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.

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.

Lady Liberty Revisited

This Tuesday, I went to Honor’s Night (members present their printed photos to be judged) at Bay Area Photo Club.  I did not present anything—mainly because I did not expect to be going because of Cole’s baseball games which none were scheduled due to spring break—however, I like to see what others are doing and I try to learn from what I see.

Bill Baker presented a black and white image of a castle in Spain.  The judges said that the print would be more successful if it had an established black and white point and more contrast.  I agreed with this assessment but still felt that it needed something else.  To me the castle need to separate from the sky.  But how?

I believe that the eye is naturally drawn to details within a photograph.  So, today I present two prints of Lady Liberty—one, as shot and the other and a second with added clarity, sharpness and contrast within the statue.  Does the second photo make Lady Liberty more significant?

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 300mm, ISO 200, f/11 and with shutter speeds 1/500^th of second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 4—set white and black points, added clarity and vibrance to second photo.

Liberty

Last fall, I began rereading the works of Ayn Rand.  I really enjoyed her writing when I was in high school and for some reason, I thought that it might be time for me to revisit them.  I have finished The Fountainhead, Red Pawn, Night of January 16^th and We the Living.  I am currently reading Atlas Shrugged.

The reason that I bring-up my current reading list is because of a conversation I overheard by two 6^th graders at Cole’s baseball game last week.  The two boys were discussing an assignment that they had regarding the "state of America".  Both boys seemed to be alarmed by some things going-on in our country—the excessive spending by our government, the amount of debt that “they” would have to repay and the control that the government seemed to exert over everything.  I do believe that the boys were echoing some of the parent’s concern however I was impressed by the amount of factual information that the two boys seemed to have.  They definitely were not just parroting what they had been told by grown-ups and they were concerned.

In light of these two events, I thought this photo of the Statue of Liberty would be a good one for today’s blog.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/3.5~5.6 at 300mm with polorizing filter attached, ISO 200, f/8 and with shutter speeds 1/350^th of second.

Post Processing:  

Lightroom 3—set white and black points, added clarity and vibrance.

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.

Patience and Working the Scene

The three children in the scene are cousins.  While watching the children play in the water, I talked to their parents about taking a photo of them playing.

What drew me to this scene, of course, was the children playing; but I quickly noticed that the curvature of the water spray was matched by the curvature of the wall in the background.  I thought this implied circle would make a great composition.

Now, what did I do wrong.  First, I was not patience.  The real photo was the little girl in the foreground and how she was studying the water.  I should have waited until the two cousins moved out the scene—which was right after this photo was taken.  Second, this photo should have been taken at f/8 (very sharp portion of this lens) which would have resulted in a shutter speed of 1/750^th of a second.  The f/8 aperture would have better isolated her by making the foreground and background slightly out-focus and the 1/750^th of second would have frozen the water better—basically, a win, win situation.

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm, f/19 and 1/125^th of a second.

Post Processing:

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

Gesture Is King!

Another photo from 2011 and another question about what was I thinking.

Here, I saw this frog character approach this boy and knew that there was about to be a good photo.  I asked the boy’s parents if I could take a photo and they agreed.

Looking over the metadata, I can see that I shot the photo at 38mm rather than 70mm.  Why?  The photo is about the gesture, not getting all of the boy and the frog into the photo.  Next, I see that I used f/11, which I can accept but that forced me to shoot the scene at 1/125^th of a second—too slow to stop the boys hand from blurring.

Thanks to Jay Maisel workshop and a little (very little) knowledge on my part, today I would have had my camera set at ISO 1600 which in turn would have resulted in a shutter speed of 1/1000^th of a second—fast enough shutter speed to stop the boy’s hand.

Lessons learned:  street photography means using ISO of 1,600 or higher unless blur is an important element of the photo and make what drew you to the scene the most important element within your frame.

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 38mm, f/11 and 1/125^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black and white points, added contrast with a mild curve and cropped second image to simulate lens at 70mm (guess on my part!).

Why Did I Do That?

Again, working through photos from 2011, I ran across this one.  I cannot remember a lot about the shot except that I tried various apertures to get the background blur that I wanted.  I also remember moving around so that I could get the out-focus flower in the background.

Looking at the photo now, I cannot help but wonder does it look better with the flower in the background or without it?

Which one do you like best?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8, f/4 and 1/500^th of a second.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop CS5:  Removed flower in background in the second image.

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.

Oilfield Worker

I am fascinated with ordinary working people.  I am currently working on a body of work of such people.  Based upon my start, this may be a very long venture.

In November, I was hired to photograph men working on a workover drilling rig for an oilfield equipment company.  After the shoot, I asked a few of the men to pose for me.

I was really impressed with this young man during the shoot.  When he was not working, his nose was in a school book.  I asked him about it and he said:  “I screwed up in school.  Didn’t work at it.  Didn’t learn much.  Don’t want to work like this the rest of my life, so, I got to learn what they were trying to teach me in school if I want to have a better life.”

Well said.

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 85mm f/1.4, f/8 and 1/125^th of a second with Elinchrom Ranger Quadra head with 17” beauty dish attached.

Post Processing:

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

Photoshop CS5: Used nik Color Efex filters Detail Enhancer, Tonal Contrast and B&W to bring out details within subjects hair and clothing and dodged and burned various areas of photo.

Am I Misusing HDR?

Let me start by saying that I have been a fan of HDR for a long time.  However, I am not generally a fan of the over-the-top HDR look that some HDR photos have.  It’s just too surreal for me.

I believe that over the past few years I have misused HDR.  Instead of using it just to adequately capture a dynamic range outside the range of my camera, I have often used it to capture more details within a scene.  This point was recently driven home to me when after a portrait shoot, I shot a few urban scenes.  Without thinking, I composed the scene, set my tripod up and banged out seven shots with a range of +3 EVs to -3 EVs.  I processed the images in nik HDR Pro (my favorite HDR processing program) and upon first look, was reasonably happy with the results.

I then started studying the processed HDR image and, to my surprise, I saw that many of the details that I wanted in the photo were just not there.  I know that RC Concepcion in his book “The HDR Book” says that after you process the image in an HDR software, you then need to further process it in Photoshop to bring-out your artistic intent.

I would much rather shoot photos than process photos.  Sitting at the computer is not that much fun for me.  So, I thought “what sort of result could I get from processing just one of the images and using nik Color Efex Pro to enhance the details?”  For this processing I selected the exposure that had some highlights blown-out, but had details in the shadows.

The first photo is the one processed using nik HDR Pro and the seven exposures.  The second photo was processed only using nik Color Efex Pro’s Detail Enhancement and Tonal Control filters.  I was surprised at how well nik Color Efex  Pro 4 was able to recapture some of the blow-out highlights.

Conclusion:  if you do not like processing images but still want a lot of details use nik Color Efex Pro 4 or Topaz Adjust or Detail to bring them out, not HDR processing. 

Enjoy.