Dan Milham's Photography Blog

I Captured "The Juggler"

2012-01-31T07:53:00.000-06:00

It sounds a little like a nemesis to Batman but the juggler is just one of the folks I see nearly every time I lead a workshop through the French Quarter for American Photo Safari. He's in the 500 block of Royal St. and I like to ask my students to switch their mode dials from aperture priority to shutter priority. The purpose is to freeze the motion of the pins or, in this case, the bowling ball as it's juggled.

I put these three shots of the juggler in the post because I shot in burst mode. The camera kept firing as long as I depressed the shutter button which was 4 shots. I like these three. exposure data: 1/2500 @ f/4, ISO 640 in shutter priority using spot metering with the Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens on the EOS 5D Mk2 at 32mm. This was shot in the vertical orientation and cropped down to the 5x7" finished product(s).

This guy actually did juggle a bowling ball along with the two pins. Of interest to me are the two people in the right portion of the image who are oblivious to the act going on behind them. The shutter speed of 1/2500 sec. was enough to capture the juggled items with no blurring. That same shutter speed us not quite enough to do the same for the moving wings of large birds that I so often shoot.

Make Your Portraits Pop

2012-01-30T08:56:00.001-06:00

When taking portraits of family or friends you can make them memorable with a couple of techniques I like to employ. Here's an example from my French Quarter Workshop for American Photo Safari yesterday morning.

This is Melissa Holman, daughter of Ron Holman. Both were with me for 4 hours of photo fun from 9am-1pm yesterday. I took this shot mainly to show how getting close to Melissa helped achieve a shallow DOF starting close to the camera so the background was out of focus. exposure data: 1/1000 @ f/9, -1/3 EC, ISO 200, Aperture Priority, spot metering and focusing. The Canon EOS 5D Mk2 had my favorite Canon 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 45mm. I was 2 ft from Melissa's face. That may be a little close for the comfort of your subject in some cases.

The close up aspect is one of the techniques I recommend. Don't be worried about losing the top of that hair. It's the face that speaks to us. I also like to put my subject off center. I think that creates a suggestion of context or activity while still keeping the face the center of attention. The lighting is something you can achieve with positioning. In a studio you'd try to get a 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 ratio to create some defining shadows. In the open you can often just position your subject to achieve that look with the ambient light. On a sunny day like yesterday a shaded area would have provided more diffuse and potentially flattering light but for Melissa this spot worked.

Melissa is a pretty and cheerful young girl who isn't worried about being in a photograph. The photograph above gives you a feeling that she's enjoying herself and comfortable. You may find people over 40 less comfortable with close ups, especially women. Never the less you'll be happier with those portraits that give a closer look at the person even if your female subject tells you to get rid of that picture immediately. For that type of subject remember the soft light of shaded areas and a little refinement in the development stage.

I've written in other posts about the difficulty of photographing females who simply don't want their appearance recorded as if we don't already know what they look like. Those subjects often like the results of your handy work in helping recall a slightly younger look in the finished image. The best subjects for this kind of photograph are comfortable with or perhaps resigned to their appearance. To them it is what it is, baby.

Let's Develop A Photograph

2012-01-27T09:57:00.001-06:00

I still have the occasional discussion with a student about the "validity" of developing photographs. They seem surprised but not moved to learn that all the great photographs they see are developed to some extent, some a great deal some just a little. Read on and see why it's the other half of photography.

Example: Canada goose with wings extended.

I love me some birds. In this photograph I got the focus point I wanted and the sharpness and the exposure worked. exposure data: 1/1250 @ f/8, ISO 800, Av, spot metering with the Canon EOS 5D Mk2 and my good old Tamron 200-500mm f/5.6-6.3 lens at 500mm.

Once I open this image in Adobe's Lightroom3, however I really start to make a photograph that looks quite different.

Lightroom's Develop module is Adobe's Camera RAW editor in a different interface. Here's where I adjust the contrast, color intensity, shadows and highlights and generally tweak the image until I like it even more than originally.

Here I mute some colors and intensify others and crop. This image isn't as realistic as the original but that's the point. I like to take some images to a state in which the natural contents have unnatural bot not extreme qualities.

I want an image that looks like it was taken in such a way that the colors were enhanced and the lighting made dramatic and the framing was just right. Much of that must be done when shooting. Some of that can only be done in developing.

If you think about film photography you'll see why some people whom I respect say it's not a photograph until it's developed and printed. If someone wants to buy one of my artistic photographs they'll want it as a print, not as a digital file. Developing isn't just about how the file looks. It's about how it will look in print.

Whenever I hear someone say they don't develop their images because they work to "get it right in the camera" I suspect that the person hasn't been in photography very long. That whole idea only applies to digital photography. If you shoot film you must develop that negative and print or you won't see a positive image.

It's a matter of taste and intent but once you get familiar with whatever developing software you have, even that which is shipped with the camera, you'll have a much wider range of possibilities for your images.

Goosing That Shutter speed

2012-01-26T11:11:00.000-06:00

I'm still experimenting with my old Tamron 200-500mm AF lens and the shutter speeds that will freeze the motion of the wings of the large marine birds that entertain me so frequently near my house. Yesterday it was a gaggle of geese, Canada geese by name, I saw their passports, that chose the pond behind my house in which to bath and cavort.

I'm showing this one full size so you can see the detail I was able to get. This is a little drying and fluffing they do after splashing around. exposure data: 1/1000 @ f/8, ISO 800, 500mm, Av, spot metering with a Canon EOS 5D Mk2. The wings are pretty clear but I soon realized that it's because I caught them at the top of a movement in the split second when they stop before completing the big flap.

In this shot the wings appear clear until I crop it about in half.

This is shot at 1/2500 with everything else the same. Looks god until you crop it in half.

The drops of water are pretty clear but the back end of the wings is a little blurred even at more than twice the shutter speed of the first shot.

The big birds' wings move more slowly than those of the little birds like the mockingbirds that serenade us each morning. I'll be working on trying shots like this with shutter speeds at 3200 next time. That means I'll be increasing the ISO by 1/3 stop but the noise is minimal and the noise reduction in Adobe Camera RAW/Lightroon 3 Develop module is really excellent.

Shooting Synchronized Duck Butts

2012-01-25T08:52:00.000-06:00

I think this duck couple might have been rehearsing for the Olympic games if they have those for ducks.

I saw these two while playing with one of my older lenses, a Tamron 200-500mm that doesn't have any currently popular features like image stabilization or fast autofocus.

The purpose of my play was to see if I could get good sharpness at the 500mm range and these ducks were there when I needed them.

This was shot at 1/1000 @ f/6.3, the fastest this lens will get. I used my Canon EOS 5D Mk2 and added 1/3 stop EC at ISO 200. I shot in shutter priority and used spot metering and focusing on the duck butts.

This is the original shot. I cropped more than half the shot away to get the close up. I'm very pleased with the sharpness.

I shot a RAW file, as usual, and sharpened and clarified it in Lightroom 3's develop module. I think I'll return this lens to the shelf. My wonderful Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS is great but not with a teleconverter to push it past 500mm. The AF doesn't work with the teleconverter and I need the AF when shooting the birds. Someday I'll probably invest in a Canon L series 500mm or 600mm lens but first things must come first. First I win the Powerball and then I buy the lens.

Find The Fill Flash

2012-01-24T08:49:00.003-06:00

Here's an example of using flash to fill shadows from last Sunday's workshop and tour for American Photo Safari. Can you see the clues that indicate a fill flash was used?

Look at their shadows. You can tell that the sun is high but shining toward the camera. Jordan and Laurie would be in darker shadows had I not turned on the flash for this shot. This shot, BTW, was taken with my Canon PowerShot G12. Exposure data: 1/2000 @ f/8, ISO 400, Evaluative metering, auto mode. The lens was wide at 6.1mm.

The two people closest to tha camera are Jordan Hayes and his mom, Laurie. They took my morning tour while waiting to visit Tulane on Monday to see if Jordan wants to attend. He's interested in architecture. This was taken on the Algiers ferry as we were about to leave the Canal St. landing. On mild days I like to include a ferry ride near the end of my tour for the view it presents of the French Quarter and the skyline. I'm surprised by how many local people have never taken the ferry.

Fascination With Feathers

2012-01-23T07:52:00.001-06:00

The snowy egret near my place this weekend seemed to be thinking about something very important.

It may have simply been waiting for dinner to swim by or for me to get too close for comfort.
Exposure date: 1/1250 @ f/11, ISO 400, -1EC, shutter priority, Canon 1D Mk2 body, Canon 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6 L IS lens at 400mm.

At last I became a distraction.

Perhaps it was a simpler urge to return to the nest as the sun sank lower but by this time I had increased my shutter speed in anticipation of flight.
Exposure data: 1/2000 @ f/11, ISO 400, -1EC, same, same, same

I have always hoped for the clear, sharp image of the bird in flight.

Recording details from the whitest feathers to the areas in shadows is a wonderful challenge. The birds are so bright in the sun that I've learned to try to expose for the brightest white spots.
Exposure data: same as previous

On this day the shadows may have offered as much interest as the highlights. I probably read way too much into the posture and movements of birds whose faces offer nothing we can recognize as emotion.

Raised as I was with cartoon animals as my guide I reflexively attribute human meanings to animal activities. They are beautiful and graceful regardless of what I imagine to be their deep thoughts.
Exposure data: 1/2000 @ f/8, ISO 400, -1EC, etc.

Cleaning Your Sensor, My Favorite Way

2012-01-19T09:13:00.000-06:00

A question from one of my former American Photo Safari students prompted me to pass this advice along. Amy Solassi Goodlett is a friend now and I want to maintain that friendship because she owns a candy store!! Actually my favorite way to clean sensors is to send my bodies to Canon's professionals but I do clean my sensors at home now and then with a product called FireFly.

This product combines a good old Giotto Rocket Blaster with a collar that locks on the bottom of the FireFly. The FireFly uses a 9v battery to ionize the air passing through from the blaster so that when that air comes out of the FireFly in to the mirror chamber of your camera it neutralizes the static electricity that sticks particles to your mirror and especially your sensor.

I've used it with repeated success. Here's my procedure for checking and cleaning my sensor.

1. I take a few shots of a pretty sky setting my focus on infinity. I want 3 or 4 shots for a reason.You can use a plain white wall or something similar but I like to use the sky.

2. I load the shots into my computer and look for those smudgy dots that indicate dirt on the sensor.

In this shot I determined that spots 1 and 2 were dirt sticking to the mirror or sensor and spot 3 was loose dust on the lens or mirror because...

3. I gave the lens and mirror a quick blast or two from a regular blower and took more shots. Spot 3 disappeared but 1 and 2 were in exactly the same place in every shot.

4. After checking my second set of shots and establishing the presence of sticky dust spots I put my camera on a tripod and point it down toward the floor. That's so loosened dust can fall away.

5. I set the camera to manual sensor cleaning, remove the lens and give it 5 or 6 blasts with the FireFly. I DO NOT TOUCH THE SENSOR. Did I need to tell you that?

6. I immediately turn the camera off and blast the mirror a few times.

If I still see spots I may try wiping the mirror with a microfiber lens cloth. If I can't get rid of the spots I send the body to Canon. I do not use a brush because it can leave behind a hair or two. I have tried wiping the sensor with two products and just made a worse mess both times. You can, of course, check with a local camera store to see if they can do the cleaning or send the body to the manufacturer for you. I prefer such delicate work be done by someone who'll replace anything they mess up at their expense.

Kicking The Tires On A Camera

2012-01-17T08:40:00.003-06:00

My friend for decades, New Orleans area Realtor Skip Weber, and I used to spend some time doing what we called kicking the tires. We both like cool cars and sometimes we'd go to look at a cool car for sale somewhere just to sit in it and get close to the lines and hear the engine. That was kicking the tires. I got to do that yesterday with Canon's newest professional grade camera, the EOS 1DX.

It's one of the items on display under the huge Canon banner in the exhibit area of Imaging USA 2012. That meeting and show is in its last day at the Earnest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans as I write this.

I didn't take any shots with the camera. It never left the counter to which it was tethered. I did get to hold it and examine the controls and fire the shutter in the amazing 12 frames per second high speed burst mode. For those who've owned or used a 1D series camera the control setup is familiar. Those who are more accustomed to a consumer style camera will immediately miss the mode dial.

The assumption is that the professional who invests $7,000 (no typo) in this camera will have no use for scene modes and already has a selection of lenses. The priority modes are selected by pushing the mode button on the top-left and turning the control dial.

The camera feels much like my EOS 5D Mk2 with its battery grip in place but not quite as heavy. It's a beautiful piece of equipment and the specs are kind of mind boggling. Notable is the ISO range up to 51,200 and expandable to 204,800!!! You get the feeling you could use it like night vision; shoot in total darkness and then see things in the image you didn't know were there. 12 frames per second is hard to imagine also and it's a little bit of a thrill to squeeze the shutter and hear that rapid firing sound.

The EOS 1DX is due on shelves in March. In case you're wondering (and my wife may be) if I intend to purchase one the answer is no. My 5D and 5D Mk2 both have full frame sensors like the 1DX. While the 1st generation 5D has fewer pixels on the sensor it still gives me beautiful photographs and I already have a good ole' 1D Mk2 to give me 8 frames per second if I need that speed. Many journalistic shooters may jump all over the 1DX but I'm going to be quite happy with the features I have in my existing bodies, at least for now.

Shoot Some Clouds Today

2012-01-16T09:23:00.000-06:00

The forecast (always dependable) indicates this will be a good day to point your camera at some cool clouds.

In this shot from the Twin Spans across the Eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain you can see some of those scattered showers over parts of the lake and the North Shore. This was shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mk2 and a 17-40mm f/4L USM lens at 17mm. The ISO was 640. The exposure was 1/4000 s @ f/5 plus .33 EC.

The Future Of Photography?

