Hotel room Photography

Finding compositions in a hotel room can be tricky. Here's my attempt.

Spider Light

Day 1

Light Saber Before The Light

Day 3 of 365

ISO: 250

Aperture: F4

Shutter: 1/250s

70mm

My son was playing with a 3 point lighting system for taking video and I thought I would capture this photo of my Son.  The wooden light saber will soon become a glowing light in post production for the video.  It's exciting to see my son work so hard on his passion for being a director.

The girl that empties my wallet

Day 2 of 365  1-2-11

ISO: 250

Aperture: F2.8

60mm

Shutter Speed: 1/250s

This was a quick experiment in looking for light.  At first we were on the porch and my daughter's back was to the sun.  The light was not falling on her face enough to make it clear and the shadows were too much.  We moved out to the middle of the yard and had her face lit from the sun on her right.  Then I looked for the background to find something dark to frame around her.  The green bush was perfect and I think this shot turned out well.  I shot it wide open at f2.8 so I had to make sure my focus point was on her eyes.  If the eyes are not sharp, then the rest of the picture is useless.

Low Light Challenge

I learned a lot during this photo shoot.  I learned to look for light first.  This was my attempt after trying to let the flash do all the work. Taken at Bastone brewery in downtown Royal Oak, Michigan

Window light and my dog

Every morning she begs me to play, and yet every morning she seems to move a bit slower. She's getting older now.  It's starting to show, and it makes me sad.   The window light was shining on her just right this morning so I thought it was a great opportunity to remember how she was at this moment in time. Meet Sparkie, my dog. She's awesome.

Window light Roses

I was noticing how the window light was shining on my wife's valentines day roses.  Grabbed the camera and played with the shot a bit.  I like the composition of this one, even if the roses seem to be wilting a bit.

Learning to see light

The light coming from this window fascinated me. I see light differently now, and that's a good thing.

A lesson from Denis Reggie

You may remember in yesterday's post a picture of my son with the light going across his face from light to dark. Today's pic is a lesson that I learned from Denis Reggie that really helps to light the face even in a dark church. He calls it foofing, and it's a technique that allows me to light the face nicely without blasting a flash right on the face. I get the directional light from my flash by foofing it off into the distance, bouncing it off of a wall that is 40 feet away and letting it hit the subjects face in a nice beautiful way. This photo is an example of why it was essential for me to go to Imagine USA to learn from the best. I can't wait to use all that I have learned in this years busy wedding season.

Window light and Ice Cream

This isn't the best photo because of the iPhone camera lens, but take a look at how the light goes across his face. It really adds to the definition of the shot and helps make it 3 dimensional. Having the same light across the face makes it look flat and undefined. The way the light was hitting my son at this moment was what I was really trying to capture.

Ann Arbor Downtown

Opryland At Night Continued

Painting with Light

This evening I was experimenting with long exposure times. I call this "painting with light" because you really have a lot of control over what comes into the sensor when it's dark out. I picked a dark culdisac and set up the camera on a tripod right behind my car. I set the timer for 20 seconds in order to give myself time to get in the car and put it into gear. The exposure time was about 20 seconds at F/9. I then got in my car and drove away (swirving back and forth.) Oh, I had to be careful not to run over the camera on my return trip back to view the results. I like how the light polution in the sky begins to show up as a hint of red.

Hit The Fence

Hit The Fence

Seems like most of my shots are taken at sunset these days, mainly because I'm currently a natural light photographer (That's another way of saying that I don't have an external flash.) I really enjoy the challenge of using available light to it's fullest, and here was one example of that. The sun was setting and the shadows from this fence were really great.

Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.004 sec (1/250)
Aperture: f/3.2
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 200

Swinging in Motion

Swinging In Motion

One of the many photos I took at the carnival this past weekend. This was one of my favorites. You can see the sun was setting a little bit by the redish hue in the clouds.

Camera: Nikon D80
Exposure: 0.1 sec (1/10)
Aperture: f/14
Focal Length: 40 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Touch Of Light

Touch Of Light

Today is a very special day for this girl. She has been in remission for 4 years from Leukemia and Lymphoma and still growing strong. She is a survivor, and she is one of my heroes.

Light Fixture

Light Fixture

I decided to scan this photo and publish for today's blog entry. One of the rules of photography is to know the rules of photography and then break them. One of my rules for the blog is to post a photo taken within a week, but I violated that rule since this shot was taken in 1993 with my Nikon 5005 camera. I could have used a bit more blurring of the background, but this was in the film days when you took a shot and waited a couple weeks for the film to get developed. I think this photo violates just about a million photography rules, but for some reason I really enjoy it. I like the business of the street, and the way the cars are blurred just a bit from going by. I like the way the light pole divides the shot with the symmetry of the men working on either side of the pole. Toronto is an amazing city.