Cool Composition at the Beach

This is my little cousin, Mackenzie at the beach last year. I found it this morning when looking through some old pictures. I always liked the composition of this shot especially the leading lines which take your eye to the blown out ocean and sky at the end of the boardwalk. Also, Mackenzie's placement in the frame is perfect.

When you are trying to become a better photographer, sometimes you get to thinking about f-stops, shutter speeds, whether or not to use flash, etc. and forget that one of the most important things in making an interesting photo, is the composition. Get out today and take a picture. Then make it a better picture by adjusting your composition. If you'd like, you can post links to your shots in the comments section of this post.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there! We took time this afternoon to take a couple of Mother's Day pictures in the front yard. These were made with one SB800 in TTL to camera left. Shot in manual mode at 1/250 and f/4.0 with -3.0 EV.

Happy 30th Birthday, Brooke!

Today is Brooke's 30th birthday. She is the love of my life, and I am so thankful for her and how she loves and supports me. We spent yesterday at Universal Studios and had a hotel in Orlando last night while Brooke's mom stayed at home with both kids. It was the first night we have had to ourselves in over 3 years, and yet Brooke agreed to let me take the time to make some night-time portraits of her in Orlando. She was very patient and only got a little scared whenever people would walk by us. Anyway, here's my favorite:



For those of you who care, here's how I made this frame:

I used the 70-200mm lens at 170mm. Shot in manual mode at f/2.8 and 1/30th of a second. ISO was at 500. Had one SB800 shooting through an umbrella directly in front of Brooke in manual at 1/32 power. I forgot my tripod at home (of course) which is the only thing I would have changed. Even with the VR activated on my lens, the shot would have been a bit sharper if I wasn't hand-holding it.

Wilson Family Portraits

A couple of weeks ago I did some family portraits for the Wilson family. They are a great looking and fun family, and our time was quick, easy, and productive. We got some wonderful shots at their property, but these were two of my favorites:

Senior Prom

The senior year is coming to a close and one of the biggest events is prom. I showed up at Rachel's house the other night about a half hour before her date, Tyler, arrived. We got some great shots of her getting ready as well as some lovely portraits. We did the group shots in the backyard with two SB800's with dome diffusers on them to fill in the shadows. I was standing between the two light stands.

Kyle's Senior Portraits

Friday I had another senior portrait session; this time for Kyle Vann. Kyle is another student at First Academy who I've done pictures for this year for football, basketball, and soccer, so I was looking forward to taking his portraits. We came up with a lot of good shots and you will see three of them today inside a Graphic Authority template. Graphic Authority has some great products and I own a few of them. Make sure you check out their website.

This template is for a 12x12 print.

Tyler's Senior Portraits

On Sunday evening, I did Tyler's senior portraits in downtown Leesburg. I've done some football, basketball, and soccer pictures this year for Tyler, so this was the first time that we got to interact during a photo shoot. We had fun and got some terrific pictures. We started out in an abandoned building and then moved out by the pond. Here are my favorites:

Baby Shoot

Last week I had the opportunity to shoot baby Waylon at the house. We set up a white background in the studio (garage), and three lights. The key light was to camera right at 45* from Waylon and the fill light was to camera left, close to 45* from Waylon and back further than the key light. I also put a light on the background to make sure it would be white instead of gray (which is what happens to a white background when you light the subject and not the background as well).

I was a little nervous, but baby Waylon did such a good job!

Katjia & Pablo's Wedding

Saturday I had the opportunity to shoot Katjia & Pablo's wedding at her parents' home in Fruitland Park. It was a beautiful setting by the lake, and God gave us the perfect weather. Both families were such a joy to be around, it truly was a very fun day! Thanks, Katjia & Pablo for allowing me to be a part of such a special day! See you when you get back!

I still have a long way to go on finishing images from Saturday's wedding, but I thought I'd share a few that stood out to me during editing.

Ainsley's B-Day Party

We had Ainsley's third birthday party tonight at Chick-fil-A. Great place for a party! I took a few portraits of her before we left. This is my favorite:



Gotta go charge my batteries and go through my checklist for a wedding tomorrow. I'll post some pics from it next week.

Little League

I got to shoot a little league baseball game last night for a neighbor. His name is Ronnie, and he's one heck of a ball player. He caught the first inning and then pitched. The other team couldn't touch him! Here's a few of my favorites:

Pink Jacket

It's been a while since I set up a portrait shoot in the studio (garage) so tonight I did just that with Ainsley. This shot uses three lights. The main light is through an umbrella to camera left at 45* in front of her. The rim light is diagonal from the main light behind her to camera right. It's bare and zoomed all the way in. Then one final light behind her to light the background so that it would be pure white. I fired all the lights from my D700 using CLS and its pop-up flash.

Then I put a pink "X" on the ground where I wanted her to stand, dressed her in a cute pink jacket, and she does the rest!



I know... I know... she's kind of cute.

Flower Girl

Ainsley is going to be a flower girl in a wedding this summer. Last week we had to go begin the fitting process for her dress. I took my camera and a 50mm lens just to document the day, but ended up getting some great pictures. Ainsley had a ball trying on the dresses. She thought she was a princess and didn't want to take it off when it was time to leave!

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!

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:

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:

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!

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!

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: