Nicole—Part 3

As I said in Nicole—Part 1, our original purpose of this shoot was to rip-off Joe McNally’s photograph of a woman playing a saxophone on a beach at sunset.  I forgot to say that I think this is a great photo, especially when in comes to mixing ambient and flash exposures.

We started our shoot just as Joe did—having Nicole in the water with the ocean and sky in the background.  Unfortunately, I did not recognize that our backdrop was not the same.  We did not have the sun setting behind Nicole and we did not have the rich colors in the sky behind.  Yet, we still set-up the shot as it was.

Overall, the light on Nicole is nice, but the photo as a whole does not work. Nicole is properly exposed but the background is under-exposed by about an f-stop.   There is no pop to the photo.  There is no compelling composition to make you study the photo.  And, finally, it lacks gesture.

I show today’s photo to show where we started so that you can better see how the session evolved.   

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D4, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 200, f/6.7 at 1/60^th of a seconds with an Elincrhom Quadra flash on a pole above and to the camera’s left.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—applied Portrait preset during import, set white and black points and then applied various Lightroom presets to the original picture.

Inga

Although Inga had a great big smile and beautiful hair, I personally like her best with a slight smile and her hair put-up.  I think this way just set off her face much better.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/90^th of a second on a tripod with two Elinchrom strobes with umbrellas on each side.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush.

Omar

Omar was at this portrait session because his girlfriend told him that he would be there.  He had no desire to have his photo taken. 

He had a great smile but no matter what I did, he would not show it for the camera.  Omar is from Iceland and according to Inga, his girlfriend, men don’t smile for the camera in Iceland.  Don’t know if that is true or not, but I do know that Omar did not smile for my camera—I think he is a Canon guy!

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/8 at 1/45^th of a second on a tripod with two Elinchrom strobes with umbrellas on each side.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush and did some basic dodging and burning.

Brent—A C&W Singer and Songwriter

I recently had a portrait session with Brent, a country & western singer and songwriter.  Brent is originally from Alabama but recently moved here to promote his career.  He is very natural in front of a camera, but became even more so when he picked-up his guitar.

This photo is a natural light photo.  There was a very small spot in the lobby of the building where the light was streaming-in.  I wanted to use that light as a spotlight on his face, but was faced with a problem—it was right in front of a pole and so I would have pole coming-out of his head.  To me, it was a no brainer—light first!

If I were going to print this, I would probably try to remove the post.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 400, f/4 at 1/60^th of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in his eyes with adjustment brush and did some basic dodging and burning.

Christina—A Serious Young Lady

Before I took Christian’s photos, I asked: “What type of photo do you want?”  She said:  “I am pretty serious and I look stupid with a big smile on my face.  I am not a super model.  I do not like that plastic-skin look that you see on so many portraits.  I want the photo to look like me.  As I am.”

I think this is impressive insight for a junior in high school!

In the photo I tried to follow her wishes.  The photo is a high key portrait of a serious young lady with a minimum amount of retouching.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3x, 85mm f/1.4, ISO 100, f/4.8 at 1/90^th of a second on a tripod with ring flash lighting her face and strobes lighting the background.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black point and increased contrast, increased clarity, contrast and sharpness in her eyes with adjustment brush and cloned out some temporary blemishes on her skin.

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.

Emili and Jordon Shoot #3

Before I write another word, let me say that the photos that I have previously presented of both Emili and Jordon are no better than the two that I now present.  To me, it is a matter of personal preference as to which one of the photos of them you prefer.   

I present these adjusted photos (as requested in several comments) to merely show how a low-key version of Emili’s and a high-key version of Jordon’s photo might look.  I do not think that you can get the same effect using Lightroom or Photoshop that you can be actually shooting with a given look in mind, but I do think that these are a relatively good representation of what the shots might look like.

It is totally up to you to decide which photo you prefer.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: as previously reported.

Lightroom 4—adjusted exposure and contrast to make changes to the respective photos.

Emili and Jordon Shoot #2

It’s Friday, so, it time to present my photo of Emili in the same location as the one that I showed earlier this week of Jordon.

As I said in Tuesday’s post, Emili has light completion and eyes so rather than photographing her with rich colors I wanted the colors in the photo to be light and airy.  I changed my f-stop from f/5.6 to f/4 and the shutter speed from 1/90^th of second to 1/30^th of a second—thus increasing both the ambient light and the effect of the strobe on Emili’s face.  I think that the changed produced an image that was more high-key and more in-tune with Emili. 

The ambient light was darker when I took the photo of Emili so I I think that the overall effect of my camera changes on the ambient light was about one f-stop—not the three that you would expect from the changes that I made to both the f-stop and the shutter speed.  The power changes on the strobe unit was the same so the change in f-stop had the effect of one f-stop on Emili's face.

When I shot the photo, I debated upon putting an additional light to Emili’s left to open-up the background but then after seeing the photo on my computer monitor, I was glad that I did not do it.  I think the additional light would have flattened the image.  The darker side helps add depth to the photo.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 200, f/4 and with shutter speeds 1/30^th of second with an Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash with a 17” beauty dish attached to Emili’s right and about eye level.

Post Processing:  

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

Emili and Jordon Shoot #1

Sunday, I had the privilege of shooting Emili and Jordon.  Both ladies are quite photogenic, but are quite different in their appearance.  Emili is a high-school senior with light completion and hair and blue-green eyes.  Jordon, on the other hand, is a young adult with dark eyes and completion.  For the most part, I photographed the two in same places, however, I did change how I approached the shots differently for each of them.

The first photo is just one that shows where the second photo was taken.   

The photo of Jordon was taken inside the statue using the gold inside as a background.  Because of Jordon’s coloring, I wanted the photo to have rich colors so I intentionally under-exposed the shot by about ½ f-stop.  The flash was positioned to the right at eye level and was about three feet from Jordon.  Overall, I like the soft, even lighting on Jordon and I think the backgrounds brings out her coloring.

On Friday, I will present a shot of Emili in the same location.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 at ISO 200, f/5.6 and with shutter speeds 1/90^th of second with a Elinchrom Ranger Quadra flash with a 17” beauty dish attached.

Post Processing:  

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

Something New and Very Different Part 2

Today’s photo is another from my shoot last Sunday.  If I had to title this photo, I might call it “Portrait of Motorcyclists.”   As you can see, most of the motorcycle is not included in the frame.  This photo is all about Eric and Crystal and their relations to each other and the motorcycle.  Motion blur is present, but here I was not trying to make it a primary part of the story.  In this photo, I wanted Eric and Crystal to be tack sharp and provide only a hint that the motorcycle was moving.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3X, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm, ISO 200, f/13 and with shutter speeds 1/180^th of second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—set white and black points, added clarity and vibrance, and adjusted hue and saturation of various colors.

Photoshop CS5—used nik Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast to the bring-out details in the subject and did some basic dodging and burning.

Something New and Very Different

Sunday, I met up with four of my buddies from Bay Area Photo Club to photograph something totally different from anything that I have previous photographed—a moving motorcycle from a moving truck. My friend, Neal Kelsoe, invited his nephew and his girl friend to be our subjects for the photo shoot.

I had no idea what I was doing and it showed in about 98% of the photos that I took.  I knew that I wanted a blurred background and tack sharp subjects.  Little did I know that was going to be extremely hard to do.

The truck and motorcycle were generally moving at about the same speed—50 MPH.   However, the road did not cooperate and as a result, both the subjects and me were bouncing up and down.  Studying my bad frames I noticed that a most of the blur on my subjects was more up-and-down blur as opposed to side-to-side blur.  This of course presents my dilemma how do you eliminate the up-and-down blur while still shooting a slow enough shutter speed to get the desired motion blur.

Any and all suggestions regarding how I might improve on my hit rate would be most welcomed!

Thanks Neal for this humbling experience.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3X, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 36mm, ISO 50, f/22 and with shutter speeds 1/30^th of second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—set white and black points, added clarity and vibrance, and adjusted hue and saturation of various colors.

Photoshop CS5—used nik Color Efex Pro Detail Extractor and Tonal Contrast to the bring-out details in the subject, removed some telephone lines and pole and did some basic dodging and burning.

Sharpness—Revisited

I interrupt the scheduled post to bring you “Sharpness—Revisited”.

I had several comments regarding last Tuesday’s post that basically said what was I trying to do with this photo.  Well, I was not really trying to do much more than show the amount of sharpness that today’s DSLRs capture right out of the camera.  
I did forgot to mention one thing about the image that I showed—in Lightroom 3, I did use the adjustment brush to reduce the clarity and sharpness of Lauren’s skin (i.e., I had too much details in that area of the photograph to do Lauren justice—she has wonderful skin).

The comments did get me thinking about how people look at photographs and how photographers present photographs.  Tuesday’s post was presented to show only one aspect of digital capture—sharpness of today’s DSLRs.   To me, the difference between a snapshot and a photograph is the photographer putting his/her intent or interpretation into the image.  With that in mind, let’s assume that the image was going to be used by an eye make-up manufacture to promote their product.  What would I do?

I would want to draw even more attention to the eyes.  How?  I would sharpen the eyes, add a little saturation to the iris, add a highlight opposite the catch-light to add depth to the eyes, remove the redness in the whites of the eyes (note, I usually do not brighten the whites because it gives people that "devil-eye look") and finally burn the skin to darken it and thus lighten the eyes.  Not a lot of difference but I think you will agree the revised version draws your attention even more to the eyes and hopefully would help sell more product for the manufacturer.

It is my personal belief that successful photographs almost always have a little piece of the photographer within them.  They are not just a collection of pixels recorded by their camera.  Think about that and let me know what you think!

I have included both versions here so that it will be easier for you to compare them.  Hopefully you will be able to see the added details in the first photo.

Enjoy 

Sharpness

I have been looking over many of my photos of the past year just to try and get some perspective of where I am and possibly where I am going.  While doing this, I was amazed at how much detail that my camera can reveal, especially when using lenses at f/8 through f/13.

Here is a crop of Laura’s eye.  Could you get much sharper and reveal any more detail?

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 85mm f/1.4, f/9.5 and 1/250^th of a second with Elinchrom Quadra with beauty dish attached

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black and white points, added contrast with a mild curve.

Blaze and Pepper Update

Thank you Cindi! 
I have been trying to get a decent updated photo of Da’ Girls for several weeks without ANY success.  Think about trying to do a portrait of two puppies together—Mission Impossible.  One goes one way and the other goes other way—that’s the play-by-play for such a shoot.   I must admit I was getting a little discouraged by the experience.  Then I read Cindi’s post and my life had meaning again. 
I shot each of the girls separately and then combined the shots in Photoshop CS5.  Since I did not have an assistant and was both cameraman and treat-distributor, I used Auto-Area AutoFocus, which automatically focused the camera to the closest subject in the viewfinder.  Overall, I think it did a good job in keeping Da'Girsl in focus.  Combining the two phots was very simple since both of the shots were shot on a white background and with consistent lighting and camera settings. 
Blaze (left) is currently about 5 pounds and Pepper (right) is about 5 pounds 9 ounces.  The only problem that I had with the images was that Pepper stood a little closer to the camera and therefore appeared even bigger than she is relative to her sister.  I adjusted Pepper’s position and size to more closely match Blaze’s. 
I was not happy with our hair stylist for the shoot.  I wanted an elegant, sophisticated look but I got more of a punk-rock look.  And, even though I paid handsomely in treats, I think that the Da' Girls gave me there “driver’s license” pose rather than the elegant, sophisticated look that I wanted.  I guess that I will need to give them better directions next outing—and yes, there will be a “next” outing. 
Enjoy  
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 48m, f/16 and 1/180^th of a second with two Elinchrom 500BxRi Monolights at an angle to the subject (see lighting diagram). 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Used white balance eye drop to make both backgrounds a consistent white, set black point, and added contrast with a mild curve. 
Photoshop CS5:  Combined two images, cleaned up background and used nik Color Efex filters Detail Enhancer and Tonal Contrast to bring out details within Blaze and Pepper.

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.

Model Shoot #5A

Anne’s comment about a sepia tone got me thinking—maybe, just maybe.  So, I deleted the photo that I intended to show today and substituted this sepia toned image of the last posting.

The conversion to sepia was made using nik Silver Efex Pro.  I used a strong curves adjustment, burned the edges of both the left and bottom of the photo and used a yellow filter to even the tones.

No matter how many years I do this, I will never stop being amazed at how black and white seems to simplify and increase the emotional impact of a photo.

Enjoy.