lighting test

My friend and fellow photographer sat for a minute today while i tried out some lighting. I watched a movie about photographer Platon and was inspired to try his lighting setup. I don't think i nailed it by any means but i used one strobe into a shoot through umbrella straight in front of him and over my head. I did a little burning and dodging afterwards in photoshop and cooled down the colouring but thats about it.

Vimy 100th Anniversary

berries

i have been doing a few close up studies lately and think i am going in the right direction.

2016 vacation

Had a great vacation this year and just took a few photos trying out a new to me 14-24mm lens.

Animaritime

Fredericton streets looked great last weekend so i took a few shots while out for a little walk.

portrait

I recently had the pleasure of shooting images for an exciting fundraising campaign. The posters will be out soon and i can't wait to see them.

top light tester

My top stand in / light tester got to work it again today. This was a setup for a magazine feature inside spread. the photo may run over two pages so was trying to come up with a composition for this without placing the model in the gutter (centre). i was stuck so ash nicely said just shoot from the side, idiot. I added the idiot part as she never would, but should. the main light umbrella is a new one we got which is 72" and oh so sweet. Go big or stay home.

photo effects

I downloaded a new effects plugin today and had some fun with it. it is made by on1 and is called effects 10. I found some great presets and filters in it and the nice part is it attaches itself to photoshop and lightroom. The second part of my post refers to my conversation with the model you see in this image. I told him he should give up his career choice of an engineer and start modelling. I can honestly say that was the first time i had ever said that to anyone. More often some may say don't give up your day job , but not in this case. Just a natural i guess. The third part of this post is that you will notice that i have used lighting that i would tell people to never ever use. The dreaded copy lighting, on a person you say, no way. The eyes give it all away. In my defence, i was shooting groups of people and was trying to get some light on all faces. We also did individual shots but they were less important to the client. I did try to balance the light so the main was on the right side and fill on left, with the fill being less powerful. I also had two lights on the background to make it white. The fourth part is that there is no more to tell.

professional light tester

Its funny how you stumble upon your favourite models and its wonderful when you do. I take a lot of scholarship recipient photos and usually like to set up one or two off camera nikon flashes. I of course then need to test my setup and am lucky to have my client at all the presentations. I usually take a handful of test shots and then am ready to roll. Over the past little while this has added up to a significant collection of great testers. Perhaps a show will be had one day, you never know.

shoot

2015 tree

Another Christmas and another HDR tree shot. I used three images through photomatix and then a few curves to try and correct colour cast. I used a tripod with a low iso setting and around f5.6 for this. Shutter speeds started around 2 seconds as room was pretty dark.

winter again

Im not much of a winter kind of guy as my fingers just don't like the cold. I did manage to get out last week and take a few images of our first snowfall of the year. I didn't have a tripod but i did bracket 7 exposures (hand held) for two reasons. The first was easy, in case i wanted to do an HDR later. The second was to see if there were any unexpected surprises in the scene that i just wasn't seeing (for example, two stops underexposed looked pretty cool and dramatic). I did do an HDR using three of the exposures i shot and then i did quite a bit of burning and dodging to bring out the light and dark parts that i wanted the eye to bounce around to. I do recommend a tripod and warm gloves if you want to do some winter HDR shots. Also photomatix pro is my HDR program of choice.

Remembrance Day

more blue jays baseball

Go Jays

I happened to be in toronto this past weekend and was lucky enough to see the jays play the yankees. Great game with great company and even liked a few of the photos i took.

harvest jazz and blues

The harvest jazz and blues festival has kicked off with the downtown blues band giving a free concert tonight. I love this band and have been fortunate to have done lots of photography for them over the years. This should be a fun week.

on duty

I walked by this on my way to a shoot recently and had my camera at the ready. I always set up my camera in the car and walk in with it around my neck as i always see something worth shooting on that little trip.

whale watching

We went whale watching for the first time this past weekend but unfortunately did not see a whale. We had a nice boat ride though and i shot about 500 photos during the three hour trip. There was a weird fog on the water which made for a great background behind this herring net. I exposed the image for the brighter parts, having decided that the net would go black. In lightroom i boosted the clarity, lowered the blacks and the exposure to where it looked good and brought the saturation down to 0. I cropped it to a bit of a pano and that was that.

ellens stardust diner

We watched pitch perfect tonight for the first time and it reminded me of ellens stardust diner in new york. This was a great night and my children loved it.