Hi everyone-

So one of the things I hoped to accomplish in last weeks Location People II workshop was to push the limits of my photography. And the workshop did not disappoint on opportunities to do so. Bryan Allen and his crew delivered each and every day.

On Friday night we shot at two different locations, the Time Warp Tea Room and the Body Graffix Tattoo shop. I'll post some images from the Tea Room in the future.

So going into shooting at the shop I excited about what we might be able to do. When we got there we found we were limited in where we could shoot and in how long we could shoot. Because this was a working shop there were areas that were cleaned that we were not allowed to touch. This created a bit of difficulty in how to shoot in the small tattooing booth.

Also there were a lot of people in the area we were shooting making it tough to move around.

When we first started shooting I was using a 10-20mm lens but quickly found that it was not accomplishing what I had hoped and switched to the only other lens I had available the 50mm 1.4.

This limited me to tighter shots at closer range but I think in the end it really worked out pretty well. In these images are Ryann and Cesar as well as the tattoo artist.

Initially we used a beauty dish as the key light but because of the limitations on where we could use it we abandoned it for the ambient fluorescent light. This too was a good reason to switch to the 50 1.4 as I picked up a few stops of light.

We shot for about 15 min and wrapped up. The last 5 min of the shoot were the most productive after everyone dialed into what they should be doing and shooting. It went fast but was very cool.

Have a great weekend!

Hi everyone-

Well the big day has arrived for Carolyn and Floyd. Today I will be shooting their wedding and reception. I am really excited to shoot with them because not only are they friends but because they have such cool attitude towards the photography and have chosen such a cool venue for their reception.

We'll be shooting at the Antique Automobile Club of America Museum in Hershey, PA. This is a really cool location for a shoot and I can't wait!

So today's image was shot at the train station in Harrisburg, PA. Another very cool spot to shoot at. In this image Floyd is working his mojo on Carolyn. It was lit with a single beauty dish and ambient light. Post processing involved cleaning up unneeded details and local contrast boosting as well as a slight color bump.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Today's post was shot on Tuesday during Carolyn and Floyd's e-shoot. We had a great time and shot at a bunch of different locations. There will be a ton of images to come from this shoot so stay tuned! Don't forget to check out the SKYWATCH BLOG and see great skies from around the world.

In the comments from the post yesterday Larry asked me to talk a little about how the image was created. So here is a bit of information on how it was created.

First off here is the SOOC image:



This is a diagram of the basic set up:



So here is the story- Over the past three years Floyd purchased and restored this vehicle. So while we were shooting he asked if I would shoot some images of him and the car. We were at the Harrisburg Train and Bus Station which is a fantastic location to shoot.

The car was parked outside of the main entrance of the building. As you can see in the images there are a lot of lights that hang under the canopy. I wanted the light that I was going to use to look natural like it might be coming from one of those lights.

To do that I used a beauty dish with a diffuser on it to soften it up a bit. I had my assistant Kayla hold it up as high as she could so it would kinda of shine down on the car. She was at about a 45 degree angle from the passenger side front corner of the car.

That was it. We took several shots and adjusted the location and intensity of the light.

Once I got the image back and on the computer I went to work created the look I wanted. It had to have a vintagey feel to it so I altered the color a bit by desaturating and warming it up slightly.

Once that was done I removed some of the background objects that I didn't like. The rest of the work was local contrast adjustments to bring out the details.

It ended up being a pretty simple image to pull off and finish.

Here is the final image (which is different than yesterday's image.)

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I hope everyone is doing well this morning. If your in our neck of the woods...stay inside! it is hazy, hot and humid here and when I say hot were talking 90's...no time to be outside...lol I'm taking advantage of the weather to try and get a bit caught up on editing and posting today.

So on to today's image...

I am continuing with the shoot we did with Savanah and Shay along the Rocky Mountain Front west of Choteau, MT. As I said yesterday we rushed to get to this spot in time to get some shots before the sunset went away and we got clobbered with a thunderstorm.

Initially we were looking to shoot the girls with a nice sunset in the background, but as the weather rapidly developed we realized it wouldn't be the case. As a matter of fact if we didn't do something quickly we wouldn't get any more images that night period.

So initially we set out with a beauty dish as our light source and me shooting a 70-200mm 2.8 on my D700. We used pocket wizards to trigger the light.

My initial intention was to get the girls walking along a prairie road with a dramatic sunset behind them. But several factors just weren't working out. The skies were rapidly changing, the distance was to great and made the girls look way to small in the image and the light wasn't really believable.

Since I had initially been shooting from on top of a vehicle We moved the vehicle closer to keep the leading lines of the two tracks that made up the 'road'. But it just wasn't working.

After abandoning the vehicle I was shooting down at the level of the girls and things were looking a bit better. The shot was still just not looking right.

At that point Bryan suggested switching to his camera. He was shooting with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 lens. I switched over, set the lens to 24mm, got the exposure dialed in and we suddenly had a much better image.

We now had the girls as the main subject and not the sky, which was the case the original set up.

We finished out the shoot this way and I am really happy we did. Tomorrow I'll talk more about the actual set up and lighting set up.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I decided to step away from the Vegas images today after working on some new processing of older images in Photoshop over the last few days.

Today's images are of Jack. They were shot in Savannah Georgia on a hotel balcony. The original image was posted some time ago but after revisiting them in photoshop I thought we'd take another look at it.

Some background on how the image was shot... It was a bright sunny day in Savannah and we were on a balcony that was in full shade but it was open. so basically the building was to the viewers left and the sun was overhead of that. The viewers right side was the open balcony. So while it was bright and sunny we were in an open shade. Here is a SOOC shot to show the ambient light in the area where we were shooting:



Jack was sitting on a chair on the balcony. To the viewers left was a hotel room window and the curtains were closed in it.

The image was shot hand held using a Nikon D300 at ISO 200, 1/250 sec at f/22. The lens was a Nikon 80-400vr at 160mm. The flash unit was an Alien Bees head with a silver reflector on it. I can't completely remember the set up but it was a few feet away at a bit of a reduced power. I'm sorry I don't remember exactly what it was.

So that's the set up. Here is the SOOC image:



As you can see that is somewhat flat and not to exciting. So Since I have been at home pretty much under the weather I decided to see what I could do with the image. I'll give you a brief explanation of what went on here but it's pretty basic because I am really bad at writing down everything that I did. I promise I'll get better with that and come up with a good way to pass that info along.

So that being said, I first off made some global adjustments and set the white and black points.
Then I smoothed the skin a bit with a surface blur.
Then I created masks for the highlights and shadows. Here I did a ton of work.
Then a few more curves adjustments.
After that it was all pretty much experimental. Blending modes, saturation, masks, this is where I am bad at keeping track.
Here is the final image in a color version:


Of course I wanted to see what it looked like in black and white:



And then in a selenium toned version:



I am not sure which I like the best. But I think they all work pretty good in bringing out the character of Jack's face.

I'd love to hear what you think. Which is your favorite? And does anyone have any questions, or thoughts on how to improve anything? It's all a learn as you go process so I'd love to hear your comments.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Today's image was shot back in September while in Savannah. It was a bit more difficult of a shot to pull off as we were coordinating Abby and three assistants all moving down a sidewalk.

Abby was walking and when she hit her mark was to turn around as if someone had actually called out her name. The three assistants were waking a long side in the grass. One had an SB800, one a SunBounce reflector to which the flash was aimed, and one a large scrim to hold back the real sun a bit.

It was a fun shot to create and pull off and we had a fun time doing so.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Hope you are all having a great Friday! I am really excited for the weekend to arrive because it's the first in a long time that we do not have any plans. How nice it'll be to catch up on things around the house and just hang out with the family.

Today's images are the final shots from the bridal shoot I did in Atlantic City this past weekend. I wanted to try out some new skills I learned from John Michael Cooper last month in Las Vegas.

This is a single flash multiple exposure technique that John has been using quite successfully. In the end it creates a very cool somewhat surreal look. This shot is actually a compilation of 16 different images that I shot while exposing different parts of the scene with the flash. The best parts were then blended together in Photoshop. After that a little more post and ta-da a cool new image.



The other cool part about creating shots this way is it can be done at any time of the day and under any lighting conditions. The next image was shot as we were setting up for the main photograph. I wanted to get an idea of the composition and get the set up correct before we started shooting. and of course Beth was standing in 30 degree temperatures and wind so she wanted me to get it right the first time too.

As I was downloading images I found the next shot and thought I would post it so you could have a reference for the time of day and lighting conditions when we were shooting.

These are a lot of fun and I hope to be shooting more over the next few weeks.

Have a great day!