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: