Photographer of Aerial, Building, Event and Portrait photographs, Goshen Indiana
What’s not to like about pottery? You take clay from the earth, put it on a table that spins, play with it in your hands and then bake it like a cake! When it’s finished, you have a very useful plate, bowl or cup that looks great and lasts forever (unless you drop it).
Eric, with few pieces of his pottery, was great photo subject. Anyone who agrees to get their photo taken with a coffee cup on their head is okay by me!
Eric’s Pottery can be Purchased at Gift of GAB, Goshen
The Gift of G.A.B (Goshen’s Alternative Boutique) is a one-of-a-kind fashion store for women, men and home items. They have everything from cool clothing to crazy-looking robot sculptures (me like’em robots).
I was asked to review (and improve) their method for product and fashion photography. Michele and Carrie welcomed me into this beautiful store but then quickly swept me into the dungeon-like basement where the sight of bare light bulbs made me think I was about to be interrogated! Was it possible that my demise would come from the hands of these two seemingly nice women or had I just been watching too much Breaking Bad?
The harsh light from the bare bulbs also got me thinking about the benefits of soft light. To demonstrate, I set up a single speedlight inside a soft-box and offered to take some sample photos. Carrie and Michele, apparently both having done this before, donned outfits from the store upstairs and commenced posing without hesitation. I simply stood there and pushed the shutter button. All that was missing was some funky music, martinis and a fog machine.
After some photo review and discussion, we decided that I’d set them up with two light stands, equipped with 250 watt constant-light bulbs and shoot through umbrellas. Stay tuned for great photos from The Gift of G.A.B!
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Whether we like snow or not, we can all agree this winter brought us plenty of it. Snow changes things. Its whiteness and lack of contrast smooths our familiar bumpy landscapes, brightens otherwise dark areas and replaces the splendid colors of spring, summer and fall with an even monochrome blanket.
Photographers are always thinking about light, the quality of light and how it plays on our subjects. When used with portraits, hard light casts dramatic, sharp shadows while soft light gently sculpts the curves of a face and highlights fragile features and expressions. Photographers will go to extraordinary measures to create this soft light. We put sheets over windows, soft-boxes over speed-lights and require our “photo helper” Uncle Seymour to awkwardly balance a diffusion disk above his head during mid-day sun in public places.
Snow also modifies light. It increases light’s intensity through reflection and softens it through diffusion. With the help of snow on the ground, a person facing the setting sun will be cast with a beautiful (albeit blinding) fill light that is painfully good for glamour-lighting portraits.
Snow is more than a subject or dressing. It is a powerful lighting tool, that surrounds us much of the winter. Enjoy it and be sure to wear sunglasses.
Through the years, we’ve been given contradictory advice regarding “The Light.” While accounts of near death experiences suggest “going towards the light,” the scary-as-hell “Don’t go into the Light” scene from the 1982 movie Poltergeist, strongly suggests the opposite.
Deeper considerations on the subject take me back to 6th grade and an impressive solar eclipse of the sun. The entire class was buzzing with excitement and activity. We were about to make scientific history by turning ordinary old shoe-boxes into pinhole cameras to tract the progress of the moon across the face of the sun! It seemed like the happiest day ever until our teacher, in a very loud and serious voice announced, “Half of you will probably be blind by the end of the day!” If this was her way of getting our attention, it worked. She then went on to explain something about photons, harmful rays and how many Amazon children would never see again because nobody was there to tell them “don’t look into the sun!” Buzz kill was not in my vernacular at the time but it accurately described how I felt. I no longer wanted to make a shoebox camera. Instead, I sat in a dark corner, thought about the doomed Amazon children and ate raisins. Eventually, with considerable urging from the teacher, I agreed to work on my shoebox as long as I could spend the rest of the day wearing the shop teacher’s welding helmet. For the record, none of my classmates were blinded that day, but Willy Henderson did spill his chocolate milk on his corduroys.
Bold Farm Sunrise – ISO 100 F/10 1/1600 sec
Photography is about light. Light provides us with photographic opportunities and options. While side lighting gives depth to scenes and portraits, back lighting can produce nice separation edge-light on our subjects, cool looking shadows in the foreground, evoke moods and create interesting colorful flares.
While the sun can harm our eyes, it also provides us with amazing light to illuminate our photo subjects. It is both our most important celestial body and our best and free lighting tool that we all share. Use it wisely.
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Lola, my nine pound Shih-Poo had been recently bugging me for a photo shoot. She smelled bad (in a good way) and her hair was just the right amount of messy. On walks I’ve observed her admiring sheep dogs. Her own bangs, although not long, were starting to get mangy. She was adorable and she knew it.
She spent Saturday morning taking lots of short naps in prominent places around the house. These were followed by an unnecessary and ridiculously cute stretching regiment that she learned from a baby tiger show on Animal Planet. She later spent the afternoon tossing her tiny rawhide toy into the air and pouncing on it like she was a kitten. I watched her for a while before yelling, “Okay, I’ll do it!”
I then gathered and set up my white muslin backdrop, speed lights and soft box. Predictably, Lola was no help. I placed the speed lights as shown below, adjusted their zooms and set them all to manual mode.
Lighting Setup
I then adjusted the output of each light separately on my remote, eventually dialing in the correct amount of light. The Hair Light was placed high on a stand while the Background Light was placed on the floor. I used both of these lights bare, without diffusion. Lola was concerned the harsh, bare Hair Light would make her look like a Rat Terrier. I reassured her that the main light (Key Light), coming from the large soft box, would be very flattering on her fur. She didn’t argue, and instead chewed on a bone.
While Lola liked the above photo very much, she has yet to figure out how to post it on Facebook.
The final photo was shot in manual mode at ISO 125 59mm f/5.6 1/125 sec.
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My “Little People”
A few weeks ago, while inspecting a very tall and shapely snow drift through the convenience of my sun-room window, I came up with an idea. If I could find some scale figurines, I could position them on this drift so they appeared to be climbing up this “mountain” (think “Into Thin Air”) or perhaps skiing or surfing down it. A quick and disappointing search of my house revealed no such scale figures or action dolls. Next, I did what any modern person in my situation would do… I searched Ebay! Ten minutes of searching returned only a few seemingly good prospects. After some deliberation, I pulled the trigger on a $3.00 packet of “scale people.” About a 10 days later, they appeared in my mailbox. They were So Tiny!
Being so darn small posed some problems. 1. They could not stand on their own. 2. Their paint jobs were not very good (they looked horrible if I zoomed in up close with a macro lens). How could my Tiny People and I work together to get decent photos? First I decided that my expectations needed to shift. I would no longer be trying for “excellent” or “moderately great” shots, but would instead try for “good” photos.
I played with the crazy idea of painting my face to look like a monster and get strangely lite shots of the Little People falling into my mouth. Hey, I’m always up to try something different, but after considering the potential health risks (the Little People would become slobbery choking hazards, and their paint was bound to come off in my mouth), I decided to nix the idea.
I then set up for the photos. At first, I thought a black background would be best since they are lightly colored. I set up two speed lights, one on either side and took some test shots of them falling.
The final, and I think best shots below, were achieved by gluing their tiny feet to a board and back lighting them against a large white diffuser disk. I used a snoot on a single speed-light to get the silhouetted look. The camera and strobe were both in manual mode. The strobe was set to about 1/16 power. I used a 50mm macro lens for these shots. The camera was at 1/800 sec. at f/11, ISO 200. The high shutter speed was needed eliminate the room’s ambient light that I was using to help me focus as I comprised different shots.
I like my friend’s title suggestion “Alien Abduction.” I just hope the aliens weren’t as perplexed at their tiny size as I was.
Manual Mode 1/160 sec. F/22 24mm, ISO 200.
Only the most fortunate photographers jet-off to exotic locations to take fantastic photos of amazing destinations. The rest of us hang around the same old places, often resulting in the doldrums and waning interest for anything photo-related.
This winter’s super cold temperatures compounded this feeling for us Midwesterners. But, regardless of weather and temperatures, we often forget that our neighborhoods, and even our own backyards, hold photographic opportunities not yet discovered. Realizing I had been sadly picture-less for a number of days, I ventured outside only to find the snow was deep enough to swallow much of my legs and self-generated photo-enthusiasm. I eventually made it into my all-too-familiar backyard where, after searching for and finding some decent composition, I put together a couple of shots I liked.
Snow and Cold Weather Tips:
Exposure In Snow: With snow on the ground, your camera sees (meters) very bright conditions and will adjust the exposure accordingly. This means the resulting photo will be darker than it should be. Yes, you can always brighten it up in post production but a better solution is to manually increase exposure compensation 1-2 stops before pushing the shutter button. This will ensure that the camera captures the most amount of detail. If you do not increase exposure compensation, you risk losing some details in the shadows and darker parts of your photo. If these details are not captured when the photo is taken, that data will not be there to brighten up later in post-production.
Condensation: If you are outside long enough for your camera to get really cold, you should seal it inside an air-tight plastic bag before bringing it back inside. The inside humidity will condensate on the surface of your camera and lens. Condensation might also occur inside your camera, and potentially harm delicate electronics. Putting your camera inside a sealed plastic bag until it is room temperature is an easy and inexpensive way to protect your expensive camera and gear.
I stayed inside today and took some water and wine photos. I used two off-camera speedlights at low power and poured many glasses of wine. I used a large, white diffuser disk for my background, which I lit with one of the Canon speedlights. The other speedlight was pointed at the glass from the side and was fitted with a small diffuser. I shot on a tri-pod and used a remote trigger (since I was also pouring).
Summer Academy is a summer program for undeserved neighborhood youth in South Central Elkhart. The program is held at the Roosevelt Center, which is the former Roosevelt Elementary School.
I put together the video for LaCasa of Goshen.
A few photos of Dr. David Lindbo speaking at the IOWPA Conference near Indianapolis. Dr. Lindbo is Professor and Extension Specialist at NC State University. I snapped photos while Dr. Lindbo was giving a Power Point presentation in low light conditions. I shot these event photos with my 5D Mark III mounted with a 135mm prime lens wide open at f.2 at an ISO of 1250-1600.
Dr. Lindbo
