2010 - Week 17, Backlight

Galveston Beach
April 28, 2010 6:50 & 6:56 pm
Nikon D90, 18-105mm 3.5-5.6 - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/200 & 1/125 at 105mm
Spot Metering, AF-C

I learned a few lessons on this little outing. The biggest being that my camera does not behave properly with an almost dead battery, and that if I have taken about 500 photos it's time to charge up.

I have seen some beautiful backlit photos, but I have yet to figure out how to take them myself. I could have helped myself at the beach if I had brought along the external flash so that I could have used a higher shutter speed and high-sync-flash to provide some fill light and then maybe their hair would have just been kissed by the sun, versus being completely overexposed. I think in the end its ok, because you would expect their blond hair to be aglow in the evening sun.

I used spot metering and metered for their skin and then chose to underexpose the photo in camera a little more (to save some of the hair) and then used Photoshop to selectively brighten their faces. Too underexposed and then it creates noise when you lighten, too bright and the background is just completely overexposed and unrecoverable.

I still have a lot to learn on how to get beautifully exposed skin with bright backlit sun, so this will be a project again in future weeks.





post-processing
Selectively masked skin & base of hair in each photo and then lightened using a curves adjustment layer, then also brightened using a brighten adjustment layer.

2010 - Week 16, Lens Tryout

Backyard
April 23, 2010 4:26 & 4:41 pm
Nikon D90, Nikkor 70-200 2.8 VR I - shot in RAW
Manual, No Flash, ISO 200, f/2.8, SS 1/800 (cloudy), SS/1600 (sunny)
Pattern Metering, AF-C, 75mm & 78mm focal lengths

I had a big assignment over the weekend. My photography class instructor asked me to assist him as a second shooter at a wedding. It was going to be a pretty big wedding, and the two primes I carry in my bag weren't really the right lenses for the task so I rented the appropriate lenses from our local store Light Tec.

The wedding was a great excuse to lay my hands on a lens I've been itching to try ever since I first really understood what fixed aperture meant, the Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8. It's a big, heavy lens and when its coupled with my camera and flash means toting around over 6 lbs. Six pounds in itself doesn't seem like much when you're doing bicep curls, but it suddenly seems to weigh more when you're having to hold your hands in specific positions to get the camera at eye level.

I needed to test out the lens and the only thing the girls were interested in doing was swinging so I took the lens on trial run on moving objects using the continuous focusing mode.





post-processing
The post processing work on these was pretty easy since I had great light to work with. I did bring them into Photoshop and used a curves layer to lighten the midtones in the overall photo.

2010 - Week 15, B&W

Girl's Bedroom
April 16, 2010 9:30 pm
Nikon D90, 35mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Manual, Bounced Flash, ISO 400, SS 1/40, f/4
Pattern Metering, AF-S

I rarely take or convert photos to Black & White. I know that it should make a photo seem timeless, but I almost always prefer a color photo over a black and white one.

When we put the girls to put on Friday night I intentionally took a series of photos (ok, it was 52 photos in 8 minutes) to try and find ONE that that I would want to convert to B&W of Vince reading Skippy Jon Jones to the girls. (As a side note, if you haven't introduced Skippy Jon Jones to your kids, you are missing out...very funny books).

It felt different knowing that I was taking a picture that would I would convert to B&W.

I wanted to show a connection between them and this story and was drawn to this one where they have similar expressions.



post-processing
Cropped to a square to focus attention on the subjects. Used a hue/sat layer to desaturate color, following by a grayscale map to add a bit more depth to the darker elements, then added a vignette effect in the corners to draw attention to the focus of the photo - the storytelling.

I struggled with a bit of noise, which was odd at ISO 400 and my focus seemed to fall back. I know I was focusing on Alena's eyes in most of the shots, so something is not quite right with my 35mm or my technique. I've been trying to use single shot focus and recompose, but I don't think its working as well as back button focus with continuous focus. More trial & error is warranted, but I used to get super sharp images using BBF & continuous focus.

2010 - Week 14, Cloning

Brenham Bluebonnet Fields
April 5, 2010 5:54 pm
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Aperture Priority, No Flash, ISO 200, SS 1/800, f/5, spot metering using exposure lock

This was not the technical shot of the day, but I wanted to remember the experience of this day where I shot about 300 photos of 3 little people while dragging my two girls along as well. I squatted down once and all of a sudden my knees turned into chairs for my girls, doesn't make it easy to take pictures - ha ha. In the end I got 30 good ones of the 3 kiddos I was trying to take pictures of and not nearly enough choices for photos of my own kids.

We made the hour+ trip to Brenham under cloud cover and I was so excited thinking what wonderful luck to have the giant softbox in the sky working for me, but just as we pulled in the sun came out from the behind the clouds and it got hot & muggy. Not optimum photography conditions (for me anyway) at 4 pm in the afternoon with no shade in sight. But we made do and got some adorable shots that you can see on my creative blog.



post-processing

I did some creative masking and cloning to eliminate the lamposts and hotel in the background...doesn't it seem like they're in the middle of country? Then I did some hue/saturation layers to make the foliage greener and darker. A slight saturation bump for the blues & yellows and it's a new photo.

2010 - Week 13, Fill Flash

Mercer Arboretum
April 2, 2010 10:32 am
Nikon D90, 50mm 1.8 - shot in RAW
Aperture Priority, SB600 Direct Flash, ISO 200, SS 1/640, f/3.2, Exposure Compensation -1 1/3, Flash Compensation + 2/3

I hadn't pestered the girls all week taking pictures so I made up for it today, asking them to take a trip over to Mercer Arboretum so I could practice with the external flash, high speed sync, exposure compensation and flash compensation. We actually had a great trip and I got more than one set of photos that I was happy with. Still quite a few things to work out with using flash during the day, but I'm feeling more comfortable.

This was a lucky catch. I felt good about the exposure & flash, but they were actually swinging when I snapped this so getting them in focus was an accomplishment. I need to figure out what to do to prevent the deep shadows under their chins. The whole point of fill flash is to eliminate shadows.

I'll post more photos from our trip on my family blog.





post-processing

This is actually one image that I cropped two individual shots out of since they were not sitting close enough together or at the same height for the original to be considered 'fantastic'. Slight WB adjustment, and then a little tightening of the levels for their skintones.