Recently I had a chance to photograph Syd in my portrait studio. With a majority of my portrait work happening away from my studio I thought this was a great opportunity to share some of my thoughts, some behind the scenes shots of my gear and how I like to set things up.
Today I want to share a trick I use for Extending Focus Depth with Photoshop. It turns out there’s a feature in Photoshop that makes this super easy. I use this technique for lots of different situations but for this article I’ll talk about how it helps me when I’m shooting macro with a long lens. Continue reading
I’ve spent the last week working with the new public beta version of Lightroom 5 (now free to download from Adobe Labs). So far I’m loving the new features and I wrote a quick mini-review for my friends over at Sony Alpha Lab. If you’re interested in reading about the new features and seeing how they worked with some of my images be sure to check it out here:
For this blog entry I’ll share some behind the scenes shots of my Mobile Photography Studio setup along with a few images from my photo session with one-year-old Brody.
A big part of my business involves creating portraits on location. Most of the time that means being in scenic locations like lakes and parks. Other times it’s an assignment where I’m photographing an office staff in their place of business. But sometimes I’ll get a call that requires a studio environment set up in a remote location. My photo session with Brody was a perfect opportunity to create a full studio environment in the clients home.
For the last two weeks I’ve been Photographing Home Interiors for a Michigan based audio/video company that specializes in super custom design, engineering and installation. My primary job has been to travel to numerous homes and capture how they are able to integrate their systems into the unique lifestyles of their clients. For this blog post I’ll be sharing some of the images and giving a few thoughts about this kind of photography.
Recently I took the Maker’s Mark Distillery Tour in Loretto, Kentucky and for this blog entry I’ll share some of my pictures along with a few things I learned on my visit. It all started with a long drive… As in ten hours of long drive. I began in northern Virginia and I drove through West Virginia with a final destination of Bardstown, Kentucky.
For this blog entry I want to talk about Photographing Liquor Bottles and give a look Behind the Scenes of a Product Shoot. After my recent trip to Kentucky I wanted to take some pictures of some special bottles of bourbon I received at the Maker’s Mark distillery. The bourbon inside the bottles was aged in a barrel that had my name on it (along with names of some other really cool Maker’s Mark Ambassadors). I was surprised to learn that I’d be putting custom labels on the bottles before I dipping them into the signature red wax to seal them. I’ll be sharing my experience at the distillery in a future blog post.
For this blog post I’ll be sharing my techniques for setting up and lighting a product in my studio. It may seem simple but when the goal is to create a specific look for your final shot it can get super complicated really fast. For the shot above I used a total of 5 flashes (three groups each set to different power levels).
Last week I got to spend three days in Kentucky. It’s been a long time since I’ve visited the state and I have to say that I really enjoyed myself. My primary objective was to take the Makers Mark Distillery tour where I’d be picking up my special ambassadors bottles of bourbon. I spent most of a day at the distillery and it was absolutely incredible!
If you want to see the entire story about my Maker’s Mark Tour be sure to click here.
Recently I’ve been working on new articles for a great website called Sony Alpha Lab as well as some new stuff for here on my own blog. My latest article for SAL included some of my thoughts on shooting during golden hours and returning often to my favorite locations. In the article I shared some examples of what a difference an hour can make in terms of the sky having some great colors.
What I wanted to share here was a comparison of four shots that were all taken during the 2013 Presidential Inauguration in Washington, DC. The top was captured at 6:00am, then next shot down was captured at 6:30am, the third shot was captured at 7:00am and the last shot was captured at 7:30am. I really like the first three shots a lot but that last one is just blah looking to me. Everything was exactly the same except for the time of day when the shots were captured. I can talk about the advantages of golden hour but this comparison should speak volumes for waking up early to get better looking shots.
In future articles and blog entries I’ll talk more about shooting at golden hour and I’ll share some of my favorite shots captured in those magical times of the day.
On Monday (January 21, 2013) I attended the 2013 Presidential Inauguration. This was the historic second inauguration of Presiden Barack Obama and while it didn’t draw the same size crowd as the first inauguration it was still the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen. According to the news over 800,000 people attended the inauguration ceremonies (with some estimates over one million) and it was officially one of the highest attendances for a second inauguration of a president. For this blog entry I want to share my experience and some pictures from the inauguration.