On the Beach

As beautiful as my wife is, she doesn't like to model all that often. I finally talked her into an early morning beach session at a nearby lake. I wanted to catch the early morning light before the crowds arrived. Though I didn't have an assistant lined up for this shoot, I was able to recruit a couple of pre-teen boys to help. They thought this was pretty fun.

I kept the camera and lighting simple. The first picture was taken with a 50 mm F1.4 prime, and the second photo was with a 35mm F2 prime. The only light was sunlight and a gold reflector.

Kay is not all that comfortable in front of a camera so we had to work a bit. I tried showing her some poses, but I don't think I look all that sexy in my poses and she agreed. She was game and did a good job and we ended up with several nice pictures.


She said she would do this more often if I would take here to the Bahama's for a photo shoot. I think she looks pretty damn good for 45!

Photos from The Classen

Last year I did a commercial job for The Classen condominiums and had the opportunity to photograph from the top of this building, just north of downtown Oklahoma City. I wanted to capture pictures at twilight so that I was able to get both ambient and artificial light in the same photograph. Using my D2X on a tripod with long exposure noise reduction turned on, I was able to capture these images, which were used in large prints in the sales center of the building.

Below is a GIF file I created showing the various views from atop the building.

Studio Shoot

2006-0722-0257, originally uploaded by jamest210.

Here a couple more pictures we did from the studio shoot. This bicycle is pretty cool, Emily purchased it from a garage sale. We had more plans to use it as a prop but everyone was getting tired.

Despite my goal of doing full-length shoots, I couldn't resist this closeup.

Studio Day

We started early today with our studio photo shoot. Emily and Amanda were once again models. Jerry and Melissa stopped by to assist, and they were a BIG help. Normally I am left to deal wtih lights, backdrops and setup all by myself, but having someone to assist was quite a luxury.

Our goal today was to create "pinup" style high fashion images. We wanted to use a white background this time and have the girls be the focus of the images.

It took me a while to get the lighting the way I wanted it, and even then we were constantly tweaking throughout the day. Our key light was a big softbox with a grid, which was located to the photographer's left. Another light was on the background, an SB-800 was used as a hair light, then we alternated with a fourth light for rim lighting and a fifth light to brighten up the floor. I started by shooting just my prime lenses, a 35mm F2 and a 50mm F2.8. These worked fine except that I was getting some glare at times. Neither lens had a shade so I am not sure what was causing this. Eventually towards the end of the shoot I switched to a 17-55 AFS zoom that I am more familiar with using. I will practice with the prime lenses later when I don't have so many people standing around during a shoot.

This setup used lots of lighting, a fan and several gobo's. We transmitted the images to a laptop as we shot so we could tweak poses and lighting as the session progressed. I really like the poses and the clothing, but I am still not totally wild about the lighting. All during the session I kept thinking "man, there is just too much light" and I couldn't adjust my strobes any lower for less light. It was only after I got home that I figured out what a "duh" I had made. I had left my D2x set to ISO-250, which added two and a half stops of light! DUHHH. No wonder I had too much light. This also added a bit of grain to the photos but not noticably so unless you zoom in really tight.

Overall I was pleased with the session and as always, I learned by doing. It was a challenge to get the white backdrop completely blown out without affecting the remaining exposure. I had a great time and I think the girls did also.

2006-0715-0077

2006-0715-0077, originally uploaded by jamest210.

For the first time on a long motorcycle trip I decided to carry some lighting gear. Along with my D200 I had a 17-55 AFS 2.8 lens, a 70-200 AFS/VR 2.8, an SU-800 commander, and two SB-800 strobes. Also had a small Gitzo travel tripod, a Manfrotto 5-section portable light stand, some gels, a homemade cardboard snoot and some gobos. Carried all this on my dirt bike, along with a tent, sleeping bag, clothes, rain gear, and other miscellaneous stuff.

For this picture I was camped at about 10,000 feet along Engineer Pass, a jeep trail between Lake City and Ouray, Colorado. My D200 was on a tripod and set to self timer. One SB-800 was in the tent at 1/4 power and another SB-800 was on a light stand to camera right, snooted to point at my face. Exposure was 1/8 sec at F5.6. Like normal, I set the aperture to match the flash and then dialed in the shutter speed to get my ambient light. This took me several test shots to get right. Wish I had got the back of the bike in the picture, but oh well.

Photographing a laser beam

2006-0710-0020, originally uploaded by jamest210.

My project was to photograph a guy working on some medical equipment with a laser beam. I didn't have much time to prepare or think, just get the shot. I was packing light for this job, since I was on my motorcycle. All I brought was my D200, 17-35 2.8 lens, two SB-800's, some gels and a tripod. I made a couple of snoots on-site out of some fedex envelopes and tape. We used some black posterboard as a gobo. We wanted a dark shot since they normally do this in almost complete darkness. I placed an SB-800 with a red gel since the digitizer and held another one in my left hand, with the snoot pointing at the technician's face. A third person held the gobo behind the digitizer. We tried using aerosol to highlight the laser, but the light from the strobes would reflect in the laser so I just ended up photoshopping the laser in during post-production.
I thought the shot turned out quite well, although if I had more time and a laptop to preview the shot I probably would have done things a bit differently. As it was, I only had about 10 minutes to do the entire thing.

More Nikon Capture NX

2006-0624-0184, originally uploaded by jamest210.

Tonight I couldn't sleep so I decided to play around a bit more with Capture NX. I am really starting to like this program. I was able to create this sepia toned image and add film grain to it in just a few clicks of the mouse. For this size of an image I maybe should have added more grain, but overall it looks pretty cool I think. Of course, having beautiful models always helps!

Baseball portrait

2006-0513-0160, originally uploaded by jamest210.

This photo was taken as part of a commercial job to cover the Oklahoma State High School Baseball Championships. While most of the photographs were action shots, this turned out one of my favorites. This coach was waiting on his outfielders to get ready for fly balls. I had an SU-800 on-camera and set an SB-800 to my left on the ground. I used the flash to fill in his face from the bright sunlight. I like the side lighting offered by the off-camera flash vs just flat lighting from an on-camera strobe.

This next photo was taken during the game. I like the action and narrow depth of field. My son played baseball for 14 years so I have LOTS of baseball pictures.

Nikon Capture NX

Nikon introduced their latest RAW conversion program yesterday, Nikon Capture NX. I downloaded it and started using it. The interface was quite different than their older program Capture 4.4, but after using it for several hours I was fairly pleased, especially with the black and white images. To put it through it's paces, I decided to play around with some images I took last Saturday at the Metro Camera Club field trip to the OKC Zoo.

Normally I am not much of a nature photographer, but this was a fun challenge. We went early in the morning before the heat and crowds. I used my new 105 mm macro to grab some pictures, and off-camera flash using either one or two SB-800's. This parakeet image was photographed through a wire cage. I set my aperture to properly expose the bird with flash, then adjusted my shutter speed to make the background go dark.

I used Capture NX to process these photos - nothing was done in Photoshop. This is one of the first times I have been able to totally process a picture in something other than Photoshop. The only thing I cannot do in Capture NX is add my copyright text on the image. I thought this photograph would work well for a magazine cover. I left room at the top and left for text.

Next up is a flower photograph. I was in the butterfly garden trying to capture some butterflies but it was still a bit cold for them to be out. So again I used my macro to just capture this flower. I hardly ever do flower pictures, they just don't exite me. I have maybe done 5 in my entire life. I thought this one turned out pretty decent. A tripod would have made it better.



Finally a butterfly landed nearby and just sat there, warming it's wings for the morning. I couldn't get good position on it but at least this shot turned out OK. I don't like the big leaf in the front, but the butterfly ignored my direction to move a bit to the right. Darn.