Daily 2013
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Sundown Blues, Lake Sam Rayburn TX The high water washed out part of our beach, creating this great little line and reflection pool. Since this photo was taken the water is now much higher and this part of the beach is completely under water. But there is still plenty of beach for us to play on! This is a single six second exposure. For an even longer blue hour exposure see my current Sam Rayburn favorite. I love shooting after the sun goes down. I like the longer exposures, blue tones, and the reduced dynamic range. Not to mention it’s just a peaceful time of day to be relaxing on a beach! Read about my filter set up for this shot here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: April 3, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
Beautiful in Black, Nacogdoches TX She’s an angel but she looks amazing in black! We love looking through all of our old photos and occasionally picking out a new one to process. There are still a lot of unprocessed photos from our anniversary shoot and I am slowly working through them. My favorite photo from the shoot is still this full body beauty on the bricks. I’m a sucker for the wider portraits! I really like the shadows created by using only one light. Click here for more info on my lighting technique. I processed this photo in Photoshop CS6, which I’ve owned for about a week and a half now. I followed Sue Bryce’s retouching techniques from her 28 Days challenge. Sue gave us over an hour of retouching instruction on one of the recent challenges and it is truly awesome to see her retouch photo after photo spending only two minutes on each. She is so fast and uses only a few Photoshop tools over and over again. She makes it look easy, but it’s not! This photo was supposed to be retouched in two minutes, but it took more like an hour. Hopefully I can get my time down as I get used to the tools in Photoshop. I spent a lot of time over doing it and then trying to back track, when I should have just done it right the first time. But practice makes perfect. CreativeLIVE is LIVE and FREE all day with Ben Wilmore’s Photoshop Fundamentals in case you missed my note in the Smugmug Daily group on Facebook. You can join the group here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: April 2, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
Wedding Landscape, Galveston TX Lindsay and Kevin are such an awesomely in love couple that I’m pretty sure they don’t even remember I was there! But their special day on the beach was a special day for me too. I’m so lucky that the amazing Sarah Williams let me assist her with this beautiful wedding. I learned so much from her and she has so much more to teach me. I can’t wait to do it again soon. Being a wedding photographer’s assistant and second shooter is such a fun job! You get to enjoy all of the excitement of capturing the precious moments of the day with very little of the stress, especially if you’re working with a pro like Sarah. Of course I’m naturally stressful but Sarah kept me under cool the whole day (unfortunately she couldn’t prevent the sunburn though!). There were times when I was running around carrying camera bags and keeping track of heels and sandals, and I most definitely sweated through my shirt several times, but it was so exciting that it didn’t seem like work at all and I was happy to do whatever I could to help. For more beautiful photos from this wedding check out Sarah’s awesome blog post! Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: April 1, 2013, taken March 16, 2013
Pink and Purple Azaleas, Nacogdoches TX
Happy Easter! This spring has me feeling like flowers and I think pink and purple are the official hallmark colors of Easter (along with yellow probably). Usually I’m not much of a flower photographer but the SFA Arboretum and Azalea Garden are just too pretty not to photograph. Not to mention it smells really good there and it’s conveniently located right on campus. We’ve been taking the dogs for walks and have even walked it without the dogs. It’s probably the best place to be in Nacogdoches, other than in bed sleeping in! We’ll do both this Easter!
This is a single exposure processed in Lightroom 4. I really like the Canon EF 135mm f/2 L series lens. It creates beautiful bokeh and shallow depth of field, on full display here at f/2. I’m learning flower photography on the fly. For me the biggest challenge is finding a way to create a strong composition while still showing off the landscape of the flower garden. It’s easy to isolate a single flower for a closeup and move around until you get a nice background to achieve a strong composition. But in doing so the flower gets removed from its surrounding environment. In this photo I think I successfully pulled off a strong composition while still showing off a little more of the garden than just a single flower or two. Of course the composition doesn’t matter at all if you don’t have good light!
