Tag Archives: Photography

Rainbows & Sunsets…

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I went down to a friend’s cabin this weekend for a day… We were looking forward to basking in the sun as we darted around the lake on their family boat, spraying children on the shore with our wake, chucking empty beer bottles at elderly folks, and leaving uncut 6-pack plastic rings in the water for fish and seals and birds to get their necks caught in… you know, what everybody does during Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately, as soon as I arrived with my friends Andrew and Carrie, the sun went into hiding, and the clouds came out with it’s angry face. It rained for the majority of the afternoon, which sucked, but it stopped raining just in time for dinner. We were able to catch some double rainbows, and the angry clouds made for some dynamic sunset photos as we got on the boat for an evening cruise.

These were taken with the E-1 and 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 lens. Not bad for a camera that’s 6 years old… I also had my E-620 with me, but I opted for the E-1 due to it’s weather sealing… just in case the clouds decided to unzip it’s pants and unload on us again. Fortunately, it didn’t, and I ended up with these two photos… (the second shot was taken holding the camera just above the water… getting it ever so slightly wet.)

The Bormann Boys (and the Adults They Hold Hostage)

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My buddy Keith asked me to take some photos of his family, which consists of Keith, his beautiful wife, Jessica, and his super cute twin boys, Dylan and Carter (19 months old).  Seeing as how these tiny little bundles of mischief joy can be quite the divas (is the male form divos?), it was decided that the morning would be the best time to take photos.  Sunday morning, at 9am to be exact.  Yes, I’m normally a night person, and on weekends, my mornings are where I refill my sleep reservoir with much needed dreams of butterflies, rainbows, and morning dew.  I mean, who needs to see these things in person, when one can just dream about them?  In any case, I was able to drag myself out of bed, after an excellent night out with some friends who were visiting from out of town.  (Sidenote: I am also recovering from a slight cold, and as it turns out, Gin and Tonics and shots of Patron are actually not home remedies for the specific cold that I have.  I still have faith that it does cure something.  Probably just boredom.  And social awkwardness.)

More after the jump…

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Chad & Sean’s New Baby pt. 2

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As this is a photo blog, I’ve decided from here on out, I’d always post a photo first, then get to the words.  (Took this suggestion from one of the posts over at Zack Arias’ blog, who is a pretty awesome photog that I follow online (but not in real life, because I’m not a creepy stalker).

I took these wide open, with a max shutter speed of 1/4000.  It froze the action, so you don’t really get the motion blur that you wanna see in an action shot, but I really wanted to get that shallow DOF, and have that shown in the foreground.  I also darkened the foreground a little to put the focus back on the car.  I caught these shots as the guys were putting this through a tight turn, so you can kind of see the slight compression on the front right side of the car due to the turn.  Also, it does show the GrimmSpeed decals pretty well.  1st photo is my buddy Sean driving, and the 2nd is my buddy Chad (also the guy in the climbing pic from a previous post).

Lessons Learned: for next time, I think I will try to get some more motion in it, and do a little horizontal panning, but i’d have to be inside of the curve, so you can see the driver face toward you as they turn into the curve (plus, it keeps the distance from the camera approximately the same, so the focal distance doesn’t change too much).  If I want to keep the aperture wider, I’ll need to get some ND filters or polarizing filters to take the exposure value down a bit.  Unfortunately, the 3 main lenses I like to use (12-60mm, 50-200mm, 35-100mm) all have different filter sizes (72mm, 67mm, and 77mm, respectively), and right now, I only have 72mm filters for my 12-60mm.  Oh well, we’ll see what happens then.

That’s all for now.

A Moment in Time…

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Chad, Trad Climbing over the St. Croix River | Olympus E620 & 50-200mm @ 50mm, f/3.2, 1/800 sec, ISO 100

You can also see it on NYTimes website here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/03/blogs/a-moment-in-time.html#/4bde4810b93af13e49000045

I submitted my photo to the “A Moment in Time” project that I saw on the New York Times website. Basically, long story short, they wanted people from around the world to take a snapshot at the same time, and upload it, and in this case, it was 10am cdt, 05/02/2010. Luckily for me, I was already up and out to go rock climbing with some friends at Taylors Falls. I snapped this one at 10am exactly (according to the timestamp on the photo).

Also, thanks to Sandy (at sandyalamode.com) who reminded me about this project. 🙂

Mike & Megan in Maui

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I took pictures for my friends’ (aka, former roommates, Mike & Megan) wedding in Maui.

Gear: Olympus E620, E1, ZD 12-60mm F/2.8-4.5, &50mm F2.0, Cactus V4 Flash Triggers, FL50R, FL50, 1/4 CTO Flash Gels, Lumiquest Gel Holder, and Honl speed strap.

Pics turned out really good.  I was pretty pleased with the results.  It was my first time using the flash gels which I had bought to use with the wedding in mind.  I used them to help match the flash with the fading light from the sunset, with the added bonus that shifting the white balance a bit would put a little more blue in the sky.  I started off with using only 1 flash, but later used two flashes triggered with the cactus v4 triggers, set at either 1/2 power or 1/4 power.  Key light was set directly opposite of the setting sun, and i took most of the shots about 30-45 degrees off that axis (with the 2nd flash, i would set it around 90 degrees off of the axis, with me between the flashes).  I didn’t bring any stands or other light modifiers, just the gels, so i had some friends assist by holding the flash (they held it around chest level).

Shots were mainly taken around f/5 – f/5.6 shutter speed 1/160 s- 1/320 s.

Anyway, I’m always learning with this photography thing.

Lessons learned:

Sync Speed:  I made some beginning strobist mistakes (I’m such a n00b)… I tried pushing the flash up past it’s sync speed (my camera’s sync speed is 1/160th of a second).  I thought it was working, til i looked at the pics on my computer monitor when I got home, and then it hit me.  I thought my flashes weren’t directed properly in some frames because it wasn’t getting the flash coverage.  I noticed it was always on the bottom of the frame (the mirror was cutting it off).  I was shooting 1/160th & 1/200th of a second okay, but the 1/250th and 1/320th all had the distinct underexposed areas in the frame.   (The reason I had the shutter so fast was to help darken the ambient light so i wouldn’t have any blown out highlights.  When trying to control light, the aperture controls the flash exposure, and shutter speed controls the ambient.)   In any case, the wide shots were okay cuz could crop it, but definitely something I’ll wanna keep in mind for the next time.  In hindsight, I should have used the neutral density filter or the polarizing filter i brought along to bring down the ambient.

Light Stands & Umbrellas: Another thing I would change is if I could have brought my light stands & umbrellas, that would have been nice to get the light above, and the umbrellas would have given a larger softer light source.  Would have created nicer catchlights in the eyes, and a little more even lighting.  Lighting from above would have given more natural shadows.

Light angles: I probably should have done a little more on axis fill flash.  I botched some pretty straight forward group photos cuz I was trying to stick with off camera flash, but better results would have been had with on axis (even on camera) fill.  But a lot of that had to do with not getting the light to come down from above, so it was some unanticipated and unnatural shadows being cast.  I also could have done a little more with rim lighting/hair light/back lighting.  Something for next time I suppose.  I mean, if I learned it all at once, there’d be no use for me to write this blog!

Gels: Something for next time: experiment with mixing gels, balancing/cancelling light, and setting a custom white balance in camera so I can get more accurate results when checking them out on location.

Other things to work on:  I need to take photos from more angles, and use longer focal lengths to compress the angle of view.  I figured I’d keep it pretty wide to really capture the scenery, but variety is the spice of life.  I need to mix it up and think outside of the box sometimes.

Anyway, I think that’s all for now.  If I think of something later, i’ll add it.

Comments/Critiques welcome.  My monitor isn’t calibrated (yet, hoping to get a calibrator over xmas), so there may be some general color issues.  Plus, I’m using a cheap TN monitor, word is the IPS monitors are where it’s at.  I’ll probably look into that at a later time.  Also, the compression seems to do some strange things to the photos, even color wise.  I’ll have to figure out something with that.