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!