Category Archives: Photography

Related to Photography and taking or dealing with pictures.

Ice Boats on Lake Calhoun

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On Saturday I got a chance to go out and shoot. I wasn’t sure where to go, but I headed to Lake Calhoun. Turned out to be a great place to take my new lens. I got the chance to shoot some ice boats.

There were a few different kinds. There was a windsurfer, and both small front steer, and a long rear steer boat. I talked to the guy with the long rear steer, and these guys are really into this kind of thing. Multiple boats, multiday regattas, traveling around to different lakes. Crazy. The one guy thought that maybe this was the first and only rear steer boat to be on Lake Calhoun. Not sure how we can know when they have been around since about the 40’s, but if it is, I have the only pictures!

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70-200 at the Studio Lighting Class

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I missed posting for a few days. It is time for the next studio class, and I am just getting to putting up some pictures from the last class!

I got the chance to use my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 lens. That thing is very nice. I liked that I was able to stand back a bit and not be on top of the model. I had taken some pictures before with my 55-200, but these turned out sharper. I wish I could remember exactly what type of lighting we were doing with each of the models. Some of the lighting techniques woked better than others. I have some of the images turned into prints to bring to class tomorrow. The “models” in the photos are others from the class. The people that were supposed to sit in the chair didn’t show up.

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Late Christmas Present

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I was completely floored this weekend. My father pulled out a BIG yellow box with the letters Nikon on the side.  What was inside the box, I would never have imagined my father to have picked up for me. I must have droned on for longer than I remember when we drove to Cleveland together last year about this lens. I have wanted this lens for the longest time, but it is quite a bit of jingle.

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Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF

The Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 is a monster.¬†¬†Here is a dpreview. (that’s where the image is from) This is an amazing do everything lens. I am psyched to bring this to my studio lighting class. If I get to take more portraits and senior pictures this spring, this will be the lens on my camera.

It is not light, but it does let in a lot of light. It would require a few trips to the gym before you would want to carry this all day at a wedding. But, it is fast in every sense. I love the 2.8 aperture. I love how fast the AF-S ultrasonic motor focuses. I also love¬† that you get VR on top of that. I was shooting indoors at 2.8, and I still got sharp pictures handheld at 1/30. I couldn’t do that with my 17-50mm f/2.8 Tamron. I love VR.

Did I mention that this is sharp. I shot a picture of the door across the room at the hotel in Fargo. On the door was the usual drivel about the room cost, fire escapes, liability, etc. When I zoom in on that writting, it is very readable. It was only a postage stamp size on the picture, but I could still zoom in and read the words. Amazing.

Did I mention how happy I am to have this lens? Woo Hoo. Thanks Dad.

I will try to get some pictures up later from this lens.

Studio Lighting Class

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The first evening in the studio when pretty well. It was good to get into a real studio with real lighting equipment, and get to use it. We had between 2-4 strobes in softboxes and grids going. This is the view from the back of the room.

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The goal of this class was to look at how the use of the different lights would effect what the picture would look like. We had our model Maggie sitting on a stool. She had a couple of different wardrobe changes, and we used both a dark grey and a white background. These are the pictures from this shoot that worked out pretty well.

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New studio lighting class tonight

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TestI am psyched. Today is the second day of my studio lighting class. The class is going to be down at the instructor’s studio. He is bringing in live models, and we will be using his strobes. He has some radio triggers (pocket wizards I think) that he is planning to use. He will have the recievers set up on the lights, and just hand us the transmitter when it is our turn. I will have more about the evening later.

Whats for supper

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Annie and I made fried egg roll things for supper. They are Mexican egg rolls, or Chinese burritos or something. They are Mexican type fillings in a fried won ton wrapper. They turned out great. The kids even ate a version that just had rice, chicken and cheese.

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This needs a bit bigger depth of field. I shot it hand held with available light, which is just the light above the table which wasn’t very bright. I should have got out the tripod and maybe my flash, but hey, the food was getting cold and I was hungry.

Very Cool Shoot and Post Tutorial

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Well, I just stumbled along this guest post on Scott Kelby’s blog. Ok, stumble is not the correct word as I usually stop by every day or two. This is from photographer Dustin Snipes, and a shoot he did of high school basketball stars.

This was just good timing, as I started the studio lighting class yesterday. It is great to see how others have set up their lights, and the effect on the pictures. Even better how he shows how he created the entire look, from the lights to the post processing. I like his use of the “high contrast” look. (Even better that he knows that this is not a look for every pictures.)

I learned a great photoshop tip from this post too. One way to “dodge and burn” is to create a new layer an fill it with 50% grey.¬†Then¬†set the blending mode to Softlight. Now, with a¬†brush opacity¬†of 5% and¬†hardness of¬†0%¬†, you can paint with either white or black. This will accent the highlights or darken the shadows just by switching the brush color on the same layer. Neat.

Studio Lighting Class

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Alien Bees B400I just got back from my first studio lighting class. It wasn’t too bad. We just went over equipment, so we didn’t get into any real detail. Next class is when the fun starts and we get to set up lights and shoot pictures of a model.

The class is through continuing education, with this class at Jefferson High in Uptown. The instructor is Gil Dignen, and he seems to be a great guy. I have signed up for the intro and the advanced course that follows it, so I have 9 weeks total I think.

A cool thing about the class is that we are going to go to his studio for the next 3 classes (at least), and he will be bringing in a real model that he works with. This should be a lot of fun.

Scott Kelby Stirs the Pot

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I suppose that when you are somewhat famous, everything you say has a chance to get spun out of control. It is like this for Scott Kelby. The last couple of days he has posted about a photo shoot that he did, and the post processing he did with some of the images. Part 1. Part 2. There is just so much to comment on this post…

First, having someone document a shoot is pretty cool, I think. The fact that this one wasn’t going well just makes it even better. Shows that we all have to keep our heads on straight, and can still pull something out of the ashes.

Second, Scott shows us an effect plugin which he decides not to recommend. This is great. I like to see what people are using and how it is used. I don’t buy plugins (yet). They just seem soooooo expensive, and that is part of the reason that Scott does not recommend it.

Third, the comments are crazy entertaining. The plugin, by Lucis Art is what is driving all the comments. It is a mostly one trick pony that creates a rather striking effect. Scott posted about a older version of this a while back, and how to create it without a plugin. The comments concentrate on two things. One, they don’t like the Dave Hill look (I think he has some great photo’s), and those that think that the effect is overused. First, Dave doesn’t use the plugin. He invented this “look”. He certainly has the right to do to his photo’s what he likes. Why wouldn’t anyone else? I am amazed at the self richousness of photographers. Raw vs jpeg, crop vs no crop, in camera light balance vs post, “natural” vs post. The list is endless. I wish people would just take pictures. If you don’t enjoy someones work, just move on. I haven’t seen others using this effect, but then I don’t actively look for them. I did notice a couple of flickr groups, but I hadn’t seen them before today. I have yet to see in in print. Hardly overused. But who cares anyway.

One interresting thing is that a commenter talked about a plugin I had not heard of before from Topaz Labs . They have a plugin that comes close to this for a lot less money. I don’t know how close, because I haven’t tried it yet, but it does have a free trial. They also have other plugins for noise, sharpening, and others. I would love to know how good the noise one is. I could use a good noise filter.

Wine Bottle Photos

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So I thought I would try to take an interesting picture of some wine bottles, and a little wine rack we have in our house. It was kind of a fun little project. I think the best images were those that involved a mirror that we had near by. There is still some visual clutter in the pictures. One of the things I need to pick up are some white and black poster board sheets to use as flags. It would help to cut unwanted reflections for example.

In case you don’t know, the bottle of wine I featured is made in Italy at a small winery named after their family name, Endrizzi. That is also my wife’s name. Turns out, this vinyard is in the same area that Annie’s family is thought to come from, and they are probably relatives. Her brother got a case a couple of years ago. I think the only importer of this wine is based out of Atlanta.

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