Just a nice kitchen, that's all. No story, just a photo.

Enjoy.

I was told today that we're expecting more snow over the next couple days - as if we need any more - so to try and cheer myself up, I was cruising through some photos when the weather was little warmer. I came across a bunch of shots that I had done for James Madison University as part of a stock-project during the fall semester, then I realized that they were run on the homepage - so there's one of the screenshots of the page from that time.

See, what's interesting about this is that these folks really do work with all of the equipment - from the test-tubes, to the super-refrigerator, even to the wanna-be-welding-mask - but not that day. They were really just humoring me for the sake of the photos. That seems to be a trend that will never go out of style.

You wouldn't know it from the photo above that there's 22 inches of snow on the ground. I would. Not only that, but the homeowner knows it all too well - her car was crushed by her car-port, which collapsed under the weight of the snow. Sheesh.

Anyway, I just liked that photo - that's why I decided to post it. You'd think I used lights coming from the right, as seen by the shadows coming from the objects near the fireplace - but I didn't, it's all exposure fusion. The shadows are from the natural light shining in through the windows - can't do much about that.

Onto the snow:

See, it's crazy out there!

So even though my assistant and I took over 5,000 photos that Saturday - the shot above was the shot of the day for me. It wasn't forced, it wasn't unnatural - it was barely even staged. We got Natalie to take a seat on the bench and it just came together. Megan (my wife, also known as 'the boss') is off to the left with the softbox, just inches out of the frame. You can really see the light's impact on Natalie's face, dress, and flowers - it creates a really nice shadow on skin, gives the dress a soft gradient, and does the same for the flowers. Because the softbox is small (I think it's only 12x12), it doesn't define the light int he rest of the environment.

When there isn't a great background to work with, I always try and make it symmetrical as not to cause a distraction, then try and get rid of it. In this case, I intentionally over-exposed those windows so the viewer looks at what they're supposed to - the guys - and not look at what's distracting - the background.

Dancing shots are a lot harder to get than you'd expect. Well, that's not true - good dancing shots are a challenge. Most are blurry or out of focus - if you do a get a good shot off, it's probably of people looking all funky and whatnot. Face it, dance-moves aren't often flattering when they're captured in a single frame. Limbs flailing, funny faces, you name it. Like I said, it's challenging, but that's what's so fun about the process!

This was a really nice kitchen to photograph. Simple, not extravagant, very functional - just a really nice kitchen.

There's no complicated lighting scenario here - it's all pretty plain. The story here is actually about a memory card - a corrupted memory card. Yeah, that's right, I actually had a memory card go bad on me. The brand will go unnamed, but I called up their tech support and asked politely for a refund, and they gladly gave it to me seeing as how their product didn't fulfill its end of the bargain. Anyways, this is the exact spot card went down. I had just taken my first set of exposures, then the card died, I panicked, then replaced the card immediately. I'm not a superstitious person or anything, but I made sure the card didn't get near any of my other equipment, just to be safe.

Same kitchen, different angle. It's not often I get to shoot vertical, due to the restrictions in real estate MLS systems, but this one called for it. The only part I'm not a huge fan of in this shot is the glare on the hardwood floor. Just like over-exposed windows, glare is a necessary evil. It not only shows you where and how bright the light is coming in, it also shows you the texture of your floor - whether it's flat or glossy. You can always cut down the reflection with a circular polarizer, but you'll never really eliminate it if you're using exposure fusion or some sort of HDR method for creating interior photographs.

What a view, right? Shooting here was amazing - the view never got old.

See, what makes this shot work so well is the sunset. You're probably saying to yourself, 'I don't see a sunset', and you'd be correct - you don't see it, but it's still there. The actual sun set way-off to my left (you can tell by the variety in the blue sky, left to right). But we're still not talking about why the sunset made this picture yet - it's the pink in the clouds. That color was created by the setting sun and lasted literally 2 minutes - then it was gone. The shot only took a few seconds to create (bracketed 7 frames for exposure fusion in post-production), but the setup was hefty. Setting up the camera and tripod, filling the pool to the infinity-edge (it previously was down about 4 inches), cleaning the pool, cleaning the area, wetting-down the stone, and last but not least, waiting for that magic moment.

This one wasn't as magical, but it was still pretty neat-lookin'. Shooting four mansions in 10-days doesn't sound like hard work, but when one of those mansions is booked year-round, it means I get to shoot between rentals. Yeah - 8,000 square feet and 14 different views between 10 AM and 3 PM - following the housekeepers after they finish each room. I'm just lucky that turnover day brought me a nice blue sky to work with.

No, I didn't paint this beautiful piece of art - and artist named Kerry Minnion did - I gave it a digital life. This sort of thing can't be scanned in as it's 60-some by 30-some inches, not exactly scannable material.

If anyone out there has dealt with photographing paintings, then you'll know that it's not about holding a camera up to painting and clicking the button. There's more to it than that, much more, if I may say so. Want to know how much more? Alright, let's talk about it.

I didn't take a picture of the gear I used, but you'll need the following and the reasons why:

• Tripod: Essential piece of equipment for photographing artwork. You'll actually spend as much time leveling the tripod as you will balancing your lights. It is imperative that you place the camera directly in the vertical and horizontal center of the painting so both the edges and the content aren't distorted. If you mess this part up, you're going to spend a long time correcting the distortion, and you might not even be able to fix it, which means you have to start all over again.
• Camera with manual settings: Yeah, a DSLR will probably be your best bet - but there are a few point-and-shoot cameras out there that allow you to manually control the aperture and shutter speed. Crank that aperture down to around f/8-f/11 (depends on where the sweet-spot of your particular lens is - you don't want diffraction, so don't go overboard) for sharpness.
• Lights: Notice how I didn't say you needed a camera with the ability to fire off-camera lights? That's because you don't need one - that's how I did it, but you can always use hot-lights or even lamps. Yup, lamps. As long as all of the bulbs are identical in their color temperature, you're good to go. Just match the color temperature of the bulbs in-camera and you'll be fine.
• Distance: This one's free, but sometimes hard to come-by. You need to separate yourself from the painting as much as possible. Put it this way, the closer you are to the painting, the more barrel-distortion you're going to create. If you have an 18-50mm lens, zoom-out to 50mm and find your place in the room.
• Software: Find yourself some photo-editing software when you're done shooting and chop-away those edges. If you framed it correctly, it should take a few seconds. If you goofed, it's going to take much longer.

There's your materials-list. How about some of the process?

Notice how washed out the color is with this one? It's bad, really bad. There's even a glare on the left-side of the painting. All-around bad stuff. This is what you get when you take your camera and point it at a painting.

So we essentially turn the lights out, but not in the traditional sense, we increase the shutter-speed to cancel out the ambient light. If you look closely, you can still see some detail (it looks like smudges). That's about right where it should be. Now we have to add some light.

So here's one-light bounced off a white ceiling (you can't do that if the ceiling is any other color) on the right side. We're getting there. You'll notice how the light is perfect in the upper-right corner, then gets weaker as you look towards the lower-left corner. Not quite where we want to be yet, but we're getting closer.

All three lights (left, center, and right) are working their magic - all diffused via the ceiling - are doing exactly what they need to do. After that's done the image needs some contrast and sharpening. Our cameras can't see the dynamic range our eyes can (not yet, anyway) so you need to boost the contrast. You know you've got it when you look at the both the photo and the painting and you don't see a difference - if you do, you're either under or over-compensating. The sharpening is just to add a punch of clarity to the hard edges. Just like with contrast, don't over-do it.

So that's it - it's not rocket-science, but it's also not as simple as pointing and clicking.

This is why you need a good Art Director. I spent some time with Bethany here way back in the beginning on June 2009, got some shots, and even wrote about it on this site. If you go back to that post, you'll notice that this shot didn't make it to my 'top picks'. Now that I look at it, I can't help but wonder why it didn't. I guess that's why we have Art Directors...

