Category Archives: Photography around SoCal

Image of the week #19

May 13, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

I am still loving shooting with my X-Pro 1, this weeks image is a statue at the Huntington Library, this statue resides between two galleries. Taken with the 35mm f1.4 at f8 and ISO 200. Converted to black and white with Silver Efex Pro 2.

 

Image of the week #18

May 6, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Long exposure photography can yield some interesting images even during the day, this image used a Lee Big Stopper, 10 stop ND filter in front of the Fuji 18mm lens at f16 and ISO 200 with the wonderful Fuji X-Pro 1 camera. This yielded a 15 second exposure of the incoming surf at Treasure Island in Laguna Beach, CA. There are some nice tidepools but you have to watch the incoming waves as the tide comes in, they can catch you by surprise. I did not get wet on this trip, but there were a few people there that did not watch the wave patterns! Several large waves arrived during this exposure and that leads to the misty water look during this exposure and overcast skies made for a nice even light. Hope you enjoy it.

 

Image of the week #17

April 30, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Spring is a fun time of year, here in L.A. it can mean anything from hot spells, to rain, to grey overcast skies, and this year it was a little strange. First we got hardly any rain during our normal rainy season and had heat instead, the lack of rain and heat really messed up the normal wildflower prospects. So you have to wonder to other places to find some flowers. This weeks image is from the Huntington Library gardens. They have a very nice cactus section and a lot of them were in the processing of blooming.  This weeks image was also taken with my new camera, the Fuji X-Pro 1. I really like this new camera, a very nice and compact, well at least more compact than the dslr I normally use. Great optics, great image quality and all packaged in an interesting retro kind of case. A nostalgic trip back to rangefinder type cameras, although not a rangefinder per se, the handling is very similar. Great camera. Since Adobe has not released the raw file processing ability I have been using the in camera jpgs and it is capable of generating great images. This weeks image was taken with the Fuji 35mm f1.4 lens and using the Velvia film simulation mode. I bracketed the exposure and blending the files using exposure fusion. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Image of the week #16

April 23, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

I was watching this sunset and really liked the clouds and the layers so I grabbed the Fuji X-Pro1 and fired off a few shots. Originally I was hoping that the setting sun would illuminate the clouds and light up the sky, but it turned out it was a more subtle sunset. Even though my original thought was to get something more dramatic I am quite pleased with this sunset as the storm clouds were beginning to break up and the storm was clearing. Taken in Laguna Beach, CA. Lens was an 18mm. Enjoy.

 

Image of the week #15

April 16, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Spring is here, flowers are out and the weather is definitely getting warmer, and warmer. Since we seem to go into extremes, cold then hot, it can make it rough on finding spring flowers. So when the wildflowers are not producing, the gardens get worked. This is from Descanso Gardens, they always have a nice display of tulips.  The was taken in a patch that was partially shaded and what I did was accentuate the shadows and the highlighted areas.  The translucent appearance of the tulips when backlit caught my eye. Taken with a Canon 5DmarkII and 70-200mm f4 at f4 and 163mm. Enjoy.

 

Portraits

March 13, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Portraits: a lot of photographers make their living taking them but they are a subject I seem to not do very often, so I have set out to change that a bit. Part of my quest has also involved lighting and learning how to light without relying on natural light. I usually prefer natural light but it does not always cooperate when you need it. I think I am finally feeling a bit more comfortable about using flash and have a better understanding in how to use it and how to set it. I had a lot of previous misconceptions and always used to rely on the camera to set all the flash settings, and I often found out that was not optimal. Yes it did light the subject but often in a way I did not find appealing so I am slowly getting more familiar with how to control it. Manual control is your friend!

Portraits are hard for me, mostly because of lack of experience I think. I also am a relatively shy person especially with people I do not know. This last weekend I tried to take the hardest portrait of all…. the self-portrait. This is difficult for a lot of reasons, primarily the subject and the operator are on the same side of the lens, which makes controlling the camera a bit difficult. One option is to use a remote and a self timer and just start guessing. Or have a stand in to use for composing and framing and focusing and then do the footwork to take the image.  The option I chose was to use my Motorola Xoom tablet! There is a nicely done application from the Android Market called DSLR Controller and it works great for controlling the camera. I was able to hold the tablet in my hand while in front of the camera and see the live view of what the camera was seeing. This allowed me to focus, change exposure, take images and review them and either delete them or let them stay on the memory card. This setup actually made it fun and left me to play with the lighting and the exposure. Of course the subject matter I was stuck with and I did not have to entertain or relax the subject. Here is one of the attempts that I liked.

 I had my camera setup on a tripod and the Xoom tablet attached via the usb cable, so I was able to focus and control the exposure and camera settings from the tablet while I was staring into the camera lens, how cool is that? I used two speedlights, the first was off to my right and fairly high up, this 580exII had a Honl travel softbox with a warming gel, set at about 1/2 power. Behind me was another flash that had a small grid and a purple gel. The grid made for a small spotlight effect, I wanted to create some feel of separation from the background. A very simple and easily transportable setup.

Below are a few more examples of portraits that I have made using a similar setup, but I was behind the camera this time, this was from a class I took on using off camera flash.

