Trying Different Things

 

Last week I was at my Cole’s baseball game and I saw a mother photographing one of the players (I assume it was her son that she was photographing) through the fence.  You can see the fence in the background; it is your normal chain-link fence.  I immediately thought:  “Doesn’t she know that the fence grades will show-up in her frame?”  Then, I thought:  “That might make for a most interesting special effect.”

So, I then proceeded to copy her.  I probably shot 100 or so images through the fence.  I was using my trusty Nikon 28-300mm and I was racked out to 300mm for most of the shots.  Additionally, I really wanted to isolate on the batter so I usually shot at or near a wide-open aperture, f/5.6 to f/6.3.

Image my surprise when I opened the images in Lightroom and I saw none of the fence in the image.  Rather, I had a good isolated image of the batter.  The first photo is a full frame of the shot and the second image is a 100% crop of that image.

The point of today’s post is not to shoot through fences at sporting events, rather, it is to try different things—you never really know what you are going to get

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 28-300mm f/3.5~3\5.6, ISO 1000, f/6.3 at 1/750^th of a seconds.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied Portrait preset during import, set white and black points and increased contrast, clarity and vibrance.

Nike Look

Several years ago, Nike had a series of advertisements in which they presented various athletes with a look somewhat similar to Joel Grimes work.   That look was what I wanted when I took this photo.

Casey’s look tells the whole story—I am an athlete and I love competing!

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D800, 24-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm, ISO 140, f/6.7 at 1/45^th of a second with an Elinchrom Ring flash to the right.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity and added a vignette.

Photoshop CS5—applied nik Color Efex Pro Bleached By-Pass filter.

MIA Is Back

Several people have asked why I have not been posting to my blog.  One even labeled me as MIA.  Well, she was correct.  I was missing in action with absolutely no reason.

Yes, I was a little busy with my photographic business, my grandchildren, Bay Area Photo Club and this and that.  But, I did have the time; I just decided to do other things.

Today’s photo is a continuation of the session we had with Casey.  In this photo, I wanted to isolate on Casey’s face but still give the photos some context.  I deliberately placed Casey in the center of the frame—damn the rules!  I used a spot meter on her face for my meter-reading which because of the light hitting her face, slightly underexposed the rest of the frame.  The light on her face was from the setting sun and because the rest of the pool was in the shade gave me a warm Casey against a cool background.  I think this helps isolate her.  Finally, I used a very low camera angle (my camera was almost touching the water) so the lane dividers would stack in the background.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 70-200mm at 200mm f/2.8, ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/1500^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness on Casey with the adjustment brush and added a vignette.

Taylor #5

Obviously, today’s photo is a Joel Grimes rip-off.  Unlike Joel’s photos, this photo is not a composite with the background being an HDR photo. 

The lighting is pretty straight forward as you can see by the diagram.  The only difficult part of the lighting is making sure that the two rim lights (SB800s) are pointed at the same direction and are at the same power settings.  This required some fine tune adjusting to get it just right.  The Elinchrom Beauty Dish with a diffuser was attached to a pole and held in-front and above Taylor’s face

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x on a tripod, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 100, f/4 at 1/60^th of a second with two Elinchrom Quadra flashes—one positioned in front of her and the other behind her as a hair light.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and vibrance and did some basic dodging and burning various parts of the photo and used adjustment brush to cool temperature of background so that it would appear bluer than it actually was.

Photoshop CS5—ran nik Color Efex Pro glamour glow filter.

Taylor #4

Today’s photo was taken at the same location as last Tuesday’s photo.  Again, I wanted the photo to have both a lot of environment and an “after the race” look for Taylor.  Here, I had Taylor look at the camera to make a better connection between her and the viewer.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x on a tripod, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 100, f/4 at 1/250^th of a second with two Elinchrom Quadra flashes—one positioned in front of her and the other behind her as a hair light.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and vibrance and did some basic dodging and burning various parts of the photo.

Photoshop CS5—ran nik Color Efex Pro glamour glow filter.

Taylor #3

Today’s photo was taken at the same location as Tuesday’s photo.  Here I wanted to bring more of the environment into the scene and make it appear as if Taylor had just finished a race.

I do like how the shadows in the background seem to mirror her mood.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x on a tripod, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 100, f/4 at 1/250^th of a second with two Elinchrom Quadra flashes—one positioned in front of her and the other behind her as a hair light.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and vibrance and did some basic dodging and burning various parts of the photo.

Photoshop CS5—ran nik Color Efex Pro glamour glow filter.

Taylor #2

Before Taylor arrived, Steve and I walked around the area for the photo shoot.  When we walked behind the stands, I immediately thought of using the shadows as background.  I felt that the shadows would give the photo an added sense of depth.

Here, Taylor is setting on a support for the stands.  I wanted this photo to look more like a grab shot than a formal portrait. 

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x on a tripod, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 100, f/4 at 1/250^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and vibrance and did some basic dodging and burning various parts of the photo.

Photoshop CS5—ran nik Color Efex Pro glamour glow filter only on Taylor.

Taylor #1

Meet Taylor—M.D., PhD., marathon runner and really nice lady.  I am sure there any many more things that you could say about here, but I think you get the idea—she is an accomplished young lady.

My buddy, Steve, and I had the pleasure of photographing her about a week ago.  Taylor’s only request was for us to get a good photograph of her running.  According to Taylor, a good photograph would be one in which both her feet were off the ground and she did not look like she was dreading the next step.

Steve and I had a few problems getting her good running photo—hard light, messy background and, in my case, not too much sports photography talent.

I think this photo qualifies.  But, as always, what do you think.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3 on a tripod, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at ISO 800, f/5.6 at 1/3000^th of a second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—increased clarity and vibrance and did some basic dodging and burning various parts of the photo.

Lots of People, Doing What?

Last Sunday, I headed downtown Houston very early. I wanted to photograph various aspects of the Houston Marathon.

If you have never gone to and photographed a marathon, I suggest you do so. Before the start, you will meet lots of people who for some strange reason want to run over 26 miles, just to return to the same place. The pre-marathon atmosphere is more like a party than you would think. Everyone is excited.

In these first photographs of the marathon, I wanted to show the magnitude of the crowds that were participating while also isolating on one person. Since these photos were taken at sunrise, I shot them at ISO 4,500. I did set black and white point and did apply some noise reduction in Lightroom.

Enjoy.

Spring Training #2

Near the end of practice, I noticed that I had a wonderful sunset behind the boys as they did their final batting practice.  I set my camera to underexpose the ambient light by about 1.5 EV and then set my flashes to overexpose the subject by about 1.0 EV.  I wanted to saturate the colors of the sunset, but show all the details of the boys batting.  Again, I placed the two SB800s on each side of the batter at 45 decree angles, but this time, I replaced one of the boys with a dad (to avoid injury).  Again, my VALs did a great job.

Overall, I was really impressed with how the CLS worked.  In about 100 shots, I think I only had two or three flash failures.  After this little test, I will try some additional tests for the system.  Who knows, I might be selling my AlienBee triggers if I keep getting good results, because it really is easier to adjust the flash levels from the camera as opposed to adjusting them at the flash.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D700, 70-200 f/2.8 at 150mm, shot at ISO 800, f/8 and 1/180 of a second.

Post Processing: 

Lightroom—set white and black points, adjusted white balance and added clarity and vibrance.

Photoshop—did some clean of spectacular highlights on the boy's batting helmet.

Spring Training #1

After photographing "Mr. Red Whatever", JD and I headed to watch the big boys at spring training.  

I took various shots of their practice and then decided to use a little flash and try something different.  I usually carry two SB800s in my camera bag and since I recently watched the DVD of Nikon School presents A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting, I wanted to try-out some of the things that Joe McNally did in the DVD.  I used my Nikon D700’s built in commander as the control unit and two of the boys as my VALs.

This turned into a lot of fun both for me and the boys.  The boys would line-up to run through the drill and then line-up to be the VAL for the next boy doing the drill.   The boys followed my instructions to the “T”, except for the oohs and aahs that I got after each time the units flashed.  Being a VAL for a six year old boy is a real treat!

According to the history books, Ty Cobb sharpened his cleats before each game.  Looking at this young, budding-star, I think I see the same thing in him.   Look at that face.   Does that not look like the face of a person who will win at any cost?

I had one SB800 on each side of the boy sliding into home plate at a 45 decree angle.  I set my camera at   -1.0EV and the SB800’s were programmed to TTL mode at +0.3EV so that I would get a nice fill but not completely light-up the whole area.  I instructed the VALs to point the SB800s about 2 to 3 feet in front of the subject so that the light would be somewhat feathered.  To make it easy for them, I placed water bottles down on the ground where I wanted them to point the flashes.   My VALs did a great job!

Enjoy

Camera settings:  Nikon D700, 70-200 f/2.8 at 200mm, shot at ISO 800, f/8 and 1/125 of a second.

Post Processing: 

Lightroom—set white and black points, adjusted white balance and added clarity and vibrance.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast filter to add local contrast to the image except on the boy’s face and arms.

Houston Marathon

Sunday, I went to the Houston Marathon.  I do not consider myself to be a very good sports photographer.  Why?  Because I do not take very many good sports photographs.   I must admit, it is not something that I really enjoy, so I do not do it very often.

So, why did I go to the Houston Marathon with my cameras in hand?  Well, I had an idea--I know this is risky for me!   I was over at a friend’s house a few weeks ago and I started looking at a couple of his Leroy Neiman paintings.  I really like the way the painter had abstracted the athlete and since I have decided to try more abstracts in 2009, I thought that would try abstracting some runners at the Houston Marathon.

My idea was to place my camera at street level, use a wide lens and a slow shutter speed.  I thought that I would get blurred runners and a sharp background (the buildings of the Houston skyline).  I did not get exactly what I thought, but I though a couple of them were interesting.  Here is one of my abstract runners.  Hope you enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D700, 28-70 f/2.8 at 28mm, shot at ISO 1,600, f/8 and 1.5 a second with the camera resting on the street.

Post Processing:  Lightroom—set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast, added clarity and vibrance, increased saturation of reds, yellows and blues, cropped the photo to be a more panoramic crop

World Hula Hoop Contest

Happy New Year!

You probably did not know it, but the World Hula Hoop Contest is held at the Patrick homestead.  Cole, my six-year-old grandson, and his grandmother (a little north of six years old), have had a running battle over who is the better hula hooper.  I was lucky to get a press pass to shoot a few of the contests' workout before the upcoming contest.   Cole was out on our drive practicing for the big contest when I got this shot.

After watching both contestants over the past few days, I would place my money on the shorter one.   He seems to have the style and the stamina to take her down!

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, 17-35 f/2.8 at 20mm, shot at ISO 200, f/8 and 1/180 of a second with me and my SB-800 Speedlight laying on ground and pointed up (triggered by AlienBee radio trigger)

Post Processing:  Lightroom—set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast, added clarity, darkened blue and cyan of sky.