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: March 31, 2013, taken March 26, 2013
Pink and Yellow Azaleas, Nacogdoches TX
The yellow Azaleas are my favorite at the SFA Arboretum. While there are many many purple, red and pink Azaleas in the arboretum, there are only two yellow Azalea plants that I’ve found, and this is the bigger of the two. I’m still figuring out how to shoot them, and hope to get back to the arboretum this weekend for some Easter shooting.
This is a single exposure I’ve processed in Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6. Now that I’ve kind of got the hang of using layers in Photoshop I don’t see how I ever worked without them. I’m studying up on Sue Bryce’s retouching techniques too and hope to share some portraits/wedding photos using those techniques soon. It’s supposed to be a stormy 80 degree day, so I think I know what I’ll be doing!
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: March 30, 2013, taken March 24, 2013
Colorful Caboose Revisited, Nacogdoches TX I found out about a cool East Texas photo competition yesterday and started deciding which three photos to enter. I think this photo makes a good entry because it’s pretty and showcases some of Nac’s railroad history. I reprocessed it using Photoshop, and this is the second photo I’ve actually exported out of Photoshop. More on Photoshop below. The second photo I chose is this beauty of the Japanese Maples in the SFA Arboretum, which I have a 20x30” print of hanging in our bedroom and really love it. For my third choice I want to enter one of my Lake Sam Rayburn photos, and have tentatively chosen this one of the warm grass on our beach at sunset. But I don’t know, this isn’t my personal favorite, it’s just the one I think will be most useful for the Texas Forest Trail Region website. My current favorite of Sam Rayburn is this blue hour beauty, but I think it might be too abstract for this competition. Another Sam Rayburn favorite is this this colorful long exposure, but again I think the long exposure might be too abstract. Lastly, my all time favorite Sam Rayburn photo is this red and pink long exposure. Can you help me decide or give any other tips and tricks for entering photo contests? This will be my first. This photo is a reprocessed version of my original Colorful Caboose photo. I liked the previous version, but wish I had used a smaller aperture to achieve a longer depth of field and sharper focus on the caboose. I also didn’t like how underexposed the caboose is, mostly due to the graduated neutral density filters I used to reduce the exposure in the sky. So what did I do to fix it up a little? I went back to the archives to see if I had an overexposed exposure from the same spot, and I did because I usually always take multiple exposures before changing my composition. I brought the overexposed photo and the original into Photohsop in that order, and layered the original over the overexposed and used a layer mask to allow the caboose from the overexposed version to shine through to the top layer. I also applied a sharpening filter to the overexposed layer so that I could get extra detail in the caboose only, without introducing too much noise, which is what would have happened if I tried to sharpen the original too much because the caboose is so underexposed. Lastly, I added a vibrance layer to exaggerate the colors a little. I’m such as sucker for color it’s hard for me to not over saturate everything! How do you like the changes? Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 29, 2013, taken February 28, 2013 reprocessed March 29, 2013
Marriage Equality, Nacogdoches TX I made this image yesterday to show my support for marriage equality on facebook. But as many of you know, I have an awesome photo of Big Red as my fb profile photo and I’ve never changed it. So I decided to modify the marriage equality symbol to accommodate both! With the handsomest dog in the world on the side of marriage equality, I don’t see how anyone can oppose it. In all seriousness, the Supreme Court is hearing a couple of key cases this session that may result in the largest expansion of gay rights in my lifetime. Back in high school I remember thinking that equal rights for gays would be coming before the year 2000! Well, hopefully 2013 is the year! This is the first image that I’ve exported out of photoshop. I layered the photo of Big Red over the marriage equality symbol and used the “screen” blending mode. I’ve been studying up on photoshop the last few days but have only learned a few basics. It’s going to be a long process! Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 27, 2013, made March 26, 2013
Red Flower, Nacogdoches TX
I’m not sure what kind of flower this is, but it is really pretty. It grows on strange branches very close to the ground, so I guess it’s a bush. This one is bright red.
I processed this photo in Lightroom 4. I finally bought Photoshop and it’s supposed to be a rainy day, so I think I know what I’ll be doing!
Critiques are always welcome.
