Pinewood Derby

Before I go into today’s photo, I would like to give a big shout-out to the fathers and mothers who work with the cub-scout troop of St. Vincent de Paul school.  They do a great job with the boys.

Now to the Pinewood Derby details. 

At the school, the troop has a shop where all the boys and their adult supporters can go to make the cars for the Pinewood Derby.  The shop has bandsaws, drum sanders and drill presses to help make the cars.  In short, everything that you might need to build a super Pinewood Derby car is there.

As to the track, it looks like something from NASA—polished aluminum with each line individual tested for speed.  The track is supported with a state-of-art computer system that electronically determines the exact time for each car and post it to a screen (car’s and scout’s name, time and equivalent miles per hour).  Pretty cool stuff!

Today’s photo is of the first and second place cars in the Bear den.  These two cars blew everyone else off the track.  Although the Orange Speed (which was built by none other than Cole James Patrick) beat the other car in this heat, the Orange Speed lost the gold medal by 0.002 of a second for the three heats.

In hindsight I probably should have used a higher ISO and shutter speed.  I think that a shutter speed of about 1/1,000^th of a second would have done a much better job of stopping the action.

Congratulations Cole—Great Job!

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 1,600, Nikon 28-300mm f/5.6 at 70mm, f/5.6 and 1/350^th of a second with Nikon SB800 attached to camera

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black point and added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5: Dodged and burned image and sharpened cars using high pass method.

An Evening at the Beach #4

Here Sarah is not posing for me; rather, she is talking to Doug about how he wants her to look.  To me this photo is totally about the light—the golden light on Sarah’s face and the cool blue light on the water. 
I only took one shot of this scene.  I should have definitely worked it.  I think the photo would have been much better if I had moved about four feet to my right and thus shot her almost looking at me.  I think that I would have also liked the shot even more if I had shot somewhat down on Sarah.  Shooting down on her would have brought out more blue in the background and probably would have isolated here more against the background. 
Enjoy  
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 75mm, f/6.7 and 1/350^th of a second 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve and increased the saturation of blues and cyans.

An Evening at the Beach #3

Not a lot to say about this photo except that I used some of the same techniques that used in last Friday’s post—although, I did not have an orange gel on my flash which made Lauren’s face look more natural.  Rather than incorporating the sun in the frame, I used Lauren to hide it.  I wanted to maximize the edge lighting on her hair and shoulders. 
Enjoy. 
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm, f/4.8 and 1/750^th of a second. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve and cropped image to 4:5 ratio.

An Evening at the Beach #2

In this photo of Sarah, I wanted to include the setting sun, the fast falloff of light from right to left and yet get some light on Sarah’s face.  
I underexposed the ambient light reading by about four stops and then just splashed some light on Sarah’s face by using a Nikon SB800 with a snoot and an orange gel (to simulate the light of the sunset).  I should have changed my white balance to K3500 to bring out more of the blues in the sky and to reduce the orange on Sarah's face. 
Because of the bright light from the setting sun, I was using such a fast shutter speed that my SB800 was forced to be in high-speed synch mode, which greatly reduces the range of the flash.  The flash was on my camera and I set it to TTL mode.  I must admit, I really do not understand all the decisions my camera and flash make when the flash is set to TTL mode so, for me, it's a hit or miss proposition every time I use TTL.
Enjoy.
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm, f/3.3 and 1/750^th of a second with Nikon SB800 with orange gel attached shot in high-speed synch mode. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve and cropped to 4:5 ratio. 
Photoshop CS5:  Dodged and burned various parts of photo, added curves adjustment for contrast and used various nik Colorefex Pro filters.

An Evening at the Beach

Over the holidays, a group photographed Lauren (pictured here) and Sarah down at Galveston beach.   As always, both ladies were beautiful and a joy to photograph.

At sunset, the light was great.  Here, I tried to underexpose the ambient light by about two stops and then just splash some light on Lauren’s face by using a Nikon SB800 with a snoot and an orange gel (to simulate the light of the sunset).  I also made sure that my flash was dialed down by about a stop.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm, f/4 and 1/125^th of a second

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5:  Dodged and burned various parts of photo and saturated background color.

Jay Maisel Workshop #16—Lessons Learned

 A lot of people have asked me what lessons I learned in Jay’s workshop.   I learned many, but to me, the most important ones were:

1.  Ultimately photographs are about:  light, color and gesture.  As the artist, I must decide which one is the most important and then work the scene to produce a photo that extracts the element(s) that are important.

2.  Gesture is not limited to just people.  Everything has gesture.  Gesture, in essence, is what makes something unique.  Something worth photographing—texture, smoothness, position within its surroundings, etc.  And gesture always trumps light and color.  If I get the gesture right, light and color will just be supporting actors within the photo.

3.   I am responsible for every pixel within my frame.  It is up to me to select what will be within the photo and what will be outside the photo.  I must take care to make sure that the photo is framed as I want it.

4.  You must work the scene.  I was standing in front of one of Jay’s photos that I really like when Jay walked up. 
Jay: “I remember that one.  I took three shots and this one is my final shot.”
Me:  In three shots, you got that.
Jay:  Yes.  I went there and fired off three shots and that is what I got.  Of course I had been to that location fifty different times, tried for what you see here and I got NOTHING!

5.  You must be your own severest critic.  If you are your own severest critic you will always be looking for that next “portfolio shot”, that next “totally different look”, etc.

Today’s shot is about two things:  the gesture of the beams under the FDR Expressway and working the situation.  The photo was taken early one morning while I was out walking.  I loved the way that the early morning light showed-off the texture, the rhythm and the complexity of the beams.  Because of the dynamic range of the scene I knew that I would have to resort to HDR, so I shot three shots (-2, 0 and +2 EV).  I took four different sets of shots and then moved on.  In hindsight, I realize that there was much more to this scene than I appreciated at the time.  I should have worked the scene much longer and harder.  The photograph is nice but it is not a game changer.  I should have not settled for anything less than a game changer.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Not important

Post Processing:  Not important