Mild December In Denver

The weather here is Denver has been fantastic! I feel sorry for the folks on the east coast with the recent bad weather. I just can't remember a December as mild as this has been. My wife and I have been taking walks along the Platte River close to our home. Here a are a few images from today's walk.

Merry Christmas To All

I wanted to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas (Happy Holidays) and a Happy New Year. This VR pano is of our local recreation center, decorated for the holiday season. I've started shooting VR pano recently, and I truly love making them. Just click on the image below. I'll tell you more about them later. Enjoy!

Lunar Eclipse

My son woke me early this morning to look at the Lunar Eclipse. I shot this using my D700 and 24-70mm lens. ISO 1000 @ f/6.3 for 2.5 seconds. Really cool looking!

Turn on the Light

During my week of teaching at the Maine Media Workshops, I did a quick demonstration outside of the studio in downtown Rockport. On the shadow side of the building, I positioned a workshop participant outside of one of the doorway. I wanted to create a feeling of a late evening with someone standing under a street light or some other sort of light source.

The photo below shows you what the scene looked like according to my cameras metering system. You can see the painters pole and strobe set-up leaning against the wall. I use a Shur-Line expandable paint pole with a Kacey Pole Adapter.
After looking at my LCD screen and determining that the photo above did not look like night time, I then under-exposed the scene by about 2 stops perhaps 2 1/2 stops. I had a fellow student hold the light over head and I adjusted the power for the aperture I was shooting at. Here is another view with the light moved with a different composition. You can actually see the paint pole in the shot.

Let Your Bounce Be Your Softbox

While teaching up in Maine this past September, I demonstrated a proper bounce technique for a few of the students. We came downstairs from the studio to the new Maine Media Gallery on the main floor of the Shepherd Building in Rockport.

I think of a bounce as a flat screen softbox, place your bounce where you might have placed a softbox had it been on a stand. When you bounce, it is imperative that you prevent any RAW light from your flash from reaching your subject. The only light that should be lighting your subject should come from the bounce surface itself.

In the photo above, on the right side you can see the strobe. I have placed a flag or gobo on the side of the flash closest to the subject. The strobe is lighting the adjacent wall on the left of the frame. The wall which is lit, now becomes my flat screen softbox.



Here is how the subject looked before using the bounce. In the final image shown at the top of this post, the fill on the subjects face was provide by the light bouncing off another white wall on the subjects left side.

California Coast Mentor Series Trek

I'm headed to one of my favorite places on earth, the Monterey Peninsula. I'll be leading a Mentor Series Trek to this beautiful location on February 17-20, 2011. We have a busy itinerary, we'll be shooting at such locations as: Hurricane Point, Point Lobos State Park, Big Sur, Garrapata State Park, Carmel Mission, Pebble Beach and other wonderful locations. Here are just a few images from my last visit to this wonder place.







We still have space for a few more folks, I hope you'll join me on this wonderful Trek. For more information and booking a place on the trek click HERE