2012-01-12T08:38:00.000-06:00

It's here now but just getting started. As I read more and more about this new kind of camera I realize that it's something that really works and will almost certainly get better and widely used in the next few years. The short version is that the Light Field camera captures every photon of light in the scene and makes focus a function of the development instead of the shooting. Because it just captures all the light available it has no focusing control on the camera and a simple "swipe" zoom control. It doesn't look like a camera but there's no reason it must.

I don't see how this will completely replace the photography of interchangeable lenses that we use so widely now but that may be because I don't know what the Lytro people have on their drawing boards. For now no professional will want to trade in all his or her lenses for this one zoom ratio. Choosing your focus point interactively after the fact of shooting makes the display of the image sound like more fun but seems to remove a creative option at the time of shooting. To repeat; that is something much more important to the professional trying to accomplish a designed look but the next step or two in this development may answer more questions than I can think to ask today.

10 Reason You Don't Need A Professional Photographer

2012-01-11T10:48:00.002-06:00

1. Why talk to your guests when you can be shooting pictures all evening?

2. Your little camera takes perfectly good pictures just like your computer keyboard writes prize winning novels.

3. Your daughter will have another 1st birthday so you can get the shots you missed then.

4. If you just look closely you can tell who's in your pictures.

5. You don't need to be in the pictures. Everyone knows you were there.

6. Some people actually look better with red eyes.

7. You'll be able to describe the day to your grandkids perfectly.

8. You like that "Dept. Of Motor Vehicles" look.

9. No one ever looks at your web site anyway.

10. Your photos never look like these.

A Great wildlife Photographer

2012-01-10T07:25:00.001-06:00

This is an oldie but a goodie from Art Wolfe, one of the world's best wildlife photographers and teachers. I love this short promotional video because it includes a great scene near the end. It's only :41 so watch and wait for the penguins.

You can see a bunch of Art Wolfe's tutorials and travel videos on YouTube.

The Shadow Photographer

2012-01-09T13:54:00.000-06:00

I like to use shadows as elements or subjects of a photograph.

This shot from Paris on a sunny Spring afternoon was made with the 5D Mk2 in Aperture Priority with the ISO at 640. The EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens was at 90mm. The exposure was 1/2500 @f/9 with 0 EC. I like the fact that the trees actually in the photograph don't make as much of an impression as the shadows of trees off camera to the left. I also really like the lone apartment resident leaning on his railing to watch the masses go by.

Here are some shadows very familiar to those of us from the New Orleans area. I think shadows are sometimes nice because they define something familiar that isn't in the shot. For this one the 5D Mk2 was in the manual mode with the ISO at 400. The same lens was at 24mm. The exposure was 1/160 @ f/6 with 0 EC. Look closely and you'll see that the shadows of the Jackson Square fence are pointing at a visually impaired man entering the St. Louis Cathedral.

Here's Gary Brown, New Orleans musician and Gabbro Records artist, performing just for me, and the video shooter, Mark Moore and the agency rep, Erika Dutton for a shoot in the French Quarter. It's late enough on an October afternoon that Gary's shadow is longer than Gary. The day was bright enough that the shadow is well defined. It looks to me like a logo for New Orleans.

The 5D Mk2 was once again in the good ole' Av mode with the ISO this time at 250. Same lens at 24mm with exposure at 1/200 @f/10 and +.67 EC.

When I take my groups on my American Photo Safari tours through and around the French Quarter I suggest that they always look around for shots other than the first one that came to mind in a location. That includes elements that might not seem obvious at first but may add some interest to the photograph, like shadows.

Make A Composite Graphic In Photoshop Elements

2012-01-06T07:47:00.000-06:00

Here's the step by step of the Saints vs. Lions graphic I displayed yesterday in facebook.

First the background layer. The splatters were an afterthought. Too gory?

I really had the fleur de lis on my computer from an earlier graphic.

I put the Lions' logo atop the Saints' logo so I could mask out parts of the lion to look like the fleur de lis went through it.

The simplify layer command is like the rasterize command in PSCS5. It makes the text an object that can be transformed.

The only step I haven't shown is the crop to the final shape & size.

My Favorite Shot From The French Quarter

2012-01-05T07:34:00.001-06:00

I'm pretty sure that of all the shots I took during my American Photo Safari tours of the French Quarter in 2011 this is my favorite.

The Canon EOS 5D Mk2 was in Aperture Priority (I know, let you know when it isn't) and the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens was at 105mm. The exposure was 1/50 @ f/7.1 with -.33EC. The ISO was 200.

My problem with this shot is not the shooting. It's the fact that this kid is in the Quarter almost every Sunday morning with his family as they play music in the street. They're not bad musicians but then most of the people who play for handouts in the Quarter are not bad. I think the people are bad parents. This kid gets to play with his toy trombone while the family plays for money. I don't know that he doesn't live the life of a young prince when at home but I'm guessing he does not. I love this photograph but I hate that this kid's childhood is spent this way.

Get To Know Your Lenses

2012-01-04T11:11:00.000-06:00

Here's another thing to look for so you can anticipate how a photograph will turn out using a particular lens. You can check for differences in sharpness and color in different parts of an image.

Using the same checkerboard image I used to check the focal point and DOF I cropped a super close view of the squares at the center.

Then I cropped a same size view of the squares at the edge of the image. In the case of my Canon EF 24-105 f/4L IS USM lens there wasn't a great difference but there is just a tiny bit of loss of sharpness in this extreme close-up cropping.

It won't be noticeable in 99% of the images even if I crop out half of the image.

If you do a test like this you may be surprised by just how much your image changes in both sharpness and color from the center to the edge.

There will always be some aberations even in the finest lenses. One way to reduce their effects is with software that lets you adjust for those aberations. I use Adobe's Lightroom 3 which has a develop module that is the same as Adobe's Camera RAW Editor which I'll also use on some images. It includes adjustments for just about all the popular cameras and lenses out there.

You Can Check Your Lens Focusing

2012-01-03T07:06:00.001-06:00

See if your lens if focusing where you think it is or should be with a simple test using a ruler and/or a yard stick. You can also use this simple and inexpensive technique to see how your DOF extends on either side of the focal point.

Here I've laid a 6" ruler on a page of checks that I've pasted to a foam core backing with a marker line drawn where the 3" mark on the ruler is. I just focused on that spot and then shot some frames with the aperture at 4 different settings. Here it's at the smallest aperture of my Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, f/22 with the focal length at 105mm. Looks like everything is in focus as it should be at that small aperture but this doesn't tell me if the focal point is actually where I set it.

Here I take the same shot with the aperture wide open at f/4 at the same focal length. You can see how short the Depth Of Field is at the wide aperture. It looks like it's about 3" total with 1.5" on either side of the focal point. I can see that the focal point is right and the DOF is evenly split by it.

Seeing that I wanted to do the same test with the lens at its shortest focal length and see what happened.

At f/22 we see that the sharpness covers the entire yard stick. The decrease at the near and far ends is negligible. Even the dining room furniture against the wall looks pretty sharp.

It's the wide open aperture that will give us more information.

Look at that short DOF. Just look at the single numbers on the yard stick in both photos.

I checked the numbers farther away by looking at a close up of the image in Adobe Lightroom3 and found that the focal point was right where I expected it to be and that the DOF length was just about evenly split between toward the camera and away from it.

This simple test may also reveal some slight differences in the images at different focal lengths and apertures that are called aberrations. Many lenses perform their best and most consistently in the focal lengths from about 1 stop wider than the smallest aperture and a stop smaller than the widest aperture. Knowing about little quirks like that may help you get the most out of your shooting.

A Thoroughly Controlled Shoot For A Change

2012-01-02T10:05:00.001-06:00

My last job of 2011 was one in which nothing moved unless it was intended. This is dramatically different from my typical jobs on which I must keep up with activities totally beyond my control.

I shot the interior designs of my friend, Susan Currie, in the home of our mutual friends, Joe and Therese Duke, in Uptown New Orleans. Unlike most of my jobs this one required a bunch of equipment including several light sources, my laptop computer for remote shooting and a supply of gaffer tape. The idea is to get the best look at all the elements in the scene, reducing shadows and highlights so it looks like what your eye sees. It's bringing everything into the dynamic range of the image.

On most of my jobs I get general direction from the client and the occasional "Make sure you get...". In this case Susan directed everything but my exposure settings even suggesting some lighting moves. This is like taking shots of someone's art. Susan knows how it should look. I just have to get to that look with my equipment.

The first image is the only one of the four that was used alone. The others are composites using the best exposures of each portion of the scene. All were shot with the Canon 5D Mk2 and the 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. The above shot was done at .3 sec @f/9 with the ISO at 400. I had the camera on a tripod for everything so I could use long exposures and the remote shooting feature of Canon's EOS utility program on my laptop. That also lets me show the live view and the individual shots to Susan so she can make adjustments.

For this shot I used 3 different images to get the look we wanted from the items on the lower shelf of the coffee table and the best look of the lamp and the details of the items on the table. The lamp was on a dimmer which helped a lot.

I used 2 Canon Speedlites shooting into a 32" umbrella as a reflector left of the camera to balance the incoming light from double doors to camera right. Over those doors we hung a white satin background cloth and used it to diffuse and reduce the indirect sunlight. I also used a white reflector with a small optically triggered flash to fill in some of the shadows behind the chair and the hutch on the left side of the scene.

Big thanks to our friend, Joe, for letting us turn his home into our photographic play area for 5 hours...also for the bourbon.

My Favorite Photo Of The Year

2011-12-31T07:23:00.001-06:00

We saw so many great shots that I don't mean to say by any means that this was most well done photograph. The popularity of this photograph reminds us that, when capturing a moment, it's the content of the photograph that makes a great shot. This, in case you've lost your memory, was the view on May 1 in the White House Situation room as US forces raided the compound in Pakistan and killed Osama Bin Laden. This was taken by White House Photographer, Pete Sousa.

You can see a description of this photo with a list of the people shown as well as other Photos Of The Day on the White House Photo Of The Day web page.

Have a safe and happy new year.

My Year In Review: Music Makers

2011-12-29T13:37:00.001-06:00

Among the new and exciting adventures in photography I enjoyed in 2011 was shooting a benefit concert staring Amanda Shaw and several other popular musicians from our area.

Amanda radiates energy on stage. She plays and sings with such enthusiasm that I don't see how anyone could stand still during her show.

This was shot with the 5D Mk2 in manual and the ISO expanded to 25,600. The EF24-105mm f/4L lens was at 73mm. Metering was spot and I set the mode dial to Av, again. The exposure was 1/160 @ f/5. The colored lights just stuck it to my WB but that's why I shoot RAW and develop in Adobe's Lightroom 3.

I did use a flash a few times during the concert. For this shot I was about 10 ft from the stage as Amanda did a duet with one of her guests, Anais St. John. Anais is featured at the Polo Club of the Windsor Court Hotel, in New Orleans and is a very sultry and sexy performer. I thought the contrast between city singer Anais and country girl Amanda was irresistible.

For this shot the EF24-105mm lens was at 60mm. the 5D Mk2 was in manual mode. The ISO was still at 25,600 and I still used spot metering. The stage lights gave enough illumination to the setting so I just wanted to get the girls to stand out and get the feeling of their interaction in the shot. The exposure was 1/100 @f/5.

Sometimes I just keep on shooting knowing that one of the frames I expose will get a moment, an instant that just reaches out to me. It's hard to describe how that really comes together but this is such a shot.

Amanda's guest, Rockin' Doopsie Jr. is out of focus in the rear and looking at Amanda with a great smile on his face. The light and focus are centered on Amanda as she sings with her characteristic emotion.

I'm 13 ft away with the 24-105mm lens at 105mm. WB was manual. Metering was spot. The exposure was 1/60 @ f/4. I kept the ISO at 25,600 and did some studious noise reduction in Lightroom 3. The dark areas behind the stage got very noisy but that was a small trade off for the exposure I wanted. The lighting on this one is all the stage lighting at New Orleans' wonderful Rock & Bowl. That's a great place to throw a party.

Pictures Of The Year, National Geographic version

2011-12-29T07:44:00.000-06:00

National Geographic, on the web site, shows off the best of their Photos Of The Day.

My Year In Review: Back To The Water

2011-12-28T14:27:00.006-06:00

I've done so much shooting on or near water in the past 3 years I felt right at home on my first shoot for an advertising agency back in October. I was shooting stills alongside New Orleans videographer Mark Moore. The first location of the day was the waters of Barataria Bay in the early and very chilly morning hours of October 20. We were on a fishing boat and the project was promotion for the La. Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board.

We hit the water just before the first light of dawn so we'd been traveling a while when I got this shot of our captain looking in to the rising sun. The very nice lady from The Food Group, in New York city (!?!), wanted some shots of faces and hands and ropes. I knew what she meant. She wanted to see people.

This was shot with my Canon EOS 5D in evaluative metering and, as usual, aperture priority with the ISO cranked to 1250. I really don't worry about extra noise at high ISO. The camera and software will take care of that and the shot is what's important. The exposure was 1/1000 @ f/13 and I just noticed I'd turned the EV down to -1 for this shot. My EF17-40MM f/4L USM lens was at 26mm.

On this trip I carried 2 bodies, the 5D and 5D Mk2. I do that for two reasons; 1. I don't like to change lenses in the "wild" where nasty stuff can stick to your sensor and 2. I switch cameras much faster than I can switch lenses.

That same day we finished the shoot with the shrimpers, made a stop at Rocky & Carlo's, in Chalmette, for lunch and went to the French Quarter to get some shots of a sax player and some iconic French Quarter scenes.

I like this shot because of the shadow. For a shot like this you just keep moving and getting as many different angles and compositions as you can from a basically static scene. The musician was a pro and he moved a bit and tried to give us some different looks.

This was shot with the Canon 5D Mk2 using evaluative metering and aperture priority with the ISO at 250. The EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens was at 24mm. The exposure was 1/200 @ f/10 +.67 EC.

As I've mentioned the jobs I get and love require rather continuous shooting with minimal time for adjustments so I've become accustomed to quickly cranking a little more or less EC into a shot.

Pictures Of The Year, Reuters version

2011-12-28T07:36:00.001-06:00

Here's a link to the Reuters site with a slide show of their pictures of the year.

The Wildest Party I Ever Shot

2011-12-27T14:12:00.004-06:00

When New Orleans Marketing Expert Colleen Monaghan throws a party she does not, in any way, hold back. I had the "job" of shooting her recent 50th birthday party. She dressed as the Queen Of Hearts and "demanded" that all her subjects come in costume. They did with gusto. The party began at the Ritz Carlton and then marched through the French Quarter to Muriel's at Jackson Square. It was a hoot among hoots.

My approach to a moving scene like this is to travel light with one camera and a flash on a bracket and plenty of extra batteries and maybe an extra lens. I must be able to carry everything I need as the party moves around. I shot in Manual but would not hesitate to switch to aperture priority with plenty of ISO so I could adjust quickly to the changing activities.

For the above shot on Bourbon Street the Canon EOS 5D Mk2 was in Manual with ISO 500 and evaluative metering. I shot in RAW as usual. My EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens was at 40mm. The exposure was 1/320 @ f/7.1. Using a priority mode lets you concentrate more on the shot while the camera takes over some of the exposure work.

A good flash bracket lets me move my 580 EX2 around a little bit but mainly I just have to keep my eyes open and my head swiveling to try to get those cool moments. There will always be those who want to pose for the camera but the best shots are always candid. This sweet interaction was shot at 1/100 @f/11 with the ISO @500 using the EF24-105mm lens at 24mm.

Another thing I keep in mind is the constant presence of other cameras in all shapes & sizes. When I shoot an event like this I know others will be posting all kinds of shots on facebook and on web photo sites. That's why I must make my shots the unusual ones, the ones that capture moments that others will shoot poorly or miss while getting the posed shots.

This is a shot that was aided by the 580 EX2 filling the subjects with enough light while the evaluative metering exposed the background nicely. I used no EV adjusting here just shot on the move knowing I could develop some shadows and highlights when I put the RAW file in Lightroom 3. This was shot at 1/250 @ f/7.1.

The Year in Pictures: MSNBC version

2011-12-27T07:26:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to another of my favorite Picture Of The Year galleries. MSNBC has separate galleries for news, sports, departed newsmakers and entertainers and viewers' favorites. The Year in Pictures: 2011

New Jobs, New Lessons

2011-12-26T14:33:00.001-06:00

My most important "first" in 2011 was a job shooting production stills for the National Geographic Film Promotion Department. I was assigned to be on the set of the local "live action" shooting for a 3D film currently titled Hidden Worlds. I was on the set as they shot scenes on a rooftop in the Warehouse District and at places within the Audubon Zoo.

This little girl was one of the extras watching the shooting from a safe distance as the lead kids shot several scenes at the fountain.

For this shot the Canon EOS 5D Mk2 was in manual mode, evaluative metering, ISO 400 with a 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 24mm. This was shot at 1/60 @f/10 in Aperture Priority. The afternoon shadows were beautiful but I adjusted the fill and recovery sliders a bit in Lightroom 3.

The lesson from this job was the experience of shooting others as they shot. I was fortunate to have the first job like this on a set where everyone was friendly and very professional. I'm told that on some sets a shooter like me would be scolded if I was even noticed by the actors.

I also learned how to shoot quietly using a Camera Muzzle. Some jobs like this are done with a hard case called a blimp that eliminates 90% of the shutter/mirror noise. I chose the muzzle because it eliminates 75% of the noise and is a soft case that's pretty easy to use. OBTW it costs about $140 while the blimp will relieve you of closer to $1000. With the Canon EOS 5D Mk2 on Live View shooting the shutter/mirror noise was inaudible from more than 2 ft. away.

The muzzle or blimp allows the shooting of production stills while not making noise that interferes with the audio being recorded for the film or being a distraction to the people making the film. I was shooting behind the director as he made his own shot of the raft in the lagoon at Audubon Park and he wasn't aware of my close proximity.

For this shot the 5D Mk2 was still in aperture priority using evaluative metering with the same lens but the ISO was at 1250 as the light was very low at 4:00PM on a cloudy Nov. 22. I wanted the ISO high so I could shoot this at 1/100 @ f/10. When you're shooting production stills you can't ask the crew to hold still while you're getting a shot and you'd better not use a flash if you want another such job, which I do.

Pictures Of The Year, LIFE version

2011-12-26T07:28:00.001-06:00

It's already that time of the year again when we say goodbye to the year. We also look at a few galleries of "Pictures Of The Year". Here's one of my annual favorites.

Enjoy The Weekend

2011-12-23T08:12:00.000-06:00

To those who celebrate it Merry Christmas. To those who tolerate it Enjoy The Weekend.

Next week we'll take a look back at my favorite jobs from 2011. It was a very good year.

Use Camera RAW Instead Of Bracketing

2011-12-20T07:22:00.002-06:00

Let's look at an image from my morning class/tour in the French Quarter for American Photo Safari. It's the kind of image that always makes people think of exposure bracketing, shooting 3 different images at different exposure values so they can be blended later in developing to get the best exposed views of light and dark areas.

Shot with the 5D Mk2 on manual, 1/200 @ f14, ISO 200 at 24mm the sky looks great as does the building on the right. The sidewalk on the left, however is under exposed.

Now take a look at the same shot after developing just the one frame in Adobe's Lightroom 3, whose Develop module is a duplicate of Adobe's Camera RAW Editor.

This took about 3 minutes using mainly the gradient tool so only the left side was changed. It's not merging to HDR. It's just using the developing capabilities available to you when shooting RAW files.

There are many scenes you'll want to shoot that look great to the eye but have too much dynamic range, too much difference between the bright and dark areas for the camera to record detail from everything unless you shoot a RAW file, the digital version of a negative that gives you much more control over the image in developing.

Stalking The (not so) Wild Goose

2011-12-19T07:59:00.001-06:00

I spent about 20 min. on a recent afternoon closing in on some Canada Geese in my backyard hoping they'd take off so I'd get some good in flight, wing stopping shots. They're so accustomed to people they just walked to a different part of the yard to maintain a respectable distance but never even thought about taking flight.

I used a Canon EF 70-200MM F/2.8L IS USM lens so I really didn't get closer than about 20 ft.

I kept the shutter speed on 1/2000 in case they went airborne. I kept the ISO at 200 because I wanted to get really good detail from the birds' feathers. At ISO 200 I needed to keep the aperture fairly wide on this cloudy day. For this shot I was at f/4. Look at the grass and you can see the length of my Depth Of Field.

This one seemed the most interested in me and was the closest to me most of the time. It checked me out from several head angles and moved whenever I got a little close for comfort.

This was also shot at 1/2000, f/4, ISO 200 from a distance of about 50 ft. I cropped this shot more than in half to get this version.

I choose not to rush them or really spook them too much because I'm hoping they'll return on a more sunny day.

See The Past Through Today's Photographs

2011-12-17T09:01:00.005-06:00

I was struck recently by the similarity between a photo from one of my favorite photo sites and one that I shot last March on our trip through parts of Europe.

This is a photo of German prisoners working on the landscape at the US cemetery at Saint Laurent-sur-Mer, in France, near Omaha Beach. The photo was taken by AP photographer Peter J. Carroll on May 28, 1945. Since I was born in 1945 I easily calculate the time between events in that year and today. It's my age.

The web site is The Atlantic's World War II in Photos, a 20 part retrospective that is fascinating.

So here's a picture I took 66 years after the Pete Carroll photo. I chose to make it a grayscale image just for the purpose of comparison.

That cemetery is now a beautiful and very moving place. It's the Normandy American Cemetery And Memorial and it overlooks Omaha Beach. My wife and I wish every US citizen could visit Normandie and learn from the people there what the allies accomplished by liberating France and ending WWII.

You Can Use The Compression Effect

2011-12-16T08:48:00.001-06:00

By using the longer focal lengths, 75mm or more, and shooting objects at some distance, you can create what I'll call a compression effect making objects that are far from each other appear to be much closer.

Let's revisit this shot from back in April. You can see how the compression effect makes the ship on the river, the levee and the St. Louis Cathedral appear closer than they are. Those of us who live around here know there's about a half of a mile between that ship and the cathedral and a fourth of a mile from ship to shore. I'm using Photoshop Elements for this demo.

To make the effect more obvious you can crop the image to center attention on the elements that display the effect. In Photoshop Elements you can crop to whatever proportions you choose or set the crop to give you a standard ratio like 5x7 or 8x10. I'm just cropping for the effect here, not to print in a standard size

The resulting image puts the emphasis on the relationship among the visual keys, the ship, the shore, where we see people on the Moon Walk and the iconic cathedral. We can easily relate to the size of the people and the cathedral. The ship, therefore takes on a larger than reality appearance. This is enhanced partly by the height of the river above the street level of the French Quarter. Hang in there, levees.
This was shot at 1/500 @ f/9, ISO 500 with my Canon EOS 5D Mk2 in aperture priority and spot metering and focusing. The lens was Canon's 24-105mm f/4L IS USM focusing at infinity.

4 Tips For Getting Foggy Shots

2011-12-15T09:01:00.002-06:00

Short of breathing on your lens (not recommended) the most important step in getting good fog shots is to be in the right place when fog is present.

1. Check the weather forecast. I've heard all the complaints about forecasters that say something is "supposed to happen" which never does. That's BS (Borrowed Socks). Your local forecast is very dependable so long as you don't expect it to chart out the moments of your life. It's available on TV and on the web from several sources. The best is the National Weather Service and there's a forecast office in your area from which all local weather forecasts and advisories are issued. If fog is likely (not promised or supposed) it will be more so on or near large areas of water.

2. Fog will linger much longer over water than over land. This shot of the Mississippi was taken at 10:20 AM during one of my American Photo Safari tours. We were standing on the Moon Walk and we could look back at St. Louis Cathedral through Jackson Square and see that just a few yards inside the levee the air was more clear because it was warmer than the air over the river. You need to be there earlier to shoot inland buildings in fog than to shoot over the water in fog.

3. I like to use an ISO of 400 or 500 so I have some exposure flexibility. The modern DSLR does a great job of producing noiseless images at those ISOs. If you shoot RAW files you have plenty of leeway with which to adjust your exposure settings, sharpness, contrast and noise reduction to get the best from your image.

4. Wind and fog don't mix. Actually it's the mixing of the wind that dissipates fog. If you awaken and there's plenty wind a-blowin you probably won't see much fog. If, however a calm morning is expected to become more windy during the day it may create some interesting scenes as fog is slowly evaporated while being pushed around by developing breezes during the morning and midday hours.

6 Tips For Shooting Holiday Lights

2011-12-14T08:17:00.000-06:00

If you want to get good shots of outdoor light displays you'll be shooting at night but you'll be shooting bright things so the exposure can be tricky. This is doubly true if the display has moving parts.

1. Avoid the intuition to overexpose because you're in the dark (astronomically speaking). You'll want to let the dark areas look dark so the lights look natural. If you overexpose you'll get bright blurs instead of well defined lights. You may not be able to recover those blown out details in developing.

In a scene like the one at left there's enough lighting that the camera read the exposure value pretty well.

2. Use evaluative metering and let the camera take a reading that is the average of the light and dark areas. Take a test shot and see if you want to tweak the exposure up or down just a bit. You may want to switch to spot metering if you just can't get the most important spot exposed correctly so be ready to experiment with metering.

3. If you're using a DSLR don't be afraid to raise the ISO up to 800 or 1200. You'll still get a very good picture with little noise. If you're using a point & shoot I wouldn't put the ISO above 400. You'll get more noise from that small sensor.

4. Use a tripod and a cable release or other hands-off release including delayed shutter. This gives you the option of slower shutter speeds for exposure or special effects like motion blur. When using a tripod turn your image stabilization off.

5. Try wide angles. That will reduce the effects of blurring from breezes blowing the lights around. A wide angle shot with more in it reduces the need for super sharp focus.

6. Try a wide aperture like f/3.5 or f/2.8 if you have it. This will let you blur that background that may not look so festive.

Learning To Use Your Flash

2011-12-12T13:59:00.000-06:00

As happy as I am with my progress as a photographer and the jobs I've had lately I'm still working on my skills with the dedicated flash and off camera flash as a category. I know I'm not alone so for those who share my goal I suggest becoming a regular reader of a great blog called Strobist. David Hobby, the Strobist, is a practitioner of the art of using the dedicated flash in new, inventive ways. He's a friend of Joe McNally which should tell you allot. Joe McNally is also a genius in the use of the dedicated flash and his world famous work product proves that.

I've already recommended Joe McNally's latest book, Sketching The Light, and his previous book, The Moment It Clicks, as great gifts for a photographer. I own both.

Now you can add a DVD of the recent Hobby/McNally collaboration, The Flash Bus, to your list of potential gifts. The Flash Bus Tour 2011 gives you the full day of lessons you would have experienced if you'd seen one of the tour stops. David Hobby takes you on a logical progression through various uses of multiple flashes in different curcumstances. Then Joe McNally takes you through his more erratically varying look at different situations that may arise and how to light for them, as he puts it, "...more like being on assignment". If you learn everything these two guys have to teach you'll be a grand master of lighting control with small, easily portable flashes.

Shooting Manually With A Pocket Camera

2011-12-09T07:53:00.000-06:00

Many pocket sized point and shoot cameras give you the option of shooting in manual or priority modes so you can try some creativity in your shooting. Those non-auto modes also let you shoot in less than perfect exposure conditions. The question is, "Which functions are on your camera?". The only way to know is to consult your user guide. Examples follow.

You will find that some pocket cameras have many options waiting somewhere in their menus. The Canon Powershot SX130IS is a good example.

A section of the user guide tells you how to set your shutter speed or your aperture value. You can shoot with your flash in slow synchro. You can select a metering method. You can adjust the flash output. You can change the AF frame mode. There's a bunch of things you can do with this camera.

I checked the guide for a smaller SD780IS and found very few of those options available. The SD780IS is not without options but it hasn't nearly as many as the larger SX130IS.

I have not tested either camera but I note that they both advertise 12 megapixels which is a lot for a small sensor. The SX130IS is cheaper and has more functions. The only drawback may be the size. If that's a drawback read on.

I took a look at a Canon's Powershot S95 which is more expensive but similar in size to the SD780IS.

This one is a pocket camera with many of the exposure options you look for when you want to explore photography. You can set your shutter speed, aperture and ISO. You can customize an adjustment ring on the front of the camera to adjust the value of your choice and there's a mode dial atop the camera of the type you'll see on an SLR.

If you already have a small camera you have only to spend a few minutes exploring your user guide to see what it can or cannot do. If you don't see something don't give up until you've searched the index in the back of the guide to see if what you seek is somewhere not specified in the contents list.

If you haven't yet bought your camera I highly recommend searching on line for a list of details about the camera's features and functions. That's often available at the manufacturer's web site. You're more likely to find that on line than in a big box retail store in which the sales person is really just there to point you toward the products of interest. Asking at a camera specialty store like Lakeside or Bennett's or Moldaners in metro New Orleans will be hit and miss. You'll be talking to someone who gets to handle each camera in stock but your subject of interest may not be one of those. There are just too many different cameras out there for anyone to know all about all of them

Photographers Like To Read About Photography

2011-12-08T08:20:00.001-06:00

Here's another gift suggestion for the photographer in your life. Find a book that teaches photography or displays great photography on high quality stock. Here are some suggestions.

The Photographer's Eye, by Michael Freeman, is a description of composition and design for better digital photographs. I refer to it frequently.

The Photographer's Eye (same title), by John Szarkowski (different author) is a look in to photographic artistry and function using grayscale photographs by professionals and earnest amateurs.

The Moment It Clicks, by Joe McNally, is the most informative book about flash photography I've ever read. Joe McNally is truly a world famous photographer and an interesting person. He displays a bunch of his great photographs and briefly explains how he took them. He writes in a very casual, natural and entertaining style.

The Digital Photography Book, by Scott Kelby, is a really good introduction to digital photography. Scott is the founder of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals and also a very good shooter. His books, including The Digital Photography Book 2, include operational and artistic information and advice.

Photography, by Barbara London, Jim Stone and John Upton, is a textbook. I used it as a required part of a 3 day seminar and it's still on my shelf. It's now in it's 10th edition. This isn't an inexpensive book but it is really a complete course about film and digital cameras, lenses, filters, lighting, color and pretty much anything else you can connect to photography.

Browse the book store. I only have about 15 books still on my shelves and there may very well be some new ones that are great. If you know what your favorite shooter likes to shoot you may find one just right for that person.

Make Your Trip Photographs More Interesting

2011-12-07T08:45:00.001-06:00

If you want to make your vacation photographs more interesting to your friends who kindly view them avoid posing people. Just show them as part of the scene. Let your friends see them interacting with the location.

Here's Marianne Sabrier on my French Quarter tour for American Photo Safari last Sunday morning. If this were a vacation photograph being posted and emailed to her friends she would not find it necessary to identify herself. Her friends would recognize her and see her interacting with her surroundings. This photograph accomplishes the establishment of location and that Marianne was, in fact, there doing what she loves.

One of my favorite vacation shots is this one of my wife and friends on a trip to San Juan, Puerto Rico, as they consulted a map of the area. All our friends who see this shot will know who we are so there's no need to pose everyone looking at the camera. To me this photograph tells the viewer something about our trip and shows the people in a more interesting way. I still enjoy seeing our friend, Joy, taking a shot of the map as our friend, Janice, takes a shot of her as I, of course, take a shot of the group.

PhotoNOLA Is This Week

2011-12-06T16:04:00.001-06:00

If you'd like to get serious about artistic photography and you live in the New Orleans metropolitan area you should take a long look at PhotoNOLA.org. This is a series of lectures, workshops, displays and events for and about artistic photography and photographers. The biggest event of the week may be PhotoNOLA Education Day: Bringing Your Prints To The Wall. It's a morning and afternoon of discussions of how to effectively display your exhibit your photographic work. I'd have posted this earlier but I just found out myself.

My friend Laura D'Alessandro has a continuing exhibit at 4921 Freret St. at Du Mois Gallery. She'll be discussing her strange and intriguing work tomorrow, Wed., evening at 6:00PM.

Later Wed., at 8:00PM, my friend and fellow American Photo Safari instructor, Natasha Sanchez will perform the Nattie Concepts World Tour at Buffa's Bar, 1001 Esplanade Ave. Natasha is a film shooter and a singer and generally artistic person who combines all of her talents in one presentation.

My friend, Chris Loomis, owner of America Photo Safari, will be leading a tour and workshop on Saturday from 2-4:30pm in the French Quarter. I'll be leading my usual Sunday morning tour and workshop at 9:00AM - 1:00PM. You can sign up for that at American Photo Safari Workshops. As of this writing only one slot is open.

On Friday, Dec. 9, from 4-6PM I'll be at a Welcome Party at A Gallery For Fine Photography, 241 Charters St. Joshua Mann Pailet is hosting an exhibit of prints by Josephine Sacabo. She's a very talented and expressive photographer who'll discuss her work at a keynote address later Friday evening.

You can see details about all the PhotoNOLA events at the web site.

Use That Av Mode, It's Fun

2011-12-05T18:15:00.010-06:00

A very common theme during my Sunday morning French Quarter tours for American Photo Safari is the use of the Aperture Priority mode, usually indicated with an A or an Av on the mode dial. It's the mode I'm in most often if I'm not in M for manual. It's the mode you'll probably use most often because you'll set your aperture, the f/stop setting, according to the Depth Of Field, DOF, you want and let the camera set the shutter speed to create the correct exposure at that aperture. I demonstrated that effect yesterday, 12/4, taking these shots for the benefit of my tour group. Remember the aperture is the opening in an adjustable iris diaphragm within the lens.

I want you to notice 3 things about these photographs.
1. You can see how the DOF is shorter at the wider aperture setting, f/4. The sign is in focus while the background isn't. At f/11 the aperture is much smaller and the DOF much longer.
2. The camera adjusted automatically for the much greater light coming through my wider aperture setting by bumping the shutter speed up 10 times, 1/320 to 1/3200. At a lower ISO the change might not have been so dramatic.
3. Another thing that helps create the blurred background effect is to be relatively close to your focal point with some distance behind it to the background. If anything had been just behind the sign the drop off in focus would've been much less noticeable. The distance from the sign to the buildings across the street behind it was enough that the difference is obvious.

Shopping, Shopping

2011-12-05T09:34:00.003-06:00

Assuming that many or you are still shopping for Christmas gifts I'll keep passing on the sale and discount emails that I get.

Here's another flyer from Canon. The T3i is a very nice camera with good features.

You can find plenty of photographic gifts and other electronics at Adorama. I've done business with them many times and been completely satisfied. Remember that a memory card can write from the camera only as fast as the camera can write to the memory card.

Bapaw Wants A Brand New Bag

2011-12-03T16:41:00.002-06:00

You can win a great rolling camera bag from one of my favorite companies, Think Tank, if you enter at this link. You can enter once a day and on Dec. 20 Think Tank will draw an entry randomly to win an Airport Security V 2.0 Rolling Camera Bag filled with photographic goodies.

I have entered but I also hope to win one of Think Tank's "Retrospective" shoulder bags just for promoting their contest. I first used a Think Tank product when the Canon people sent me one of their Glass Taxi bags as a premium for members of Canon Professional Services. Think Tank makes several very creatively designed bags for specific purposes. One of my favorites in my closet is the modular system using their Steroid Speed Belt with 2 of their camera holsters. It's a great way to get around the places I often shoot with my 2 cameras secure on my waist instead of flapping around. I also use one of their Artificial Intelligence laptop bags and a little multipurpose bag called a Chimp Cage.

I'm hoping all these links to their product pages will earn me one of those cool shoulder bags. Bapaw, btw, is what my granddaughter calls me.

Gift For A Potential Photographer

2011-12-02T08:21:00.000-06:00

Here's a gift idea for someone who think he or she is interested in photography but isn't really sure. You can easily get a starter setup that will let them get a feel for shooting and not cost you $500-$700.

I'm finding several point and shoot cameras with available exposure controls. These are all available from Walmart, Amazon, Walmart, etc. for under $200.

I found this bundle at Walmart. It has everything I want my nephew (who, at 14, thinks he wants to be a photographer) to have in a starter kit. His school insists he shoot his class videos in HD. Since every camera now sports 720p video and calls it HD he's in no danger. The camera also includes manual exposure control just in case he really wants to learn to shoot stills. The tripod gives him more shooting options for stills and video.

This gift will let him shoot his videos and explore still photography. If he doesn't end up in love with still photography at least we haven't lost a mortgage payment in the experiment.

My Favorite Lens At A Discount

2011-11-30T21:29:00.001-06:00

My favorite lens is this one, Canon's EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS. It's the mid range lens that's almost always on my main body. On my full frame Canon body it has a wider range of focal lengths than the 18-55mm range of the kit lens that comes in the box with most new DSLRs with their APS sized sensore.

B&H now has a refurbished version of this lens at the sale price of $929, a savings of about $120 over the lowest price for a new one in a plain, white box.

Cyber Monday Photo Specials

2011-11-28T07:41:00.000-06:00

If you can find the bandwidth you may want to shop for photographic specials at one or more of these sites.

Here's the on line offering from B and H Photo Video Pro Audio.

There's a pretty, red, T3 with an 18-55 lens in Canon's extended Black Friday specials.

There's a "waterproof" Coolpix AW100 and big reductions in Nikon's on line deals.

See a wide range of products and prices in the Olympus Cyber Monday offer.

6 Is A Good Number

2011-11-25T08:13:00.001-06:00

I think 6 people is a great number for one of my Sunday morning tours and that's what I had with me last Sunday. This time all but one were experienced photographers. One has been shooting around the world. One couple was experienced in the national parks out west.

From left you can see Mike Poupart taking a shot while Mike Flynn is hard to see behind him. Everett Knox had the two Canons including a 1Ds. He's a fellow Viet Nam vet and has returned to that part of the world to get some great shots. Patty Poupart watches Mike shoot. David Holloway brought a point-and-shoot zoomer and took a lot of photos. Joe Scorsone likes to work with high contrast, dark rich tones and grayscale.

I really don't know if I "taught" these folks anything but we did have a good time walking through the French Quarter and making photographs. Mike Flynn is a beginner and he may have learned from just listening to the discussions I had with the others about experiences and equipment.

The foggy morning yielded this shot looking up river from the Moon Walk.
shooting data: 1/200 @f/18, ISO 500, 47mm

As you'd expect, the cool, damp foggy morning gave way to a warm and partly cloudy afternoon by the time we reached hour #4 of the tour. If you live in this area you also know that we'll have many more such mornings on which to shoot before the Winter months end.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T08:10:00.001-06:00

I hope you have a comfortable and thankful day as well as much for which to be thankful. I'll be with my in-laws at a restaurant when I'd rather be in my house eating my wife's wonderful cooking but that doesn't mean I'm not thankful for my wonderful wife, family, friends and life.

Now on to the important stuff. Here are some "Black Friday" sales offerings to get you thinking about gifts for those on your list who are photographically inclined. If you'd rather squeeze in to the crowd at a retail store just use these on line ads as a reference to which you can compare the prices on the shelves.

Here's a group of offers at all levels, entry to serious, from Canon.
Here's a page of ~~really cheap~~ make that relatively inexpensive Coolpix offers from Nikon.
Here's a page of cameras segregated by price and, seriously, gender from Olympus.
You can shop deals through "Cyber Monday" thanks to Sony.

The sale prices and discounts offered by the manufacturers' web sites are reflected in the deals at the on line retailers including BH Photo Video, Adorama, Ritz Camera, Amazon, etc.

Can You Do This?

2011-11-23T07:55:00.001-06:00

I mean the standing on one leg part. Anybody can make a photograph of a flamingo. It's easy to find them. They're just inside the front gate of the Audubon Zoo, on Magazine St., New Orleans.

This one seemed to be showing off but I'm sure that among the flamingos his stance meant something specific like "I'm interested in mating." or "Those insects I ate were a little gassy."

shooting data: 1/30 @ f/11, ISO 400, 105mm, developed and cropped in Adobe Lightroom 3.

I shot this while waiting to begin the afternoon shooting on the set of the National Geographic film, Hidden Worlds. Several live action scenes are set in New Orleans and I've been hired to shoot "behind the scenes" photos for promotional use. Monday's shooting was at the zoo. The film probably won't be out until next Summer so I don't know when I'll be able to show you any of my shots.

So, if you're hoping for something you can do on Friday that doesn't involve a shopping venue you should think about the Audubon Zoo. It's a beautiful place and it has some great animal exhibits.

I Could Tell You But...

2011-11-18T08:51:00.000-06:00

I shot my first half-day on the set of a film for National Geographic on Thursday but I can't show you any of the stills until they're published. The scene was a rooftop garden on St. Joseph St. in the Warehouse district of New Orleans.

The crew was great and I was aided greatly by the experience of the video shooter on the job, Don Lagarde. We are shooting the "behind the scenes" video and stills for what's known as an EPK, Electronic Press Kit, that will be used to promote the film.

We have another shooting day on Monday at the Audubon Zoo. More scenes are scheduled in New Orleans after Thanksgiving and I'm hopeful that I'll be shooting them. I'm pretty satisfied with the shots from day 1 so I am optimistic about being booked for more. Nothing beefs up a photographer's resume like the words "National Geographic" in the client list.

The most interesting part of the shoot for me was the RED 3D camera being used. It's actually 2 cameras in a completely automated rig mounted on a Steadicam-type device with an upper body brace and extender arm that together looks like it weighs 100 lbs. The iris and focus are controlled by a second person with a remote controller.

The camera rig looked something like this but with the vertical camera on the bottom.

The 3D film, Hidden Worlds, will be shown on giant screens in institutions such as museums. The shots I'm taking are intended for promotion in social media. The film will include a lot of microscopic imagery and computer animation but the "live action" sequences are being shot in New Orleans. If, make that when, my shots are used it will probably be well in to next year but I'll certainly be letting you know where to see them.

Use Fill Flash In Bright Sun

2011-11-17T08:23:00.002-06:00

Those hard shadows created by the bright sun of a beautiful day can be easily overcome with a modern flash. They're expensive, $400-$500, but the TTL (Through The Lens) flashes work with the camera and take their own measure of subject distance in the millisecond before the flash fires so you can almost rely on the equipment to do the work for you. You set it up and the equipment does the rest.

The Queen Of Hearts here is Colleen Monaghan leading a parade of her friends and family from the Ritz Carlton on Canal to Muriel's Restaurant at Jackson Square. The occasion is a celebration of her 50th birthday and the girl did it up right.

The Canon Speedlite 580EX II flash lit her up while the EOS 5D Mk2 exposed for the background in the evaluative mode.

Shooting data: 1/320 @ f/7.1, ISO 500, 105mm. Take a look at that shutter speed, 1/320. The Speedlite has a "high speed sync" mode that makes that possible.

When I'm shooting events, my most frequent job, I try to interrupt the action as little as possible. People will pause long enough to get some shots like the one below but to get the shots of their activities I rely on the wonderful way the modern flash uses the same exposure readings I see in the camera's TTL meter to get pretty good exposures.

Here's Colleen with Thomas Lavelle on the rooftop patio of the Ritz penthouse. They're really an attractive couple. Trust me on that.

shooting data: 1/200 @ f/22 (notice the sharper background), ISO 800, 24mm

As usual I shot this event in RAW files and developed the shots in Adobe's Lightroom 3. That means they were sharpened and the shadows and highlights were tweaked to get the best look possible. A little color enhancement brought out the colors that looked a bit muted in the shadows.

Nikon also makes their Speedlights with TTL technology and you can now buy 3rd party flashes that work pretty well along the same lines. I can't support the contention with data but I just expect that a flash and camera made by the same people will be the most effective combination.

NOTE: I start a job today for the film promotion department of National Geographic. It's a "behind the scenes" shot as a crew shoots some scenes for a movie. This is a first and I'll need to shoot quietly so I've ordered something called a Camera Muzzle. I'll let you know how that works out.

How Can We Thank Them?

2011-11-11T08:31:00.000-06:00

There is a way to say "Thanks" as meager as the word sounds in the face of such complete sacrifice.

To remember those who populate places like Arlington National Cemetery is easy.

What's not so easy is to acknowledge the thousands of veterans among us who now need our help getting on with a life. Too many of those veterans will never recapture the life they left behind because of life changing injuries suffered in service to our country.

We must not, can not, turn away from those people because it's hard to look at them. Their condition shows us our own vulnerability and, for some, makes us uneasy with our own comfort. We must learn that those injured veterans really represent bravery, commitment and patriotism, so much of what is great about humans.

They are not always eloquent but they can teach us. They are not always pretty but they are a moving and inspirational sight. Their bodies are damaged but they are strong. They may not be among our friends but they have done for us the greatest of favors.

They are not political but they are the true servants of the public. Do more than just honor them today. Reach out and help whoever and whenever possible. Those injured bodies hold strong, loyal and valuable fellow citizens.

Using Contrast In Black & White

2011-11-09T15:05:00.000-06:00

Here's a little exercise I did just to work a bit with the contrast in a black & white version of a photograph.

shooting data: 1/200 @f/16, ISO 250, 24mm. As I often do I made the lighter tones a little lighter and the darker tones a bit darker. I like to see a lot of contrast in black & white pictures. It seems to work well for the famous landscape photographers.

This conversion was done in Adobe Camera RAW editor. I used the curves adjustment as well as the sliders in the basic panel. Look at the sky in the upper right corner above the Presbytere. You'll see how I reduced the luminescence of the blue tones. That's something I also do in full color pictures.

My Holiday Gift Sale

2011-11-08T08:47:00.000-06:00

I think these cards would make a great holiday gift.

Photographic note cards are unusual and you can choose a shot that reminds you or the recipient of your gift of a favorite place.

Through November the photographic cards are reduced to $20 per pack of 10.

I can do the personalized cards with the name of the person in the style of the classic New Orleans street tiles for $25 per pack.

Order on line and use your credit card.

Wide Angle vs Fisheye

2011-11-04T08:13:00.016-05:00

I have recently encountered some confusion about what is a wide angle lens and what is a fisheye lens. The simple answer is that a wide angle lens is generally anything with a focal length less than 35mm. This is a wide angle shot from the West Bank of the Mississippi River shot at 17mm. This gives you about 110° in viewing angle. Some distortion occurs in wide angle shooting, especially with vertical lines and objects relatively close to the lens. These can often be corrected or minimized by adjusting your position. Sometimes the effect is desired.

A fisheye lens, on the other hand, is one with focal lengths around 7-15mm and with intentional and dramatic distortion. This is a shot by Neil Creek of the Melborne, Australia, aquarium. How clever am I using a shot of an aquarium to demonstrate a fisheye lens?

You can see how the fisheye lens offers a 180° view that works quite well for this shot but it wouldn't work if a realistic or documentary view was the aim of the shot.

Neil's shot here is made with a typical circular fisheye lens. You'll notice that the lens makes a circular image and leaves unexposed areas on the rectangular sensor. In 35mm terms this would be about an 8mm shot.

Some fisheye lenses are full frame and fill the rectangular sensor with an image that has less distortion of vertical and horizontal lines. In full frame terms that would be about a 14mm shot.

Here's another shot by Neil Creek showing a fairly complete view of the sky over the Church of The Good Shepherd.

Here's a clickable link to Neil Creek's Flickr page.

This sky view is only possible with a fisheye lens but you can also get very wide angle views by stitching several images together in a panorama. This can be done quite easily using available software and creates an image without the distortion of the fisheye lens.

Preferred Portrait Practices

2011-11-02T18:43:00.002-05:00

Getting tired of the alliteration? Not me. Let's go over a couple of ways I think you can make your portrait shots a little more interesting and (very importantly) flattering.

You may already have heard that shooting slightly angled down at your subject helps to outline the face and hide the neck but that isn't always necessary.

These are the Greens, a great looking young couple from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, on one of my recent American Photo Safari tours. The framing here was not intended to hide any physical features but to put them in the context of their French Quarter tour. My preferred practice, however, for a portrait like this would turn them around to face the land mark.

I think of vacation photos as being shown to people who know you. I'm pretty sure that the Greens' friends down under will know that's them looking from the rail of the ferry back toward the French Quarter.

If the context isn't as important I prefer to use a shallow DOF to make my subject stand out.

Once again I call upon one of my APS students, Coleen Schoch, as a subject. I didn't loose the background. I just let Coleen stay sharp while my aperture at f/2.8 made sure everything beyond the rail was out of focus. For this effect being close to your subject while keeping your subject separate from the background really helps. Your DOF is greatly affected by your distance to the focal point, your subject. Once again I'm thinking anyone who knows Colleen will see this shot as descriptive of her activity rather than simply attempting to flatter her.

If, on the other hand, flattering your subject is the goal of the shot, here are a couple of things I recommend.

Note that it helps if you have a beautiful subject like Tracy Brito, a fellow photographer and owner of Tracy Brito Photography. The things I like about this shot are: the shallow DOF, the off center framing and the soft lighting of the shade on a sunny day. Tracy picked the flower herself but it adds an interesting shadow on her cheek that doesn't quite get in the way of her face.

In a studio I might have used entirely different lighting but still had the key light on the "short" side of her face, away from the camera with gentle fill on the "broad" side, facing the camera. The occasion is rare when a hard shadow is what you want on a face, at least since the 50s.

One more suggestion, this time.

Get on in there. It's your decision whether an extreme close up will be flattering or angering to your subject. In the case of Tedra Gray, another APS student, I was able to get in close which makes her smile and bright eyes very effective and I still got some of the French Quarter in behind her.

Some more dramatic portraiture will get in even closer loosing the top of the head and the bottom of the chin, concentrating on the facial expression.

Egrets Are Very Bright

2011-11-01T17:53:00.000-05:00

Actually they can be a bit too bright. I love shooting egrets but their bright white feathers can give me fits searching for a good exposure setting.

I like this shot very much but it's overexposed on the bird's head, neck and shoulders. shooting data: 1/1250 @ f/8, ISO 1250 560mm (100-400mm with 1.4x extender) Canon EOS 1D Mk2. Everything else in the shot looks great but the feather detail is lost on the blown out parts of the bird. The answer...?

For me at least one alternative was to shoot the very Snowy Egrets in shade. The lighting there is even and an evaluative exposure works pretty well. The key was to have no sun directly on the bird. shooting data: 1/500 @f/9, ISO 400, 560mm, 1D Mk2. Developing this RAW file in Adobe Lightroom 3 brought out the detail I wanted especially in the shaded areas. I also used Lightroom to increase the depth of the green in the leaves.

Both these shots were taken in New Orleans' City Park at one of their lovely lagoons.

Using The Harsh Light Of Midday

2011-10-29T07:47:00.000-05:00

This is one of a group of shots of sax player Gary Brown I took for promotional use. The timing of the shoot was early afternoon and out of my control but, as I've told my students many times, I don't shy away from shooting when the shadows are sharp and the light is bright. I find uses for those harsh lighting conditions.

The shadow on Royal Street in the French Quarter looked just fine to me. I even thought about using Photoshop to darken the coat and sax to make a silhouette with a shadow but the client has a photo editor and I wanted to leave something for him to do.

shooting data: 1/200 @ f/10, EC +.67, ISO 250, 24mm, evaluative metering, one-shot spot AF in aperture priority

Remember that on a Canon 5D Mk2, with 2 control dials, the EC value just means that I slowed the shutter down a bit to cause the meter to read 2/3 f-stop above the middle arrow.

Gary Brown was great and just kept on playing as the video shooter and I took a bunch of shots. Time was often lost as we waited for passers by to clear the shot. This, however, is my favorite shot just because of the way the shadow turned out. I'll be very interested to see which of the many shots ends up in a brochure or other marketing device.

Creative Cropping Creates Context

2011-10-28T09:37:00.001-05:00

I love me some alliteration. Here, however, I'm attempting to show my feelings about cropping an image to give it a different feeling. I have many images of the gulls I encountered just last week on a shrimp boat out of Delacroix in the early morning. This is one of my favorites.

Shooting data: 1/1250 @ f/8, ISO 640, 105mm, evaluative metering, AF servo with center spot focusing. I wanted to see if cropping out the horizon would give this a different feel, maybe the impression of being airborne with the birds.

So I tried it.

You can judge for yourself if it worked but I like this version with no horizon.

I also noticed that 1/1250 was not quite fast enough to freeze the wings at all positions. In shots while the wings were in mid-stroke there's a little blurring at the wing tips. Next time I'll stick with 1/2000 and higher.

How To Catch A Bird Catching A Fish

2011-10-26T08:20:00.001-05:00

First thing is to keep firing that shutter. Second thing is to keep that shutter speed high.
From the shrimp boat I was on out of Delacroix last Thursday morning I tossed bait fish in to the water and waited for a gull to strike. I shot with my camera's autofocus set to servo since the birds would simply not stay still.
The gentle rocking of the boat was no help but I did get a shot or two like this one. shooting data: 1/1250 @ f/8, ISO 640 at 105mm. I was shooting in manual, not shutter priority, using evaluative metering and I over-exposed this a little because the sun was behind my subjects. I balanced the lights and darks in Adobe's Lightroom 3.

note: If shots like this were the purpose of the trip I'd have taken the Canon EOS 1D Mk2 that I have just for the higher burst rate. I was shooting pretty shots of the shrimpers for an agency so I took my Canon 5D and 5D Mk2 which have about half the burst rate of the 1D. The agency wasn't paying me to get bird shots so I just grabbed these while we were in transit after the shrimping was done.

Exposure Compensation On Display

2011-10-25T15:13:00.000-05:00

Here's a shot from my recent job for The Food Group putting some visual stuff together for their client, The La. Seafood Promotion And Marketing Board.

I don't know if they'll use it but I love it. This was last Thursday when the temperature was in the 40s and the sky was clear. Shooting data: 1/800 @f/11 ISO 1250, EC -2/3 with a Canon EF 17-40MM F/4L USM lens.

I had taken a shot and seen it look too bright in my LCD so I cranked my aperture down to f/11 which turned in to EC -2/3 on the camera's TTL meter. The same effect would happen if you looked at a first shot, thought it was too bright and depressed your EC button while turning your control dial to under expose the shot by 2/3 of an f/stop. I would have achieved the same result on my meter by reducing the ISO value 2 clicks or increasing the shutter speed 2 clicks.

Turning your control dial so the needle on your TTL meter is two clicks to the left of the middle will under expose your image by 2/3 of an f/stop. That's true regardless of whether you're using the EC button or changing an individual exposure value.

Another Shooting Job/Adventure

2011-10-22T19:11:00.000-05:00

My latest job included a very early morning ride on a shrimp boat out of Delacroix on Thursday morning. We were quite cold but the day was gorgeous and I had a chance to get some shots of seagulls that I could only get in that setting.

Those gulls have learned to follow the shrimp boats for all the little fish that get thrown back in to the water. I'll have more gull shots this week. I also have some nice sunrise views.

SHOOTING DATA: 1/1250 @ f/8, ISO 640, 105mm

Kicking Tires With The Other Foot In Reality

2011-10-19T07:22:00.003-05:00

There's a new "coolest" camera in the world and it comes from Canon, again.

The EOS 1D-X will have a full frame sensor with 18 megapixels spread evenly upon its surface. It will have 3 DIGIC processors and be capable of shooting 12 highest resolution frames per second and 14 JPEG frames per second with the mirror held in the up position.

The sensitivity ranges from ISO 100 to ISO 51,200, which was ridiculous to even imagine a few years ago but in the expanded mode that range is ISO 50 to ISO 204,800. I can't imagine the possibilities that opens.

Click here to read a more detailed article on Photography Bay, one of my favorite photo news sites.

I look at cameras like this one the same way I look at "cool" new cars. They are such triumphs of technology by achieving new functions and improvements of existing functions that I marvel at these "next steps". I own an earlier model in the 1D series and I use it infrequently because it's mainly a sport shooters camera. It's great for capturing moving things with little time for setup. The increase in the functions of this camera over the 2004 model that I own is exponential

The reality in which I have my other foot firmly planted is the fact that my 5D Mk2 is probably still the best camera for the work I do. So there's no chance that I'm even thinking about spending the $7,000 it will take to own one of Canon's new bench mark cameras when it's actually available next March. Just like there's no way I'd think about spending the money to own a Ferrari. It's really cool and I'd love to "kick the tires" but it has little or no practical use in my real life.

Shots In The Dark

2011-10-18T07:13:00.000-05:00

I've been asked several times lately about night photography. It can be tricky because it often involves extremes of brightness values from totally black to bright city lights. I advise my students to try a relatively high ISO setting and expose for the lights even though they may loose some detail in the dark areas. I looked back upon some of my night photos and found that I haven't always followed that advice.

This shot was taken with the ISO at 500. The exposure was still a shutter dragging 1 full second with the aperture at f/9. In some of my shots from that evening a close look would reveal lights moving along the Mississippi river but I was looking for skyline shots. The lights were not frequent enough to be a problem.

Even that high ISO isn't always necessary.

Again I find myself on the West bank looking at the sunset but this time my ISO is 100 and my exposure is for just 1/8 of a second at f/22. The sunset sky in this setting provided enough illumination. Look at the detail I was able to bring out of the wharf by pushing some sliders around in Adobe's Camera RAW editor.

Remember that I used a tripod for these shots with a remote shutter release. It's hands off the camera for this kind of shooting.

Here's a favorite.

For this one I used the very high ISO of 6400 on my Canon 5D Mk2. I steadied the camera on a concrete post on the bridge railing and took several shots at different settings. Part of the effort was to try to get just that right moment with the boat and the lights on the tower glowing and the beacon visible across the scene. I used the timed shutter release. Since things were moving between me and the tower I used the high ISO so I could shoot at 1/20 second. The aperture was f/4 which worked fine with the focus point nearly 40 ft away.

Here's an experiment I tried one night when sleep eluded me.

The ISO was 640 and the shutter speed was 8 seconds so I could get the headlight trails. The aperture was f/13 so I needed a higher than average ISO even with the long exposure.

Shooting RAW files meant that I had more potential detail that I could bring out of the dark areas in developing and good sharpness available when I toned down the brighter areas.

Like many things a little trial and error learning will get you more proficient at this kind of shot.

How To Spend A Beautiful Sunday Morning

2011-10-17T09:05:00.000-05:00

The day was a bit warm for October but beautiful so my nearly full American Photo Safari group had a good time and took tons of photographs during our 4 hour touring workshop Sunday morning.

Here's the group near the end of our tour as we head from the Canal St. ferry landing back to Jackson Square past the Aquarium and through Woldenberg Park.

I always advise folks about the best way to hold your camera steady but old habits die hard.

I took this shot with my Canon Powershot G12. 1/800 @f/8, ISO400.

I've had consistently good response to my workshops if I do say so myself and this is just about the best time of year to be outdoors in our area. I recommend that anyone who wants to learn more about cameras and photography look at our web site, Americanphotosafari.com, and find one of our touring workshops that fits your schedule. I take morning tours most Sundays except on weekends when the Saints play at home. On those I'll probably be taking the Saturday morning tour. Our other instructors take tours as well and our owner, Chris Loomis, can probably cater a tour to your particular interests. When you go to our web site click on the Workshops tab to see the existing workshops.

How I Get Rehired

2011-10-15T16:57:00.001-05:00

I do most of my free lance work for clients who are contractors or event planners. In most cases making the photographs I take for them more appealing and unusual is an exciting challenge. It gets repeat work, too.

An extreme example is this job site I recently photographed for a repeating client. It's a cleared lot with not much going on. My client and the subcontractors will build some facilities upon the lot over the next few months but for now it's not much to look at.

For this I have a solution. It's my "high pod", the 18ft tall Century Avenger light stand I displayed a few posts back with the camera mounted on a remote panning head atop the extended stand. That gives me elevation far above the typical human eye level but without the expense of hiring a chopper. We've done that for some jobs but it gets very pricey. So this time I just climbed the nearby levee and set up the "high pod". I use a radio remote shutter release and the Canon Utility software to operate the camera from ground level. A USB cord with 2 extensions feeds the camera data to my laptop. The last thing is to do a little developing to give the shot some eye appeal.

I know this isn't cutting edge stuff but the client gets to see his job site looking a little more dramatic. I make sure my colors are vibrant and the shot is sharp and the panorama, stitched from 3 shots, gives the image the look of a wide work area.

The point I indicated in my title is that making such scenes look as good as I can is a great challenge and the results, when they work, are very rewarding. Getting paid by the client and hired again is also very rewarding.

The Best Photographic Advice I've Heard So Far

2011-10-13T09:34:00.000-05:00

I think it was in 2007 that I stopped in at A Gallery For Fine Photography in the French Quarter to show some of my work to Joshua Mann Pailet, the owner. He was very kind and told me the most important bit of advice I've received about photography. He said I should not try to imitate the pictures I've seen and admired. I should learn how such photographs are made but shoot images that I like the way I like them.

It's taken some time to develop a feel for the photographs that I like and I don't even think I have what you could call a style yet but Joshua's advice rings true every time I have a show. Photographs that I think won't appeal to anyone but me actually attract attention, compliments and even sales. I think it's because, as Joshua said years ago, when taking and developing photographs that I like I put more effort, creativity and perseverance into bringing out what I thought was the essence of the image when I took it.

An example: I saw in this scene a chance to capture one of the memorable aspects of the French Quarter, the look of a residential block with its personal color choices set against that deep blue sky. I also liked that this stretch of the block had no trash cans or parking signs. Still I wondered if anyone else would be drawn to this shot. I've learned to go ahead and put my work in front of people and see what happens.

This one got good response and sold at my show last evening. It's a great feeling to have someone want one of my prints. It's more rewarding than the money.

Join Me For A Drink Wednesday Evening

2011-10-11T14:43:00.000-05:00

I'll be showing my work again at the J.W. Marriott, 614 Canal St., New Orleans for one of their Wednesday evening series in the Lobby Lounge called Get In The kNOwLA. I'll be showing and selling framed prints and unframed prints and note cards.

Some will be icons of the French Quarter and New Orleans. Some will be in grayscale.

This one, French Quarter Mobility, will be there as a 14x11" framed print and as a note card.

The smaller framed prints will be selling for $75 and I'll have a few larger and more expensive prints.

Everything will be signed.

I'll have some new bird prints like this one, The Great Egret, some framed, some framed and matted and some unframed in acrylic sleeves.

This one will be framed as a 14x11" print for $75 and you can buy it on line at my web site as an 8x10" print, framed and matted, for $50.

All of my prints are available as note cards and I'll have several sets with me tomorrow evening at the J.W. Marriott.

Come by after work, 5:30-8:00 PM, and see if there isn't a really unique and correctly priced holiday gift among my prints and cards.

Try Shooting People In The Back, Photographically Speaking

2011-10-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

One of the suggestions I always make to my American Photo Safari students is to take shots that are unexpected or at least unusual. To make your family and vacation shots look unusual and more interesting try shooting your subject person from behind as they look at something also interesting.

I will, of course, take this chance to include another photograph of my granddaughter, Lily, this time looking at some ducks in the pond behind my house. Everyone knows this is Lily so there's no information lost by shooting her from behind as she wonders why the ducks won't come any closer.

The shot becomes more than Lily and some ducks. It's Lily interacting with the ducks.

The same technique can be used in your travel photographs. Instead of a shot of your subject looking at the camera with something interesting in the background, try shooting your subject looking at the interesting thing or interacting with it in some way. You can shoot from behind or from a side angle. Placing the subject a bit off center also adds perspective and makes your photograph a 2-subject shot.

It's all about making people look longer and with more interest at your photographs by making them look unlike their memory of thousands of other photographs.

Shooting data: 1/320 @ f/10, ISO 400, 105mm. I focused on Lily so, of course, the ducks were beyond the DOF.

Read Everything Before Buying A Lens

2011-10-07T07:21:00.002-05:00

Because DSLRs have sensors of varying sizes the specs you see on a lens may not be what you actually get. This is apparently true even on lenses designed for the average consumer DSLR with the popular APS-C sized sensor (which varies among cameras!?).

Read the numbers around the top of Sigma's "superzoom" 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 lens as shown on the B & H Photo Video Pro Audio site. Ignore the maximum apertures for a moment and look at those focal lengths. The lens is an 18-200mm lens.

Now look at what the description says at the end of the first paragraph. "This lens provides the equivalent focal range of approx. 27-300mm when used with a Nikon digital SLR camera (*)." The asterisk directs us to a sentence later on explaining that this lens won't work on film SLRs or any DSLR with a full frame sensor.

Even though this lens is designed for use on cameras with APS-C sensors you still get an equivalent focal length that's different from the actual focal length shown on the lens. Those equivalent numbers are different for a Canon EOS camera than for a Nikon because Canon's APS-C sensor is of a slightly smaller size than Nikon's APS-C sensor.

Just about everybody that makes lenses now makes some that are just for the DSLRs with the APS-C sensor. Canon's are called EF S, Nikons are called DX, Pentax calls theirs DA, Sigma's are DC, Sony calls theirs DT and Tamron's are stamped Di ll. Still you must read the descriptions and look for those equivalent focal lengths you'll be seeing through the viewfinder and in your images.

Here's a reminder of the effect of sensor size on your image.

The Things I Do For A Client

2011-10-05T07:56:00.002-05:00

Prompted by the needs of a client for whom I've done a bunch of work over the past 3 years I put together what I'm calling my monster pod. It's a way of getting high angle shots while I remain firmly and cheaply standing on the ground.

This is an example of such a shot. To get a view of this site on which my client is about to build a training facility for the Plaquemines Parish sheriff's office I first climbed the levee down in Davant, LA.

Then I erected my monster pod, a contraption of sorts that uses several items combined for my purposes.

The key element is the one that gets my camera way up there. This is an Avenger light stand. It's more typically used to hold lighting fixtures of various kinds for live or recorded productions. It lifts the top element to a height of 18' and has a multi-purpose top fixture in to which I can easily secure the short center column that I use in my normal sized tripod.

That means I have the ability to lift my camera to any height up to 18' and I can use a radio remote shutter release to take shots while the camera is out of reach. The shutter release also activates the automatic focusing function of the camera so all I have to do is make sure the camera is pointed in the correct direction. That would mean some good guessing were it not for the other key element in the monster pod.

This is the Bescor motorized pan head. Unlike the Avenger light stand this little gem is made with cameras in mind. It has the standard 1/4 in. screw on top that fits in to the threads on the bottom of the camera.

It tilts up and down and pans right and left 180°. It can be easily controlled with a hand held controller that I connect to the pan head with a long extension cable.

I also connect to the camera to the ground with a long extension USB cord which I plug in to my Macbook so I can control the camera through Canon's EOS Utility. That Canon software lets me change my exposure settings at the ground while the camera is way up there. It also lets me see the view so I can really get the shots I want. The Canon EOS Utility also include a shutter release so I really have a lot of control over the camera when it's 18' above my head.

I don't know if other manufacturers have something like Canon's EOS Utility but it's worth checking out. thanks to the monster pod and the levee I was able to get the shot you see above from about 40' above the job site. It's not as high as a helicopter would have taken me but it's one helluva lot less expensive. The whole rig, not counting the Macbook, came to right about $500.

Learn Photography By Making Photographs

2011-10-04T09:42:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning dawned as the first cool morning for my American Photo Safari since Spring. The students learned alot by taking many shots and asking many questions.

I lead my groups through several locations in which they find all sorts of ways to take pleasing photographs. Some shoot for interesting details and others shoot pretty scenes. That's Amber Danenmeuller and Ian Busch shooting the Lower Pontalbe.

I let you decide what to shoot and help you learn how to shoot it.

The tour typically ends with a trip across the Mississippi river and back on the Algiers ferry.

Here's Ian Busch getting some shots of Jackson Square from the upper deck of the ferry.

As we go along I offer information about the workings of the camera and the way to use exposure settings to get the shots they want.

On the moon walk I show them ways to change depth of field and, on this tour, I used a polarizing filter to show them how to reduce glare.

In this case the sky was beautiful but empty so I placed the horizon higher in my shot to include more details from the levee to the West Bank.

1/1600 @f/5, ISO 400, Exp Comp. -1

One of my favorite portrait tricks is to get some reflections in someone's shades.

The shallow depth of field is created more by getting close to my subject than by opening up my aperture. The aperture on this shot was f/5, not too wide, but my focus point was very close and the background was so far away that it easily fell outside the area that looked sharp.

To join me on an American Photo Safari tour go to the American Photo Safari web page and sign up for the tour of your choice. If you want to go along with me pick a Sunday morning when the Saints are out of town or a Saturday morning on a weekend when the Saints are playing in the Superdome.

I Can Help With Holiday Gifts

2011-09-30T08:51:00.000-05:00

I'll be showing off my work again at the New Orleans JW Marriott on Wed., Oct. 12, 5-8pm. This time I'll include several prints priced at well under $100.

Prints like the one above will be 14" x 11" framed to 16" x 20" and ready to hang for $75. I'll have some larger, more expensive prints, too, and some note cards in packs of 10 for $20.

Save the date and join me to find some truly unique gifts.

Use Your ISO Instead Of Your Flash

2011-09-28T07:37:00.005-05:00

I was lucky to get a job shooting the events at the gathering of the RTDNA, the Ratio Television Digital News Association, on Monday at the Sheraton in New Orleans. The most interesting part of the day was the awards ceremony that ended the formal events on Monday. Receiving awards from their peers were Linda Ellerbee, former reporter and anchor and Nick News pioneer, and Lara Logan, CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent and familiar face from 60 Minutes.

I usually approach a shoot like this by first looking at the challenges. In this case it was a familiar one. No flash allowed and don't get in the way! The typical hotel lighting was spotty but spotlights were used to illuminate the stage. A flash wasn't really necessary because I wanted to get the whole room exposed anyway. The answer was to turn up that ISO.

The spot lights created huge glaring reflections off the bright metal Sheraton hotel sign on the front of the podium. For this shot, made while crouched in the center isle I had to adjust my height to loose those bright spots and wait until Lara Logan was looking up so that the shadow of the microphone wasn't across her face.

I used an ISO of 2000 and got good exposures that brought the whole room out and even got the projected image on the big screen. A flash would've washed that screen out.

The high ISO on my Canon EOS 5D Mk2 didn't even give me noticeable noise even in the dark areas of the stage curtain. An aperture of f/4 worked pretty well with a shutter at 1/30.

As in the shots I showed you yesterday I used spot focusing and metering wanting the stage to be sharp but the whole room ended up looking good after the requisite enhancements in Lightroom 3. My tungsten WB left just a little tweaking needed to get the flesh looking good on stage.

The lesson here is that working without a flash was a requirement to get these shots, not really an impediment. It's one of the reasons I encourage my students to turn that mode dial off the green box and have some fun exploring the camera's capabilities.

Anyone who still loves to shoot with film probably doesn't shoot much in situations like this one. The digital camera's options for adjustment as the situation unfolds let me get the shots I wanted and digital developing let me turn those shots in to JPEGs and get them back to the client for use on the web that same evening.

Shooting In Hotel Meeting Rooms

2011-09-27T09:34:00.000-05:00

I am repeatedly dismayed to find that meeting rooms in hotels and other places that make such space available have the most awful lighting not just for photography but for people attending the meeting. The most glaring problem being that no lighting is provided for the speaker. As a result the speaker almost always ends up standing in a shadowed area with most of the light falling on the listeners.

Get a load of this setup. It's typical. Our eyes, of course, adjust and see everything quite well but we are not focused on the speaker. A little extra light directed to the speaker's side of the room would allow the house lights to be lowered a bit so focusing on the speaker would be easier. We'd be less inclined to be distracted by the person in front of us texting during the talk.

This was shot with an ISO of 2000, shutter 1/30 @ f/4. Because the shot was made for use on the web in a size much like this extreme sharpness wasn't necessary and Adobe's Lightroom 3 let me bring up the shadows and calm the bright lights. I also sharpened the shot but we always sharpen and enhance RAW files.

For shooting in a scene like this go ahead and use that high ISO that your modern DSLR can use. You'll find it's not too noisy unless you're shooting a scene containing lots of black area. That high ISO will let you have a little faster shutter speed and more flexibility with your aperture. I shot this in aperture priority mode and used spot metering and focusing.

Catching The Golden Hour

2011-09-25T08:48:00.001-05:00

Here's a shot of our backyard gang. These girls (I think they're girls) hang out behind our house and Sunday morning was a great one for catching them in the warm light of the golden hour, around 7:30.

This was shot at 1/125 @ f/11 with ISO 250.

I also developed the RAW file in Adobe's Lightroom 3. Any RAW file I decide to use gets sharpened and developed to bring out the colors.

I was telling my students on my American Photo Safari tour Saturday morning how RAW files are meant to be developed more than JPEGs. They give you more with which to work and give you more as a result.

Use A Slow Shutter For Pleasing Flash Photos

2011-09-22T17:55:00.000-05:00

I have tried several combinations of shutter speed and flash setting to get photographs that expose the background and the subject with neither a very dark background or a brightly lit subject. My best results have come from what would be for many images a very slow shutter speed.

This is a photograph of Jefferson Parish, LA, Councilperson Cynthia Lee Sheng posing after speaking at this week's meeting of the Rotary Club of Metairie, LA. To our left is her husband, Stewart Sheng, a fellow Rotarian and to our right is our club President, Neal Adler.

To me the exposure in this shot is even between the subjects and the background but this room is too dark and lit too unevenly to get this image with no flash.

I made use of the wonderful ETTL technology of the Canon Speedlite 580 EXll. It really works well with the camera. My problem had always been getting good exposure for the background. I was afraid to set the shutter speed below 1/30 sec. For the shot above the shutter speed was 1/8 of a second. If these people were animated, talking and gesturing, I'd get some blurring but with people standing still like those above there was no blur. The aperture was f/5 and the ISO was 640.

Yes, the flash was right there in the hot shoe. Taking photographs at my weekly Rotary meeting offers no time to have creative fun with the off camera flash even tethered by the ETTL cord. I have only a moment to get people to look at the camera and get the shot. The above photograph will never be entered in a photography contest but it will suit my fellow Rotarians and I quite well as it appears in our weekly newsletter, which I happen to publish.

Great Camera, Great Gear, Cheap

2011-09-20T17:23:00.000-05:00

I've reduced the price of my Canon EOS 5D with the battery grip and other accessories.

Everything you see pictured is now $1,700. I'm including a Canon hand strap for use with the battery grip. Check out this link for more pictures. Buy it with your credit card just like any picture or note card on my site.

Do Your Own Thing

2011-09-20T07:51:00.000-05:00

I had a great tour this past Saturday morning for American Photo Safari. The tour was sold out, 10 people is the maximum, and each person seemed to be finding things to shoot and ways to shoot them.

This is Louie finding a creative way to shoot the skyline of New Orleans from the ferry across the river near Algiers Point. The good news is that he was trying different views and adjusting his own position as well as his camera to get different shots.

One of the things I tell my students is that they'll get more photographs that get approving remarks if they look for views that are unusual. Louie found one.

Own My 5D With Accessories

2011-09-15T08:28:00.001-05:00

I've decided to sell my Canon EOS 5D, one of the original full frame sensor DSLR cameras. I bought it in early 2008 and it has less than 8,000 clicks on a body rated at over 150,000. It's in great shape except for the expected minor scratches and the wear on the hot shoe. Canon has since learned to leave the hot shoe bare metal so you don't see where paint has worn away.

As you can see I'm including everything I used with my 5D, extra battery and charger, battery grip with AA battery insert, the original manual, strap, cables and software. I'll throw in my hand strap for use with the battery grip as well. You'll see just the body selling on eBay for $2,300 but I'm asking $2,100 for everything you see.

If you want to step up to a full frame camera with professional tonal range and detail check this out close up on my web site. Here's the link to the hidden gallery. You can purchase the kit just like any photo print.

Big Panorama, Little Hassle

2011-09-14T08:30:00.000-05:00

If you're interested in making a panoramic picture you already know you'll need some editing software. The good news is that you can do a great pano with very little effort in the inexpensive version of Adobe's Photoshop, Photoshop Elements 9. (note: I receive no compensation for my repeated endorsements of Adobe's Photoshop products. I just love them.)

Shooting tips: shoot vertical so you have plenty of sky and earth and overlap about 30% so the software has plenty of matching lines to work with.

This is a group of 8 shots I took from the Algiers ferry landing across from the French Quarter on Sunday morning's American Photo Safari tour.

THIS MAY LOOK COMPLICATED BECAUSE I'M SHOWING YOU SEVERAL FRAMES BUT IT'S ALMOST COMPLETELY AUTOMATIC.

When using PSE9 you can select "file", "new", "photomerge panorama". Right there you're telling PSE that you want it to make a pano out of the photos you'll select.

In the left column leave the selection on "auto" then "browse" your files and select all those that you want in the panorama.

Click OK and sit back for a minute.

PSE will not only load all the files in to one stack of layers, it will go ahead and merge and blend them into a panorama.

You think that's cool? Prepare to be amazed. Instead of cropping to turn that polyhexagramical shape into a rectangle you can click "yes" and let PSE fill in the edges for you. That's where having plenty of sky and land (or water) to work with helps.

In some cases this "filling in" may distort the content too much but in this case a little stretching of fine detail isn't noticed.

Didn't I tell you this was easy?

Now we want to fix the image.

In the "Quick" editing section I used PSE's "Smart Fix" slider at about 50% and then moved the highlights slider just a little bit to the right to even out the sky brightness.

Done! Save it and enjoy it.

This is a wider view than I could get with my 24-105mm lens.

Pop Your Portraits

2011-09-12T11:27:00.000-05:00

One of the techniques I cover during my French Quarter tours for American Photo Safari is a way of making your portraits look better, more dynamic.
This is Melissa. She's a pretty young lady and I showed my students how to capture that beauty and her emotion by getting really close in.

You do this with your telephoto lens. You don't have to be as close as the shot looks.

Don't crowd your subject and try to let them be candid. I like this shot because Melissa isn't looking at the camera. She's laughing with her friend, Gia, who was also on the tour.

This kind of shot may be hard to get if you just start pointing your camera at people. 90% of the people at whom you point the camera will pose for you. They'll stop what they're doing and assume a stance and expression. Most people think that's how they look their best. As you can see by Melissa's picture, that isn't nearly always the case.

People usually look their best when they're being natural and relaxed so try to get close up shots without posing them even if you have to tell them to look at someone else and tell them a joke to loosen their expressions.

Then try to zoom in so that you fill the frame with their face. It doesn't always work but it's another technique to have in mind.

Memories Recovered

2011-09-11T21:39:00.000-05:00

People have asked frequently how long I've been nuts about photography. The answer is since the mid 60s when I purchased my first Single Lens Reflex camera from an Army store, a PX, in Viet Nam. Only recently have I been able to recover some of my favorite photographs taken during that all expenses paid vacation.

The negatives of these were found by my youngest daughter in the attic of our old house. I asked the folks at Professional Color Services, in Metairie, to scan them in to jpegs on a disk, which they did for a very reasonable cost.

I'm still in the process of sorting out many that I don't want to save and enhancing some in Adobe's Photoshop CS5. All are faded and many are scratched or otherwise damaged beyond saving.

The three photos above were taken in the mountains of the Central Highlands where they reach down to near the coast of the South China Sea. I was stationed at Qui Nhon, a former resort town on the coast. That's me posing in the tent in which I slept or stashed my stuff when I was on guard duty in those mountains.

The photography I practiced while in Viet Nam got me hooked on the passtime. I finally got the chance to try making a career of it when I was able to retire from WDSU TV at the end of 2008.

Depth Of Field With An iPhone

2011-09-08T09:13:00.000-05:00

The iPhone camera is remarkably good at capturing scenes with good tonal range and color. Working with your DOF, however, can be tricky since there is no aperture control. You are not without an option.

In this shot taken by my sweet wife, Paula, you can see my granddaughter, Lily, and I and the ducks we're watching with pretty good clarity. That's because the iPhone, like all small cameras, has a small sensor and a built in deep DOF. Everything looks pretty sharp, for an iPhone, because Paula wasn't really close to us and the iPhone's focusing square was on the water.

The way to create a shallow DOF with a small sensor camera is to get really close to your subject with some distance to objects in the background and make sure the iPhone camera focuses on the close subject.

Here's an extreme example. By putting the iPhone close to the flower and making sure the focusing square was on the flower I managed to loose the sharpness on the branches in the background.

This is an iPhone I'm talking about so you're not going to get the kind of sharpness or resolution you'll get with a good DSLR and a fully adjustable lens. You can have some control over that DOF, though, if you get really close to your subject, focus on it and still have some far background in the picture.

The same technique will work with any of the small, pocket size, P&S shooters.

Make A Pretty Day Even Prettier

2011-09-06T11:50:00.000-05:00

Much of the USA is enjoying a beautiful day with clear blue skies. A polarizing filter can make those blue skies even more blue and grass even more green.

Even though these first days with a hint of Fall are great the sky offers little in the way of interesting clouds. The sun creates glare and reflections on any large area of water or glass or just about any reflective surface.

You can adjust those reflections by changing your viewing angle and/or by using a circular polarizing filter. You turn the filter on the front of your lens so that it filters certain wavelengths of the light.

Look at the difference in this image. The only difference is that the polarizing was filter turned to filter the brighter light.

This is the same effect you get using polarized sun glasses. The great difference using the filter is the ability to turn it to get the effect you want. You may still need to change your viewing angle to get the maximum or preferred effect.

What Can A Photographer Do On A Rainy Day?

2011-09-04T08:55:00.001-05:00

I must get ready and revert to weatherman mode to help my pals at WDSU TV handle the extra work load of Tropical Storm/Depression (read: pain in the posterior) Lee. Otherwise I'd be doing what photographers do on a rainy day, covering myself and the camera and getting some nice rain shots. Just searching the internet for "photography in the rain" I fond several displays with some lovely examples. Here's one.

Here's my favorite DSLR rain cover, the Optech Rainsleeve.

Terrific Tripod Tips

2011-08-31T08:08:00.000-05:00

This is a "do as I say, not as I do" post. First the things I say and that I did.

I chose a tripod that brings my camera to my eye level as I stand without bending. This is the Manfrotto 055XPROB. Without a head it runs about $125 at Adorama. I really like it because it has 3 section legs so it still closes to a very manageable size and it raises my camera to my eye level. That makes long waits in the open much easier.

This tripod also gets way down. As far down as you can get. It has a hinge for the center column that lets you stick the camera in some places where you cant' get your body. I've put a short center column on mine but with the included longer center column you can shoot around corners.

Other things I like about the tripod are the foam pads on two legs which help in cold weather and the adjustable locks which can be tightened or loosened to open and close with the pressure you like.

Here's what I'd do differently next time. I'd go ahead and pay the extra money for a carbon fiber or other composite tripod instead of the aluminum version. When I'm shooting anywhere near a road this tripod will transfer any vibration coming through the ground right up to the camera. Since I frequently shoot at long focal lengths that means I often must wait until that shaking stops. A fast shutter speed and IS in the lens don't do the trick for the really sharp photographs I'm after.

A carbon fiber tripod would transmit less of that vibration but it will cost quite a bit more.Do your research on line even if you intend to buy a tripod at a local retail outlet. You can check the features and the heights both closed and extended.

I use a couple of different heads which I'll discuss in another post.

Remember John And Marsha?

2011-08-29T16:00:00.001-05:00

I'm thinking quite a way back to an audio recording of a comedy routine in which John and Marsha take turns saying the other's name many times with different inflections. The inflections became so emotional and dramatic that we could imagine them getting all sweaty. Somehow I thought of that when I saw these two.

1/1250 @ f/14, ISO 1000, 200mm. I was set at 1/1250 to catch the wing movement of an egret that had just flown away. Those egrets are skittish birds. The ducks on the other hand won't stay far enough from me that I can get a focus with my 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens.

A Movie Sequel For Hunters?

2011-08-28T17:09:00.000-05:00

I think this idea has some great potential. It will take a visionary producer to get behind it.

I'll let you know when I get that call from Hollywood.

This is a shot from a Google search of the movie title with one of my duck shots and some text effects in PS CS5.

Nice New Lens For Canon Shooters

2011-08-26T09:01:00.000-05:00

I try to keep an eye out for good stuff ad good prices. This is a new lens from Canon that will expand your telephoto capabilities from your "kit lens", the 18-55mm that is so often sold with your new camera.

Canon's EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS ll lens offers a nice range above the kit lens and shows good performance throughout the zoom range and across the picture frame.

The "S" designation means that the focal lengths described are achieved only with cameras that have the APS-C size sensor which is most of Canon's cameras except the more expensive 5D series and some of the 1D series cameras.

If you put this lens on a camera with a full frame sensor you'll get something like an 80-400mm focal length range.

The good news is that both B&H and Adorama are selling this lens for around $200.

I Get To Introduce Students To French Quarter

2011-08-25T07:46:00.000-05:00

On a rare (for me) Wednesday morning tour for American Photo Safari I got to lead a great group of young ladies from Tulane University around the Quarter.

6 are Freshmen and 1 a Sophmore, kind of a counselor. The good news is that American Photo Safari was part of a week of orientation for the students, most of whom are new to the city of New Orleans. The group included 20 students and 3 or 4 counselors and I joined instructor Natasha Sanchez and APS owner Chris Loomis in leading tours.

We talked about photography as usual and the youngsters took a bunch of photographs. I was surprised to see several of the students holding film cameras until I learned that they were handed down from dads and granddads. I saw versions of 2 Canon cameras I had owned in the 60s and 70s.

Pick Your Spot For Vacation Photos

2011-08-23T10:35:00.001-05:00

Take a look at these 2 photos of the Washington Monument.

This one was taken just after entering the mall and noticing the monument right there in front of me. I used my Canon PowerShot G12 on the AUTO mode. That's right, the AUTO mode. My point was to experiment with composition.

I want to remind you of your photographic options that don't involve changing the settings on your camera.

This shot was taken after I walked around for a while and checked out some views that included the trees along the sides of the mall. I like this kind of composition.

I always tell my students on tours for American Photo Safari to look around and move around to see what compositions are available to them for shooting that landmark in front of them.

It's true that when shooting digital you can shoot a bunch of shots and delete all the ones you don't want later, even after you put them on your computer. Taking a moment to look around for a better composition will save you some time later and reduce the risk of filling your memory card before your day is done.

Tips For Better Group Shots

2011-08-19T17:44:00.002-05:00

Group shots may be the ones you take most often. Think about the same composition ideas that you would for scenic shots.

1. Try to get them relaxed and actually having a good time. I know that's not a composition thing but some folks are so self conscious that they always look stiff and uncomfortable in photographs. A little levity even at your own expense can often help.

2. Shoot the group from an angle other than 90 degrees.

3. Include other elements to give context to the event or occasion of the shot. This is obviously a key to interesting vacation shots but don't forget that idea when shooting birthday parties or retirement dinners, etc.

4. I try to always get shots of the group not posing for a shot. I like to show them doing something. That also reduces the possibility of the stiff self conscious look.

One of my favorites from a recent trip is this shot of the gang trying to figure out where the fugawi as two ladies try to get good point and shoot photos.

5. Use your flash to fill. If your subjects are backlit by the sun or any other light source don't forget to use that flash, even the little harsh pop-up flash built in to the camera.

6. Don't use your flash. If you're shooting at bright and/or shiny reflective surfaces you may want to keep the flash turned off. Watch for glass, mirrors and even white table cloths. They can flare or cause the camera to meter too dark for the rest of the room. Use a setting that will get you the exposure without the flash. Indoors that may mean a higher ISO, wider aperture and slower shutter speed. If you're pointing and shooting try the "night" mode.

How To Fake A Photograph

2011-08-17T08:31:00.005-05:00

If you want to be able to spot a composite photograph it helps to know how to make one. I'm talking here about a photograph that is actually a composite with elements that weren't really in the same shot. You may be shocked and indignant to learn that portrait and other non-editorial photographers often move things around to make a complete good looking photograph out of a few that have good parts. You can cool the indignity. It's not journalism. It's art.

This is a perfect example of a photograph that's almost impossible to get in one shot. That's 13 people including one 2 yr. old who've been enjoying my daughter's wedding reception for a couple of hours.

This is a composite of 5 photographs taken by my friend, Stephen Forster and blended using Adobe's Photoshop CS5 to get all the faces looking at the camera at the same time and as many smiling faces as possible.

Read on to see the keys to making this work.

1. The lighting was the same in all 5 contributing photographs.
2. The movement of the people among the 5 photographs was minor.
3. The background didn't change at all.

With only a little movement from one photograph to another the problem wasn't putting someone where they weren't. It was changing someone's expression or turning their eyes toward the camera. Where there was movement of someone's head or shoulders the background was the same as it was in all shots so that, too, could be blended in.

The lighting is key. The first hint that you're looking at a composite photograph is that one element has shadows and lights in the eyes that are directionally different from the other things in the photograph.

Other hints: If you suspect that you're looking at a photograph containing added elements you may be able to see some "fringe" around the added element where the pixels have retains some of the colors from that element's original background. The focus or sharpness of one element may be more or less than the other elements in the picture. A really sloppy composite may have a different shade to one element because the lighting was from, for example, flourescent lights in one photo and tungsten lights in the other.

I was surprised to recently see a facebook photograph that was obviously a composite in which someone had placed a young woman's face over a body not her own. In those pictures the face was in different lighting than the body and was looking in a direction that didn't match the angle of the neck.

A recent customer on one of my American Photo Safari tours commented that she didn't like the fact that some of the pictures we saw in a gallery window were altered in editing to make colors more vibrant or to add background elements. She said she didn't like that it wasn't real. My answer; if you want real don't shop at an art gallery. As I said above, it's art, the making of pretty pictures, not journalism. If you're looking at a beautiful French Quarter scene with colors that are deeper and richer than you've ever seen and you wonder how the photographer got them to look that way you're looking at the efforts of someone who knows how to shoot a good photograph and develop a good photograph.

Sunny 16 Part 2

2011-08-16T17:17:00.004-05:00

Since today's a sunny day I went to my own front yard to get a couple of shots using and demonstrating the Sunny 16 rule mentioned in the previous post. Take a look at the settings on these pictures.

You can see some detail in the shadows and the bright magnolia flower, one of the few I've seen on our tree this year, is not blown out. The shutter speed is the ISO as a fraction of a second.

If you ask me these two shots look about the same except for my framing. Notice that the ISO and shutter speed are both 2 clicks of the dial different. The ISO is lower making the sensor a little less sensitive to light and the shutter is a little slower letting a little more light in.

At this distance and framing the results are still acceptable.

Her's Another Rule That Really Isn't

2011-08-15T20:00:00.000-05:00

Among the several rules that are really just good guides in photography is the Sunny 16 rule.

On a sunny day on which shadows are dark and have hard edges like those in this photograph a good starting point for your exposure settings is f/16 with your shutter speed reflecting your ISO.

In other words with your aperture at f/16 and your ISO at 200 your shutter speed would be 1/200. If you lowered your ISO to 100 you'd lower your shutter speed to 1/100 to reciprocate.

Following that thinking you could interpolate for less than sunny skies.

If you weren't seeing any shadows on a day like the one in the photograph to the left you might open your aperture up to f/8. You might be able to maintain the same shutter speed and ISO. Or you might not.

What the Sunny 16 rule fails to accommodate is your possible need to adjust your depth of field with your aperture or stop motion with your shutter.

If that's the case just remember the rule that really is a rule. Every click of your camera's controls, regardless or whether you're changing shutter speed, aperture or ISO equals the same change in exposure value, usually 1/3 of an f-stop. If you click your ISO three changes lower, you can reciprocate for the lower sensitivity by lowering your shutter speed 3 clicks or lowering your shutter speed 2 clicks and opening your aperture up 1 click.

Keeping that in mind, if you're not getting a bright enough exposure you'll want to widen your aperture or slow down your shutter but not reciprocate with another setting so you'll end up with a higher exposure value.

I Swear They Smiled At Me

2011-08-13T17:43:00.000-05:00

I really don't get in the habit of assigning human emotions to animals but I do love the apparent expressions on the faces of these ducks photographed in the early morning light.

This is the female I shot yesterday at 1/2000 @ f/5.6, ISO 640, 400mm. This one isn't cropped just sharpened and "punched up" in Adobe Lightroom 3.

These are the juveniles that were following the female around taking a moment in the morning calm to look in to the sun as if to welcome the morning light. 1/1600 @ f/8.0, ISO 400, 400mm

The water was nearly calm so the reflections were attractive. This girl seemed to like the sun on her back side. 1/800 @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 400mm This one is cropped about 50%.

I don't remember seeing so many ducks just floating still in the water. 1/800 @ f/5.6, ISO 400, 400mm.

Resolution, Dimensions And Size, They All Matter

2011-08-12T19:36:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick reference for anyone who gets confused about the size of an image as it appears on your computer. I'll the image resizing menu from Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. The yellow numbers refer to my notes below the screen grab.

1. That's the size of the image in mb, the space it takes on your computer.
2. That's the dimension in pixels. In this case I haven't changed anything so the area of the image in pixels matches the area of my camera's sensor.
3. The resolution, the number of pixels in each inch of the image determines the dimension of the image in inches. If you change the resolution you'll change the width & height in inches while leaving the number of pixels the same.
4. If you change the inches dimension you'll cause the resolution to change unless you change the pixel dimensions. To do that you must check the box to "resample" the image.

What Are You Lookin' At?

2011-08-12T08:03:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if this is a juvenile or a mature female mallard but it was up close and personal as if it was very interested in my new Manfrotto Heavy Telephoto Lens Support tripod head.

1/2000 @ f/5.6 ISO640 400mm I cropped this to about 30% original size. I'll have more on the heavy telephoto lens tripod head in another post soon.

Your Next Lens Purchase Part 3

2011-08-11T09:03:00.001-05:00

I told you in part one that buying a new lens wasn't simple but I hope I've given you some ideas of what to look for as you shop. Here are a few more considerations that may apply to you.

Make sure you know the size of your camera's sensor and how the lens at which you're looking will work with it. I mentioned specialty lenses in part 2 and Canon's new "fisheye" 8-15mm f/4L USM lens helps to display the difference your sensor can create.

This is an image taken with a "full frame" sensor, Canon's 5D Mk2, with the lens at 8mm. 1/800 @ f/4, ISO 2500 by Dan Bracaglia from Pop Photo.com. Take note of the full circle created by the 8mm setting that falls well inside the boundries of the full sized sensor leaving the dark areas on the sides.

Other full frame sensor cameras include Nikon's D700.

Here's the same lens on a Canon 60D, a camera with an APS sized sensor. If your lens isn't calibrated for the smaller sensor you'll actually be getting longer focal lengths than those printed on the lens barrel. In this case the 8mm setting actually gives a 13mm image view. 1/100 @ f/4, ISO 1600 by Dan Bracaglia from Pop Photo.com.

Chances are your camera has one version of the APS sized sensor. APS stands for Advanced Photo System and is a size developed as cameras were becoming more digital.

You'll notice in this chart stolen from Wikipedia that the "full frame" sensor is about the size of a 35mm film frame. Canon has two APS sizes and theirs is different from Nikon's APS size.

Olympus has its "Four Thirds" system that was touted as a new standard to make lenses more widely interchangeable. Mounting a standard lens on a "Four Thirds" camera will just about double the effective focal length.

Here's one more specialty lens for which you may actually find more uses than you'd have for the fisheye lens. This is a Tilt Shift lens. It allows you to move the plane of the front elements in relation to the rear elements to compensate for the converging appearance of vertical or horizontal lines. It's not nearly as complicated as it sounds. This lens mimics the actions and effect of the view cameras used by such folks as Ansel Adams. Note: no autofocusing with this lens

Using the tilt shift lens you can move the front lens elements to take a scene like the left one with the vertical elements converging with height and straighten the way they look in your image.

You'll change your framing just a bit but depending on the developing software you have it may be the only way to get a close in shot of such things without the convergence or "keystoning".

Each of the above specialty lenses is pretty expensive but you may have more fun for just a few hundred bucks with something like Lensbaby. Once again I'm reminded of Smokey Robinson's advice, "You better shop around".