The Unnecessary Panorama

One thing that I like to do is go out and shoot images with only one lens.  Forcing me to change the way I look at a scene, an image, an object, and to take myself out of the comfort zone of having that ability to switch.  The other day I did this for a while.  I put my 85mm on my camera and headed out.  Two shots that I took (I should say composites) I took ended up being panoramas.  These could have been easily done with one frame with a wider lens.

A 3-image Vertical Pano of a Tower Crane in downtown Chicago.

I love shooting images this way with a long lens because (1) there is less distortion and (2) the detail becomes amazing.  You can easily blow up images like these very large.  Now after the crane I took a stroll to a spot where I took an image that has ended up at a couple of restaurants and seems to be one of my popular shots.  You can see the original here: City Tops!  That was done with my old D3000 and a Sigma 10-20mm f4-5.6 lens.  I did this shot differently, one black and white, and too with the D700 and 85mm.  This was the results:

A 20-image Pano of the River North Area 

This last picture was a composite of 20 separate shots that were stitched in Photoshop and also converted to black and white.  For this type of shot I think this is the way to go because you want to capture all the details in the buildings.  Photographs like this should be blown up large to make you feel as if you are there, Engulfed Within It. 

Taking the Extra Step

Photography is about vision and conveying that vision.  It is about providing something that makes a person think and feel when they view it.  With landscape photography viewers want to be drawn into the shot, like they are actually there enjoying what you are seeing and capturing. 

Composition is the main idea that we as photographers use to draw them into our vision.  There are some key factors I like to keep in mind while out shooting around the city (these can apply to normal landscapes as well):

* Foreground is important! - Including a well placed object in the foreground gives the viewer a better sense of depth and can really add a lot to a photograph.

* Getting Low - Don't always bring you tripod up to your level, get down with it to its lowest point.  Bring out the detail in the rocks, in the plants, etc to bring out something different that a lot of people would not see.

* Sometimes you need to take that little bit of an extra step - Here I mean something like climbing up somewhere to get the view your are envisioning, or in my case last night, climbing down the melting icy rocks trying not to slide into the water and ruin my camera. 

The view of Chicago's skyline from the Popular Olive Park

* Lastly, it is about your vision, what makes you feel moved when you look at it.  We all want people to  enjoy our art, but we do this because it is our love of making something we feel is special. 

Ever Evolving

Well, yesterday my wife and I signed off on our new house, and next week we move in, which means dare I say it, we are suburbanites.  Will this affect my city shots and my updating?  Yes and no, I still love Chicago, I still work in Chicago, and I will still come to Chicago.  There will just not be as much of it in my Photostream.  But with this, I think that quality will be something that could come from this.  I do take for granted how easily I can just walk out and go take pictures. 

Photographers are always evolving with location and with time.  I want to set-up a studio at our new house and we have plenty of space.  Something I did not have in the city.  I love portraiture and I want to work on it more.  But my passion for city shooting will always be there.  And my trust me, I will continue to come to the city to do portraits.   There is nothing like night shooting with people.  It is challenging, it is exciting and I love it.  

I guess I need more flashes then.   Both for on location and in studio shooting?  Any suggestions on possible studio strobes (affordable) and I still need to extend my speedlight kit ;-) 

Anyways,  the love for the city and night shooting will continue, I mean how can I give up the bright lights of the big city:

By Design (A Photographer's Website)

 The Aqua Building, downtown Chicago, IL.

Now most of us who partake in Photography are trying to get their name out there.  We have Flickr Accounts, Google + accounts, Facebook fanpages, etc.  But the one spot we all know we really need is a personal website. 

I have had one for a while, which many of you seen, or in fact is how you got to this blog.  Now I change it pretty often right now, trying to make it less cluttered, less navigation and just easier to see my work, and easy for my clients to get to see their photographs.  I am in the midst of one of these changes now.  The front page has changed and it has become 'cleaner.'  I have removed some of my old pages that served no purpose other than just more wasted space.  Everything you can do to your site to make it more user friendly can help in this business. 

The reason we build these sites is to show off our work, so make it show it off, not brag about you.  Less is more.  Show your great stuff, not your good stuff.  But make sure it represents you as an artist. 