Here's a shot that actually made it to my 'top picks' and made it to print. Both of them actually (the little one of the rifle squad). The thing that makes this photo work is the fact that the marching band is way back in the distance - nothing wrong with the marching band, except for the fact that they weren't marching, they were walking. They're way out of focus (intentionally) so you wouldn't know that, unless I hadn't just told you. Doh!

The past few weeks have really flown by - lots and lots of traveling. Virginia, US Virgin Islands, Pennsylvania, Florida (and every state in-between).  While I was away, I received a few questions about the silhouette and the location. It's a 191-foot-long historic covered bridge in Mount Jackson, Virginia. It's a beautiful place to have your engagement portraits done, that's for sure!

So here's the silhouette tutorial I was talking about last time. Enjoy!

This was shot a few years ago, but recently published in Blue Ridge Outdoors.

Silhouettes are not terribly difficult to make - sometimes they're even made by accident. Evaluative/matrix metering attempts to generate an even exposure across the sensor. It has no idea, I repeat, no idea what your subject is. After the initial exposure, adjust your exposure compensation by decreasing it 1/3 stop, then 2/3 stop, then a full stop. Each shot should make the silhouette effect stronger, but it's also making the background dimmer - so it's sort of a happy medium (some tweaking in post may need to be done). The other way to acheive a silhouette is by switching the camera into manual mode and doing the same thing exposure compensation does, just with more knowledge of what shutter speed you're using.

The next post will be about a different silhouette, along with a Lightroom and Photoshop tutorial on how to get the most out of your exposure using those tools. Hint: it involves shooting in RAW.

Say what you want, but exteriors are a challenge to shoot. Unless you are lighting the exterior up at night with a gazillion lights, you have to deal with this crazy thing called 'natural light'. The hard part is learning its patterns (and I'm far, far from having mastered it). Morning light has a certain quality, as does afternoon light (in a negative way), and so does evening light - in fact, every hour that goes by in the day offers a slightly different type of light that can greatly influence the exterior shot.

This one was a sort of perfect storm of light (in my opinion). I had started with the interiors earlier that day, knowing that I had to get a front-shot of the row and that the sun would be hitting the row as it was going down. The reason I say it was a perfect storm was because of three things - the warmth of the light, the cool-blue fall sky, and the clouds. The first two are understandable, but why the clouds? Clouds add subject matter and perspective.

Where'd the clouds go? 

No, they weren't photoshopped out - this is the second day of the shoot.

The reason I like this one is because it shows off the balcony, the decorative elements of the railing, the common-area of the community, and the row across the common-area. The light isn't nearly as cooperative this time around, but it still works.

So Veterans Day isn't until Wednesday - but that's OK.

This team's performance was super-impressive.

No flash, no special equipment - just slap the camera into CH (Continuously High) mode and fire away. I guess there's a little more to it than that, but that's how it feels, anyway.

Something to be aware of is your camera's buffer. Lots of folks go out and buy the fastest, most expensive memory card they can get their hands on and not realize that the buffer may be the bottleneck in CH.

Happy Veteran's Day.

I love Lightroom - it's a great program that makes managing and processing RAW photos a breeze. Until yesterday, I really didn't have much use for the 'develop module' presets that come packed into the software. After exploring them, I fell in love with the Adobe-generated ones and went on to alter 'em to create my own.

The first photo's preset is 'direct positive'. It raises the exposure and the recovery, boosts blacks, increases the s-shape of the tone curve, and boosts some saturation. For all of that, the effect is actually rather subtle - but really, really nice.

This preset is 'aged photo'. You'd think that Lightroom is doing some split-toning, but it isn't. It's altering the camera calibration of the red, green, and blue channels, as well as decreasing the saturation of the blue channel.

The reason I titled this blog post 'Presets that Actually Work' is because, well, just that - they do. When I think 'preset', I typically think things like - 'lame, cheesy, canned, uh…LAME'. It appears that the smart folks over at Adobe were thinking about photographers when they developed these presets, because they aren't any of those things - they're actually pretty great tools.

Selective color can be a pretty neat effect - as long as it's done on the right images, and not overdone...

I think out of 87 picks (the good ones) from the engagement portrait session, only 3 had this effect. It's a great one, don't get me wrong, just don't be 'that guy' using it on every other photo.

Like many things, there are about 100 different ways of creating the effect. Lightroom does it simply in two ways - the adjustment brush and the HSL panel. The adjustment brush was used on the top two, HSL on the third.

Adjustment brush technique is done by using -100 saturation and painting over everything you don't want colorized. You can then go in and create another brush point (is that what they're even called?) and boost some saturation among the colors that are left.

The bottom photo can't be done with this technique due to all the leaves on the ground. Well, I guess you could - only it would take you about a day to select the ones you want. Just select the tones you don't want and drop the saturation down to nothing - that will take care of it. You may need to go back in and paint away some stray tones, but for the most part, you should be good.

The leaves are changing (in case you haven't noticed…) and they make for some pretty interesting subjects. These are fairly similar to the motion-blur images from a few previous posts, only these are a bit more zoomed.

Sort of reminds me of a watercolor painting, without the painting.

No post-processing, just lots of moving and shaking at a long shutter speed.

So I decided to go post something 'people-less' this week.

I was photographing the university's symphony orchestra rehearsal earlier this week - got some good stuff involving people - but I also got some good stuff without people. I don't think there's a great deal of interest in 'people-less' shots for a school, unless they are working on ads of some sort (and even then, they try and throw photos of students), and I didn't want these to go to waste.

Wooden instruments can be incredibly difficult to get in color due to fact that the white balance plays such a key role. Sure, the camera makes an attempt, as does Lightroom, but the hue of the wood is very difficult get 'just right'. If this were a canned shoot, I would calibrate a custom white balance setting in-camera before the shoot really began to make sure the hue of the instrument was recorded correctly.

These have been converted to black and white (obviously) - but not just any black and white: high contrast. There are a number of different ways to pump up the contrast to increase the drama. I did it by using a levels adjustment. You can get even more specific by raising and lowering the luminance of the individual colors. All in all, I like it the way it is.

Fun stuff!

More fun stuff!

So here's how it was done. Look for the bright spots, they kind of give it away:

Essentially, I'm hanging out in the trunk of a moving vehicle while our cyclist is carefully following, trying to hit his narrow mark.

The rig seems more complicated than it is. Two side lights, one top light. Now getting them out there is where it gets cumbersome. The side lights are PVC pipe, 7 feet long, I think, weighed down by sandbags. The top light is a 15-foot painters pole that's been telescoped out to about 11 feet. The strobes are attached via rubber bands - lots of them.

Now that they're out there, they need to be set correctly. First - they all need CTO gels. If you don't gel them, you won't get the natural skin color you so desire. Second - they all need to be zoomed (these are zoomed to 50mm), if you don't zoom the flash head, the spread will be far too wide - especially on the top light. Finally, set your power according to your ambient light. These are all set to 1/4 power - this allowed me to shoot without thinking about recycle times, but also get plenty of power when I needed it. Since all three lights were in hard-to-reach places and time was of the essence, we couldn't stop the car to adjust the power every time we wanted less flash power - that's why you leave yourself some wiggle-room with your aperture to increase or decrease the power of your flash from your camera.

I couldn't tell you for the life of me how fast we were going, but from my perspective, it was fast enough. I'll probably find out later that we were going 7 mph and I was freaked out for nothing. I probably should have been wearing a helmet myself.

What do you get when you combine 2 strobes, 2 CTO gels, and a cloudy sky after the sun went down? This, I guess. Both strobes are snooted to make some nice hard light. The most difficult part of this was shooting at 1/20 of a second without blurring the tree in the background.

Here's another, much farther away, and with the grass lit up a little bit:

The shadows give away the direction on the light, but that's OK, I like it like that - it's sort of like a spotlight-effect.

This last one was shot earlier - much earlier. The strobe freezes the tire while everything else is impacted by the panning. 1/30 sec worked out well - the pan turned out really smooth (very unlike my other 20 attempts!). DSRL = Guess and Check. 

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