Making a Moooo-ving Portrait

Outdoor portrait with Lastolite EzyBox

It was the last farmers market of the season in Uptown Westerville and although I’d visited the market every Wednesday afternoon I wasn’t pleased with most of the portraits, or attempted portraits, I’d taken during the three hours it was open for business. This day I tossed my Lastolite EzyBox in the trunk of the [...]

Light leads the way

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  When I have the time between shoots or before heading home, I enjoy a walk in Uptown Westerville, always with a camera in hand. Sometimes the camera is an iPhone. Sometimes it’s a D300 and a full complement of lenses. The territory is familiar, usually along alleys, roadways, and sidewalks I’ve traveled before on [...]

Flashlighting

Venus Fly Trap with flashlights as light sources

My grandson Owen congratulated me last night for my photo of one of his favorite plants, the Venus Fly Trap. He also took the time to make sure I understood how the small bristles on the interior of the plant signal the intrusion of a possible meal and how the longer spikes on the edges [...]

Shutter-Flash Synchronization

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New York state-based photographer Paul Duncan has put together a nine-minute video that does a great job of explaining how strobes properly sync with shutters and why 1/250th of a second is the upper limit for most digital single lens reflex cameras. [ More from Paul Duncan ]

Strobist love affair

Strobist - single light morning workout

I love David Hobby. For all the wrong reasons. Maybe they’re the right reasons. You can’t be sure with love. I remember my first Strobist assignment for the Orlando Sentinel. A restaurant, well known in the community for not only its food but its decor, had redecorated with new wallpaper. That’s right. A restaurant story [...]

1 minute, 20 second portrait

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My original intent in shooting this quick iPhone portrait in the studio yesterday was to turn it into a black and white image contrasting this high school art student’s complexion and dark hair against the lighter wall. I did make that conversion in an iPhone app and was pleased with the result, as a black [...]

Beauty Dish Contrast

Mixed Marrtial Arts Fighters Lumodi Beauty Dish

First, the client bought me dinner so we could talk about our relationship and discuss his needs for the photo shoot to follow. It was my second free meal of the day with the first being fried catfish and green beans with sweet tea. The evening meal was chicken parmigiana with cheese ravioli and red [...]

What time of the day do you shoot?

Lighting depends on time of day

The toughest time of the day for me is during the school year when I’m the one taking kids to school in the morning. There’s nothing more frustrating than sitting in morning traffic as the sun creeps over the tree line to my left throwing shadows across the road in front of me. I watch, [...]

Up close and cold

Nikon SB800 Vivitar 283 lighting Pocket Wizard Manual settings

The second photo I shot for the editorial assignment mentioned two days ago was of an engineer demonstrating how a portion of the temperature sensor systems were manufactured. It was a perfect complementary image to the closeup of tweezers grasping on of the minuscule temperature sensors. The lighting is similar. One light, an SB800, is [...]

The first 100

Farmer open doorway portrait

Today’s post is number 100. Hopefully they’ve been enjoyable for you. It’s been an experience for me as I return to a part of what began my career many years ago. It’s been quite some time since I wrote a weekly newspaper column about photography. One day I’ll have to go into the fading print [...]