - Shot about 25 ft using a telescopic mast and a wireless trigger.
3. #31 - Dan Ryan - New Jersey - Shot on the Manfrotto 161MK2B Super Pro Tripod just above 9 ft.

There was a great bunch of images this month. Difficult job to pick the top three images. I've put all the entrants names on the photos in the Flickr contest site.

Here are Mike's comments on this photo:

I am incredibly humbled by winning this months competition. It's getting stiffer month by month which is a great thing! It is my desire to spend more time in this community and participate with the competition and the Flickr group to better my skill set.

This 5000 sq ft home is located on the 5th fairway of Skyline Country Club in Tucson, AZ, USA. The current owners purchased the home at a good price but near shanty condition. A complete and total overhaul was in order to take advantage of its phenomenal location. What you see now is the result of a great collaboration between the homeowners and one of the nations top designers. Of the original 3,500 sq ft of the house, 1,200 was retained (the stone walls on the right).

The homeowner is semi-retired and enjoys gardening. What you see in landscaping is all his handiwork.

I arrived at the home just prior to sun-up to firm up my composition and start metering. My intention was to strobe the interior (as the windows are deeply tinted) along with some of the exterior features. Once I got to shooting test shots, the radio transceiver decided to malfunction so I went au natural.

The camera was about 30 feet from ground elevation atop a guyed mast. I used a one stop ND grad on a Canon 17-40 and a wide angle hood with bellows shifted away from the sun. The body was a 5DMKIII. The shutter was released via magic.

This was a single capture at ASA 400, Aperture f/7.1 was exposed for 1/250 of a second.

LR5 adjustments include highlight and shadow recovery along with a lens profile and CA correction. From there, I made slight lens corrections in PS and added some local contrast with NIK filters.

My favorite tools used on this shot were coffee, good boots and my trusty cam-ranger 🙂

PFRE Photographer of the Month Winners:

• September 2014 PFRE Photographer Of The Month
• January 2015 PFRE Photographer Of The Month
• November 2014 PFRE Photographer Of The Month