PBPhoto

This was my first official Senior Portrait session.  I thought they came out great!  What a great subject.  She is a tough one to get to smile but as we got more comfortable the smiles came.  The shot above should be an advertisement for something. 


The family was interested in a walking bridge near their home so we got in the vehicles and headed over.  The bridge made for a great backdrop.  It was a challenge to time shots so that there wasn't traffic in the background.  People were slowing down to see what we were doing.

We took some natural light shots like this one here.  Sun is coming from behind so when we expose for the face some of the highlights get blown out.  I like the effect.

Then we broke out the umbrella and took some using just that balanced with the ambient light.


This should be a magazine cover.

I wanted to have everything from closeups to full length shots so that they would have plenty of choices.

Here's a closeup using the umbrella to capture the eyes.

We had Mom become a photo assistant and hold a second flash.  I used the second source for accent like the hair light on camera left here.  I love the sitting poses.  I also dig the far away look here.  Mom was concerned that she wasn't smiling enough.  I am thankful that she was giving the "say cheese" look all the time (like my kids).  I prefer having to dig for a smile.

You can see the accent coming from camera right in this one.  Still using the umbrella as key light.

What a nice evening.  Perfect weather, a nice family, and my wife as my lovely assistant.  This is the first time that my wife has helped me on a shoot.  It was great.  She was a great voice-activated light stand but more than that she has a great eye for good photography and provided some great ideas during the shoot.  This was our first shoot (other than for ourselves) in Cocoa Village.  This particular building is the Porcher House.  Built in 1916 by a citrus grower.  They rent it out now for weddings and other events.  The front is kind of a colonial style look with big columns.  Interesting on the back is white siding which looks great too.

It's difficult to take a bad shot of cute subjects.  The girls are adorable.


Above are some natural light shots.  I like to do a combination.  Take advantage of whatever the situation provides.

Using the front porch and the bench (thanks Honey for the ideas) we did some flash stuff as well.

Went out tonight to scout for a family photo session that I have planned for this weekend.  We got out late and had already lost direct sunlight so I got off a few natural light shots and then broke out the strobe and umbrella.  Downtown Melbourne, we have spent more time walking down there lately and it is actually a cool little downtown. 

Above is one of my favorite shots.  Got some personality from the kiddos and the wall is great.

I can say that I haven't really been inspired photographically speaking lately.  Life has been busy and stressful.  But for some reason today I was looking at Dan Winters website.  It was linked off of the Strobist.  I really dig the look of the site.  It is kinda retro.  I really liked his portraits.  Probably because they are so different from what I would typically do.  No popping colors.  Everything is nice and muted.  Not as much separation between subject and background.  He has some unique lighting setups as well.  He has a portrait of Tom Hanks that is cool.  Interesting shadows on the face.  The fill light is just enough for detail.  The poses are different as well.  There's a portrait of Bono where Bono is facing camera left at 90 degrees.  It has a different feel to it. 

So I tried to incorporate some ideas: reducing the ratio between the subject and background, muted colors and experiment with the poses.

I love the pose on the above shot.  Just looking at the flash with his head turned toward the flash. 

Now I gave Eli the same instructions and this is what I got.

For my colors, I put orange gels (3/4 CTO) on my key flash and then did a custom white balance on that.  I left my background flash bare.  The custom white balance changes the white light to blue.  Nice cool (temperature) colors.

I love capturing the crying moments.  Goes against the grain of children portraits.  They are supposed to always be happy.  Not so much.

But they are happy most of the time.


Be blessed.

So most mornings recently, early mornings, as I am leaving for work, I have been greeted by walking through a spider web as I go to get in my truck.  Spider webs on my face are not on my "favorite things in life" list.  I have just sort of swiped it away, said lots of righteous things under my breath and gone to work.  But one morning, as I walked out of the garage, I clicked the key fob for Gretchen's car.  That causes the backup lights to come on, which revealed a strand of spider web.  It was going up to the sycamore on the north side of the driveway.  As I followed it in the other direction, I see one of the biggest webs I've ever seen.  And in the middle . . . this. 

