In between official 100 portraits shoots, my beautiful friend julia is my willing muse and test subject for setups for upcoming shoots.  Did this one today, inspired by mr zack arias.  thanks for sharing your knowledge and being an inspiration, zack.

60 more days of the 100 portraits project!

I knew I wanted the shot to show the atmosphere, so I had pre-planned to get the shot from the balcony, which was closed that night.  The balcony had small tables lined up around it at a perfect height for Mitch to sit on for placement into the shot. I positioned myself up on a barstool so I could be high enough to shoot down and show both Mitch and the dance floor/stage.

First step: determine the exposure I want for the background:  f3.5 @ 1/25 seems to work well:

next, turn on my sb-900 (on camera), set it to manual mode (1/128 power), and rotate it with the goal of bouncing it off a large window to my right:

first try; aim’s off, not hitting the window at all:

second try; missed the window again

third try; got the aim right, but how about some focus?

fourth try; good, but some moving blue party lights rotated into the shot (which i kinda  liked).  if he’d been looking at camera, this may have been the keeper:

fifth try; got it!

final shot after some Lightroom adjustments:

Total time, about a minute.  It actually took longer to write this post than to do the shot, but I’m very happy with the final results.

Last night I shot the RVAlution dance party in downtown Richmond’s Hat Factory for GRID magazine.  It was a blast–hoop girls, bombshells, glowsticks, and a late night. I hadn’t stayed up until 1am on a weeknight in ages.  Felt a bit of nostalgia, as I was (suprisingly to some) really into the dance scene in my early twenties.

Most of the shots were with my D700 and my 24-70 2.8, with a couple of fisheye shots from my Pentax k10 thrown in for variety. ISO ranged from 1600-6400 all night.  I avoided flash for all shots except the portrait of Mitch, the Hat Factory’s general manager.  For that, I bounced my SB-900 off a large window to the right.

A fun learning experience, and who knows–maybe I’ll become a Tuesday regular…?

more shots here

A tease from an upcoming blog and gallery post.  I was up way past my bedtime last night, but it was worth it.

{Click images for larger versions}

Last week I had the privilege of attending Photoshop World for the 4th time, this time in Vegas. This was by far my favorite, for many reason, another of which I’ll detail in another post in a couple of days.

Photoshop World consists of more than 3 days of classes taught by world-class instructors such as Joe McNally, Zack Arias, and Scott Kelby, just to name a few. There’s also an expo floor, where dozens of photography and technology vendors hawk their wares.

This time, Westcott had a booth set up consisting of 4 sets with their constant lights on and models ready to work. Anyone could walk up, joust for position, and fire away.  It was fun–I’d never shot with hot lights, so it took a little dialing in to get the exposure right. To be honest, I don’t love the lights–I’m used to strobes–but I enjoyed trying them out and feel like I got fairly decent results. Westcott invited everyone shooting to submit their shots to their flickr group to vie to be included in their next catalog.  I’ll probably submit at least one.  Any votes?

Above are my 6 favorites.  All were f2.8, varying shutter speeds to lighten or darken the background, ISO 1250.

Had the opportunity this week to meet and photograph Fran for the upcoming issue of Sports Backers Quarterly.  She has the distinct accomplishment of having participated in at least one marathon in every state–amazing!

We met one evening before her run for a quick profile shot.  It was a very flat lighting scenario, as rain was fast approaching, so I set up an SB-900 with a 1/4 cut CTO on a stand camera left, shooting through a Lumiquest Softbox 3.  Used TTL on my D700, with the pop-up flash acting as commander for the SB-900.  The tiny bit of light added by the SB-900 added just enough to give her face a little bit of dimension and punch without drawing attention to itself as an artificial light source.

18 hours ago my alarm went off so I could go meet a fantastic family at a local track.  They’re training for a half marathon, and are up bright and early a few times a week to run and motivate each other. Took a bunch of portrait and action shots for potential future publication.  A few of my favorites are attached.

Quick hit on the technical details:  for the group shot, I underexposed slightly for the sky, adjusted the white balance to turn the clouds blue, and had a full-cut CTO on my sb-900 firing through a 40″ umbrella camera right.  Had a bare-bulb flash kicking in from the left for a teeny bit of rim light on the girls.

A long day is over, but i’m happy with the way the shots turned out.

Top left is a portrait of Ryan Nobles, and anchor at our local NBC affiliate. This was a natural-light portrait taken while he was on a walk with his family.  Left of him is a portrait of David Neal, a personal trainer at American Family Fitness.  He was positioned in a hallway at the gym, leaning against a large window.  I fired my camera-mounted SB-900 off the wall to the left for fill to cut the harsh shadows produced by the window light.

Below that is an action shot of Ann Rutledge, a local fitness buff.  This action shot was taken around 5:30 in the afternoon along Monument Avenue.  The sun was positioned at 2:00 relative to my camera position, and I used my SB-900 off-camera at 1/8th power to provide fill.  My D700 was mounted on a monopod and set at f/13 at 1/50th shutter speed.  The trick to getting the blurred background is to lower the shutter speed and pan at the same speed your subject is moving.  If  you’re in sync, the focus point of your subject will be sharp while everything else gets some motion blur.  This took about 3 tries to get right (thanks, Ann!)

And finally is a shot of Brittney Popelier, another trainer at American Family Fitness.  This shot was at 1/200 at f/4, with the SB-900 mounted on a stand behind camera, zoomed to 200mm at 1/4 power.

There are more photos in the magazine, so be sure to pick one up!

I recently had the opportunity to get a media pass to shoot a home game for the local USL team Richmond Kickers.  This was not only the first time I’ve shot a soccer match, it was also the first time I’d shot any sporting event, so I was both nervous and excited.

Here’s the equipment I used:  Nikon D700 body, swapping out a 24-120 3.5 and a 300mm f4 lens for action shots, and a Pentax K-7 with a 10-17mm fisheye lens for wide shots.  I kept my shutter speed constant at 1/1000 to freeze the action–this was where the Nikon’s high ISO capability really helped out.

I enjoyed myself, and am eager to do it again.  I did find the fixed zoom of 300mm was a little too long for some of the game, so I’d try a 200-400mm zoom next time.  Post-processing involved some minor sharpening and contrast boost to the pics.

Last week I had the opportunity to photograph a girl’s tattoo.  She was all for it due to the fact that although she’s had it for 10 years, she doesn’t get to enjoy it as much because it’s on her back, and would like to have a nice photo to print and hang.

So we set up in her apartment, using a seamless white paper backdrop rolled out for her to sit on.  Pose inspired by her yoga interests.  AB-800 w/a beauty dish on a boom stand above was the only light source.  Dialed the light down to 1/4 power, camera was 1/160 @ f8.

Post production:  entirely in Lightroom.  Cropped down to remove the edges of the paper, minor white balance adjustment, tweaked the brightness to go as white as possible w/o blowing her skin out.  Raised the overall contrast and boosted luminance and hue of the reds to bring out the robe and the hints of red on her back.

I enjoy shooting tattooed models; they tend to be a little more experimental and open to different ideas, and I’m really happy with the way this one turned out.