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:

LensProToGo

Tonight I'll be shooting at the First Academy High School football game. The job is for two seniors so I'll really be able to focus on getting some good shots since I only have to shoot the two of them. I didn't have the kind of lens I needed to do this job so I rented a 300mm f/2.8 from LensProToGo. This company rocks! The lens came in on Tuesday in the Nikon case (the lens is huge) and it works perfectly. If you ever find yourself needing to rent gear, LensProToGo is the place!

Product Assignment

Welcome back to Assignment Wednesday! I hope you had fun doing your product shoot. You never know when that big company is going to come calling!

I have to admit that I cheated this week. I did not take a new picture but the moment I saw the back of my camera after taking this picture, I saw this ad. So I've been wanting to sit down and make it for a while now. Here's the ad and after the picture, I'll show you how I did it. As always, you can click on the picture for a bigger view.



How to do it:

1. Take a great picture
2. Take your product picture
3. Take away the background of your product picture
4. Move it over to your photo
5. Copy the layer of your product and turn the copy upside down. Then move it directly below the first copy. Adjust the opacity of the upside down layer to create your reflection.
6. All that is left is to add text.

If you attempted this, I'd love to see it and share it with everyone. Just comment to this post with a link to your shot.

Next week's assignment:

-- 10 Minutes From Home --

This week's assignment is Ten Minutes From Home". Walk, bike, drive or fly exactly 10 minutes from where you live and shoot what's there. No 9 minute or 11 minute trips!

Fred & Bekah

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do a portrait session for Fred & Bekah. They were wanting a picture to use for their Christmas card this year, and I was happy to help them out. When I first talked to Bekah, she told me she wanted to do something with a "woodsy" type background. Once we chose the location, I knew I would need some lighting. Of course I could make a good picture with available light there in the shade of the woods, but would it stand out and "pop" the way it would if I used a little lighting?

I set up one light shooting through a Lastolite Tri-Grip Diffuser and balanced it with the ambient light in the shaded tree area we were in. Because they were both wearing black shirts, have dark hair, and we were in a relatively dark place, the camera was tricked and thought "hey, I need to slow down and let more light in because this picture is really dark." But the camera was wrong and ended up blowing out their faces. So I had to dial down my exposure compensation two whole stops to get the proper exposure. Here's the keeper: