Fall Colors—Retake of Same Leaves

Today’s photo is a retake of Tuesday’s post.  In this photo, I repositioned the camera, set my white balance to 3,500K (which gave a blue look to everything), use a flash with a CTO gel and a snoot on it, and underexposed the background by about 1½ f-stops and the subject lighted by the flash by about ½ f-stop.   I think the changes gives the photo a totally different feel, but, what do you think?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at ISO 1600, f/8 at 1/250^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and added vibrance to the leaves in the foreground using the adjustment brush.

Fall Colors

Over this past weekend, I was doing some clean-up on my computer’s photo files when I ran across this photo.  Houston is not blessed with spectacular fall colors so when I see colors like this, I sometimes go a little crazy trying to get my “fall colors” shot.

In this photo, I like the contrast between the bright colors and texture of the leaves in the foreground with those in the background.  I used an aperture of f/8 to achieve maximum sharpness in the foreground while also rendering a soft bokeh to the background.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at ISO 1600, f/8 at 1/90^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and added vibrance to the leaves in the foreground using the adjustment brush.

Visitor to Our Porch

Our house has a screened-in porch that runs along the back of the house.  The other day, I discovered this fellow (?) on the back of a chair on the porch.  I thought that our visitor would be a great study of depth-of-field so I attached my Nikon 105mm Macro lens and started to try different things with him.

There was not a lot of light on the porch so I was forced to use a high ISO and a slow shutter speed with the stopped-down apertures that I was using.  I also did not want to disturb the frog, so I set my camera to shoot in DX format, which had the effect of changing my 105mm lens to a 150mm lens and making the files smaller and did not use any flash.

The first photo shows the overall scene and was shot at f/27 and 1/15^th of s second.  The second photo was at f/36 and 1/4^th of a second.  You will notice that even at these stopped-down apertures, the depth of field is still quite small.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 105mm f/2.8 at ISO 6400, (top photo)  f/27 at 1/15^th of a second and (bottom photo) f/38 at 1/4^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and added vibrance on the frog.

Playing-Around in JD’s Garden

I was thinking about that old photographic axiom that you can only get great landscape and nature photographs during the “golden hours.”  I decided to test that theory around noon a few days ago.  I saw this Iris and tried to do something with it.

Here, I overexposed the image by about 2 EVs.   The very top of the flower is blown-out but I think that helps add to the effect that I was trying to get.   To enhance the abstract feeling of the flower, I shot the flower slightly out of focus.
What do you think?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, Nikon 24-70mm f/1.4 at ISO 100, f/2.8 and with shutter speeds 1/1000^th of second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—cropped photo into a square, reduced clarity and added vibrance.

Emili and Jordon Shoot #5

Before I discuss today’s photo, I would like to answer my own question in the last post—“Can you guess what that one thing is?”  That one thing that I wished that I had done was to also shoot this in portrait mode.  I think such a shot would have made Emili more the subject of the photo while still giving the photo that high key look that I wanted.  I also think that both of Doug's suggestions are excellent ones and I would use them for my next bicycle rack photo.

Today’s photo of Jordon is one in which I wanted to show the richness of the colors and her famine side by surrounding her with soft floral.  The setting for this photo (see below) was less than 15 feet from the bicycle rack, but had the look and feel that I felt Jordon deserved.  I selected a near wide-open aperture of f/3.3 to soften everything except her face.  I felt that this aperture gave me the depth-of-field and sharpness that I needed for the portrait.

Because of Jordon’s white jacket, I had to point my flash above her head so that just a minimum amount of light would be on her white jacket.  I did not want the whites of her jacket to "blow-out."  The light’s orientation also contributed to the  softness of the light on her face.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 200, f/3.3 and with shutter speeds 1/60^th of second with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash with a 17” beauty dish attached.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white point, added clarity and vibrance, used adjustment brush to add details to eyes and hair and soften skin.

Emili and Jordon Shoot #4

I intended to post this photo on Friday, but, I must not be able to read a calendar so you are getting it today.

I took photos of Jordon before I took those of Emili.  When I was taking Jordon’s photos, I keep looking at this location of a bicycle rack with no bikes in it (first photo) and saying to myself that there was a photo here, but, even though I tried a few things with Jordon, nothing panned out.

This photo came about because Emili mentioned that she could do the splits.  Half joking, I suggested that she do it on the bike rack.  I do believe that she thought “this guy has a few screws loose.”  She is right, of course, but this "crazy talk" gave me the idea to have her lay on the rack.  I did it first to make sure that it was not too uncomfortable, and, it was not.

In this photo, I intentionally blew-out (over exposed the light portions so that there was no details left in the highlights) the background on the left.  I did this because I wanted the photo to have a light feeling to it and I did not have sufficient dynamic range to capture both the left side and the right side of the background.  I wanted to only get her face in focus so I selected an aperture of f/4.

I was laying flat on the ground and shooting her at a slight upward angle.  I positioned my light so that it came from the left and was sufficient just to open-up the shadows on the right side of her face.

Overall, I was please with the photo, but as I look at it, I wished that I done one thing.  Can you guess what that one thing is?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 200, f/4 and with shutter speeds 1/60^th of second with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash with a 17” beauty dish attached.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white point, added clarity and vibrance, used adjustment brush to add details to eyes and hair and soften skin.