Nature Light Photo

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.

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Memorial Day 2010 – Thank You

Thank you to all of those who gave and are giving to protect our freedom.

Thank You

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Photo of the Week – Morro Bay Bird Festival 2010

In an effort to show more of my photography, on Mondays, I will be posting a photo of the week. Here is my first image.

It was taken during the Morro Bay Bird Festival in Montana De Oro State Park. I wish I could remember what kind of birds these are and when I do, I’ll post that information here.

The image was part of a bigger image that I cropped to eliminate the waves and sand so the focus was on the birds and I thought that the panoramic affect of the image worked well.

Please feel free to offer both feedback and criticism.

Shore birds at the Morrow Bay Bird Festival 2010

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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.

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Escalate 2010

I spent the last couple of days at a photography conference called EscalateLive hosted by Dane Sanders, author of The Fasttrack Photographer. It was held in a vintage movie theater on Lido Island in Newport Beach. Geared toward wedding/portrait photographers, it featured speakers like Dane, Becker, Jerry Ghionis, and Jasmine Star. All of them are amazing photographers who are willing to share their ideas and thoughts on marketing themselves, and therefore yourself, in a highly competitive market.

Probably the most amazing speaker was Jeremy Cowart. He spoke about the power of photography. How it can be used to make the world a better place for both the photographer and the subject. He founded Help-Portrait; an organization that gives people who can’t afford to have a portrait taken the chance to be made up and get a framed print of themselves. It was an emotional presentation and I’ll be writing more about Help-Portrait later.

The common thread that they all brought into their presentations was that each of us MUST connect with ourselves, our clients, and other photographers. We must make them feel important by sharing and making their experience with you one of the best of their lives. But we need to be ourselves.

They talked about bringing energy, inspiration, and creativity to every shoot. They talked about seeing the possiblities in situation. See the light, the poses, and the solutions in every setting. Know your equipment, how to use it, and what it can do.

Use the equipment and location to shoot what inspires both you and your client. Capture images that may be outside your comfort zone and you can learn from or hone a skill you might use in the future.

Outside my comfort zone and give back to the community. That’s my take away. I need to get uncomfortable and make my future happen. And I need to find a way to give back. In other words, I need to get off my ass and get it done.

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What Kind of Camera Should I Buy?

I get this question all of the time. People know I know photography and they think I know everything. I don’t. But I do not shy away from this question. I have an answer for every person who asks, but only for SLR cameras. I don’t know anything about point and shoot cameras.

I ask five basic questions:
1) What is your budget?
2) What do you plan on taking pictures of?
3) What do you plan on doing with the pictures?
4) What kinds of cameras do your friends own?
5) Is photography going to become a hobby/passion?

The most important question is #4. What kinds of cameras do your friends own?

Both Nikon and Canon make great DSLR cameras that are all capable of capturing images that 95% of the population would be more than satisfied with on a daily basis. So, brand comes down to what system do your friends have so you can share lenses with each other.

Asking the question about budget and the hobby/passion helps me determine what price point the person should be looking at. If they are thinking about making this a hobby, then I tell them to maybe be a bit more flexible on the price in order to buy a camera that they can grow into.

The other two questions, about their subject matter and what they plan to do with the images helps me determine the resolution that they need. If they need to print big, they are going to need more mega pixels. I ask the subject matter because I am just curious.

There is no wrong answer to what kind of camera should I buy. We as photographers should help our friends make the right decision.

Please feel free to share your opinion.

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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.

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OC Register Contest

I made a resolution to enter more photo contests this year. I made that resolution in January. It has taken me until now to get off my behind and start doing what I said I’d do.

The first contest I entered is the Orange County Register’s Wildflower Photo Contest. There are three categories; Nature Open, Flower and Man, and Nature. The images have to have been taken in Southern California. I picked two images and entered them into the contest.

The first one I entered was one I took on the Santa Rosa Plateau. It is a California Poppy that is  just getting ready to bloom. I entered it into the Nature Open category. I picked it because I liked the way that the poppy in background points to the main subject and the orange/pink of the flower seems to pop out of the green background.

Birth of California Poppy

The second image I entered was one that I took on Highway 58 while driving home from my parent’s house. It was an incredible year for wildflowers and as I drove past this ranch I saw the road going away from the gate and lined with bright yellow flowers. I immediately thought of the yellow brick road from The Wizard of Oz. I entered it into the Flower and Man category.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

I think both of the images are not bad. They probably won’t win because I didn’t go out looking to take an image specifically for the contest, which in many cases I think should be done. But I think they stand a chance.

You can vote for them at the OC Register site by clicking the link above, just don’t ask me how to find my particular images. Their system leaves a bit to be desired. If I find a direct link to my images, I’ll post it here.

Please feel free to leave a comment of let me know if you have any questions.

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Death Valley Redux – Pt. 5 – Macro Photography

Starting off with a quick re-cap: I went to Death Valley last week to try to get some images and try some new techniques. I tried HDR, panorama shots, and, finally, macro photography.

In this case it wasn’t really macro as much as very close up. The subjects were wildflowers that were blooming on the valley floor. I used my Nikkor 105 f/2.8 VR, which is an amazing macro lense and super sharp. It also does a great job of softening the background and getting the subject super sharp.

There is a certain technique to capturing sharp images. First, the use of a tripod is mandatory. A macro lens is like a telephoto lens, they amplify the smallest movement of the camera. I even use a remote shutter release to prevent movement of the camera when releasing the shutter. Second, timing the shot right so that the subject matter is staying still. This is difficult when shooting flowers in the desert wind. Third, selecting the correct aperture. If the lens is wide open a shutter speed can be selected that freezes the movement of the subject, but creates a VERY shallow depth of field resulting in an image that only has one small part in focus. Too small of an aperture and everything is in focus, but the subject is likely to move during the exposure.

One other problem I had was the harsh light. I was shooting in the middle of the day when the sun is at it’s highest. In order to soften the light and eliminate the dark shadows, I used a diffuser. By putting the diffuser just out of the frame of the picture, I was able to create a giant softbox that evens out the light for the entire image.

Here are some of the images I took using the diffuser. You can see all of my Death Valley images by clicking here.

As usual, please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question. I encourage it.

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Death Valley Redux – Pt. 4 – Panorama Pictures

As I said in my first part of this series, I went to Death Valley for some great images and to try some new techniques. I tried HDR and the use of a wide angle lens, but that’s another post. I also tried lots of panorama images.

The idea of a panorama is fairly straight forward. Capture more in an image than the camera lens can see. In other words, make any lens wide angle.

The execution is also fairly simple. Start taking your panorama by setting up your camera to capture one side of the image, usually the left, and take pictures until you get to the other side, usually the right. The only thing you really need to worry about is making sure that you overlap the images by about 1/3 of the frame. Ok, there is more to it than that, but for the basics, that covers it.

What you end up with is a series of images that don’t look like much. In Lightroom, export the selected images into Photoshop by clicking in the Photo>Edit In>Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. Photoshop will run a series of actions that will blend the images into one panoramic image. Save it back into Lightroom and you are done.

Below are two image of one of the joshua tree forests in Death valley that I merged into one small panorama.

You can see how the image on the left side doesn’t quite cover the same area as the image on the right side, but when you put them together, you get the entire field of view.

Above is just two images put together into a panorama so that you can see how it works. You can actually stitch together MANY images to make a huge panorama. The process works the same, but you select more images to stitch together.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below.

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