Update: I was back at the arboretum again today and I noticed this flower definitely has thorns on the bush, so I think everyone is right, it's a rose.
Daily photo: March 24, 2013, taken March 22, 2013
New Friend, Nacogdoches TX I made a new friend at the SFA Arboretum yesterday. I stopped in for a quick shoot before dinner and found this little guy on these red azaleas. I guess we have the same taste in color! I also saw a little gray snake slither away at one point, marking the first snake I’ve seen since moving to East Texas in August. I hope it doesn’t become a regular occurrence, but I’m going to start wearing hiking boots instead of sandals just in case! For most of my flower photos I’ve been using the Canon EF 135 f/2 L series lens. It was one of my first lenses and I still love shooting with it. I like to use it for portraits whenever I have the space and it was also really useful at the wedding I assisted Sarah Williams with last week. So I’m a little torn about buying the Canon EF 100 L series macro lens since it’s so close in focal length. I’ve gone this long without a macro maybe I can go a little longer! Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 23, 2013, taken March 22, 2013
At Arms Length, Nacogdoches TX The boys are ready to take a nap after a few minutes of intense play in the sunlight. Apparently Sala wanted to keep Cheech at arms length! Cheech is such a cutie but I always love when his little snaggle tooth is on display! I have been extremely busy the last few days, working on the wedding from this past weekend as well as keeping up with Sue Bryce’s 28 day challenge on creativeLIVE. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 22, 2013, taken March 11, 2013
Warm Flowers, Nacogdoches TX The light on these flowers was just magnificent. I actually saw these flowers glowing from a distance and in a crowd of beautiful flowers at the SFA Arboretum. The place is overwhelming, both in sights and in smells. But I discovered in the fall that when a place has so much to see like this place does, it is easy to forget that good light is the key to any photo. So now my strategy is to look for the light instead of the flowers (or maples, in the fall). There are awesome flowers and colors and smells all over the place, but it is the light that is crucial to making a good photo. I have been extremely busy the last few days, working on the wedding from this past weekend as well as keeping up with Sue Bryce’s 28 day challenge on creativeLIVE. Sue is the 2011 and 2012 Australian Portrait Photographer of the Year and the 2012 WPPI Premier Grand winner. The last two challenges have been “shooting curves,” and “posing groups of 2, 3 and 4.” Tomorrow is “Posing and Shooting Families,” which I’m really looking forward to since I’m assisting the amazing Sarah Williams with some family sessions this weekend. If you are interested in learning posing tips from the world renowned expert in posing, you can check out the first 5 challenges totally free, which include over 5 hours of instruction. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 21, 2013, taken March 17, 2013
Sunshine Azaleas, Nacogdoches TX There are almost 500 named species of Azalea in the Ruby M. Mize Azalea garden at the SFA Arboretum. There are lots of other flowers and flowering trees in the arboretum as well, all under the canopy of towering pines. It’s a sight to see (and smell)! Click here for a view of the beautiful Japanese Maples in fall colors. You are missing out on a free education if you haven’t checked out www.creativeLIVE.com yet. CreativeLIVE is putting on workshops all the time these days. Like them on facebook or register for updates and you’ll never miss the workshop you need most. Right now there is a Lightroom workshop going on, and on Weds the award winning photographer Tamara Lackey is teaching a one-day workshop on health. Most of the workshops are in photography but they also have business and health workshops too. And it’s all free to watch live! Just consider it your new favorite TV channel! Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 19, 2013, taken March 17, 2013
Azaleas in Bloom, Nacogdoches TX March is the month of Azaleas in Nacogdoches, and the annual Azalea walk is going on all month. Nini and I visited the SFA Arboretum with the dogs yesterday and the Azaleas are starting to bloom in full force. I think by the end of this week they’ll be at peak bloom. The Dogwoods and Magnolias are still blooming too, but they are past their peak. The SFA Arboretum smelled amazing too! Thank goodness we don’t have allergies (yet) because my blue car looks green with all of the pollen here in East Texas. For more info on the SFA Arboretum and a view of the beautiful Japanese Maples in fall colors please visit here. This photo was taken with my Canon EF 135mm f/2 L series lens. I really love this lens but might be putting it out of work soon with the Canon EF 100 L series macro lens. I was really busy this weekend. I assisted the award winning wedding photographer extraordinaire, Sarah Williams, on a beautiful wedding in Galveston TX. I learned so much from Sarah, she is amazing! Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 18, 2013, taken March 17, 2013
Playing in the Sun, Nacogdoches TX
Sala and Cheech have a great time playing on the bed in the afternoon sun. They play for five or ten minutes and then nap for five or ten minutes and start playing again. Big Red and Cheech have a done a great job training Sala. It is obvious that Sala respects both of them and even though he’s a pup and can get rambunctious, he minds his own business when the older boys have had enough. Sala is hilarious though and definitely has his own style!
