Inspiration Friday

Each year Pop Photo lists its Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the World. In 2008, one of those photographers was Jose Villa. His work is amazingly artistic! I love looking at his online portfolio and thought it would be a great way to send you to the weekend!

Soccer Pics

Last week I shot a high school soccer game. I rented the Nikon 300mm f/2.8 from LensProToGo that I used in the fall for a football game. I had a great time, but froze my butt off! Here are some of my favorites from the shoot:

Circles Assignment

Were you able to get creative this week? I had a few ideas but went with this one. We have adopted the Sigg water bottles at our house. Check out their website (much better for you and the environment!). So I grabbed a few of them and put them in the foyer on the wood floor. Then I got my ladder to get high enough above them to shoot straight down. Fun little picture:



If you did the assignment, make sure you comment to this post with a link to your shot so we can see it.

Next week's assignment:

-- Leading Lines --

We should be able to get some great pictures for this assignment. Read this blog post for a great explanation!

Cool Train for iPhone Tuesday

This old train is parked right across the street from our new office. I took this iPhone picture when the sun was coming just over the train and got a cool glare on my lens.

Brooke

I'm always posting pictures of Ainsley or Braxton (mostly Ainsley because she's old enough to cooperate), but never of my beautiful wife, Brooke. We recently moved into a new office, and I wanted to frame a picture of Brooke to put on the wall there. My favorite recent picture of her I took on Thanksgiving Day at Lakeside Inn in Mount Dora, FL. There were a couple of chairs down by the lake and we were actually setting them up to take a portrait of Ainsley and Braxton. I told Brooke to sit there so I could get the settings correct before we moved the kids in place (you don't get much time with them!). As soon as I snapped it, I knew I had a keeper. Brooke has one of the best smiles you've ever seen and for 1/1000th of a second, it was on full display! Of course I love how the light rims her out and the setting is perfect, but Brooke made this picture. Love you, Babe!

Inspiration Friday - Cliff Mautner

If Ainsley was getting married anytime soon (which of course she is not), Cliff Mautner would be the photographer at her wedding. He is by far my favorite wedding photographer and just happens to be a great guy as well. I attended Cliff's workshop back in August and it radically changed the way I approach photography. I would recommend the workshop to anyone!

So, check out Cliff's site and blog for Inspiration Friday.

Click here for the site.

First Academy Basketball

On Tuesday night I shot the First Academy boy's basketball game. It was my first effort at shooting basketball, and the gym proved to be a handful of problems. Of course the lighting was terrible so to combat that, I used two SB800's. One on each side of the gym. Here's a quick diagram so you will understand:



I clamped one to a folding chair and the other to the bleachers. I aimed them at the top of the key and fired them at 1/2 power. I shot from right underneath the goal. Here are some of my favorite shots:









I had a great time and hopefully will get more chances to shoot some basketball games.

Morning Assignment

Welcome back to Assignment Wednesday! If you took a picture for this week's assignment, just put a link to your picture in the comment section of this post. I took this shot of an old barn just after sunset and took advantage of the nice, long, warm rays of the morning sun.



Next week's assignment:

-- Circles --

I can't wait to see what you come up with!

Foggy iPhone Tuesday

For this week's iPhone photo, I took a shot on the way to work the other day when our city was covered in fog. You can just see the headlights from a car coming at me. Very moody photo, and kinda cool, too!



Again, taken with the iPhone and used the iPhone application "Camera Bag" to process it. That's it. Have a great day, and don't forget to get your "Morning" picture for the assignment tomorrow. See you then!

Brothers

Last week I had the opportunity to do a portrait session for Josh and Mason. They are the sons of some very good friends of mine. It was one of the quickest and easiest shoots I've ever done! We were done in less than 10 minutes and had plenty of shots to choose from. I shot them with available light only. It was very overcast, but they still turned out good. Here are some of my favorites:

Inspiration Friday

This year, I'll also be adding "Inspiration Friday" to the blog each week. I'll post a link to another photographer's website that I think you will enjoy looking at their portfolio. So just to keep everyone on the same page, that gives us "iPhone Tuesday", "Assignment Wednesday", and "Inspiration Friday" that will be weekly posts. I will use Mondays and Thursdays for showing some of my work, talking about photography instruction, and whatever else I can come up with.