These are things you need to consider when building your website:

- First issue is where to host it.  I use SmugMug because it lets me customize the site plus it sets up the ability to print right from your site for customers.  Cutting out the hassle of the in between.  But doing this you have to have some knowledge on webdesign.  To really customize it, you have to add code and manipulate code.  You can hire a webdesign team to do it for you, they usually offer hosting as well, but that can add up real quick and when you are starting out I know you are trying to cut down on spending.  So search your options, web design is so common now that if you don't know much about, a friend or family member may. 

- Second thing that needs to be kept in mind is how the site should look, especially your homepage.  This is your statement piece, your introduction to your work.  That is why myself and many other photographers go with a slideshow to show off more than one piece of work.  But keep it to just a few pieces, you don't need to put 100 pictures in a slideshow on the front page.  Now what I did was an odd crop size of my slideshow to keep some mystery to the images so the viewer wants to dive deeper into the site.  Keep it creative but keep it simple, you don't want it to take forever to load, and you don't need your life story on the front page.

- Site layout/navigation is next.  What pages do you need?  Do you have a blog to incorporate? Some basic pages to include and I think are necessary is a Portfolio and Contact page.  The portfolio page is your spot to show off your best works.  Keep it simple, and if you shoot different topics, do a page for each so people can look at what they want - wedding, landscape, commercial, etc.   The contact page is essential as well, you want clients, this is how they get a hold of you.  Do a form so it is easy for them to contact you.  There are many spots to get these forms and the code like FoxyForm.  They worry about the emails sent to you and you can custom build your form there and just paste the code where you want it in your site. 

- Keep it updated.  Update when you take a photograph you think should be on there.  Make it so people want to come back, that is why I think blogging is important.  It gives you a place to show off your work like engagement, wedding, and lifestyle sessions (ask your clients permission first!).

This is my short (but wordy) intro to web design.  What are your thoughts?  Feel free to ask any questions on my approach, tips, etc? 

What is your Favorite Lens?

This questions pops into my head on a daily basis.  What lens would I have if I could only have one?  I love all my lens, but then again most of us say that because why else would we spend the money on them. 

I always look at Lightroom and see what lens I have taken the most photos with.  As it has been, my Sigma 10-20mm has been way out front for a while.  But now with using the FX D700, my Nikkor 17-35mm is the glass that stays on my camera 90% of the time.  Other than that lens, my Nikkor 85mm f1.4 is the other lens I use and love the most.  Those two are such great lens and are what I prefer to shoot with all the time. 

What are your favorite to shoot with and what can't you live without? 

Another note, you have and will see some changes coming to the website and blog over the next week or so.  I am cleaning up once again and doing this in stages.  The top menu/header has changed as well as the front page.  Keep an eye out and let me know your thoughts.

Take the Color Out of It!

If your like me, you sometimes get tired of the same old shots.  Same perspectives, same processing, same etc...  We all look at different ways to take/process photographs.  Different foreground elements, different focus.  Well on this post, if you look at the title, I am going Black and White with it.  Now I know there are a thousand ways and programs to do this.  This is just my method, and I know it would change if I had say, Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 (Hint, Hint ;-) ).  But I stick to my conversion in Photohop.  So here is the shot I am taking, a single exposure shot that I processed through Photomatix already and brought into Photoshop.

From here, I convert my image to black and white with an adjustment layer as seen below with my settings:

Here you can see I adjusted my sliders to what I feel is right.  With cityscapes I generally push the yellows up (for the lights in the buildings) and push the red/magenta down to give it some depth.  With the sky, depending on the time of day, those sliders can end up anywhere.  Just try not to blow out any highlights.

After this I go tweak my image levels with an adjustment layer:

As you can see  I do not live in the perfect histogram range, because I want to push the contrast.  So I go up on my highlights and my darks some first, then I adjust the mids to where I think it feels right.

Here is the final image:

After this I am done, quick and dirty, and easy.  I love black and white images, they are actually my favorite photographs to print and decorate with.  How do you convert?  Use Photoshop, presets in a plugin from Nik, Topaz, etc?  What are your thoughts on B&Ws, love them or hate them?  I love feedback because it refines my ideas and keeps all of us thinking, so share your thoughts!