Not sure what type of spider this is.  If you closet etymologists out there can identify it, I would love to know.  It is about the size of a half dollar, maybe a little bigger. (update:  I found out that is neoscona hentzi, in the family of orb-weavers.  Charlotte was also an orb-weaver.  Since we just read Charlotte's web with the kids, I'm sure that is why this spider has shown up.  Now I'm waiting to see some words in the web.  Maybe "Some Gretchen" for her birthday.  He probably doesn't take requests.)

So one morning I popped up the little flash on my camera but that looked horrible.  So of course the next night after the kids went to sleep I dragged Gretchen out into the dark holding my camera stand and umbrella to take some shots.  I ordered an umbrella adapter from Adorama that came with a tiny little fold up umbrella.  Seriously, this thing looks like a toy umbrella but at close range on a small subject, it's apparent size is huge so it worked well.

The wind was blowing so getting a crisp shot was tough as thing was constantly moving closer and farther away.  And I'm just thinking "Please God, Creator of Heaven and Earth and spiders, please don't let thing jump on me or I'm going to scream like a girl."

Got a chance to do some product photography for a cool local business.  They make fire extinguishers for RV's and racecars.  Very cool I think.

So the idea is that his webmaster wanted some shots on black that he could separate for use on his website HERE.  So I brought some black foam core for background and some white foam core for reflectors.  In the above shot I used a strobe and shoot-through for key @ camera right and white foam core for fill @ camera left.  The metal cage around the nozzle didn't have a well defined edge so I added another strobe with a grid on it behind and camera left to help that situation.  This set up was great for the red extinguishers.  But not so much for the shiny aluminum ones.  The top left edge of the canister was still being lost in the black.  So I added another piece of foamcore behind and camera right to define that edge.  Here is the shot and setup below.

Being the great Dad that I am (at least that's what I'm told), I am raising up some future Rock Stars.

I was inspired by these awesome hats that we got yesterday.  They say Rock Star In Training.  I love it.  Hezekiah is always striking his rock pose. 

So I got a little edgy with the light.  Both lights are slightly behind so as not to fill in the entire face.  My umbrella is at camera left and a bare old Sunpak is camera right.

Gave it a high contrast black and white treatment in Light Room 2.

Hezekiah actually asked for a portrait after he lost his second front tooth.  I was more than happy to set up 3 lights for the occaision.  I've been shooting so much ambient light lately just out of convienience.  So I lit the background with a red gelled strobe.  Used the shoot-thru for the key light.  And a bare strobe for the rim light.  Since I was set up I got Eli to stand still for a frame as well.

Just wanted to show a progression that I went through to get the yummy shot that you see at the top.  All the shots obviously didn't look that good.  There is some trial and error involved in getting the right combination of exposure and light source placement.

So I start by setting my camera to it's max sync speed . . . uh not quite.  My camera's max sync speed is 1/250th but with my Cactus radio triggers, I have found that I can only sync at 1/200th.  So that's always the starting point.  Then for aperture I know that I can get f5.6 if my flash is at 1/2 power or f2.8 with the flash set at 1/16th power.  Those numbers are just approximate based on lots of practice shots.

I took a first shot and it looked a little underexposed.  I decided to boost the ISO from 100 to 160 to get a little more exposure without changing the aperture.  I wanted to maintain f2.8 because my 50mm lens doesn't always focus properly.  The depth of field at f1.8 is so narrow that even the slightest error in focus causes the loss of the picture.  At f2.8 the dof gives a little leeway if the focus is off.

The result here is overexposed.  It looks washed out.  We've lost the amazing red of these freshly picked strawberries.

So I set the ISO back to 100 and now we have the delicious red I am looking for.  But I have the umbrella directly over the batch of strawberries.  The shadows are shallow and it looks pretty much like a snapshot.

So I moved umbrella further back to increase the angle and increase the depth of the shadows.  Now it is looking good.  I like the exposure and the light placement.  So now I just worked with composition and perspective to get the cover shot above.

So my Eli got a new bike.  He got rewarded for crying and fussing less for a few days strait and also for going a night without a diaper for the first time.

I haven't been shooting much these days.  But I had some inspiration from checking on the subject of photochallenge.org.  It is down low.  Taking from a low vantage point.  I took this from maybe six inches off of the ground.  I didn't try to lay down and focus, I just held the camera low.  I watched it focus and figured since I was f4 or f5.6 that as long as it focused somewhere on the bike I should have enough depth of field to have her face in focus.

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.