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I took pictures at my little friend Harry’s birthday party on the weekend. It was at the Lariat Lanes (you probably got that part) in south Minneapolis. (Actually in Richfield) I don’t imagine that many bowling lanes would fall into a category of anything but relaxed family atmosphere, but they really have it nailed here. Well, I suppose with two kids parties going on at the same time, it is hard to call it relaxing, but Harry and his friends had a good time.

I think that Harry had been to a bowling alley before, but he was just so pumped up that he could barely take time out from having fun to bowl. After tossing the ball, he would run back to his friends before he had even seen how many pins he knocked down. Pretty funny.

The kid above almost hit me in this shot. I was down beside the gutter right at the edge of the last lane in the building. I had no where to go but take take the pic. Good job the kid rails were there that kept the ball out of the gutter, or I would have taken on to the knee.

Some of the kids wound up and chucked the ball like the big leaguers. I swear he was putting a spin on the ball too.

There are more pictures on an album at Christopher Ward Photography.com here.

I have been doing more and more portraits with flash recently, and I often forget just how wonderful natural light can be. While at Kate and Eric’s wedding, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to take some portraits of Annie with her fancy clothes and all.

The first shot I took, with the light directly coming in the window, I didn’t include here. It wasn’t as flattering because the light was still a little harsh. I had Annie standing in front of the walls on both sides of the giant window at the end of the room. The day was overcast, but the light coming in the window was still a little harsh.

The shots you see here are after I pulled the sheer curtains in front of the window. It helped quite a bit. I was surprised at how much softer the curtains made the light. It was like I made a huge softbox. The image still has shadows, and light areas, but the transition is very soft.

The walls of the hotel also provide a nice background, as if I had hung one just for this purpose.

I like the image above. We were trying something with her hair, which wasn’t working out, but it got a great smile out of Annie.

Lastly, I found an image that made a great black and white.

The above image was taken with a D90, pop-up flash as commander, and a SB-900 held out at camera left. I think that there is something wrong with these photos, but the subjects liked them. My issue? There was too much flash, especially from the front, and there is a shadow at the bottom of the image. But why?

I was certain that I read somewhere, saw a video, or a podcast that said that the D90’s pop up flash, when acting as a commander could not contribute light to the scene. I was wrong.

At home, I had previously been trying to use a two light setup with one light on camera, and another off to the left in an umbrella. Both were SB900’s. I had been playing with the lighting ratios, and what the light looked like. I would leave the umbrella at full power, then decrease the on camera. Then I would lower the umbrella, and increase the light from the on camera flash. This was all done via CLS.

Then I was shooting some informal portraits at a wedding. We were at a country club, on a golf course, and the sun was going down. Twilight blue sky. I set my subjects up with the golf course and the mountains behind them. I held a SB900 with dome difuser on in my left hand at arms length. (I didn’t have other diffusion materials with me.) I popped up my on board flash to use as the commander. It didn’t register that it was set to TTL. I took my picture with a Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 lens on the front, and a shadow shows up in front of their feet! Whoa! Where is the light coming from? I was a little confused and didn’t have time to figure it out, so I just zoomed in a bit more so the shadow wouldn’t be as noticible. I also added some dodging in post to even out the light a little bit.

It wasn’t until I was back home looking at my pictures that I figured it out. The light from the built-in flash was contributing to the exposure. I know that in the past I have sworn at Joe McNally because it seemed like my flash was contributing to the light, when I know that he has said over and over that when using CLS, the commander flash doesn’t contribute light to the exposure. Except when you don’t pay attention.

So, if you do not want your pop up flash to contribute to the exposure, make sure that beside the line labeled Built-In, in the left column it says “–”. If you do want some light from this flash, set it to “TTL”. You will most likely want to lower the light from this flash so it acts as just a bit of fill, by setting the right column to -2 or even -3.

I think my mistake (probably more than once) was when I looked at the menu and saw TTL, and thought, of course that is what I want. But, you probably only want light from the off camera lights set to TTL, and the pop up set to “–” for commander. The most I can hope for is that I have learned my lesson.

This was a wedding that I didn’t go to as the official shooter. I was just a guest with an unusually large camera and flash combo.

I have know Kate for quite awhile now. She doesn’t live in Minneapolis, so we don’t see each other a lot, but she is great friend/cousin, and I wish her all the best.

I bet you can’t tell that Alison is her sister. It was fun to be shooting at an event where you knew the people that you were taking pictures of. I think it helped to get some fun shots.

Sometimes you know that a picture of a brother and sister captures a moment that you might not realize is so appropriate unless you know the people.

I think by paying attention (and taking a lot of pictures) I got a few great looks.

And a picture of the dress detail can’t hurt.

Or the love(ly) cake.

A few opportune shots on the dance floor round out the package.

It was a fun wedding to be a part of. Everyone had a great time. It was an interesting experience to try to stay out of the way of the official photographer, and still get some good shots. I think I did a pretty good job. He didn’t shoot much of the reception or the dance floor, so it wasn’t too difficult.

Congratulations Kate and Eric.

Took a few pictures of tobogganing the other day. Using the Nikon 18-200 VR and panning. Pretty fast shutter, so there is not a lot of blur, but the people come out better.

We had some friends come over for dinner before they were headed off to see a play their daughter was in. Since the kids were dressed up, I decided to set up a light, and try to coax them into a picture. It went pretty well.

It is always a challenge to get two kids together, in the same focal plane, with the same expression. Extra light would have helped this.

I had just one SB900 through an umbrella camera left. I gelled it and shot at fluorescent to try to match the compact fluorescent bulbs in the light fixtures. They don’t quite match. It was a bit tricky to try to set the white balance in Lightroom.

Anyway, sometime soon I want to get the whole family together for a portrait. I need to get more light, and get it balanced better with ambient. By the way, notice the much whiter background in the first two. That will be another post…

Harry and Jack were the first to take me up on the free Christmas Card Photo Shoot offer. I went to their house and set up some lights. They were a fun couple of guys to take pictures of. Tough too. It was quite difficult to get both of them looking at the camera with similar expressions. Read the rest of this entry »

I was hanging out at Rich and Mary’s studio (that’s Rich above) and Kristen had an idea she wanted to try. She pulled out Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries and showed us the double exposure picture. She wanted to try to do something similar.

None of us had ever tried to do this with our cameras. With our Nikon cameras we went to the Shooting Menu and set Multiple Exposure: ON. Number of shots to 2, and left Auto gain on. Then I just pointed the camera and took a couple of shots.

Obviously that isn’t going to work. Kristen looks like a ghost, and the backgrounds from both pictures bleed together. We need a black background, and some light.

There are two strobes in light boxes set up at 45 deg to me on either side. The background works, and we learned that I am going to have to move the camera a bit to get separation of the images.

There was one more step, but I don’t have a picture of it. If you notice my ears, they look really weird. Too much light. What we decided to do, was fire only one light at a time. Only the light where the subject was looking was fired. That way the light drops off, and you don’t see the ear.

I also didn’t use the center focus point on the camera. I placed a point to the left of center on his cheek when he faced camera left, then switched it for the next shot. Remember I also only fired the strobe when it faced Rich.

It was fun, give it a try.

It has been a long time since I have just¬† been out for a photowalk either by myself or with some friends. Saturday I got to hang out with my “photo buds”, Rich, Mary, and Kristen. After a bite to eat, we stopped by their studio in Minneapolis’ north end, and did a little photo walk around the area. I was just looking for something interesting, and a bridge with some fun light patterns caught my eye.

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Welcome to fall color. We timed the color about as well as you could for our DLWS Michigan trip to Traverse City. There wasn’t a lot of reds, but a whole lot of yellow maples were there. You couldn’t point a camera without taking a picture of one. There was the challenge. How do yo get a picture of fall color? You need more than just color in the picture to make it interesting.

I thought my winding path shot above was pretty good. After looking at it, I am wishing that I had zoomed in a bit more, and had it vertical. I tried a vertical shot, but it didn’t work with the focal length. Oh well. Some time I will get it in my head that I need to try things more before I move on.

That leaf shot is pretty standard for me. I try to get it every year. I like this years the best. Just the right mix of leaf, color, road, and focus. I entered this image in a contest before, but the leaf wasn’t as sharp as this time around.

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