You’ll see them used on television interviews…think 60 minutes, the Nightly News with Brian Williams, etc.  These are a few examples of how they are used to add color to the background.

Going counter-clockwise, the top left shows the background being lit by an off camera speedlight, the bottom left is BTS (behind the scene) with the speedlight with an orange gel taped to it and the right image shows the final shot with the orange gel background effect.

This next image uses a purple gel taped to speedlight to light a black background.  This gave a subtle color separation between the black hat and the background.

So if you’re looking to add a little more interests or drama to your shot, think about playing around with these gels.

And also let me make an argument for a wide angle zoom.  Most photography enthusiasts would use a wide angle to take scenic images like the following top left.  But try using it at a different angle – maybe purposefully distort some things like in the very bottom image…whose sexy now?!

If you ever feel a block in your creativity, try pulling out different lenses and think of different ways to use them, i.e. different perspectives, different points of view.

To view a slide show of the opening night dinner for OPUS at the Portland Center Stage, click the following:  OPUS Slideshow

I called upon my good friend, Ted Mishima, for his 20+ years of lighting expertise as a commercial photographer.  Ted is also an talented artist doing AMAZING work with wet collodion plates – old school technology.  Read more about this on his blog.

Some “light bulb” moments for me – which may seem simple in hind sight:

• the beam of light can also be widen and narrowed by moving the light source away from or closer towards your subject – keep in mind you may have to adjust the power of your light source to keep your desired exposure (e.g. shutter speed and aperture).
• flipping the speedlight to a vertical position can give you a narrow vertical light source (like a strip light) – boy did I feel dumb after that!

Ted is a very good instructor for he asks you questions for you to figure things out, e.g. “Where do you want your light to fall and where do you want your shadows?  What do you do with your lights to achieve this?”  I had to tease him sometimes because he was so very serious and stern – very Japanese father-like!  But nonetheless- a very good teacher.  Thank you Teddy-san!

WRAPPING UP:

This composite contains some highlights from 2010 from my old iPhone (2007) with no retouching.  Getting rejuvenated by breathing in the ocean air and playing fetch with Riley last February at Cannon Beach.  Spectacular sunrise witnessed in March while Derek was on a business trip to MN.  Starting our 10 year anniversary trip to Ixtapa with Starbucks at PDX.  Beautiful evening light reflected in ponds in Riverplace Marina Park.  Scary stormy clouds on walk with Riley in May.  So many lives lost somberly represented in this installation for Memorial Day in Tom Mc Call Park.  When car meets streetcar in SW Waterfront.  Braving the cold winter air to see tree in Pioneer Place.  Shark tank at Golden Nugget in Las Vegas.  Finally getting to see snow – Mt. Charleston, NV – Riley would have loved this!

MY 2010 PET PROJECT

Since March, I’ve been taking this view of downtown Portland from the same spot off the Steel Bridge whenever Riley and I went for our walks.  The time of day was usually between 10-11am in the mornings, rain or shine.  The images came from my 2007 iPhone camera (I didn’t want to carry my heavy SLR while walking the dog) and are not retouched.

The images were placed in an “album” in iPhoto then exported into a folder – Share<Export selecting “File Export” tab, “Full-size images” checked and click export.  Now remember, I’m walking the dog so I’m not using a tripod and not marking the exact same spot on the bridge so there were variations from image to image. So I had to figure out how to match up all the images so they wouldn’t be jumping around in the video.

Using PS CS3, use File<Automate<Photomerge – for Layout, check “Auto”and for Source Files, select “Folder” for “Use:” and hit “Browse” to find the folder of images exported from iPhoto then hit “okay”.  Photoshop puts all the images together as layers in one image and will automatically align the images to match up (as best as possible).   The next step was to crop to make sure each image filled the space for the video.  This was how I matched up all the images into the video.  If there is another method, please share.

My version of Photoshop doesn’t allow me to bring in sound using the “animation” feature so I needed to do this using a different software.  Once I had the images in the various layers matched up, I used File<Scripts<Export Layers to Files and create a folder to hold these images as jpgs to use to create the video.  Using FotoMagico, I was able to sync the song with my images.  At the very beginning of the project, I only had one song in mind…Classical Gas by Mason Williams.

Click here to view the embedded video.

LOOKING FORWARD:

The beginning of a new year always holds such hope and optimism.  May this coming year be filled with joyous and memorable events for you and yours!  Happy New Year!

Here’s an example.  The following images were taken with the exact same settings from the same angle and shot within 30 seconds of each other. The top image has a shadow across the top. The bottom image is clean – no shadow.

