Last Post Of The Year

Happy New Year's Eve to you! Thanks to all of you who read this blog for making this such a successful first year. I started this blog on May 4th, and this is my 125th post! I'm going to finish off this year with a great photo I took this afternoon of Ainsley in the studio (garage). I've even included a set-up photo for you so you can see how I did it.

What I did:

1. main light was an SB800 in my DIY beauty dish just to camera left and high above her
2. back lights were SB800's in partially closed umbrellas trying to control the spill of the light
3. back drop was a piece of white felt
4. shot with my 24-70 lens at 62mm.
5. manual mode at 1/250 and f/4.0 with ISO of 400
6. main light was TTL
7. back lights were manual at 1/10 power

Here is the final picture cropped the way I would use it:



Here is the full final picture:



Here is the set-up picture:



I know, I know... she's adorable! Have a great New Year!

Please update your bookmark

Here's a quick Sunday post just to do some house cleaning:

For those of you who use a bookmark to browse to my blog, please make sure that the link goes to http://bdwphotographyblog.blogspot.com and NOT www.bdwblog.com. Too many people have had problems viewing the site there so it is much easier for everyone to just go to the Blogspot address. You can leave comments there much easier as well. Thanks!

Since this is a photo blog, I'll leave you with one last photo from Christmas day. This one is just of the four of us. For setup info, please view the last blog.

Christmas Portraits

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas Day! We enjoyed my parents and Johnny & Jess being in town. We had a ton of food, played the Wii, and spent way too much time trying to get a family portrait where everyone, including both kids, were smiling and looking just right. I'm not sure if we got it or not, but here is the keeper from the bunch:



Here's the setup: I used two SB800 with shoot-thru umbrellas at 45* on each side. I then used another bare SB800 behind us to give some separation from the background. The setup really wasn't the hard part, it was getting Ainsley to smile! A huge "Thank You" goes out to our neighbor Lynn who came over and stood at the camera to keep the kids attention and make them laugh.

When we were done with this one, we moved to the Christmas tree with one of the umbrellas and had to position it so you couldn't see its reflection in the windows. Here's my favorite shot of the kids:



Have a great weekend and I'll see you here next week!

Put The Sun Behind Your Subject

Got to do a quick portrait on Monday for a friend of mine who wanted to surprise her husband for Christmas with a print of herself and their daughters. We didn't have much time, but they came out to my office, and we took the picture across the street at the Heritage Park in Lady Lake. We had some nice shade from the big oak trees and great sunshine coming through those trees. I placed them on the edge of the fountain with the sun behind them at about 2 o'clock. It gave a nice rim light around them and some sparkle to the water from the fountain. I was able to stand in complete shade to keep any glare from the sun out of my lens. Fast and easy, and I think we got a winner:



Have a great Christmas!

Christmas Morning

Are you excited about Christmas morning? I'm sure you can't wait to get great pictures of the tree, food, and all the presents! David Hobby (pictured above) over at Strobist.com wrote a blog last year on photographing Christmas morning. You definitely need to read it so you don't miss a shot! Here's a link to the post.

Too Shallow Depth of Field

Usually I try to only show my best work to people, even my friends and family, and that definitely goes for this blog as well. However, today I thought I'd show a mistake I made yesterday and hopefully by me talking about it, you won't make the same mistake. Thankfully this was not a picture for a client, but just for me.

I needed a picture of Ainsley and Braxton together for a small frame that is actually a Christmas tree ornament. So I took the kids outside and quickly snapped some shots. I grabbed my 85mm 1.8 because I usually like that lens for portraits. Here's the picture (make sure to click on the picture for a larger view):



Man, that could have been a great picture. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get both of them to look at the camera at the same time? Not to mention they both look happy!

So what's wrong with this picture? The problem is that although Ainsley is tack sharp, Braxton is way too soft and out of focus. How did this happen? If you follow my photography, you know that I like to shoot wide open 95% of the time. Which is to say that I shoot with the biggest aperture (smallest number) possible with whatever lens I am using. So for this shot, I was at f/1.8 and 1.8 is very shallow. In fact, it is too shallow for a portrait of more than one person, especially if the two people are not exactly on the same plane horizontally. When we sat them down in the grass, they were back to back, but Braxton rarely sits still for more than .3 seconds. In this case, Braxton is just a little bit in front of Ainsley and I focused on Ainsley's eye which put Braxton out of focus. So when shooting multiple people, make sure you have an aperture chosen with enough depth of field to keep everyone in focus as best as possible.