When I saw the dogs playing in the back lighting I quickly grabbed my camera because I’ve wanted to practice this technique. I’m really happy with the exposure. To get this exposure just expose for the shadows, making sure not to clip any shadows on the left side of your histogram (look for a tiny little gap on the left side of the histogram). That’s it! Getting the right focus is another story. It’s so bright shooting into a backlight that it’s hard to see what’s in focus. Even the camera has a hard time auto-focusing. I’ve found that using your free hand to block the backlight helps the auto-focus and helps you to see what is in focus. Then you just remove your hand and shoot. But if your subject moves in the mean time, then you’re out of luck.
By now most smuggers have heard about Sue Bryce’s 28 days of video challenges on CreativeLIVE.com. But did you know the first five challenges are FREE FOR ALL!? Challenge 5, posing couples, was especially useful because Sue has never shown how to pose couples before. Check out all 5+ hours of FREE EDUCATION at: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/28-days-sue-bryce
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: March 16, 2013, taken March 11, 2013
Food Fight, Nacogdoches TX I was taking photos of the dogs yesterday morning and before I could even get ready I caught this blurry shot of Cheech defending a bone from Sala. Cheech looks a lot less cute than he normally does on smugmug! Cheech weighs under 10 pounds, Sala weighs just over 25. So it was a David and Goliath situation, but David always wins around here! Even when they are just playing around, Sala has no defense for Cheech’s turbo attack and just ends up playing defense with his big paws while looking stunned! As usual, Cheech successfully defended his bone from Sala and the two were back to being best friends in no time. By now most smuggers have heard about Sue Bryce’s 28 days of video challenges on CreativeLIVE.com. But did you know the first five challenges are FREE FOR ALL!? There’s over four hours of instructional footage already available and today is only day four. Check it out at: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/28-days-sue-bryce Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 14, 2013, taken March 13, 2013
Nini Icon, Lake Sam Rayburn TX
This is a photo that I’ve been meaning to share for a while. I took this out at the lake shooting into the sun, creating lots of lens flare. Then I added a lot of grainy and clarity in processing to make it almost look animated. The final touch was the fake light leak that I actually added by myself in Lightroom 4 without the help of any apps. I think it looks really cool as a thumbnail profile photo for facebook or G+. Too bad Nini likes her Cheech fb profile photo so much because she won’t change it!
I didn’t get much response yesterday on the Sue Bryce 28 day challenge. So am I the only one taking the challenge? That’s crazy! Sue is going to show you how to pose everyone from one person to couples and groups of five. She’s going to show you how to pose hands and get five poses out of one composition. And all while using only natural light, which I know a lot of smugmuggers prefer. I cannot stress enough that if you struggle at posing, Sue is the instructor for you! She is the queen of posing techniques. Check it out at: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/28-days-sue-bryce
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: March 12, 2013, taken February 23, 2013
The Austin Building, Nacogdoches TX We had some big storms roll through last night and this photo was taken just as the storms were moving in. I noticed the clouds were moving really fast, so I set up a quick shot before heading home. I always like the contrast between moving clouds and still buildings. This is the Austin building on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University. This is a single five second exposure. I used two neutral grad filters to darken the sky, bringing it closer to the exposure of the foreground. There are lots of tall pines all over campus and I find they make for challenging compositions of the buildings. See my previous photos of the SFA campus here and here. QUESTION: Is anyone doing Sue Bryce’s 28 challenges over the next 28 days? If you buy the course you’ll be enjoying an hour or more of Sue everyday, teaching you all of the poses and lighting techniques to run a contemporary portrait studio. It should be fun! Check it out at: http://www.creativelive.com/courses/28-days-sue-bryce Critiques are always welcome. UPDATE: Check out my awesome 16 year old cousin's new blues song from Kolkata India: http://soundcloud.com/thesuitables-1/the-hat-song Daily photo: March 11, 2013, taken March 9, 2013
Tasty Crab Cakes, Nacogdoches TX
These are some great crab cakes with remoulade from Autnie Pasta’s, one of our favorite restaurants in Nacogdoches. I had these crab cakes when I was out with a friend and they looked so pretty I made it a point to bring my camera the next time we went there. When I find pretty food I like to take photos of it. Food photography is a fun challenge.
This photo was taken with the ambient light in the restaurant, mostly one overhead tungsten bulb. The photo had a warm yellow and orange cast so I cooled off the color temperature and desaturated it quite a bit. I added some extra desaturation to the non-food parts of the photo. I think I could have done much better if I used table top studio lighting but with ISO 2500 I made the ambient light work.
Critiques are always welcome.
UPDATE: The color temperature I ended up with is 3929. Thanks for your critiques!
Daily photo: March 10, 2013, taken February 24, 2013
Rusty Sunset, Nacogdoches TX This train car fascinated me because it appeared to be half gone. This must be the antique section of the train yard where they retire old equipment. Just down from this half car is the caboose I featured previously. Despite the antique train cars, the sunset was the main attraction in my eyes, and I tried to find compositions that featured the sunset. This is a single eight second exposure. You can read about my filter setup for this shot on my Colorful Caboose photo. I forgot to mention previously that I broke my giant tripod on this shoot. It was terrible! I spent a lot of time with that tripod, so I was sad to have it go down. It was all my fault for not keeping it clean and putting way too much leverage on one of the extended legs. But even though it was an old Bogen model, I found the new Manfrotto version that is just as big and heavy but with some cool new features. I also ordered a replacement part so I can try and fix my old friend. More tripod discussion to come in the next few days, and over on the smugmug daily group on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SmugMugDailyPhotosCommunity/ CreativeLIVE is live and FREE all day today and tomorrow with Sue Bryce’s “28 Days.” I’m not sure what the workshop is about exactly, but I know Sue always delivers. I always make sure to tune in for Sue’s workshops. Check it out live all day or catch the rewatch all night at www.creativelive.com/live Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 8, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
Natural Beauty, Nacogdoches TX She’s still a doll even when she’s not all dolled up! This is just one of those Saturday or Sunday afternoon laying around in bed shots. Sometimes the afternoon light is just too nice to resist so I coax Nini into posing for me. She’s usually willing to pose once a week or so, as long as it’s only roughly ten minutes or less. I think she looks like an angel with this light! She's my angel! For this portrait I was experimenting with the blown out backlighting technique. I used a white Styrofoam reflector to light up her face and put catchlights in her eyes. The light was so nice and soft that I didn’t do any retouching, and I used Nini’s favorite preset at the starting point for the processing. See her favorite preset here too. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 7, 2013, taken January 31, 2013
Nini’s Closeup, Nacogdoches TX We took this photo right when Nini walked out of the salon after getting her massage, hair and makeup done. I wanted to get a closeup that I could give to the makeup artist to show off their nice work. Until now though, I haven’t been able to find the makeup artist on facebook or anywhere, so eventually I’ll have to call the salon ask for their email address. At this point in the day it was a little cloudy, but there was plenty of nice soft light, so we shot with all natural light. I added a lot of contrast back into the image in post processing to give it some depth. To do so, I mostly darkened the shadows on her camera left side and on her neck. This is a technique I learned from Lindsay Addler on CreativeLIVE’s photoshop week last week. Because of the nice soft light there wasn’t much retouching required for this photo. My favorite photo from our shoot is this wider angle portrait I shared last week. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 6, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
Wavy Sunset, Lake Sam Rayburn TX We were really surprised to find that our little beach at Lake Sam Rayburn was only about half of it’s normal size due to high water. And the lake had huge two foot waves! It was crazy! The beach looked totally different and lots of rocks were now in play for foreground composition. It was a fun change of pace. Things were looking good until about a half hour before sunset when almost all of the clouds cleared out, making the sunset a bust. So I spent more time playing around with the dogs and taking video and I never quite got around to polishing off this composition. If I could do it over I’d like to move back a foot and get my tripod even lower. This is a single exposure using the two filter set up I mentioned here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 5, 2013, taken March 3, 2013
Colorful Caboose, Nacogdoches TX Well the caboose isn’t really colorful, but the sky is! I knew from the looks of the clouds in this sky that we were in for a very colorful sunset, but I didn’t have time to go to any of our normal sunset locations (aka, the lake). The railroad tracks are only a few minutes from our house, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did because even the ugly old train tracks looked pretty with this sky! This is a single 4 second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter to balance the exposure between the foreground and the sky. I wish I had closed down to f/22 for a little added depth of field so that the caboose was in sharper focus. Focusing on something a little further away would have helped too. With shots like this, my thinking is that if something is out of focus in the foreground, it is going to be more noticeable than something in the background. It’s for photos like this that I would like to be able to manually blend exposures in photoshop. That way I could blend one exposure focused on the foreground and another focused on the background, a technique called focus stacking. But I’d have to get photoshop first! Thanks for your comments last week! My most popular photo from last week was very special for me because it is a photo of my beautiful wife! Check it out if you haven’t already. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: March 4, 2013, taken February 28, 2013
Cheecher!
Pink Skies after Sundown, Lake Sam Rayburn TX This is the view to the Southeast about 10 or 15 minutes after sundown. There was an abnormal amount of color going on in that direction and neither I nor Sarah (who was shooting with me) were set up to capture it. We were ready to leave, but the sky had other plans. I worked fast and got a few shots before the color faded. The composition turned out pretty horrible, but color like this is pretty forgiving. This is a single six second exposure. I used a circular polarizer to create more contrast in the sky and enhance the reflection. I’m happy to have received some constructive feedback yesterday on my portrait of Nini. Several people mentioned found the pole on the left side of the frame distracting, and nobody came out in favor of the pole. So I updated my post to balance out the conversation. Check it out here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 27, 2013, taken February 23, 2013
Nini’s Favorite Preset, Nacogdoches TX
Nini has been begging me to finish processing this photo since the day we did this shoot. We looked at these photos over lunch actually, and I applied a preset that I adapted from one of Marcus Bell’s free presets, and Nini immediately loved the photo and kept coming back to it. Now she keeps telling me to apply that preset to every photo! But I did a lot more than just apply a preset to this photo.
I think this photo conveys a strong emotion, despite technical imperfections. I think these recent portraits of Nini have a good fit and consistency between pose, hair, makeup, location, lighting, and processing. To me, all of these elements feel like they go together nicely. What do you think?
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Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 26, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
UPDATE: Thank you to everyone that gave constructive feedback on this photo. Several people mentioned that they did not like the blurry pole on the left side of the frame and no one said that they liked it. To balance out the conversation I’ll walk you through my thought process on the pole. This is in no way intended to be a rebuttal. I think the pole is a legitimate critique and understand that some people may not like it or may find it distracting according to their own criteria. Just like some people may not like the background at all, or Nini’s pose, or my retouching, or any other element of the photo. I’m only writing this in the spirit of sharing and hopefully someone will find it helpful. I always enjoy receiving constructive feedback no matter how harsh. I am a ruthless critic of my own work and have developed a very thick skin as a result!