Care to take a guess?  Solution at end of this post. Here is some background information:

Exposure: 1/80s @ f/5.6

Focal Length: 70mm

ISO: 400

Camera Body: Nikon D200 with Pocket Wizard attached to hot shoe

Lens: Nikon 28.0-70.0mm f/2.8

Lighting: Nikon SB900 and SB800 on tri-flash bracket on light stand with shoot through umbrella.  Pocket Wizard attached to SB900.  SB800 set on “SU-4″ with sensor pointing towards SB900.  Both speedlights are connected to Quantum Turbo 3.

Think its the shutter?  One might expect to see this shadow across all the images rather than sporadically, no?  Rebekah Johnson guessed correctly – one of the speedlights is not firing in sync with the other.  I took the whole set up to Pro Photo where we tried several different set ups and found that when the speedlight was set to SU-4 it sometimes had a delayed flash following the speedlight triggered with the Pocket Wizard.  Rob at Pro Photo tried to help me find a “cheap” way to “daisy chain” the two speedlights.  Made sense since they’d be so close to each other, right?  One would think that there should be a way to connect the two speedlights through the PC connection but such a device doesn’t exist (hint: new product for a genius out there to develop?)  After trying several devices, e.g. radio poppers, we had no success.  The conclusion is to bite the bullet and get another Pocket Wizard to attach to the second speedlight to assure that they all trigger at the same time.  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  I’ll take the $170 solution to buy a Pocket Wizard anytime over spending $3-5K for a new camera body.

I was having a good photo biz chat with my friend Denyce of Something Blue Photography.  I told her I felt like being in a batting slump.

I can always depend on Denyce to give it to me straight…”You’re just trying too hard.”  She told me to stop over-thinking and just let instincts take over.  Denyce has been in the professional photography business for 20+ years and I respect and value her opinion.

I did a little “batting practice” with her daughter So-So, who is such a natural.  Photographing her is like someone pitching you a big fat ball right over the plate that you can hit into the stands to build up your confidence.

I’ve been off a little over a week to spend some time with my Mom.  We went to visit family in Honolulu where I “pigged out” on all the foods that you can’t get here on the Mainland.  I’m well rested and ready for my Fall sessions!  It’s post-season play-off time and I’m ready to bring on my A-game!  Also needing to work off the 5 extra pounds that I put on this trip!

Thank you Denyce and So-So!

For this home portrait session, I used the big bay windows to provide the back light separating the back of the doggies’ head from the leopard print background.  A speedlight  shooting through an umbrella on a light stand is placed just off to camera right.   Milan get ready for these two adorable hotties!

Ten Tiny Taiko Dances

June 19, 2010 | 3pm + 8pm
June 20, 2010 | 2pm
Winningstad Theatre, 1111 SW Broadway

Ten different choreographers—in genres from traditional to contemporary—taking up the challenge of creating dances for a tiny stage with taiko as the heartbeat. Portland Taiko, working with celebrated choreographer Mike Barber, brings together the best in creative energy of dance from the West Coast, with the soul of taiko in this concert of world premieres.

For you techies, here is the set up to create this image:

So here’s my thought process for this image.  I wanted to show the buildings and sky in the background as well as show “me” and the products in the foreground.

I first metered for the light coming from the window in the background of the image so the buildings and sky would not get “blown out” (i.e. overexposed) in the final image.  Unfortunately, my light meter was in the “shop” so I had to use the meter in the camera body (not the best method but will do in a pinch).  Wanting to keep a good depth of field (i.e. a wider range of keeping “things” in focus), I set the aperture to f/8 and adjusted the shutter speed until my meter indicated the correct exposure (i.e. middle of the scale).

If I just stayed at this setting, everything in the foreground (including me) would be dark.  So the next part to consider was how to light the foreground.  A Nikon D200 was set up on the tripod and an SB900 Speedlight was placed on the light stand with a shoot through umbrella.  The set up image doesn’t show that the light and umbrella was actually placed higher just above my head pointing slightly downward.   Having the light set up “off camera”, I avoided glare off the products and placing the light slightly above me created a flattering shadow line (see below my chin).

Ta Da!  Let me know what you think!

So for you techies:  To get this shallow depth of field, I used my 50mm lens at f/2.0 at ISO 100 shooting at 1/320 sec.  Used ambient light from window off to camera right.  As I’ve suggested in past posts, its not the camera body but the use of fast fixed lenses that can create these shallow depth of field artsy looking images.  Amazing what it does with a simple subject like this little tomato on the vine!