Saturday was a blast. I shot a wedding out in St. Joseph near St. Cloud Minnesota. The couple getting married had gone to school at St. Johns/St. Benedict’s so it was a fitting place to have their wedding.
It was a great location, and I will have more pictures later once they are processed, but this is the church they were married in.
Went to Lake Harriet Sunday night with Kristen. As I got there and was looking for her, I spotted some great light on some tulips, so I had to stop to take this:
The background looks painted, but it isn’t a photoshop effect, just a result of taking the picture at f/1.8. I did some burning on the background, but that is about it.
We were there to hopefully get a sunset picture, but not much luck. No clouds. I did get a couple of things though.
 
 
Kristen then had to leave, but I when down to the Band Shell, and took some shots of the tenders and boats there. It was really calm, so you could get longer exposures without bluring. This is a couple of my favorites.
 
David duChemin is a photographer, blogger and author of the book Within the Frame.
Note: This is not really an interview with David. He was not involved with this at all. This is just me misappropriating his words from his book. My leading questions, his words taken completely out of context…
Chris: Hey David, lets get right to the questions. Would you say this book is just for professional, travel, or aspiring travel photographers?
David: It’s a book for everyone who’s wanted to shoot images of the places and people they love, whether or not they ever go around the world to do it.
Chris: So your goal with this book is to reach all types of photographers, not just travel photographers?
David: If you come away with anything from this book, I hope it is a renewed resolution to seek and serve your vision through this elegant craft.
Trust me, it is a whole lot easier if you get it right in camera the first time. A whole lot easier. Anyway, I didn’t. I didn’t get all that good a picture of this family, and it was bugging me. The first problem was that I didn’t have all four of them with a reasonable expression. You gotta love groups! The first thing I had to do was to put a left side and a right side together of two pictures. Lesson learned: Keep shooting until you get a picture with all people looking forward!
The next thing I wanted was that burn and dodge effect. I tried a couple of things that didn’t work, then I remembered that I had seen a couple of things on David Zisers blog. The first one I found was this. This video post was specifically about dodge and burn. I could not quite make it work. Then I looked around a little more, and found this. I had this one bookmarked to look at sometime. It is about pulling people out and putting them on a different background. I didn’t really need something so drastic, but I decided to pull them out so I could textureize the background that was flat beige. I then used the same technique for dodge and burn that he did in this post.
I will briefly tell you, but it is better to just take a look at his video. First make a curves adjustment layer, and pull the right side way down to darken the image. Create a mask, then with a large soft brush swish through the faces to lighten them. Then use different size brushes to do touch ups. I think it worked.
David has lots of information and many many video posts. It is worth checking out.
Scott Kelby is putting together the second anual WorldWide Photo Walk. This year it is July 18. If you don’t know what a photowalk is, you should check out the site. Basicly it is just a bunch of photographers that decide to get together on a particular day and all walk together (more or less) in the same direction. The idea being that you would chat, get to know each other, help others, and maybe learn something from your fellow shooters.
Last year was a lot of fun, and I met some great people here in Minneapolis. I still follow their pictures on flickr a year later. We had that walk on Lake Harriet/Lake Nakomis. The picture above was taken while on the walk. The picture below was my favorite from the day, but it was long after the walk while I was headed home.
I am not sure where this years walk will be. Unfortunately, we don’t yet have a walk leader for Minneapolis. Boo hoo. Anyone out there want to step up?
I took some pictures at¬†Gina and Shawn Dormanen’s wedding on May 16. It was a lot of fun. One of the things we did was head outside to get some pictures of the Bride and Groom in this little structure that was build last fall. We were just a little late getting here. I would have liked more blue to the sky, but I think we got some good pictures out of it. I really like playing with flash and trying to combine it with ambient light, especially with some fun colors going on.
I did some work in photoshop to these images. I needed to darken the stage. It was a ugly grey from too much light spill. The stage doesn’t look quite as dark on my computer. Here they look a little “floaty”. I also did another adjustment layer to get her dress back¬†in the color direction of¬†white.
I just finished viewing the Nikon DVD called “A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting”. You can see excerpts of this DVD from Nikon here. You can get it for around $30. (I got mine from West Photo) This DVD features the host, Bob Krist, and Joe McNally.
This is a pretty good DVD, with something in it for everyone. Probably not for the ripest beginner, or the most advanced flasher, because it covers a lot of ground. A beginner or intermediate photographer with a speedlight or two willing to pause, stop, and rewind this DVD a few times will probably get quite a bit out of it.
My friend Steve needed some portraits done, so I offered to help. I was at his house over the weekend and took some pictures. We tried to mix it up and take some stuff that was more “portrait” like, and some different shots that showed a little more of Steve. Here are¬†a few that I liked.
 
I finally did it. I sent my Tamron lens in for service. This is my main walking around lens, and only wide-ish lens. So… for now I am walking around with the Nikon 50mm f/1.8. I like that lens, but it sure isn’t on the wide side.
I had finally had enough of the lens. I sure hope it can get fixed. I would feel bad about trying to sell it and move to a Nikon version without getting it check out. So, what did I want looked at? Three things:
I lived with this stuff for awhile now, thinking that this is what I get for not going Nikon, but it isn’t acceptable now. I bought this lens after hearing from several Canon shooters who had the similar lens in a Canon mount just how good it was. I can’t believe it is the same lens they talk about.
It was getting some quality Nikon glass that pushed me to send it in though. I now have a Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8, and that lens is amazing. It really does make me want to try other Nikon lenses out and see if they are as good. The Tamron is no where near as sharp a lens. I can only hope that Tamron can find some little screws to adjust in there somewhere that will magicly make me like this lens. Otherwise, I am saving pennies (and lots of them) for the Real Deal.
Update: Tamron Customer Service.
Update: I got a paper confimation (05/29/2009) that they had recieved the lens and found issues they would fix. Paper. Really?
Update: Lens Fixed.
Spring is finally here. Well, it has been for a bit, but my backyard has been slow to bloom. I have often taken pictures of flowers from my backyard, but it seems like it has been forever since I have been able to do that. We finally got the tulips to bloom, and I took a couple of pictures.
 
I had the girls help me. Their favorite thing is to get the spray bottle and spray everything in the backyard, except the flowers I am trying to photograph. It had rained earlier in the day, but we needed to add a bit of water by the time I took these in the early evening.
 
Once again, I am taking these with my Nikon 50mm f/1.8. I love the bookah that I get from that lens. I can get the focus better with this lens too. I am not convinced that my Tamron 17-50 focuses properly. I am looking at sending it in. So, it probably means that I will be using the niffty 50 for most of my pictures after sending the Tamron in. But that’s ok. It is sometimes a little too big when taking pictures of the kids, I have to back up further than I want to, but I still like the pictures I get from it of them.
 
These two were the reason I picked up a DSLR in the first place, so it is good that I am getting back to taking pictures of them. I have been trying to concentrate on getting portrait pictures for a new portfolio that I haven’t taken¬†many pictures of my kids lately. But now that it is nice out again, we will go for¬†more walks and hikes, which will present more¬†oportunities for pictures than just the sidewalk in front of our house.
