PBPhoto

I had wanted for a long time to bring along my silver reflector on a sunny day outing.  Just wanted to experiment with having the sun behind or at some angle to the subject and using the reflector to direct that light as the main light source.

Some great things about reflectors verses strobes are:
1)  They fold up into about a 10" square.
2)  They weigh less than a pound.
3)  They give a light source size that is similar to an umbrella.  Which means soft light-to-shadow transitions that are great for portraits.
4)  No batteries required.
5)  No radio interference.
6)  They weigh less than a pound.
7)  They fold up into about a 10" square.

A little repetitive but man it sure is true.  So it does come with some downsides.  My daughter thinks it is fun to play on for one.

And it turns out that a huge ball of nuclear fusion is no easier to look at when it is reflected into the eyes.  I think this picture is hilarious.  The squinting and covering of the eyes is classic.  I think that I've read that the way to do it is have the subject close their eyes and then open them on command at the moment you take the shot.

So I found myself directing that sunlight everywhere.  Cool shot into a rotten old log.  So if you don't want to spend the money on a bunch of lighting gear, just go to Wal-Mart and pic up an autoshade.  Give it a shot.

Be blessed.

I must admit that I really enjoy these family sessions.  It is informal and we take an hour or so to just hang out and capture some cool candid shots as well as some nice posed ones as well.  These are a few of my favorites from my most recent shoot.

Above is the only one that I included that is lit with flash.  I have my Vivitar 285HV shooting thru and umbrella camera right at full power.  Even though it was evening the sun was lighting the ocean quite brightly.  And I was using my 28-135 that starts at f3.5.  The 50mm 1.8 just wasn't wide enough to capture enough environment here.  This was at f5.6 to get some added sharpness from that lens.

This is just as sweet as anything with the baby doll. 



Here we have Daddy with his girls in the nice late evening sun.  I like the triangle formed with the three of them.


Someone loves Daddy.  This is a nice moment with a full up natural laugh.



I love the simplicity here.


I was getting a little artsy here.  The heart kind of mirrors what the dress is doing.



A couple more sweet smiles and great curls like my daughter.




I hope you guys enjoy these photos.  I had fun capturing them.

Be blessed.

I really like good black and white photographs.  I'm not sure what makes a good one a good one.  I suppose I lack the artistic language to describe it.  I took these and had worked them up in color.  Just for fun I tried converting them to grayscale and to me they went from good to great.  The curly hairs (that Daddy loves by the way), the super sharp eyes.  You be the judge.

I haven't posted in a while.  Life is busy.  I am currently shucking my responsibilities as I type.  I have tile work to do in the bathroom, the cedar playground needs some repair, the pavers in the back yard need work, I have to mount an igniter to the burner I installed in the grill.  But it is just so much more rewarding to share photos. 

My friend Kevin has a blog http://kevinkeigley.wordpress.com/.

He apparently has a problem with creepy dolls.  Not sure what that means but I still love him.  So anyway he was asking for submissions of said creepy dolls so this is what I came up with.  Just in time for Halloween.  Note that I have his blog up in the computer screen in the background.

The lighting is a snooted 285HV for the key light and a bare, red-gelled 540EZ behind and below for the red accent.

In an attempt to at least occasionally shoot for the daily challenge at PhotoChallenge.org I went looking for a window display.  Actually the whole family went.  We packed up the car and went to downtown Melbourne, FL looking for the right one.  My wife suggested the year-round Christmas store.  Which normally would be a great choice but the time of day wasn't very good.  The reflections in the window were stinkin' up the joint. 

So we drove on down the street and she spotted this one.  Excellent.  I didn't really like the street reflection but it was reduced some as I worked on it in LR2.  The colors are great.

Here's my most recent family portrait session.  I had a great time with them.  What a great little family with the new (ok not so new) baby.  We met at the beach with about 45 minutes until sunset with another 30 minutes of twilight.  First we tried to take advantage of the direct sunset light up on the boardwalk.  I tried as many different light schemes as I could come up with.  We used the sun as direct light.  We tried using it for backlight as you can see in the following photos.  Awesome how the hair just blows out and you get nice soft light for the face.  I've been trying to do more of this these days. 

We used the sun for side lighting.  This has got to be one of my favorites of the entire section.  As a Daddy, I can relate so much to this shot.  I talk about capturing interactions later on and this is exactly what I'm talking about.

And for a silhouette.


Weights And Wind

Then we even broke out the flash and umbrella.  The wind was blowing hard.  Earlier that day, while sitting in my office, I remembered the two times that my light stand had taken a fall because of the wind.  I knew I needed sandbags but I didn't have any and even if I wanted to buy some (I don't because that costs money and costs even more money if it is "made for photography") there was no time for them to be delivered.  So I'm looking around my office . . . I see my old A3 bag from the Air Force.  It acts as our scuba bag and has masks, snorkels, fins, and WEIGHT BELTS!  So back to the beach.  I set up the stand with flash and open the umbrella.  The only way this works is with the umbrella pointing into the wind.  Otherwise I would be asking some of you from California to ship it back to me.  Just latch the weight belt and drape it over the legs of the tripod.  Works great.

Only drawback is that once it is set, it is not trivial to reposition it because of the wind and the weight so it was easier to move the subjects around in the light.

Interaction
I shoot a lot of pictures in hopes that I capture some moment that stands out.  Little interactions between parent and child.  I caught a few of those here along with the photo at the top and the one of Daddy kissing baby.

Here's a quick one that I captured tonight.  I used the preset "Matt's Vintage New York."  I like the muted tones.  I added a little brightness in the eyes to bring out some detail that went away when I applied the preset.

Just used my Vivitar into a shoot-thru umbrella.  I slowed the shutter speed down until the incandescent light burned into the background.

Be blessed.

Can't get away from that kids eyes.  Lighting here is just my Vivitar 285HV into a shoot-thru umbrella at 1/4 power.

I am really liking LR2 and all of the presets that are available for it on the web.  These shots started as decent photographs with cool lighting IMHO.  But the colors are just too stinkin' accurate!  What?  It occurred to me as I was looking at various effects to apply to these shots that I spent a lot of money for a camera that has incredible resolution, low noise, and represents colors accurately.  Now I am undoing all of that.  What does that mean?! 

It reminds me of the tube vs. solid state debate in music circles.  I have to admit that I used to be a solid state guy until I played my '74 Strat through a Fender tube amp.  It just does sound better.  I know as an engineer these days that it has to do with the harmonic content of the signals as you overdrive the devices.  Odd harmonics from tubes and even harmonics from solid state.  But that's a debate for a different time.

Anyway, I suppose that all that matters is the end creation.  Use whatever tools and techniques necessary to produce the outcome that you have visualized.

So the lighting is this: I have a home-made foamcore snoot on my 285HV @ 1/4 power for the key light, and for accent, my 540EZ, bare @ 1/32 power.

I found this great preset called "Matt's Polo/Ralph Lauren" available HERE.  I really like the desaturation and also the tone that is added.