Most of you probably already knew that, but what you may not know, is that f/1.8 may have actually worked for this shot, but my focus was in the wrong place. Let me explain. Depth of field falls off much faster forward than it does backward. Meaning from the point of focus, the depth of field stretches a little further backward than forward. So, if I would have focused on Braxton instead of Ainsley, Ainsley would not have been as out of focus as Braxton is when focusing on Ainsley. I hope this makes sense.

So when shooting a portrait of two people with a wide aperture, it is a good practice to put your focus on the most forward subject. If the other person is still too soft, then decrease your aperture until they are sharp enough for you.

Katjia & Pablo - Part Two

I finished editing the pictures from Katjia & Pablo's engagement session this past weekend. I thought I would share a few more with you today:

Katjia & Pablo

In March I will have the honor of shooting the wedding of Katjia & Pablo in Fruitland Park. They are a young, fun couple and I know it's going to be an awesome day! On Saturday we did their engagement session in downtown Orlando. We started out at the Grand Bohemian Hotel, walked around downtown, and then headed to the park. Afterward we all had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory. The day was a blast, and we got some great pics. Here are some of my favorites from inside the hotel. I'll have more from the shoot later this week.

Ladder for the Leaves

Gear doesn't always mean camera bodies, lenses, and lighting equipment. Sometimes gear means a 5 foot step ladder so you can get a different perspective which is what "gear" meant for me yesterday when I finished raking the leaves into a pile. Ainsley immediately jumped into the middle of the pile and I quickly grabbed a camera and ladder. The ladder helped me to get a higher perspective and made for a better shot than the first one I took standing on the ground. Because of my point of view, her eyes just jump out at the viewer in this picture and it's really hard to look away! Enjoy.

Christmas Card

Sorry about no blogging last week! I had to send my computer to Apple to get a few things fixed, but we are up and running now.

The last couple of years, our family has had a Christmas card made like so many people do these days, but this year, I thought I would attempt to make my own. I made a 4x8 canvas in PS, used one of the great frames from Graphic Authority's Photo Toolbox, and voila! I printed it out and put it on the fridge beside last years, and I think it's just as good. The only difference was my new one was free! Merry Christmas!

Register for the Class!

Registration for my next workshop began today. The class will be held on January 15th from 1:00-2:30pm at The Villages Public Library. You MUST register to attend. Registration is $5.00 and you can sign up by clicking here.

Please print out your receipt and bring it with you to the class for proof of your registration.

News Photography Assignment

Sorry I am posting so late on this Assignment Wednesday. I didn't get my pictures for this week's assignment until this morning. I was able to photograph Operation Uplift in action at the Lake Weir Middle School. Operation Uplift is a project sponsored by Chick-Fil-A who has partnered with numerous schools and businesses in the area to help fill all the food pantries close to Lake County. Today was one of the pickups and I got to take a few shots.


Some of the food that had been collected at Lake Weir Middle School.


Volunteers from nine different food pantries in the area walk out of Lake Weir Middle School with boxes full of food.

It was an exciting day, and I'm proud of Stephen May and his team at Chick-Fil-A for what they are doing.

Next week's assignment"

-- Food Photography --

You will probably have some good chances to do this assignment seeing that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day! Have fun!

On-Axis Fill Continued...

Tonight I continued to experiment with on-axis fill. This time in a more controlled environment in the studio (garage). The setup was as follows:

1. main light (SB800) high and at a 45* angle from my subject camera right - shooting through a Lastolite tri-grip diffuser
2. fill light (SB800) directly behind me and the camera just above my shoulders - also shooting through a tri-grip
3. ratios - I used TTL and set the fill light to -2.3 stops beneath my main light

So the thought is that I could fill in some of the shadows without creating a "new" light source from a different direction. I'm starting to like this technique. There has been a lot of talk about it lately over at Strobist.com. My model tonight was my beautiful daughter Ainsley, however, that meant I only had a couple of shots to get it right before she got bored. Here are a couple for you to look at:

Piper

This afternoon I had the opportunity to shoot some family portraits for the Barshay family. They were all together to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their parents. 40 years! What a blessing! Stephen May helped me out with the shoot and I owe him big time. You see, Thursday night I ended up in the emergency room after getting hit in in the back during a flag football game. My ribs are totally bruised and I could barely move Thursday night and all day Friday. I was feeling much better today, but there's no way I could have gotten through the session without Stephen's help.

