PBPhoto

Silly question to ask you I suppose.  Only I would know.  Anyway.  In terms of photography, I haven't been doing a lot of shooting since my last family session with our friends in the previous post.  What I have done though is open an iStock account.  Check it out if you have never heard of it.  It is a place where you can purchase licensed photography, artwork, audio, and video for use in publications or websites or any number of end uses that you may involved in.  So it is also a place for photographers (like me) to sell their work. 

So you can purchase some of my work or any the bagillion other photographers there.  They are sticklers for quality.  I have posted about 11 items so far and have a number of them rejected for being slightly out of focus or overprocessing.  I have made my first sale.  So that will pay for half of a piece of chewing gum.

So I've been reviewing my older work looking for things that might be a good stock shot.  And then seeking model releases for those involved.  Then going through the submission process which takes about a week or so.

So you may want to join as well.  To purchase or to submit some of your own.  If you have interest please follow the link below so that I will get a referral.  Thanks to my friend Mark Morgan for telling me about the referral program.

Here are some portraits of our friends that we love a lot.  It was a cold day on the beach but we had a good time. 

Simple lighting again.  One strobe, a shoot-thru umbrella and balanced with the ambient light.  It can sometimes be difficult to beat the sun with a small strobe so I've learned to wait a little longer so that the sun goes down a bit more before beginning shooting.

I love the shot at the top.  That is real family life.  Shows the chaos that is the norm.  Kids flying and grabbing hair. . .awesome.

Here's Daddy with the boys.

And big sis with the baby.

Love you guys.

Be blessed.

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.