Lighting; Learning from one of the best.

I like to read Joe McNally's blog and watch his videos because I love the way he uses his lights (I like to look at his photo's too.)

A couple of months ago I saw this http://www.joemcnally.com/blog/2010/03/16/santa-fe-first-day/ on his blog and wanted to try it myself. I sent one of the pix to my buddy Chriss and she was excited to try it too and after a couple of weeks we finally got together in her garage to give it a try.

I had Nikon SB600 flashes set on light stands on both sides of her level with her head, another SB600 above and behind her shooting into a silver umbrella and a silver reflector in front of her angled into her face (I ran out of flashes or would have used another instead of a reflector.) This is what I got on the first frame.

Chriss was so disappointed in the first shot she lost interest and wanted to get on with another shoot I was doing for her that night so I had to give up trying. Next chance I get I'm putting the silver umbrella low in front of her and the reflector over her head. I know it won't be "Joe McNally" quality, but it will help me develop my own style.

just a snap shot

I took my wife to breakfast at Wiley's Pub yesterday and we sat outside on the porch. I loved the way the sun lit up her hair and since I always have a camera with me I shot this.

I turned the flash down one step to avoid washing the whole thing out and left the camera in Program mode to take care of the rest.

setting up an in situ studio

I see I haven't posted in a couple of weeks so there's going to be two today. I've been feeling under the weather and haven't felt like doing much of anything lately anyway. My wife says it's because I'm retiring; maybe she's right.

My buddy Chriss has been in an exercise challenge for the past couple of months and needed photo's of her and her partner as part of the "before and after" shots. She's in the National Guard and has drill this weekend so she was going to miss the regular photo shoot at her gym and asked me to help her out.

I don't have a studio (and really don't like studio shoots anyway) so we found a conference room to use.

We taped a white sheet to the wall and laid another one on the floor to use as a back drop. I had two speed lights set up with an easel to use as a reflector. I ended up adding another light in place of the easel and laying a silver reflector on the floor in front of them propped up on my camera bag.

Here's a shot of me testing the light.

and here are a couple of photo's of Chriss and Garry doing their poses for the contest they were in.

Good luck guys!

When 'you' want to be in the photo

How many times has it happened, you're out with friends snapping photo's and realize you aren't getting any with you in the frame. So you hand your camera to a buddy to get a pic with another buddy and this is what he/she hands back to you.

I have several examples of this where the background is in perfect focus and the subjects, me and my buddy, are out of focus, framed incorrectly, not zoomed, etc...

Most folks have a digital camera of some sort or another; a few even have an entry level DSLR. I have yet to see any of them carry their camera's or pull them out to take a photo. When I ask them where their camera is the constant answer I get is "in my desk/closet at home." If you own a digital camera, get it out and some fresh batteries in it and start carrying it with you. You will enjoy looking at the photo's you make in later years and can even have fun posting them to the web.

I was finally able to teach Sergeant Maxon how to focus lock and recompose after about 5 minutes and 20 frames and here's how he did.

Not too shabby I'd say.

This post was supposed to be about focus/exposure lock, but it took off on it's own path. I'll do that post next.

Fill Flash or using your flash outdoors

The weather decided Albuquerque needs snow in the middle of March so I decided to take the wife over to Imbibe (a local pub) for a Mai Tai. If we can't have sun, we can make believe we're in a sunny place like Oahu. Here I snapped the wife as she was getting in the car.



You can see how the flash filled in what would have been a dark photo and brightened her up.

Here you can see the snow flakes falling (they were really more like snow lumps than flakes.)

And my lovely wife finally got her Mai Tai after putting up with me taking photos the entire trip.

Vibration Reduction lens and 'does it work?'

My lovely wife and I were at Sneakerz Bar and Grill one night and I saw a nice rose plant. It was kinda far from where I was sitting (and drinking a beer) and I had my 18-200mm lens opened all the way to 200. Settings used; Exposure 0.5sec, Aperture f/5.6, Zoom 200 and ISO 800 for both photo's (these mean little to me, but there are people who want to know this stuff.)



You can see there's a lot of blur in the photo. So I turned the VR (Vibration Reduction) on and snapped again.



I'd say from these two samples, VR works and works well in low light. Get one if you have the means.

P.S. clicking any of the photos in this blog will take you to my Flickr page.

Strobist (or, things you can do with a speed light)

This post is with photos I didn't take today or with two flash units (I just needed to get a post up.) My wife had just bought me the first one last year, a Nikon SB-600, and I was having a lot of fun using it off camera.

This is a photo of my Army buddy, Dawn. I set the flash in her lap and shot her from the front of her desk. It's kinda crude, but I really like the effect of the light and shadows.




In this one I was sitting at Dawn's desk with the flash sitting at the far edge away from me and pointing up with the Sergeant Major standing close to it. I asked him to show me his "War Face" and this is what I got.




Here is one with the flash sitting to Dawn's right and aimed at her.




I really like the effect of using a strobe to direct the light at angles to get light and shadows giving texture to my subject. Something I really have to do is start a notebook and record setting and positions of where I put the subject and where I put the light so I can more consistently make these kinds of photo's. I need to get time and a place to start playing more with my second flash too.

New Strobe

My lovely wife bought me a second Nikon SB-600 Speedlight. Here she's holding them for me showing both firing at the same time. I'm going to be playing with these baby's the rest of the week.

Panning and white balance.

My youngest daughter, Chelsea, was home on leave from the Marines and wanted me to teach her how to ride a motorcycle. During the lesson my Wife comes running out of the house with my Nikon D40 and yells at me for not taking pictures. As a dutiful husband and dad I take the camera and start snapping away. Then I decided to try some panning shots so I turned the D40 to Shutter priority and set the shutter to 1/40th of a second. The camera decided to use f/13 (it's not set for full stops) and I shot away. I did manage to get a few good ones. Here she's going about 10 miles per hour, but it looks much faster because of the slow shutter.

Panning is just following the subject through your view finder, pressing the shutter half way to focus lock on it and shooting. Your camera has to keep following the subject as it moves or it won't work.



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A few days later I read on Ken Rockwell's site about white balance and how he uses the cloudy setting even in sunlight for it's amber, warming effect. It was early morning in Albuquerque and my 50mm lens was on my D300 body so I opened the front door, set my white balance to sun and here's what I got.



Changing the setting to cloudy I snapped again and here's what came out.



I have to admit, I like Rockwell's way better and keep my WB setting on cloudy most of the time now.

Trying to shoot in an auditorium (was not easy)

So I tried to shoot the 44th Army Band at a concert they were playing down at the fair grounds and it was very different than anything I'd done before. The light was horrible; it was low so I had to use a High ISO, large aperture and slow shutter. The lens I was using didn't have Vibration Reduction so most of the pix are fuzzy (my VR lens is still in the shop getting repaired.) Flash was a small help, but didn't help much because of the size of the place and the distances I had to shoot at.

I used my Nikon D300 body with a Nikkor 28-100mm AF lens and a Nikon SB-600 Flash mounted on the body.

This was a humbling experience for me and I am glad I got to do it so I could learn something. Specialist Erin Montoya from the 200th Public Affairs Detachment was there taking pix too and I hope she did a lot better than me.


White balance was another nightmare in the place. I tried using Live view, going through the WB settings until one looked good; took a shot then the light changed. In this frame there is different WB in different parts of it and I couldn't fix it in Photoshop.


Next time I have to shoot something like this I will have a VR lens and maybe rent one with f/2.8.