Back to the title of this blog... the little girl in the family was named Piper and she was NOT happy about getting her picture made. In fact, she did not look too happy in most of the pictures. But we were about done with her immediately family's shots when her parents started to tickle her. Everything to that point had been very formal so I was loving it! Finally some emotion! I zoomed in on Piper and got the shot of the day! I don't think it was what this family was looking for, but I loved it! For this shot, Stephen was to my left holding an SB800 in one hand shooting through a Lastolite Translucent Diffuser which he held in the other hand. Easy lighting!



Put it in a magazine!

Humphrey Family Portraits

Had a great time yesterday afternoon with the Humphrey family during their portrait session. We went up to their property in Lady Lake that was just beautiful and made for a great setting. My favorite spot was right in front of a huge oak tree that was letting in some of the sunset. It made for an awesome back light and the shade enabled me to shoot without using flash. We got a ton of great pictures, but this was one of my favorites:



It always helps to shoot good looking people and this family fit the bill! Thanks Humphrey family for allowing me to share that time with your family!

Natural Framing Assignment

Many times in nature or in our everyday surroundings, we can find subjects that are naturally framed by other objects. Whether it is a window, looking under a bridge, a break in the trees, or anything else, it's a neat perspective to have and many times makes for a great picture.

My shot this week is of some flowers and a waterfall but shooting through a glassless window with a cool design in it.



If you were able to get a shot this week, post a link to it in the comment section below.

Next week's assignment:

-- News Photography --

Get out there! Capture the news as it happens!... Or, Build a news desk and shoot yourself? Turn a child into a reporter? ...Just make it something that says to the viewer "News or Reportage"

Blanchard Family Portraits with On-Axis Fill

Yesterday I had the opportunity to do a family portrait session for some very close friends of mine. We had a great time and got some good pictures. I wanted to try using a technique called on-axis fill where your fill light comes from the same line your camera is on. For yesterday's shoot, I used one SB800 to camera left shooting through a Lastolite diffuser for my main light and one other SB800 in my DIY Beauty Dish directly above me and the camera for my fill light. The key is to make sure the on-axis fill is only a fill light... not being a detriment to the key light you set up. So I set the fill light at 3 stops less than my main light which just brought in some detail without overpowering my key light. Here are some pictures of the setup courtesy of Ben Rogers:





I used that setup in two different places and was very pleased with how things turned out. In the second picture, you can see Randy holding a reflector, but it was not being used as a light source, just blocking the sun. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the session:

First Class A Huge Success

I taught my first class today at The Villages Public Library on an "Introduction To D-SLR Photography". The room at the library was full and unfortunately, we had to send many people home. Thank you to all who attended. You asked great questions, and it seemed like everyone had a good time. I hope you will email me with pictures that you take while working on the techniques we talked about today.

Because of the great turnout and promise for future classes, we went ahead and scheduled another class for Thursday, January 15. We will take registrations on my website (www.bdwphotography.com) beginning December 1st and will close the class at 40 people. So be sure to sign up early as spots will be on a first come, first serve basis. We will also be charging a very small fee of $5.00 for the class in January based on the great response we got from today.

Thanks again to all who were there and especially to our host, The Villages Public Library.

So please tell your friends and check back on December 1st to register for the class on January 15th.


-Brian

10 Minutes From Home Assignment

Welcome back to Assignment Wednesday! This assignment was more fun than I thought it was going to be. I drove exactly 10 minutes from home, got out of my car, and started looking for things to shoot. I had my 60mm macro lens because it had been a while since I had used it and thought this would be a good opportunity... and I was right. I spent about 10 minutes walking around and taking pictures. Here are some of my favorites:











I hope you had a good time doing this assignment, and I'd love to see the pictures you got. Next week's assignment is:

-- Natural Framing --

This week's assignment is "Natural Framing". Basically borders, nature paths, windows, all of these setup a nice natural frame outline for the focus of the subject. See you next week.

Family Portrait Session

This weekend I had the opportunity to do a family portrait session for some good friends of mine. He is the Pro at one of the local golf courses so we did the pictures there where there is a lot of nice landscaping. I needed to use just a little flash because I wanted to keep everything else looking as good as it did. So I set up one SB800 high and camera left shooting through a Lastolite Tri-Grip Diffuser. Then I was able to expose for the landscaping behind them and put out just enough light to fill in any shadows on their faces. Here are two of my favorites:

First Academy Football

Last night I shot the First Academy Football game. I got to use the 300mm f/2.8 lens that I rented from LensProToGo and it was awesome! I had so much fun! I only had to focus on two of the players, Kyle Vann and Tyler Ross because it was their parents who hired me. I got some great shots and the Eagles finally won their first game! Here are my favorites: