A major influence.

Growing up my Dad had a great collection of photo book and magazines and after I was shown how to use an SLR I basically taught myself by reading all of those magazines and books. Now I have a large collection of books and magazines. Over the years I have gone through different styles as I found photographers who's work I liked, Herb Ritts, Norman Seeff, Galen Rowell, Mark Seliger and most recently Joe McNally who literally wrote the book on small flash photography. Back in 1996 I taught myself how you mix natural light and flash outdoors, till I got a hand held light meter I was stuck with the S.W.A.G. (scientific wild ass guess) method of flash metering. When I got one though I was able to create the below image, which won first place in a state wide high school photo contest.

Then came digital, which allowed me to try new things with small flash but it was still hit or miss since I didn't understand that the communication between flash and camera was even more advanced then what I was used to. The image below was my first serious work with balancing gels and white balance.

After having read Joe McNally's book "The Moment it Clicks" and following his blog I have been inspired to add small flashes to my photographic style and haven't been happier with the images I have been able to create. The top image was done with two SB-800's, one clamped to the shelf across from Tommi and the other hidden in the book. The white balance was set for tungsten and no gels on the flashes to keep the overall blue feel going.

Camera: D300

Lens: 17-55mm f/2.8

6th day on.

One of the things I wanted to try doing with this project was to shoot in some locations that people wouldn't normally think of for a photo shoot and the laundry mat is just such a place. We got a lot of strange looks while doing this image. The concept of the shot was Tommi was reading a book while waiting for her laundry to get done, very simple. The lighting set up was also really simple, I placed an SB-800 outside on a stand with a full cut of CTO filter on it. Trying to go for the late afternoon sun look. We tried two full CTO gels but that was just way too orange.

Camera: D300

Lens: 17-55

Another image with Annalise

This one was done with a cardboard snoot on a SB-800 up high camera left pointed at her face and a second SB-800 camera right zoomed to 105mm. I processed the image in Lightroom and then tweaked everything in Photoshop. The yellow tone is from the quadtone setting in Photoshop.

Classic black and white with Annalise

Back in photo school I realized how much could be done with just one light, in fact I did my whole graduation portfolio in the studio with one light. Back then I was the only person in the class who enjoyed shooting with the old Agfa 25. In the studio it was great, I could shoot with my 35 mm and still get images I could blow up to 11x14 without hardly any grain.

These days I still try to keep things as simple as possible. With this shot I worked a small (1x2') softbox with an SB-800 in as close as possible camera right. Shot with my 17-55 at f/2.8 to get that nice shallow depth of field.

More to come with Annalise.

Anyone for a game of pool?

I got a chance to shoot with a Facebook friend today while she was in town visiting family for the holidays. Since the temps were below zero we had to find a place inside to shoot, which I think is going to be the major obstacle for this project. I had been wanting to do a pool table photo for a while so we headed to a local bar.

This was a two flash set up, I had one SB-800 in a soft box camera left and a second SB-800 bouncing light off of a silver reflector on the floor. Everything is gelled with CTO filters and the camera is set to tungsten. Lens was 17mm @ f/5.6, I dragged the shutter at 1/8th of a second to bring up the background detail a bit.

Day two...

This one started off kind of rough, had a shoot lined up but the model didn't make it out. I had some images that I had been saving to put on here but I really wanted to shoot since I dragged myself out in sub-zero temps. I was just about out of town when I thought I would see if my friend Lance was free to shoot a photo.

These were done in Lance's living room, the sun had already dipped below the trees so out came an SB-800 flash. I put two full cuts of CTO gels on it, placed it outside about 15 feet from the house and zoomed the flash to 105mm.

Inside the house I had a 17-55 set at 17mm and f/2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/125. The trigger for the flash outside was another SB-800 because I needed its omni-directional head to trigger the flash behind me.

I couldn't decide on black and white or color so here are both of them.

MTC

Starting 2010 off with new images!

As I said in my last post I want to start posting at least one new photo a day for the whole year of 2010. To kick things off I did this image of Corina on New Years Eve day. We had gotten a lot of snow over Christmas and in the areas thick with pine trees the snow really clung to the branches. I knew Corina is really into yoga and I thought pine trees covered in snow would make for a great backdrop. The set up was really simple I had one bare bulb SB-800 on a stand camera right zoomed out to 105mm. My 17-55mm was at 17mm and I was holding the camera (D300) just above the snow, kind of winging the composition. I processed it for the most part in Lightroom and just tweaked things a little bit in Photoshop. Hope fully I can get to work with Corina again under more pleasant conditions, it was probably right at zero when we did this shot.

More to come.