Preview: Meet Baby Carter {Infant}! - 7.29.12

Yesterday our good friends Anne and Adam brought there little man, Carter, over for a session.  Carter is almost 2 months old and is such a cutie and was such a good sport.   Come meet this little man and his happy, proud parents.

Such a wonderful family and such an adorable little man!!

Pet Portraits 2: Featuring Jersey (Radio Trigger Test)

Yesterday I received my one year anniversary gift from my amazing wife a few weeks early, a set of Calumet Quad Plus 2.4GHz Wireless Trigger and Receivers.   I got an extra receiver two since I work with two flashes a lot.

Now I love the CLS from Nikon, but there have been several times the optical slave has killed me and frustrated me so I have been longing for radio triggers for a while.  I know Canon came out with there own and if Nikon ever does I know I will favor that especially for TTL.  But for someone who shoots manual a lot with the flashes I did not need something like the miniTTL PW, especially at that price.  I went with these over PW III due to just price.  Plus I love Calumet's gear, I have a lot of there lighting gear and being a Chicago based company I like to support them!

Now I only tested these a little bit last night and will give a full review once I can use them more in the field.  I do want to test distance and some harder out of sight shots than just inside my house.  But to play around with the system, I called on my favorite little model, Jersey, for some more pet portrait fun.

These are basically straight out of the camera, minus some dust cleaning (didn't clean my lens before hand) and some slight WB adjust.

Last nights sunset was amazing, then again there are so many nights out at our house that I snap Instagram (cffotog - add me) pictures from our deck of the sunset.

The set-up for this is simple, the old camera in the right hand resting against my left shoulder, radio driven flash in my right with the good old trustworthy LumiQuest Softbox III (perfect size for photographing a small dog).  Laying in the grass since Jersey stand all but 9 inches tall.  Took the exposure for the sky, then turned on the flash to light the subject.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: 17-35mm f2.8
Flash: SB700
Settings: ISO 400, f/13, 1/200sec, +0.3exp @ 17mm
Flash Setting: 1/8 power

She is the queen of her domain!  Stayed tuned for a full review of these Calumet Radio Trigger/Receivers!

Post-Processing: Dessaturation

It's been a little bit since I looked at some post processing techniques.  I posted this shot a few weeks ago on flickr here.  It was a popular shot (for me at least) so I wanted to give some information on processing.  The image started out with one of my favorite locations I have shot many times, looking south on LaSalle in the loop towards the Board of Trade Building.  It was still a little bit to blue hour, the sky was slightly gray, so I wanted to do something to bring this image out. 

I thought about a nice light trail but the exposure I was getting at f/16 was not long enough (I think it was 5 secs or so).  This is where I grabbed my 10 stop B+W ND filter.  Love this thing.  I slapped that on, set my aperture at f/8 and calculated that 2 minutes would be good and slightly underexposed to what I want (though I shot for 122 secs).  This is the results straight from the camera:

Other than the light trails, a boring flat image.  Now for the look I was going, I wanted that HDR look (of course) so I headed to Photomatix for a little single image tonemapping action.  From this, I got this look (I straightened out the image as well):

Now we got something looking a little more interesting.  Now I wanted to make the light trails pop but the rest of the dark.  A homage to Nolan's Batman Series and the infamous scene here on LaSalle with Batman and the Joker. 

**(I still cannot believe what happened in Colorado, my heart goes out to all the victims, the families, and the community.  It is such a shame that fear is becoming so great in our society and that people can be so heartless.)

Here you can see the image with just the saturation reduced, -36 on this particular image and then I masked out the light trails so they would still pop.

From that just a simple levels layer and a vibrance layer for the light trails to finish it off.  The final product you can see below:

Images do not always have to be 'vibrant' and over-saturated.  I have done it, most of us have, but this time I wanted to take the opposite approach and make it seem darker. 

Its always fun to try something different and actually have the results turn out like you imagine!

Addison {2 years old}!

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to meet Addison, who had just turned 2 years old.  Though a little wary of the camera, she played around her yard and playhouse while myself, her mother, and her sister Devin enjoyed the morning with her.  I am a little jealous of her playhouse which would be awesome to have as a kid!

 

 The dogs wanted in on the action!

 

Pet Portraits: Featuring Jersey

After getting the current issue of Popular Photography and seeing photographer Darrell A. Harris photo of his puppy, I knew and my wife asked me to do this with our dog.  Jersey is a 8.5 yr old pekinese poodle mix, she is the runt of her litter and usually this breed is a good size bigger.  She has a lot of attitude in the pint size body and we love her to death.

So I went down to the basement and set-up some backdrops and lighting.  I went with a similar setup as Mr. Harris did in the magazine, but the big difference is I used a 24" softbox versus a beauty dish.  This was lined up above camera pointing down at the subject.  I placed a reflector underneath this (classic beauty portrait set-up) to fill light into the chest area.  My camera was on my tripod a decent distance back since I was using a 70-200mm f2.8 lens for the shot.  Here is a set-up diagram, the main difference between the white backdrop shots and the black one is only the black one has a rim light.  Since Jersey is mostly black, she pops well off that backdrop without it.

I used a random object, my wife's yoga mat, to get the flash power close to correct before bringing in my model.  

So here she is, our wonderful peekapoo!

 Settings: 1/60 sec, ISO400, f/13, exp +1.0 @ 92mm (cropped later)

Main Flash: -2.7 exp, Rim Light -3.0 exp.

 Settings: 1/60 sec, ISO400, f/6.3, exp +0.7 @ 70mm

Main Flash: +2.0 exp.

Another at the same exposure:

My wife wanted one more shot, one with all her toys, which she has plenty and these were not all of them. 

She was a great model.  Easy to get to sit still in the same spot and to look at the camera, most of the time.  For some pets you may have to use treats, toys, or some other object to keep their attention. 

Samantha + Kyle: {Married}! Preview

Sometimes an intimate ceremony with your family is all you need to show how much you love each other.  Samantha and Kyle were wed this Sunday is just this way, with Kyle's dad and pastor of the Church presiding over the ceremony. 

Here is a quick preview:

She was a little camera shy!

 

Congratulations to the happy couple on their new life together!

Samantha + Christopher: {Married}! Preview

A rustic barn, red door frames, and a gold wedding dress highlight Samantha and Christopher's wonderful wedding at Byron Colby Barn in Grayslake, IL. This venue is amazing, like Christopher said "We didn't want to do too much decoration to take away from the place" and I agree.

Take a look for yourself.

 

Congratulations you two and keep watch for the full post!!