Two Contrasting Portrait Lighting Styles

As you guys know I have been more and more experimenting with lighting and portraits.  Usually using myself as the test subject to see how the lighting affects and changes through the process.  As of right now I have a two speed light set (SB700s).   So all lighting I am doing is simple and easy to set-up, which is what I want.  With engagement and wedding portraits you want to be as quick but as accurate as possible.  So that is why testing out different lighting scenarios is important.  I wanted to show two completely different lighting styles in two different locations to show a dramatic and a simple portrait.

I will start with the simple portrait.   (Now I have added some photoshop fun to it, but the gist of the post is lighting)

The key for this is I am evenly lit.  In fact this was taken with my old D3000 since you can see my D700 is in my hands.  It also was lit with just one speedlight.  There is a big window right across from where I am standing so the speedlight was actually doing just a little work to light the shadows and keep it even.  It was set to -1.0 and was in a 24" softbox right above the camera.  To help highlight the underneath especially on my back arm I had a reflector mounted directly below the frame to bounce some of that light back up into me.   This is a perfectly simple way to light someone in a controlled environment.  Use a light above and a reflector below to keep the light soft and light there features well.   Push in the light and reflector as close as possible to keep it soft and to minimize drop-off.   The settings on my camera were 1/80 sec at ISO 100, f1.8 @ 50mm.

Now for something drastically different and streaming away from the soft light we all love.  Sometimes you want dark shadows to set a mood.  So I wanted to try something and had to find a dark spot in the city.  So a nice underground alley near the river worked perfect:

This metallic and reflective background made a perfect spot for lighting.  This was lit with two speedlights, one key light for myself, and one lowlight to add some 'cool' to the backdrop.  My main light was up above camera left just out of frame pointed down at me.  It had a full cut CTO and I set the camera to Tungsten to control the color of the shot.  Now the shot had too much warmth to it since I was in a Chicago alley in February, so I took my second light and left it bare and pointed it up at the backdrop camera right.  The key light was at 0.0 and the low light was at -1.0.   The camera was dialed in at 1/6 sec (rear curtain to drag the shutter) at ISO-200, f2.8 @ 19mm.  I had the camera dialed down -2.0 to really darken the image since there were a decent amount of tungsten lights overhead. 

I have become so interested in using speedlights and the unlimited amount of things you can do with them to create a portrait.  These two ways that I just highlighted are just something to get you thinking and a way to keep myself pushing what I can get out of these little lights.

Favorite Blogs/Websites to Read

I did this in my previous blog about a year and a half ago and I just looked back at it.  It is amazing how things have changed over that year and a half.  I noticed now I read a lot more photographers blogs, not just photography ones.  I find I get more useful information on those.  Now I like to say this is a post for me to inform you on what to read but it is actually the opposite, this is a post for me to learn who you read and what I am missing.  With that I need your help on this, please comment and let me know if there is a blog you love that I missed, or a photographer I should check out. 

** As a note, these are the ones I read regularly, I do read a ton more randomly. 

I broke this list down into two sections: Photographer and Photography blogs. 

Photographer Blogs:

Joe McNally : The master of all things light and color.  I read everything of his.  I love how well he uses speedlights in his photography.  This is a must read.  Get his books if you want to learn about Flash Photography!

Zack Arias : He has some of the most amazing black and white portraits of celebrities.  His lighting is amazing and he is so blunt and straight forward.  He just switched to Medium Format, but his older blogs on what equipment he 'used' to carry are great since he is very minimalistic. 

Ryan Brenizer : The wedding photography/flash guru who even has a method of depth of field panoramas named after him.  Just looking at his wedding portraits makes me want to go out and try new shots even when you are on a time crunch.

Scott Bourne : He has an old school approach to things that makes you think about really shooting and not relying on equipment.  He tells it like it is.

Chris Smith : Chris's Out of Chicago is new, but he has a great concept and should be read by any inspiring Chicago Photographers.  From tips to locations he has really got a lot of great information in there.

Photography Blogs:

Nikon Rumors : Of course being a Nikon shooter I read this religiously.  For upcoming Nikon news do not miss this site.

Photo Rumors : The site for the rest of you shooters out there.  Run by the same people that bring you Nikon Rumors.

Light Stalking : This blog brings you some great information on so many different aspects of Photography, it is a must read.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips: This is a must read for anyone using Lightroom.  Matt has some of the best tips and presets out there!