So for our first "Inspiration Friday", I give you the website of one of my favorite photographers, Joe McNally. Joe has been shooting for magazines forever. His images have been on the cover of Sports Illustrated, National Geographic and loads of others probably more than anyone else. You'll love looking at his work. While you are there, you should bookmark the RSS feed of his blog as well.

click here for the site

Great Class Today

Thanks to everyone who attended my Intro to D-SLR Photography class today! I had a great time and I'm excited to see some of your photos as you apply some of the things we talked about. Stay tuned to this blog for information on new and upcoming workshops in the future.

Assignment Wednesday Is Back!

Let's get back to it. If you're new here, every Wednesday is assignment Wednesday. I give an assignment and we all go out and complete it during that week. You may not use a picture that might fit the assignment that you took some time ago. The point is to get you out and shooting and to consider the assignment... even plan it out.

Then, the following Wednesday I will post my picture from the assignment and you can post a link to your Flickr account with your picture so we can all see it. Make sure to explain the thought process behind the photo and how you got it.

This week's assignment:

-- Morning --

Anything that deals with the early part of the day, sunrises, work commutes, breakfast, etc.

Now get out and do it! I want to see some pictures here next week!

JPG Magazine

I'm trying to get a photo published in JPG Magazine. The category that I entered is "Fairy Tale". If you don't mind, take a second to click on the link below and vote for it. Thanks!

VOTE NOW

Back to Blogging and iPhone Pics

OK... it's been a little difficult getting back to blogging with the dawn of the new year, but I'm ready to go now so you can expect to see multiple entries every week again.

I'm going to add a new element to the blog today. Tuesdays will now be known as iPhone Tuesday, and I will post a picture taken with the iPhone. Just a fun way to challenge myself and maybe you as well to take good pictures with a camera phone.

Don't worry, I'll still be doing Assignment Wednesday, in fact, I will have a new assignment for you tomorrow.

I'm excited about 2009 and what this new year will bring from a business point of view. I'll be teaching more workshops around the area, adding more weddings to the schedule, getting to shoot some more sports photography, and more. I've updated the website, www.bdwphotography.com, and am finally happy with what I've got going on over there.

So... without further a do, here's the first picture for iPhone Tuesday. Of course I'm starting with one of my two favorite subjects:

Balancing Ambient Light with Strobe Light

On Saturday we did some family portraits with my mother-in-law. I will walk you through my thought process and light setup for the shoot:

When we arrived at the location, I began looking for the best place for the shoot. I wanted to keep the sun behind the subjects to make for a nice back light. I found a cool red chair and thought we would use it for the prop. I turned it so the sun was behind it and to the right. I could have taken the picture just like that, but didn't want to blow out the background in order to expose for the foreground. I wanted it to be more formal as well so I put up one light with an umbrella just to the left of the camera and close to the chair (it's just outside of the frame in the picture below).

Just as I was ready to get my subjects in place, the sun went behind some very thick clouds and totally took away my back light. I could have gotten a good picture without it, but I'm looking for better than just good. So I took the little bit of time to setup one more light behind the chair and to the right to imitate the light I was formerly getting from the sun. I put a Honl Speed Grid on it to control the beam of the light.

I put the back light on manual mode at 1/2.5 power. I set the front light in TTL -2/3 stops. Those numbers are the final numbers, of course I started a little different from that and adjusted just a little once I took a few pictures. The key is to balance the strobe light with the ambient light so people don't look at it and say, "he obviously had a light here, here, and here." What you want them to say is, "great picture!"

You can see that taking the time to setup the back light really paid off. It rims them out nicely and separates them from the background. This gives the picture dimension and takes it from a good photo to a great one.

Enough talking, here's my favorite: