Those Blue Eyes

I was walking down the sidewalk when I looked over and saw this great looking pair of eyes staring at me. I immediately told Terry’s mother that he had quite a pair of eyes. She shyly smiled and said that he already seemed to know how to use them to his full advantage.

Terry and his mother were there to cheer his dad and uncle to the finish line. I asked his mother if she minded if I took a few shots of Terry. This is my favorite photograph of him. For some reason, I really like the way he was intently staring at something, but from my perspective, I did not know what it was. It seemed to give the photo a little added mystery.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm shot at ISO 800, f/5.6 and 1/90^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast to his jacket.

Family Cheering Family

Before I discuss today’s photo, I would like to write a few words about last weeks photo. I appreciate all the comments that everyone took the time to write, however, I would prefer that people keep from criticizing other’s opinions. I do not see that helping anyone. I do fully expect a critical analysis of everything I post; that is why I post my work. Now, about today’s post.

Probably the neatest aspect of the Houston Marathon is meeting lots of family members who are cheering their fellow members.

Meet Annie. Her brother and cousin were running in the Fun Run and her father was running in the half marathon. She was at the starting line cheering each of them off and was planning on being near the finish line cheering them. She told me about each one of them and how proud she was of all of them. Great conversion with a really cute young lady.

After we talked a while, she asked me to take her picture for her dad. I wanted this photo to be about her enthusiasm and her child-like charm.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 70mm shot at ISO 800, f/4.8 and 1/350^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity and reduced saturation of pink to reduce affect of pompoms.

Portrait with Edgy Lighting

Originally, I was planning on posting another photograph from the Houston Marathon, but after a portrait session on Monday, I decided to post one from that session.

As Doug Haass indicated in his post on Tuesday, Doug, Steve Schuenke and I tried a little “edgy” lighting on some portraits of Kelsi on Monday. Steve and I have been discussing doing this for some time, but the opportunity to do it had not presented itself before our shoot with Kelsi.

Before I get to the particulars of today’s photograph, I would like to say something about Kelsi, her mother and brother: they were great! I really enjoyed seeing such a close-knit family.

I wanted to “push the envelop” with this portrait and a great subject like Kelsi made that very easy. I must admit, we were blessed with some great clouds that rolled into the areas just as we started setting-up the lighting for the edgy portraits.

Both Steve and I was somewhat surprised with how easy the lighting was to set-up for the edge lighting that we wanted. We placed an Nikon SB-800 at about four feet on each side of Kelsi. We put a homemade gobo on each strobe and pointed the strobes at Kelsi’s ears. From past experience we knew that 1/8^th power would be a good starting point for the strobes for properly exposing her at f/13.

Next, we placed the main light, a 53” octagonal softbox housing Elinchrom Quadra strobe. Ideally, the main light would have been directly over Kelsi on a boom, but since we did not have a boom, we placed it above and slightly to the right of the camera. I wanted the two Nikon SB-800s to be the primary source of light, so I dialed the Elinchrom strobe down to a power rating that underexposed her face and front of her uniform by about one to two stops. I wanted the edge lighting to be very pronounced in my versions of the portraits. Steve and Doug used higher power settings for the Elinchrom strobe, so the effects from the Nikon strobes is less.

Not shown on the screen grab is some minor clean-up I did on the background and the layer in which I used Topaz filter (described below).

After seeing the image on my computer, I decided to make the portrait more surreal. I added more details to the background by using Topaz Adjust filter to increasing the contrast and color saturation. I also turned the field lights on and added some light beams. I used separate layers for each one of the beams so that I could adjust opacity of each beam independently. The beams were created by making a selection with a feathering of 25-40 pixels, filling the selection with white, adding noise to the selection and then blurring the noise. I used used a gradient at the group level to reduce the effect of the light beams from the source to the ground. I also added a glow around the lights to simulate how they look in real life.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3x, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 56mm shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/250^th of a second.

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.

Enough Interest?

When I saw this scene I really liked the textures of the foreground versus the foggy, blown-out background. I started to shoot the image in HDR but then decided that I would normalize the overall scene and the contrast would be eliminated. I decided to properly expose the foreground so I used a spot meter on the net area and expose accordingly.

The basic question I have about this image is simple: Does the subject of the boat and the contrast with the background create a photograph that has impact?

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 50mm shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/60^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast to add contrast to highlights, mid-tones and shadows of the boat and dock.

Shapes in the Fog

Last week Sam asked for some more shooting information. So, before I discuss today’s photo, I will give you a few more details. First, I have shot at this location a couple times, but never got anything that I really liked. I had decided that I wanted to visit it when there was fog, as I did over the holidays. Second, I spent about an hour and half shooting and took about 230 photos (including several bracketed exposures for possible HDR). Today, I have only 12 images from the session on my hard drive. Of the remaining images, there are about six that I feel may be worthy of showing and another six that for some reason, I like—ones similar to the second image I presented on Friday.

Now, about today’s image. When I looked at this scene, I really did not see boats, piers, water and fog; I saw geometric shapes. And, that is what I wanted this photo to show. I felt that a sepia toned photo helped simplify it so that the shapes showed-off better. What do you think?

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 34mm shot at ISO 200, f/11 and 1/125^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—used nik Silver Efex Pro to convert to sepia toned image.

Different Views of the Same Thing

The first photo has some of the same characteristics as the one I presented earlier in the week: detailed boats complemented by simple foggy areas. But, in this one, I wanted to present the complex details of the mask fading into the simple lines of the boats’ hulls and finally the solid off white of the foggy background. I like the progression of complexity to total simplicity.

After taking the first photo, I moved closer to the boats to see if I could get some detailed photos of the boat’s mask. I must admit, I was very surprised to see really how complicated the scene before me was. I decided to take a few shots to show the complexity of the scene. This shot raises a question I constantly ask myself: “what is the subject?” After looking at the photo, I decided to ask you the question: “Can you have a photo of complexity and details as the subject?”

Enjoy

The Wonders of Fog

Since 2009 was a much busier year for my photographic business than I expected, I decided to take the last two weeks of the year off. It was a great break. I delivered all the portraits that I had taken before Christmas and so between Christmas and the New Year, I was official on “vacation.”

I had some blog posting prepared for that week, but, forgot to post. Oh, well, it looks like everyone out there in cyber land got lucky!

I was going to try some new lighting techniques with my buddy Steve, but the weather got to us and we were not able to shoot, so instead, I just went out and roamed the countryside looking for something that might resemble a decent photo.

What photographer does not like fog? It adds instant mystery and mood to any photo. Add some water and a few boats, and it is hard not to make a good photo.

As I looked at this scene before me, I wanted emphasize the contrast between the details in the dock and boats and the total lack of details in the foggy foreground and background. I decided to frame the detailed portion of the photo in the upper right quadrant and leave the reaming portions of the photo as negative space to help emphasize the details. I tried various crops of negative space and finally settled on the photo as shot. A lot of people might think the amount of negative space is excessive, but I felt that I needed that much space to balance and contrast with the details of the dock and boats.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 56mm shot at ISO 200, f/13 and 1/90^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white point.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex Pro tonal contrast to add highlight, mid-tones and shadows of the dock and boats and then sharpened that are using a high pass filter in the soft light mode.

Dickens on the Strand #4

While doing many portraits over the last year, I have noticed a very difference between how females and males react in front of a camera. It does not seem to be affected by age.

In this photo, notice how relaxed and posed the young girl is and how the young boy seems to be more tense and suspicious he looks. For whatever reason, this seems to be the norm.

In this photo, I wanted to show how boys and girls react so differently.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 62mm shot at ISO 200, f/9.5 and 1/125^th of a second with a SB800 with softbox attached right and left of subject and set to 1/8^th and 1/16^th power and triggered with AlienBee radio triggers.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—use nik Color Efex Pro soft focus filter to add minimium amount of soft focus to the overall image.

Dickens on the Strand #3

Today’s photos are of grandfather and granddaughter. I noticed the grandfather sitting on the bench watching everything going on around him. I thought his face and clothing would make for an interesting photo and the reflection in the window would add both context and depth to the image.

When I started photographing him, I immediately encountered a couple problems: reflections from his glasses, the strobes showing up in the window and finally the highly reflective nature of his shirt and cape. The first two were relatively easy to resolve by moving the strobes a little, however, I never really resolved the high reflection off of the shirt. Looking at the histogram, none of the shirt is blown-out, but yet, there is not enough detail in the shirt to make it look real.

In post processing, I used a black and white layer to tone down and mute brightness and intensity of the colors in his clothing.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 32mm shot at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 1/45^th of a second with a SB800 with softbox attached right and left of subject and set to 1/4^th and 1/16^th power and triggered with AlienBee radio triggers.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—use nik Silver Efex to create a black and white layer and then reduced the opacity of the layer to 25% to reduce the brightness and intensity of the colors in his clothing.

The photograph of the granddaughter was much easier to light. I wanted part of the sign and the archway in the background and I wanted the lighting to look as if there was some side-lighting coming from the right. We positioned the main light at 1/4^th power to the right and then added the second light at 1/32^nd power to light under her hat and parasol.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 60mm shot at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 1/60^th of a second with a SB800 with softbox attached right and left of subject and set to 1/32^nd and 1/4^th power and triggered with AlienBee radio triggers.

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—use nik Color Efex Pro soft focus filter at a very low level.

Enjoy.

Dickens on the Strand #2

Meet Kelly. Steve and I took her photograph last year, and to be honest, in spite of having a really great subject, we did not do a very good job. What was the problem? Well, we did not do a very good job controlling the background. In my photo, I had tent supports growing out of Kelly’s head. I changed the background and ended-up with a very nice photo of her, but, the original photo was just not that good. You can see the post of last year’s photo and the altered background here.

When Steve and I saw Kelly at this year’s Dickens on the Strand, we both rushed over to her to make amends. We immediately started looking for a background that would complement her and her clothes. Steve photographed her in landscape mode and included very little of her clothing. You can see his portrait here.

I wanted to show more of her so I photographed her in portrait mode and included enough background to establish her position relative to a building. I really like the vanishing lines of the background and thought that they played well off of Kelly.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 50mm shot at ISO 200, f/6.7 and 1/250^th of a second with a SB800 with softbox attached right and left of subject and set to ½ and ¼ power and triggered with AlienBee radio triggers.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—Cloned-out part of a sign in the upper right corner and used nik Color Efex Pro soft focus filter at 35% opacity to soften Kelly.

Dickens on the Strand #1

I recently finished processing photographs that I took at Dickens on the Strand in early December. I must admit that I was disappointed in my work at Dickens on the Strand and at the Texas Renaissance Festival in November. I felt that neither session produced the quality of photographs that I did last year. I know that I understand lighting and basic posing much better this year than I did last year, but, the fact is the photos from last year sessions were better.

I have been studying both last year’s and this year’s photos to see if I could determine why last year’s photos were better. After a while I noticed something very interesting: last year, I generally took 10-15 photos of each subject whereas this year, I usually took only 5-7 shots of each subject. Because I have gained more skill at lighting a portrait over the last year, I know that I am able to get the exposure I want much quicker, but, then my photos this year were worse. Why?

I thought about a Joe McNally seminar I recently attended. Joe, who knows significantly more than I will ever know about photography and lighting, would start each portrait session very simply and then would tweak his lighting ever so slightly until he got what he wanted and then he would start working with his subject. I was quite surprised how he worked each situation until he got what he wanted.

At the Renaissance Festival and Dickens on the Strand, I did not work the situation. I got the lighting right and then I stopped. As a result, I got photos that were generally properly exposed, but nothing more than that.

What attracted Steve, Doug and me to this man was his unusual eye glasses. We decided that the red building would be a great background, but there was a considerable difference between his exposure in the shade and the building in the bright sun. I got the shot relatively quickly and then decided to shoot only part of his face and the glasses. On the second shot, I got luck to include the face of someone else.

However, here is where I should have continued working the scene. Image a shot where I positioned his wife, who was dressed in a interesting Victorian dress a few feet behind him and positioned her so that she was what was being magnified by his eye glass pieces. I could then light his face and her. The photo would have then been about what we found most interesting to begin with.

I hope I learned something from this, but, knowing me, I will have to learn this lesson a few times over before it will stick with me.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 42mm shot at ISO 250, f/9.5 and 1/250^th of a second with a SB800 with softbox attached right and left of subject and set to ½ and ¼ power and triggered with AlienBee radio triggers.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Candid Photos from India #15

Today’s photo is another from a market. In this photo, I wanted to show his pose, his expression and his environment.

After trying several different crops, I concluded that a square crop worked best.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D200, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 42mm shot at ISO 250, f/8 and 1/60^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex tonal contrast filter to add contrast to highlight, mi-tones and shadows and bring out all the textures in the scene.

Candid Photos from India #14

I was watching a lady prepare flowers for a wedding when I heard: “you’re nothing but a hound dog. . . crying all the the time.” Naturally, I had to follow the music. I walked about a half a block and found this man playing nothing but Elvis music over his stereo.

He spoke very, very little English, so trying to understand why the Elvis music was playing was next to impossible to discover. Regardless, I think with the music playing and a poster of Elvis prominently displayed, one thing is evident: Elvis is indeed the King!

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D200, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm shot at ISO 100, f/5.6 and 1/90^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.

Photoshop—used nik Color Efex tonal contrast filter to add contrast to highlight, mi-tones and shadows and then cloned-out various minor distractions.

Candid Photos from India #13

Within all Indian markets, there is a collection of food vendors who prepare unusual dishes on the spot. The smells of these dishes were amazing—I must admit that neither JD or I tried any of them because, well, to be honest, we just were afraid of getting the famous “Delhi Belly.” Almost everyone we know that have been to India had at least one episode of “Delhi Belly.” We were determined not to get it; and, fortunately, because of being very careful, neither one of us got it.

Even though I never had any intention of eating anything from any of these vendors, I did enjoy smelling the food and watching them prepare them. The chef in this photo had long lines of people lined-up to eat his food, and in all honesty, it looked and smelled wonderful.

I wanted the photo to be about his world of food.

Enjoy.

Camera settings: Nikon D200, Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8 at 28mm shot at ISO 100, f/5.6and 1/30^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom—Set white and black points, added mid-tone contrast, added clarity.