Mayfield Park
OMGAH!!!!!!! THEY HAVE PEACOCKS!!!!!!
1/800 - f/4 - 150mm - iso400
After the sister’s wedding (see the previous post), we decided that since we were already in Colorado Springs, and we needed a vaca, we might as well stay a couple of extra days and check it out. My parents, wife and I took a trip up Pikes Peak via a cog train. I got some beta on a climbing spot near (about 30 min south) Colorado Springs called Newlin Creek. We also wanted to check out Garden of the Gods and do the tourist/ photog thing and just relax and have fun. I shot photos of the three places, and put together my selects from the trip. Here they are, I hope you enjoy.
Congratulations Ashley and Bryon!!!
Last month, my awesome sister got married to a great guy in beautiful Colorado Spings, CO at The Broadmoor. WOW. A really great wedding with really great people with an amazing backdrop. I didn’t really get to take many photos because, for one, I was in the wedding, but I also knew that Tyler Schmitt had everything covered. His photos of this (and others) wedding are amazing! But I still wanted to be able to give a shout out to my sister and my new brother on my blog. Congrats you two! To many years of joy and happiness in your lives!
OH YEAH!!! How could I almost forget this…. At the reception, Bryon sang to my sister. It was…. it was… well, why don’t you just watch the video and decide how to describe it yourself…. Click here of the Youtube link.
Ladies and Gentlemen… Brad Allen
Sometime you go out to photograph something that you have never photographed before, and you have a vision of an image in your mind, and expect to do great things. Then you get out there and realize that nothing is working out the way you had it planned. So now what? Accept the fact that you didn’t get what you wanted and move on? Or go back out and try to make it better? After hooking up with Greg from Lake Lessons here in Austin, (if you want to learn how to wakeboard, give these guys a call. They are super professional in everything they do) we set up a photo shoot with one of their instructors, Brad Allen. The concept was “Wake boarding in Austin” and what better way to show this than to have the iconic Pennybacker bridge as a back drop. One of main problems with the first time we went out was that we decided to meet up on Friday, at 6:00 pm, at the 360 bridge. Let me reiterate. We went to one of the most popular boat launches….. on a Friday…. AT 6:00 o’clock… when everyone is getting their weekend started early. This place becomes a cluster _____. What were we thinking??!?! I have to say that Brad did the best he could and we walked away that day with some decent imagery, but at the end of the day, you want to always ask yourself, “Could I have made this better?” If you’re not asking yourself that, then you’re not continuing to push.
Fortunately we were able to meet up again, but this time on a Monday, and this time knowing exactly what shot we needed to concentrate on, so the rest was just nailing down the timing. After a couple of passes, we knew what we had to do. We concentrated our efforts on just that and it didn’t take long to get the shot that we had all envisioned. After we nailed the shot, we had some free time to just have fun, relax and do some fun shooting. The first shot is the concept shot that we were going for, and the following two are just goofing off, having a good time, which is what it is really all about.
1/640 - f/8 - 50mm - iso400
1/320 - f/8 - 200mm - iso500
This sequence shot was a set of 9 images layered and stitched together in Photoshop. Pain in the arse, but worth it:
1/1250 - f/5.6 - 40mm - iso400
Combining Lights for an Exterior
Some things happen through trial and error, others are super well thought out, planned and executed, and somethings are a combination of the two that people tend to call experience. When I first started photographing exteriors, I believe there was a bit of luck involved for the way some of them came out. Later down the path when I started photographing commercial and higher budget exteriors, I noticed that a lot of them had pre installed lighting so I figured it was time to invest in my own lights. Due to budget limitations at the time, I went out and bought a set of work lights to help light up my elevation shots. I did this for a while and for some bad decision, I went through the HDR phase, realized it’s limits and started trying to come up with different solutions. For my last photo shoot, I decided to try and combine my work lights from the past, with my strobes that I am presently using. I knew that the color temperature of the two were going to be different (halogen bulbs rated around 3000k vs sunlight balanced flashes rated at 5600k) but I was okay with, and in fact impartial to the house going a bit warmer. So I set up the work lights on the side of the house to light it up, and added in the strobes to fill in the foreground. I really like the combination of the two lights working together to create this image, and more importantly the clients emailed response was:
“ohhhhhhhh ahhhhhh…..I love it!! Very nice!”
Here is the front elevation shot with 1000w work lights and two strobes:
.8 seconds - f/8 - 24mm - iso200
and here is the set up shot of everything. Note the two red stands are the work lights, one camera right, and the other is in front of the sign right next to the American flag flagpole. One strobe is soft boxed camera right, and the other is just camera left below the camera. I also included the bed of the truck since this is where I was shooting from. It is a great shooting platform that raises you off the ground a good 7 ft. which gives you a nice perspective.
Photographing babies is definitely a bit off the beaten path from the usual things that I tend to photograph, but when a good friend asks me to photograph her baby for her 6 month pictures, you bet your @$$ that I’m going to do figure out what the heck I’m doin! I love a challenge! For these images, we wanted to do something studio. Now, I don’t have a studio (yet) so we have to deal with what resources we do have. I have backdrop stands, backdrops and a truck. Sure, I’ll bring it all over to your space! This actually probably worked in our advantage because everyone knows that modeling is a tough job and babies get hungry and tired on a whim, so it was nice to have her in her own environment. For most of the shots, we photographed with a black backdrop, and we pulled in a coffee table that we put a black cloth on top. I photographed with one light source bounced into an umbrella camera left and on some I had a 20 degree hair light behind the subject, camera right. I pretty much kept this set up for the second set and just changed out the backdrop to white and put the baby on the coffee table on some Thrifty White Tileboard (that you can pick up at Home Depot or Lowes) which I got when I was totally jocking Zack Arais White Seamless action. For the first time shooting 6 month baby photos, I’m pretty psyched. Here’s some of my favs from the session:
Happy Fourth of July!!!
15sec - f/22 20mm - iso200
