BlOG

I've been here before!

Interface Visual — Tue, 15 May 2012 03:17:35 +0000

When i got the request to shoot this home, it made me smile since I photographed this stunner roughly 4 years ago. The new owner went thru the house to make it "all about the view". When I shot this property 4 years ago, it took me several hours to set up the lighting and balamce the exposures. 4 years and a couple of thousand homes later this took about 1.5 hours and was all lt with about 8-10 small strobes!

My weekend with the Samsung Galaxy Note

Interface Visual — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:36:20 +0000

I got this HUGE device on Friday and have to say I LOVE the screen's color and shrpness. A 5.3 Super Amoled screen with 1280x800 resolution is perfect to watch Netflix and surf the wed for long periods of time. I wouldn't use it as my primary phone, but as a second phone it's perfect.

Pretty good battery life, and it uses ATT's fast 4G network. With the large screen and 4G connection, you will fly thru your data plan quickly. So you should consider getting a larger data plan, which ATT have recently increased the prices of...not really happy with that.

Adding Nikon lenses to a Samsung NX100!

Interface Visual — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:09:26 +0000

My ongoing adventure with my Samsung is taking advantage of it's ability to mount different lenses to the body. Not just regular stock lenses, but with an adaptor, I can use my Nikon lenses on this camera. Now I have a great wide angle, and to my total surprise I have the BEST macro set-up using a Nikon PB4 bellows set-up. I've used the PB4 with film and digital SLR's but because of the size of the cameras I couldn't full rotate the camera body to take advantage of the bellows movements. Also, a DSLR with the bellows is heavy, and puts a great strain on any tripod mount I would put it on! With this camera body on the bellows it's better balanced and easier to use! The adapter cost me $18.00! Best deal this year!

Using a point and shoot for interiors.

Interface Visual — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:35:23 +0000

Over the weekend, I picked up a Samsung NX100 CHEAP! I don't have a point and shoot for the holidays. It gets old using a DSLR all the time. While getting the feel of the camera, I noticed that it has a flash hot shoe. After a few minutes I discovered that it will trigger all the remote triggers I have. What I decided to use is the my Phottix Starto, to get my strobes off camera. I lose TTL but getting your flash off camera opens a lot of options! The NX100 also has full manual control over aperture and shutter. It has a top synch speed of 1/200 of a sec so I can "pull" detail in windows if I need to.

For the attached images, I used 1 SB600 at 1/4 power triggered by a Phottix, I also used a SB800 in SU remote mode that will fire when another strobe goes off for fill.

I like the size and speed of using a camera like this. It's going to be fun playing around with this set-up!

Senior Portrait

Interface Visual — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 05:55:37 +0000

A few weeks ago, my niece informed me that she had ideas for her senior portrait. Not such an unusual request, except her father is also a photographer. I got the assignment of something outside and lite!

When shooting outside, normally you'd have to deal with the the stray sumlight coming thru the trees. This really isn't a problem for the background, but stray sunlight causes problems with possible blown highlights if they fall on your subject.

What I did was use a large trasnlucent scrim to shield the sun hiitting her hair, and I also used a a black scrim in conjuction with the large white scrim to further control any specular highlights on her head. For fill I used a lard white reflector.

I did slight variations of this to get several different moods and looks to my niece.

Wide Angle Lenses

Interface Visual — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:49:23 +0000

There is nothing more impressive than seeing the super large lenses that sports photographers use. You simply assume that they are professional photographers. Because of the field that I specialize in, I don't have any ultra telephoto lenses. I do on the other hand have quite a few ultra wide angle lenses, which I think are just as impressive as ultra telephotos. These are 2 of my favorites...

Water Polo

Interface Visual — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:19:27 +0000

What do I know about shooting sports? Not a lot! I came to watch my niece play water polo, but I came from a house shoot and arrived with only wide angle lenses! Fortunately a kind photographer from Digital West Photography was generous enough to let me borrow a zoom lens.
To see Digital West Photography, please go here...

https://picasaweb.google.com/110790329719487819665/MontereyHighSchoolVNotreDameWaterPolo

Hotel Room shot with an Iphone

Interface Visual — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 23:01:05 +0000

I recently shot a job in Vegas. Because of what I was shooting I left my cameras on set. The only thing I had was my iphone in my room. When doing these images, I used the HDR feature built in with the Iphone.To get the best results when using HDR on a iphone is to expose for the highlight and let the HDR software lightien the shadow areas.

Warm Cottage

Interface Visual — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 21:54:36 +0000

My shoot was a beautiful cottage in Carmel. Problem was it's in midst of a forest. Any splattering of sunlight thru the trees makes the shot much harder. What I decided was to shoot at dusk, but light at dusk is very blue/cyan. Blue/cyan makes foliage lifeless. Of course, we can color correct for the color, but it makes incandescent lights much too orange.

After color correcting for the blue/cyan, I felt the house exterior needed some sprucing. I used 5 small strobes...

1 in the entry

1 in bedroom

2 behind the tree for the walkway and front of house

1 for left side of house

The strobes balanced the dark exterior elements and made the house a little more inviting.

There's a view out there!

Interface Visual — Sat, 14 May 2011 03:10:11 +0000

As I was going thru this home, the person showing me around said...there's a terrific view upstairs, but we can't seem to get the view and the interior. This is caused because the outside is much brighter than inside.

As a photographer, it's as simple as making the inside as bright as the outside. The hard part is making it LOOK like it's not being lit with artificial light.

Another problem with this shot is there is no place to bounce, I would normally bounce on the side walls but with the all the exposed wood it would cause a horrible color shift that would be more work to correct.

What I decided to do is use large white panels to simulate a neutral wall. I bounced the light on one side of the window, then i mirrored the lighting on the other side. I now had two exposures that where blended together.

The hard part was the floor, I used a strobe on a boom to get proper exposure and get rid of the Cyan highlights from the light coming in from the door.