Nature Light Photo

Romeo and Juliet – A Lesson in Lighting

Last night I got the opportunity to shoot our school’s dress rehearsal of the production of Romeo and Juliet. I have shot our theater before, but this time I wanted to add to the experience for the kids. Usually, I just shoot from the theater seats as the play progresses. This time, during the intermission, I took individual shots of each of the cast and crew in a portrait setting, but this meant that I would have to learn lighting portraits.

Because I knew that I would want to be able to get better at off camera lighting in different situations, I recently purchased a 20×20 inch soft box that works with my SB900 and two light stands. It isn’t the biggest soft box, but it works for most of what I want to do. I got the soft box and light stands off eBay for a really good price and will be adding one more soft box to my collection. The total for both soft boxes and two light stands will still be uner $100. So far, they are working great for me.

I set the soft box which had the SB900 attached to camera left and the SB600 with a Hanson Fong Skin Glow light modifier attached camera right. I controlled the flashes using the pop-up flash on the D300 as a commander unit and each flash was set for manual. Both flashes were at 1/8 power and the camera was at 1/60 of a second at f8.

I was constantly amazed by the results that I saw on the back of the camera and the results were confirmed when I got home  and looked at the images in Lightroom.

The whole experience was a confirmation of what I had been working on and practicing with myself as a model at home. Up to this point, I was outside my comfort zone and by forcing myself to use the equipment, I think I am feeling more and more comfortable behind the camera in different situations.

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

D’oh!

This past weekend I made a monumental error in the execution of a photo shoot I had planned. It wasn’t a particularly difficult or technical shot, but it was derailed by one small error.

The plan was to travel to San Diego’s Balboa Park and shoot the city skyline with the storm clouds clearing behind it at sunset. The park has a bridge that goes over the freeway and from the bridge, you can see the city. At dusk, the lights of the cars would snake into the city, the building lights would be lit, and the sky would have some character.

Everything went as planned. I packed my gear. I made the one and a half hour drive. I was in position at the correct time. And I had my camera set up and was ready to go. Just one small problem. I looked through the viewfinder and saw -E- on the display.

For a moment I panicked. I rechecked my settings. Then I stopped for a moment and thought. My camera said I didn’t have a memory card. I opened my camera and my heart sank.

I had left all of my memory cards in the middle of the living room floor. That’s right, EVERY memory card was back at home.

That’s when I remembered that I had just gotten done downloading the images of the play I shot last week from my card to the computer and then I packed my gear. I thought about bringing all of my cards in my Pixel Pocket Rocket, but thought that would be overdoing it, so I left them at home. Along with the card that had been in my camera.

What was my result? I packed up my gear, headed toward the car, and drove home. When I arrived, there were my cards. Sitting on the floor in the middle of the room. Mocking me.

Lesson learned? Follow the checklist. Body, lens, batteries, CF cards, gear for intended shoot, extra gear. That’s my quick packing list. I skipped it and paid the price.

D’oh!

Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Giving Back – Softball Against Cancer

Again, I look to Jeremy Cowart for my inspiration to use my photography for giving back to the community. Every year our school has a staff vs. senior softball game where all proceeds go to the Cancer Society. I offer my photography to the cause shooting each player as they take their turn at bat and also some of the plays out in the field. The biggest contribution I make is to take a picture of all the players on the field and then make 8×10 prints that thank the sponsors.

We all know someone who has had their lives touched by cancer. I know I have several. This was an opportunity to give back to them.

The players

Mr. Warren founder and coordinator of the game.

The Field and Crowd

Miss Kline at Bat

Saibrah White at Bat

Mr. Ermert Rips One to Right

The Staff - Winning Team

And for the record: the staff beat the senior 17-5.

Giving Back: A Very Special Night 2010

It was 4:30. The text message said that the district prom was going to be at Ramona High School at 6:30. A friend was asking me to come and shoot an event for free. Did I mind? NO!! and I was rewarded with an evening of  being awestruck by the joy and energy these special kids have.

They danced, laughed, and they had fun. For a few hours their lives were “normal” and I loved being a part of it. No, I didn’t regret or have any misgivings about spending my Saturday night shooting this event. Especially after listening to Jeremy Cowart at Escalate Live last week where he stressed using your photography to give back and do something good in your community.

The prom being held in a high school gym didn’t help the photography. Dark and bad lighting. The answer seemed simple to me, grab the SB900 and the 50 f1.4 and shoot away. I also used the Hanson Fong Skin Glow Reversible Bounce Card which was recommended by Hal Schmitt at Light Photographic Workshops. Honestly, at $42 it is the best light modifier I have purchased.

I looked at the night as an experiment and learning opportunity in using speedlights. Remember, when using flash, the shutter speed controls the background exposure and the aperture combined with the flash intensity controls the exposure of the subject. Wanting to separate the subject from the background, I shot most of the images at a shutter speed of 250-300 and an aperture of 2-2.8. I put the flash on manual and shot most of the time at 1/8-1/4.

If I wanted the background darker, I increase the shutter speed. If I wanted the subject brighter, I usually increased the power of the flash by a 1/3 of a stop or so.

I think the technique worked fairly well, but needs a bit of refinement. After I looked at the images in Lightroom, I found that those setting tended to leave the subjects just a little darker than I wanted, but all of the images could be fixed with a little exposure control in the develop module of Lightroom.

Here are some of the images from the night.

Balloons outside the prom

Posing for the camera

Ramona's King and Queen

Poly's King and Queen have their first dance.

King's King and Queen

Honestly, it was a rewarding experience. I hope you have the opportunity to give and experience such an event.

Please feel free to comment or offer suggestions.

Senior Session – Alyssa Garside

Last Sunday, I had a senior session with an amazing young lady, Alyssa Garside. We shot at Fairmount Park in downtown Riverside. It was late in the afternoon on an overcast day.

I shot the entire session with the 50 f/1.4. I was looking for a really blown out backgrounds, but super sharp details in the subject. Due to the overcast day, I didn’t need to worry about a lot of uneven lighting, but I did use the SB-900 as a form of off camera fill flash.

I still need to work on posing and finding a good background or location, but I’m pleased about how the shoot came out.

Here are some of the images of Alyssa.

If you would like to read more about Alyssa, please travel over to Nature Light Photography.

As always, please feel free to leave comments or let me know if you have any questions.

King High Remembers 2010

What do you do if you are great social science teacher and you want to make a connection between the history you are teaching and the real world? You invite 28 veterans to speak to your classes about their experiences serving in our country’s military.

That was John Corona did 10 years ago. It has grown from those 28 men to over 200 veterans and ALL of the junior U.S. History classes. Mr. Corona has established a nationally recognized program, King High Remembers, that brings together veterans of all wars since World War II and all services from our county’s past and the students of today. It represents an opportunity for the students to understand what others have done to protect our freedom.

We owe these ladies and gentleman a moment in our thoughts and lives.

Usually, I try to capture the details as well as the individuals participating, but I wasn’t feeling very creative, so I made it my mission to capture each and everyone of the veterans who were participating. Here are some of the images I got. You can view all of the images from King High Remembers on my SmugMug site here.

Rusty Perez

Once upon a time, I was a assistant swim coach at Bolsa Grande H.S., working with two great coaches, Howie Clarke and Mr. Henkle. They taught me how to be a good swim coach. Howie was my college coach and, to tell the truth, I owe him my career and what I have accomplished. But that is another blog.

This is about a swimmer from Bolsa. Rusty Perez. Rusty was an good swimmer and a great human being. First off, he is blind. That isn’t a big deal; at least he never made it a big deal. He swam sprints and was pretty good at it, if my memory is correct. In addition to being good in the pool, he was a leader on the deck. The team drew strength from him and he was always there helping teammates. All-in-all, he was a good person.

I found him on Facebook and he friended me. On December 21st, I saw that he was performing in downtown Riverside. First, I didn’t know he performed. Second, I didn’t know downtown Riverside had any kind of holiday event. I thought it would be cool to go see him. I mean, I haven’t seen him since he was in high school. You can see my blog about Christmas in Riverside here.

I got to Riverside after sitting in traffic for over an hour, but I still made the last half of his performance. He was singing Christmas Carols. He has a lot of talent and seems very comfortable in front of the audience. He had two back-up musicians, a percussionist who played a box and a bassist. Turns out that they had never practiced together and this was the first time playing together. You wouldn’t have known that from listening to them.

Rusty played a great set and when it was time to end, he announced that he would be back on stage on January 3rd and gave his website.

After his set, I went over and introduced myself. He remembered me, which I thought was nice and made me feel good. He was busy so we didn’t get a long time to talk, but I found out that he spent seven years teaching high school English and is currently teaching English at Riverside Community College. It was really nice to see Rusty again and hear him perform.

As for the photography, it was a VERY low light situation, so I kicked up the ISO to 1600 and then, using the 70-200 2.8VR, opened it up wide and shot. I have come to trust the lens/ISO combination in low light situations. As you can see the D300 is capable of producing some very usable shots at that ISO. The stage had a strange orange spot light focused on Rusty, which explains the weird coloration. I couldn’t remove all of it in post.

Here are nine of the images from that night. Please feel free to tell me what you think.

Published! Kinda

I took pictures for the school’s Comedy Sportz team a few weeks ago.

After posting the pictures on Smugmug I got a lot of pictures viewed and the visits to my site went WAY up, but I thought that was going to be about it and at the same time, one of the parents asked if they could use some of the images for publicity. I said sure and forgot all about it.

Flash forward two weeks. I got an email with a link to the Press Enterprise in the inland empire in southern California.

The link was to an article about the Comedy Sportz team. And there were some of my images!

Plus, I got photo credit. How can I argue?

Here is the link to the article in the Press Enterprise.

COMEDY SPORTz – The High School League

I was asked shoot an event at school, the COMEDY SPORTz competition.

I’ve never been to one of these events, but I have shot in the theater. Talk about low light!!!!

The event is modeled after Whose Line is It Anyway? The British and then American TV show that spotlighted improvisational comedy.

The kids weren’t bad. They really got into the scenes and were very witty and quick. It really wasn’t a bad show. Again, it is always nice to see students doing something they love to do. Passion.

As for the shooting, what can I say? LOW LIGHT!! Set the camera on Aperture Priority,  open up the 70-200 f2.8 to wide open, set the ISO to auto (max 1600) and shoot.

I did have a problem with exposure. Using evlauative metering created an overexposure situation on the subjects as the camera tried to bring the background to the right exposure, but when I went to center weighting, the exposure got a lot better.

I also learned how to really stream line my post production time in Lightroom, but I’ll talk about that at another time.

You can view all of the images at the Nature Light Photography Gallery.

Senior/Staff Basketball Game

I was asked to shoot a charity basketball game between the seniors and the staff to benefit scleroderma victims. I like this kind of event. The kids have fun and so does the staff. Plus, it goes to a good cause. Here are a few images from the evening and a short analysis of the problems and possible solutions follows that.

You can see all of the images at The Nature Light Photography Gallery.

What Did I Learn?

This was a new challenge. I have never shot sports inside before. Water polo and swimming? Yes. Softball? Yes. Rodeo? Yes. But never indoor basketball.

I have read where the lighting situation inside most high school gyms is difficult. JEEZ!! Is that true!!!! My plan was to take my SB600 and shoot with a fairly fast piece of glass, the 70-200 f2/8. It worked. Kind of.

While the flash did freeze the action fairly well, focus was a bit of a problem. The lens wouldn’t lock on to subjects well and fast enough. I think this is due to the very low light conditions and the difficulty of following the subject.

I basically planted myself under one basket and shot from a seated position. The length of the lens made it difficult to keep the subject in the viewfinder as they came closer to my end of the court and the proximity of the players made good composition difficult. You can see my results here.

You can see the limited field of view and difficulty of composition.

I brought my 50mm f1.4 also, but it limited my ability to isolate the players or what I wanted to shoot. I also had the D70 kit lens, a 18-70mm f3.5-4.5, but I didn’t think that it was fast enough. But I wasn’t getting the shots I wanted or needed, so I tried it.

I was surprised. It focused quickly, the flash froze the subjects well, and the images were usable!! The subjects weren’t too close for a good composition and I could compose fairly well.

With a wider lens, the composition is better.

The only problem was that the on camera flash left some weird shadows behind the subjects. It’s not the lens, but me not utilizing the flash well.

Harsh shadows caused by on camera flash.

I think I really need a better flash, something like a SB900 and some sort of remote to fire it off from a distance. I have seen sports shooters utilize two flashes mounted on stands placed at the corners of the floor and triggered by remotes such as Radio Poppers or Pocket Wizards. I would like to try that set-up next time.

The bottom line is that next time I WILL get the flash off of the camera and try to get two flashes that I can work together to improve the lighting situation.

All-in-all, I think it was a good shoot. OH, and the staff won!!!