 

So where does this leave me? Well I am getting the technical aspects down but what else is there? I am quite happy with these, but there is always room for improvement. That is the great and interesting thing about photography is that it is a constant challenge.

The team at Craft and Vision, who publish some really excellent ebooks, have come out with an ebook dealing with portraits. It is written by David duChemin, who takes some fabulous portraits. Here is a shot of the cover, and it is called “Forget Mugshots  10 steps to better portraits”

 

This book  is not meant to cover the technical aspects of taking a portrait, it gives you some insight in how to get a portrait that is attractive and has a sense of emotion.  This is all about how to make a compelling and natural looking portrait. Things like engaging your subject to make them relax, how to get the person to open up and act natural. There are some interesting and compelling things to try, exercises to help the photographer break out of the mold of standard cut and dry portraiture. He also shows some examples and talks about the methods he uses to break down the barriers. A lot of what he says will help you break out of the mold and step away from conventional thinking to apply creativity and create portraits that you and your subject will both enjoy. David duChemin has a really down to earth manner of writing and is really good at stimulating thinking about improving your own vision, I find him to be a good motivational author.

This ebook is available for the nominal price of $5 and if you order it before March 17 you can get it for $4 using the code: “Mugshots4” when you check out. Click here to visit Craft And Vision.  You will also find a lot more useful and informative ebooks there. Well worth checking out some of the titles. If you do decide to purchase 5 or more ebooks enter the code “Mugshots20” and save 20%. Remember these codes expire at midnight on March 17.

I hope that this will get others to look into doing portraits and I am always happy to answer questions, and if you want to have your portrait taken….please feel free to contact me. Thanks.

 

Image of the week #10

March 11, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Well it is hard to believe that 10 weeks have already gone by since the start of the year, time flies so to speak. This week’s image is of a stack of railroad wheels that are now scrap that were sent back for repair/service. This open air yard had hundreds of these wheel sets, most with recent dates on them. On the premises are some large buildings where they seem to work 7 days a week on these wheels. It is impressive to see how massive they are and I know I could not get one to budge, so literally there are tons of them at this location. I have no other information on what they do or how they repair them, but the wheels themselves make for interesting subjects. These are located in Mojave, Ca. This was taken with a Canon 5DmII and a Zeiss 35mm f2 lens, and processed in photomatix, lightroom and then turned to black and white using Silver Efex Pro 2. I think the border really adds to the feel of this image, and the late day light made for some long soft shadows. It is hard to get an idea of size but I am sure most of you have seen railroad cars so that might help give some scale.  Hope you enjoy it.

Railroad wheel sets

Image of the week #8

February 27, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Orchids! This was taken at the Los Angeles Arboretum, and is a stack of 12 images to get the all of the orchids into focus at one time. So 12 different images were taken and stacked together only using the pieces that were in focus. This is one solution to increase the DOF of an image. Taken with a 180mm macro lens at f11. Stacked with Zerene stacker software.

 

Image of the week #7

February 19, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

This weeks image of the week is a learning exercise. Last weekend I took two courses on using speedlight flash on and off camera, this image is practicing what I learned. Most of what I learned from David Honl is applied in this image. The flowers are from my garden and my wife had picked them and had them setup for me when I got home on Valentine’s Day. We had made a decision about not buying flowers for “occasions” such as this, but this was a nice surprise. This image uses 4 flashes all set on manual and all using different power settings. The first flash was overhead and had a grid to focus the light into a small spotlight, there was also a slight warming filter on this flash. Then there are two flashes, one on each side with green filters to had some fill and interesting color, as the top lighting was creating harsh shadows. The background by the way in not “wrinkled” it is merely “textured”, or at least that is what I am stating! Then to add some fill on the front I used another flash with a snooted grid and a green filter to fill the front slightly. It was intended to be a little on the darker side. Overall I am happy with it and it was as I envisioned the project to look like, so I would say that the exercise was a success. It is not a piece of wall art, but I had fun experimenting and it helped cement the concepts that I had learned in the class.

Image of the week #6

February 13, 2012 by admin | Comments Off

Here is an image that is a little outside the norm for me, taken at a class on using flash. The class was specifically how to use speedlights to light a subject, it was actually two different classes, one on Saturday which covered using mostly ettl and on camera flash. Then Sunday was more about using the flash in manual mode and with light modifiers. Both classes also dealt with removing the flash off camera and using it more creatively. This image of Brittany was taken against a wall in shadow from the sun, so it was very even and dull lighting. A single flash with a warming gel was used with a small softbox. It really did give some nice light on the subject reminding me of sunset colors at the the beach. I thought it worked really well and the model was really great to shoot. She had some great poses and was very patient. This shot is almost straight out of the camera, very little editing was done and no cropping. Taken with a Canon 5Dm2 and a 580exII with a Honl 8 inch portable softbox and a CTO gel, 24-105mm lens at 82mm. I was quite happy with both classes and it was through the Julia Dean Photo Workshops, got a lot out of the classes, especially on the Sunday. Julia Dean taught the class on Saturday, Crash Flash I. David Honl taught the Sunday class, Crash Flash II.