Monday, November 29, 2010

Hope You Had A Wonderful Thanksgiving


Every year, my son Chris starts decorating for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. There is one thing I always look forward to pulling out is this photo of Chris. When we first moved into our home some 10 years ago, we photographed Chris dressed as Santa for our Christmas Card.








Anyway, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and yourself a super Christmas, Hanukkah or what ever this Holiday Season. DT

Saturday, November 20, 2010

LumiQuest SoftBox LTp

Lumiquest has recently added a new "larger" portable softbox to their lineup. The SoftBox LTp is roughly twice the size of their SoftBox III. The surface area is over 40 times that of the flash itself, producing the softest shadows of any of LumiQuest SoftBoxes.

The LTp was designed to fit into a laptop pocket of your camera bag or backpack which makes it that much more convenient to carry a larger SoftBox.

I photographed my son on the front porch of our home using the new LTp SoftBox. In a matter of moments I was able fasten the SoftBox on a boom and start shooting. You can see the SoftBox in the top of the frame in the following image.

This new SoftBox has over 120 sq. inches of surface area, a vast improvement over the smaller SoftBox III. I'll be carrying one of these in may bag for those quick and easy portraits we sometime have to make. Here are a couple of more images, the second one is when I moved the flash to camera left and moved into high speed sync in order to get that beautiful shallow depth of field.



Monday, November 15, 2010

Atlanta Nikonians Workshop

Very sorry for not blogging recently, I've been working very hard these past 3 weeks. I've been shooting several corporate assignments as well as teaching for Nikonian's, Santa Fe Workshops and the Popular Photography Mentor Series.

Today's post is about a recent Nikonian's lighting workshop in Atlanta, GA. The workshop was held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in the trendy area of Atlanta known as Buckhead. Our model for the workshop was a charming young lady by the name of Tatianna. She's a makeup artist as well as an aspiring model working in Atlanta.

One of the many lighting techniques I enjoy sharing with students is the simulation of sunlight. When I'm scouting a new location, I am making notice of any available window that I might be able to push light through. My hotel room was on the 14th or 15th floor, not the sort of room that you might normally think about being able to get your light up to. In this case, I had a corner suite and a view of the elevators across a portion of the atrium.

In the above photo you can see the room where Tatiana was seated in the top photo. I used a ball bungee to hold two SB-800 strobes together. I placed a full CTO gel on each of the strobes to provide additional warms to the image.

My base exposure was based on the lamp in the room, as I wanted the lamp to appear on in the photo. My setting were ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/80th sec. Once I reached this determination, I than turned on my flashes and set the power which allowed for an exposure of f/2.8.



Here is one of the workshop participants sharing images with Tatianna on the sofa.

When ever I walk into a new location, I am always looking for all the possible options available to me to make light. Just think, it could have been raining outside and your still able to bring a bit of sunshine into the photos.

I just got back from my Mentor Series Trek to Egypt, over the next several months I share some of my experiences and images with you. My next Mentor Series Trek is to the California Coast, the central coast that is. Carmel, Big Sur, Point Lobos, Garrapata State Park and the famed Pebble Beach. For more information regarding this trek and many others, click HERE.