Beach Session

It's still a blast to photograph couples at the beach.  I like to head out about an hour before sunset to capture that late afternoon light usually shooting well after the sun goes down.

One of the challenges to photographing at the beach is blowing sand, and very moist air.  I find it useful to keep the lens cap or lens pouch on just until I'm ready to shoot. This means composing "Over" the lens and when the cover comes off it's pretty quick to make the final adjustments.

Another hurdle to get over is the lack of communication.  If you are shooting with a long lens as I  do, (Nikon 200mm f2) you are a fair distance away from your couple.  With waves crashing and the wind blowing, it's difficult to give direction to the subject. 

If you have the luxury of someone coming along, (in this case I had the young man's mother) position them half way between the subject and you, to relay position changes and posing.  There still is a lot of trotting through the sand back and forth between the subject and the camera but having the third person helps a lot. 

Congratulations to Laura and Cody on their engagement. 

Colorful Bride and Groom

Last weekend's wedding shoot in Durham, North Carolina, came to a close with something I've never done before. Photographs of the Bride and Groom getting pelted with color! Similar to the popular color runs, the participants are doused with pods of colored cornstarch by willing family and friends. While the bride and groom strolled in their wedding finest, friends and family gathered to give them a proper send off.  I hope you enjoy the photographs as much as I did shooting them.

Something Missing?

Photoshop helped me not to violate the commonly enforced trademark ruling against commercially publishing a photograph of the Lone Cypress in Carmel California.  

As many of you know, the Lone Cypress in Carmel is trademarked.  The current trademark is held by the Pebble Beach Company and it declares that no commercial use of its image is allowed. By rule you are not allowed to publish photographs, paintings or drawings of the tree without written permission. Permission that they hardly ever grant. That includes the use of it on Facebook, Twitter or Blogs.  Though people take photographs of the sturdy cypress tree braving the elements on the point in the Pacific Ocean, every day by the thousands, few understand the trademark business. I don't agree with being able to trademark something in nature but I will respect it for now with my Photoshop protest image. 

Recently, after I finishing a shoot in Monterey, I made my way over to 17-Mile Drive and took in the sites. Like everyone else, I had a to shoot a shot of the Lone Cypress.

On this shot I used a 9-Stop Neutral Density filter to enable my camera to shoot down to 3 full seconds in broad daylight.  That allowed me to capture the silky water below.  

Of course I had to use a tripod and since the filter is so dark, you can hardly see through it. You also have to make all of your adjustments in advance.  You need to determine your exposer by test shooting or using a calculator like ND Timer for the iPhone.   Put your focus on manual, your camera on manual, then delicately place the filter over the lens.  You only have to thread it on lightly because you don't want to move the camera and thereby changing your composition or focus. Then use a cable release and mirror lock up to fire the shot. 

Shot at an 80th of second at f/16 at a low ISO of below 100 - this is as slow as I could shoot at this time of day. (Image is blacked out so as not to violate trademark ruling.)

While shooting, watch for the rhythm of the waves to capture the most dramatic water splashes.  Since that day was pretty calm, the use of the 9-stop ND filter was quite helpful in making the water look more special than it really was. 

Later in Photoshop, it took about an hour to take out the Lone Cypress.  I like to work in sections that I have selected in order to make the cloning look real.  I used the stamp tool and the healing brush both at different opacities to remove the tree and replace it with the hills in the background.  Another technique I like to use is copying the horizon from one part of the image and pasting in where you need it.  It's a lot easier to work with a mountain top that is real than one that is cloned. 

Lastly I cropped it and saturated some of the teal color in the ocean.  Now I'm going back to the computer to take the Golden Gate Bridge out of few shots.

Cat Pictures

When photographing Tigers in captivity, (I happened to be at the Oakland Zoo),  it's important to know a little about their behaviors in order to capture them the way you had in mind.  Big cat behaviors are easy to learn,  just observe the cat you have sitting on the couch next to you.  Big cats and little cats mostly do the same things.  They look for the warm spot in the sunlight, they stretch, and they yawn among other things.   All of these behaviors can make fantastic photographs, you just have to be patient watch, and look for repeating animal behaviors. 

Like their cousin the house cat, the Tiger will roll around in their enclosure and occasionally they will stop and freeze still for a moment. This is a good time to capture an image, since you know the Tiger will be sharp and in focus, especially nessasary if shot with a slow shutter speed. 

Even at several hundred pounds, the Tiger can sometimes appear kitten like while stretching and rolling around. 

One behavior that the Tiger does, that I have not seen a domestic cat do, is "flehmen".   Upon smelling another Tiger's scent, the big cat wrinkles his nose and hangs out his tongue in a grimace called flehmen.  This move is a way to gather in all of the scent so they can and send it to the roof of their mouth where there is a gland to determine all the chemical information inside the scent.  Scenting and scent marking is a way Tigers communicate thier boundaries, mate readiness and to acertian if a friend or foe is in the area.  Before the tongue comes out, it's a pretty fierce look and makes a fabulous photograph. 

I noticed one female mark an area along a fence.  Shortly after, I saw another female start to walk the perimeter of the enclosure. I knew she'd notice the fresh marking and I thought she might make the "face."  With things like this, you get yourself and camera into position, check and double check your settings and just wait.  

In wildlife photography, the more you know about what animal you are photographing the better your odds are of getting superb photographs.

How to Photograph Wine

Photographing reflective bottles of wine can be difficult when trying to get the glass and the label to look good. One solution is to make two shots and combine them in Photoshop. The highly reflective foil of this label text added to the difficulty of creating a compelling shot.

Set up the scene with props, etc. 

Set up the lighting.

Determine the Depth of Field.

Shoot the bottle.

Set new lighting, shoot the label.

In this first shot, I worked with the bottle and props, and I started tweaking with the depth of field so that the pear in the background would fall softly out of focus but the wine bottle was still sharp.  If you don't have a strobe system that can be dialed down to allow you to change your aperture,  try using a variable neutral density filter to get the aperture you are looking for.  I used a strong side lighting with a strip light here. 

Once that was determined, shot number one was created.  Keeping the camera on a tripod, and locked down, the lighting was changed for the label but the bottle and the camera did not move.

A soft box overhead with lots of white reflective cards would bounce soft light into the gold foil graphics and text of the label. Once everything looked clean,  shot two was created.

I brought both of these images into Photoshop.  You can drag one image on top of the other with the move tool while holding down the shift key.  This will align the two images perfectly.  Use the pen tool to make a selection of the label - then create a layer mask.  First layer shows the bottle shot, the second layer shows the label. 

Now you are ready to retouch the bottle and the reflections to make a realistic shot. 

If you want to learn more about how to create better images while using Photoshop, check out my hands on classes - taught in my Pleasanton studio.