Canon 1D Mark III, 24-70 F/2.8, f/8.0, iso 250, 1/50
For Valentine's Day I'm bringing back an image from an engagement shoot a few years ago. I haven't done many weddings, but this was one of the best. I had just met them minutes before this shot, and you can see we all had a pretty good connection right off the bat. It's not work when it is this easy!
Have a nice Valentine's day everyone!
Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70mm F/2.8, f2.8, 1/80, iso 4000
In a little bit of a melancholy mood tonight. Posting on Weds night, because I have an early day tomorrow. Listening to Heart's Red Velvet Car over and over (check it out on Heart's website.) On the right is one of the most important ladies in my life. Thinking of you, honey.
Canon 5D Mark II, 35mm F/1.5, f/1.2, 1/1250, iso 100
Here is another image from the Angels and Demons shoot I did back in August. This is the lovely Stephanie. Several of us were taking pictures of her from the side, with gorgeous clouds behind her. I stepped back and tried to come up with something different (remember this was my first model shoot).
I thought of this OOF idea and opened up the aperture. I waited until she looked at me. To be honest I don't remember if I asked her to close her eyes, or if I caught her blinking, but it works for me. One of my model moments. I enjoy this shooting so much!
Canon 5D Mark II, 14mm F/2.8, f/6.3, 1/15th, iso 1240
My wife and I visited the new Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento this week. The Crocker has been around since the turn of the last century, but they recently added a huge new facility, a very modern one.
Our main objective was to see a personal collection of Wayne Thiebaud. Wayne is an internationally known painter, and just turned 90! He is Sacramento's best known artist. I had never seen his works in person. Suffice to say I was pretty blown away.
I thought about him when blog commenter Cathy remarked that my aerial shot had a Thiebaud feel in this post.
Which is also how you feel when standing next to Mr. Big here! No, Mr. Big is not a Thiebaud piece. Some other fun artist. For shots like this, I put my camera down on the ground and just fire some shots, review my framing and adjust. I'm not getting down on the ground for this! I thought this one was kind of fun, and I like the other gallery viewer on the right for scale.
Click on the continue link or Mr. Big will smash you to bits! Actually, I'll show you a couple Thiebaud pieces...
Canon 5D Mark II, 85mm F/1.2, f/2.2, 1/6400, iso 2500
Today we have the lovely Rachel, whom I met on my second modeling shoot. It was working with her that I realized "hey, I can do this!" I had just finished working with Tina, whom I had met on the first shoot. She and I had a very easy rapport and were walking back to the main gathering spot at the old factory when we encountered Rachel. "No one wants to shoot me!" she pouted!
"I will!" And off we went.
What really felt good was that I knew where I wanted to take her, I knew I wanted to use this toule as a prop. (If you look at my camera settings, you'll see I didn't quite have everything together as I had a much higher ISO than necessary, chalk that up to excitement.) If I recall correctly, her poses were about half me and half her. She definitely has experience.
The other factors working in this shot are the gorgeous window light and of course we have to give proper credit to the amazing 85mm F/1.2. This lens makes everyone look great, even more so when we have some rocking raw material as with Rachel.
As you can tell I'm very much enjoying this new photographic challenge. Combine meeting fun new peopele and photography, hey that's a pretty good thing. I'll email Rachel and tell her to check out this page, so let her know (i.e. comment below!) how you like this shot of her.
Canon 5D Mark II, 85mm F/1.2, f/9, 25 secs, iso 100 + Singh Ray Vari ND Filter
Sometimes you work a shot out in your mind, and you get on location and it just works, exactly like you thought. Right? Well, often not, as a matter of fact. But in this case, it did work.
As you know I recently did a shoot at Preston Castle with my Click Monkeys photography group. This place is certified haunted, at least as much as you can do that. In fact, there was a whole club of ghost hunters set to enter the place after us photogs left, let me tell you this is a NERDY bunch!
But back to my image, eh? Knowing about the haunted thing, I decided I would try some light writing. I brought the Singh Ray Vari ND filter that I have used to shut out light for longer exposures of water. I set this handsome model (son Nick!) in the light. I dialed in the filter so I had about a 10 second exposure.
The plan was to trip the shutter then run through the scene waving my flashlight holding hand like some crazy person. In my frst couple attempts I found that I couldn't get enough writing done in 10 secs, and my flashlight wasn't strong enough.
Fortunately another photog had a more powerful one. I dialed in more light blocking with the filter until I got an exposure of 25 seconds. Told Nick to hold REAL STILL. And then did my writing thing. I had on purpose worn a white shirt so that in case the sensor did record me at all, I would look a little ghost like. I think it caught me just a bit by the window. Apply some vignette in LR and here we are.
All in all, I'm very happy with the results, and appreciate that other photographer helping me out!
Today we return to the recent Preston Castle shoot, which was featured in last Monday's new Model Monday series. I don't think I mentioned last week that I brought my niece Megan with me. She both wanted to model, and to shoot other models as well.
She spied this stairwell in the basement, and wanted to pose, but the place gave her the creeps, she said. (Perfect! I thought!) There was this amazing natural light, my favorite kind, coming in through the window. What do you think of the pose? I like it a lot, but it was not creative genius. The stairs were so filthy that I said "sit on your haunches - let's try that."
I do think this is one of my best portraits ever. I think the uncomfortable nature of the place really helped with her intense expression. Great model and setting! Let me know how you like this one. Thanks for your visit, as always.
Canon 5D Mark II, 85mm F/1.2, f/2.5, 1/640, iso 800
Model Monday? Well, I went on another model shoot this weekend, with the Click Monkeys, a Sacramento based photography group I belong to. The venue was Preston Castle, which you may remember from a series I posted here on the blog. (Here is the first post of that series if you want to go back to review them.)
I know I'm more known for nature images, macros, still lifes... But I'm just having SO MUCH FUN shooting these models! Now I'm getting into the swing of things and designing my own scenes, like this one. A group of photographers were shooting Kayla just kind of standing by the building. I looked to my right and saw these stairs going down below the building and said "hey, what about something more sinister?" Kayla got that flash in her eyes and we went over there. I came up with this pose, and she was good enough to go for it.
I really like her expression, you have to try to decide is she's alive or not... I'm leaning toward not alive.
The image looked very good SOOC, but I decided to increase the creep factor and give it a moonlit kind of look. I began with a Lightroom preset called B&W Creative - Cyanotype, and went from there.
So thank you Kayla for being such a good sport, you are a joy to work with (this was the second time I got to work with her), not to mention beautiful.
Comments anyone? What do you think of this image?
Canon 5D Mark II, 85mm F/1.2, f/1.8, 1/6400, iso 100
Having a little fun today with one of my Megan shots. She and I were goofing around with her modeling all over this BMW convertible. It was a really good time. Several shots I like a lot.
I decided to take this one and see how it would look with a "high key" treatment. In a high key image, you are removing most of the color, and blowing out all but the darkest areas. So I began with a preset called "Street Life - Harder." BTW, presets are not magic, they just automatically move around the sliders in the Develop pane. You can do all of this yourself, but presets get you to a starting point more quickly. From there, I just increased the exposure a bit to create even more of a blown out effect.
I usually only show the SOOC version of an image on Topaz Tuesday, but today I'm going to show you the original on the continue link below. The finished version above is quite radically different. Click on continue if you'd like to see it and/or comment on today's image. Thanks as always for visiting my blog.
Canon 5D Mark II, 35mm F/1.4, f/2.8, 1/1600, iso 100
Well, I have saved my favorite shot for last. I like many of these, but this one is the most dynamic in many ways. Love the posing. Amazing sky. And the mask on Thomas just really makes it for me. Not really that well planned, I was just in this spot when Thomas came into view. Grabbed about five frames. Life is good.
For processing, I once again used the saturation sliders to take away all but the red and orange channels. It's a nice effect. Thanks for taking this tour with me this week, I guess I owe everyone a few nice landscape shots now eh?
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