Alright, this list is short but I do read a lot more blogs, I want to see what you guys read.  So help me out and give me some things to read today/tonight!

Looking down the LaSalle Corridor.  Blue Hour style with Light Trails. 

Nikon's D800/800E

Well, I have been waiting for it and I know probably most of you have.  The Nikon D800/D800E have been announced.  See the official press release here: Nikon.com D800/800E Press Release.  At 36MP it is the highest resolution Full Frame Camera.  The difference between the 800 and the 800E is the 800E has the anti-aliasing filter removed which gives better sharpness but also gives the problem of moiré patterns and color variation.  I would save $300 and stick with the normal D800.  Now this camera was obviously pushed to compete with the Canon 5D Mark II and the upcoming Mark III version of the camera in the HD-SLR market.  And with that one thing cool for us Chicago folk, is the promo movie was filmed here in Chicago, check it out:

One thing with the new high mega pixel is you loose the low light ability.  I know Nikon is pushing it works till 6400 ISO but the one thing Nikon has always excelled is low light.  Now most of us probably won't need anything higher than that.  The camera weighs 100g less than my Nikon D700 which is a plus, but it almost a 1/2" taller.  The last thing missing that would have been nice is the U1 and U2 settings found on the D7000 but not here for saving your own preset settings.  Overall this is a big announcement of a great camera.  At $3000 dollars it is priced well also.  With the D4 announced earlier Nikon has left the ball in Canon's court for the 5D Mark III which I am sure we will see soon enough. 

 What would you rather have, a new Nikon D4, D800, or the Canon 1Dx?

Here are two shots I took this past weekend on the Out of Chicago Photowalk:

The Mag Mile at the River.  After taking this we all noticed Chris Smith taking panning shots of cabs.  So we all joined along, and then with the CTA buses passing a foot in front of us I took this shot: 

Now this shot reminds me of Joe McNally's New York FireFighter's shot!  Of course not as cool or thought out since he mounted his camera right to the fire engine and you can make out the driver.   I would love to pull this shot off from the driver's side but that would involve me standing in the middle of street. Hmmmm, maybe. 

Get Up Close and Personal!

We all get tired of the same old shots, at least the photographers I know.  We shoot the same thing over again and try to make it better.  But sometimes you just have to do something different to get those creative juices flowing again.  If you do a lot of wide angle shots like myself, one thing to do is to get close. 

Pull that zoom out that you have not used in ages, you know that one that doesn't show everything in the frame!!

This past Saturday, Chris Smith of the Out of Chicago Blog had his first Photowalk and I would say it was a definite success.  He talked of this same subject not too long ago in his blog, and it really holds true.  I feel I don't pull out my zoom quite enough unless I am doing portraits but they work so well with architecture and landscapes, pulling your focus in.  Getting those lost details that can really draw your eye.  So on this photowalk since I knew most of us would be using our ultra wides exclusively, I did take the chance to pull out my zoom a few times. 

I would suggest to any photographer to also get out and go on these walks.  You can learn a lot from other photographers.  You see how they look at a scene and it really can make you look at things a lot differently. 

Chris, thanks again for throwing such a fun photowalk.  Here is the group shot that started the evening:

And here is a shot of how the evening ended, with the Name tags that Mr. Smith provided for us, looks familiar huh:

Cheers to a great walk!

Anjali + Vishal : Engaged! {1.28.12}

When you go from Wine to Hot Chocolate you know it was a good session.  Anjali and Vishal braved the cold (one of the few cold days we have had this winter) and the wind to head out through Chicago.  We started at a wine bar and ended up on a bridge overlooking downtown.   Anjali and Vishal claimed they were shy but warmed up right away and were easy to shoot right from the start. 

I want to give thanks to Shawn at Webster's Wine bar for letting us use the bar as the backdrop for some great shots!

  Always fun when shooting at busy spots!!

Apparently he likes to bite her nose!

 It was pretty cold and windy, so we stopped to get the couple a little warm me up ;-)

Congrats once again, you two!

Warm January Days

The temperatures right now are insane, making for some nice times to photograph.  Here is a shot from a few days ago with a beautiful sunset over the Chicago River.  This was taken the same evening as the shot from a previous blog: It's OK to Revisit!

I hope everyone has been able to enjoy this weather!