My thought process on the pole on the left side of the frame is two fold. First, and most importantly, my wife and I both were really drawn to this photo. Nini kept hounding me to process it, and I too kept going back and looking at it, trying to decide if I should process it. My hesitation was that it isn’t tack sharp on Nini’s eyes and I’m not thrilled with her facial expression. But something kept drawing me in. The photo has a consistent feel to it with the gritty background, gritty makeup, gritty wardrobe, and maybe even gritty pose. So I started to think maybe the pole was also consistent with the feel of the photo. Further, I started to think the pole was enhancing the photo in the same way that shallow depth of field does, by focusing the interest on the only sharp thing in the photo, which is Nini. But I still wasn’t sure, so I looked to see if any pros are including blurry objects on one side of the frame to force the eye elsewhere. Sure enough I found several wedding photographers that do include blurry objects in their foreground in much the same way I did here (Marcus Bell, Jasmine Star, and especially Todd Laffner). The final straw was when I was watching fashion photographer Lindsay Addler on Photoshop Week on CreativeLIVE, and she was adding in blurry objects to several photos both in camera and through compositing with photoshop. I actually processed the photo while watching Lindsay on CreativeLIVE Monday night and used some of her techniques, albeit in Lightroom.
Second, I asked myself whether I think the blurry pole is distracting. I knew that it was supposed to be distracting based on traditional compositional techniques, but I wasn’t sure that it actually was distracting. In fact, shallow depth of field is a common technique for removing distracting objects from the frame precisely by making them blurry. I thought about it more. What does it mean to be distracting? When the eye is drawn to a part of the photo that the photographer did not want to draw attention to. What causes distraction? Usually the eye is drawn to the brightest part of the frame, the darkest part of the frame, the sharpest part of the frame, areas of high contrast, and colors. This is why shallow depth of field and black and white is so common in portraiture, both make most compositions less distracting. Does the pole meet any of these criteria? No, it’s not the brightest or darkest part of the frame (it’s a midtone), it’s not sharp, it’s not high contrast and it’s not colorful.
I decided the pole is not distracting in theory. But is it distracting in practice? I spent about 5 minutes looking at the photo in different sizes, even down to thumbnail sizes, and turning my head to and from my computer screen to see where my eyes were drawn each time I looked at it. Never once did my eyes go to that pole. I asked Nini do the same and we got the same results. Instead, I think the pole actually reinforces the vertical pattern in the background that keeps the eye moving up and down on the brightest/darkest, sharpest and most high contrast/colorful part of the photo, which is Nini.
I’m glad I thought this trough, because now I’m convinced that in general, blurry, low contrast, desaturated midtones are not distracting to me. Also, by my own criteria the dark hole in the door in the background is distracting as a dark spot, so I’ve removed it. Thanks for those who suggested doing so.
Red Wisps, Lake Sam Rayburn TX We caught a beautiful sunset at Lake Sam Rayburn this weekend. We had a great time hanging out on the beach, watching the sun go down. This trip was extra special because we were joined by wedding photographer extraordinaire Sarah Williams and her 13 month old baby boy! It is so fun to hangout with other photographers, especially when they are as cool as Sarah. And our little puppy Sala must have sensed that there was someone near his own age there, because he could not get enough of the little guy. Click on Sarah’s name above and check out her award winning photography. This is a single six second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated neutral density filter to even out the exposure between the sky and the water. The sky was cloudless most of the day, so I felt very lucky to have these clouds during the blue hour. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 25, 2013, taken February 23, 2013
Mural Pose, Lufkin TX Downtown Lufkin is full of murals. This one reminded me of Sue Bryce’s posing technique with the shoulder, although I’m sure she’d tell this mural to work that shoulder even harder! I was in Lufkin to meet an amazing wedding photographer, Sarah Williams. I’ve been searching far and wide for photography friends in East Texas and I am so lucky to have found an such an awesome one as Sarah. I can’t wait to hang out with her again soon! This is an Iphone photo. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 23, 2013, taken February 21, 2013
My Shot, Nacogdoches TX
I decided to jump in front of the camera after setting up these lights for Nini’s anniversary shoot. I put the camera on a tripod and pre-focused. Unfortunately I didn’t step into the right spot so that I would be in focus! Making self-portraits with shallow depth of field is always difficult. I also discovered that posing is much harder than I thought and I’m especially bad at posing for men.
Yesterday was really busy for me, both at work and at home. At home we’re dealing with a lot of problems with our landlord because our house is falling apart. Hopefully they will take care of the problems or let us out of our lease without having to go to court.
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 20, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
Nacogdoches!, Nacogdoches TX
The train yard in downtown Nacogdoches. It started to thunder and lightning, so I had to leave before I really got this composition figured out. On my way home I drove the most torrential downpour I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t see anything even with my windshield wipers blasting at full speed. Luckily I only had a few blocks to get home and could get there going only a few miles per hour. Our street looked like a river. And they say we’re in for even bigger storms later this week.
This is a 5 exposure HDR. One of the 5 exposures was taken at f/18, creating the starburst effect on the lights. The other four exposures were taken at f/10.
Critiques are always welcome.
UPDATE: The composition that I wanted to try before the storm hit, was to compress the frame using my 135mm lens and moving a long ways back to get most of this Nacogdoches sign, some lines from the train tracks, and the Lone Star Feeds sign in the background but within the frame of the Nacogdoches sign. Maybe I'll go back during blue hour today.
Daily photo: February 19, 2013, taken February 18, 2013
Crashing Waves, Lake Sam Rayburn TX A beautiful cloudy sunset on our favorite beach. The sunset was beautiful despite all of the clouds, as you can see here. The waves were crashing gently on our beach. This is a single ½ second exposure. I like the wave action that is captured with this fast shutter speed. Usually I shoot at longer shutter speeds that washout the details of the waves. I like both looks but prefer the long exposure look a little more just because it looks so much different. You can read about my filter set up for this shot here. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 18, 2013, taken January 25, 2013
Spooning, Nacogdoches TX
Cheech and Sala spooning for an evening nap in Big Red’s kennel. Cheech and Sala have become great friends but Big Red has been much slower to warm up to Sala. At this point I’d say Big Red tolerates him, but will be quick to put Sala in his place if he gets too rowdy. Sala on the other hand, adores Big Red. He follows Big Red everywhere and is constantly submitting to Big Red and trying to gain his favor. It seems Big Red’s dominant strategy is paying off. Cheech and Sala both submit to Big Red and he is the undisputed leader of the dogs, while I am Big Red’s undisputed leader. I think that’s why Cheech and Sala like laying in Big Red’s kennel.
This was taken indoors with available light, mostly from a ceiling light. The dogs were entirely in the shadows. I didn’t want to spook them by bringing out a flash or reflector, so I just cranked up the ISO to 6400. I rarely shoot above ISO 320 or 640, so 6400 is like a million to me, and it introduced a lot of noise. When I do shoot high ISO I like to convert the image to black and white and embrace the graininess of the high ISO noise. I didn’t add any additional grain in processing, and I did apply quite a bit of noise reduction.
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 17, 2013, taken February 12, 2013
Warm Grass, Lake Sam Rayburn TX
I love the way that a sunset can light up a foreground! This glowing grass caught my eye as I was looking for a new foreground composition that included the reflection pool. We hope to get back to the lake this weekend and maybe even today!
This is a three exposure HDR. I haven’t made many HDR photos lately, but still find it to be a handy technique when I have to shoot into the sun without any filters. The only filter used here is the circular polarizer.
CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today with Jen Rozenbaum and workshop titled “Building a Successful Boudoir Business.” Check it out FOR FREE 24hrs a day for the next two days at http://www.creativeLIVE.com/live
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 15, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
Working It, Lake Sam Rayburn TX That’s me working my composition during sunset. I’ve been posting so many photos of Nini lately I was starting to feel left out! And since she loves to see photos of me too, this is a mini-gift to my beautiful wife on Valentine’s Day! Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! This is a single 15 second exposure. It’s rare that I’d be moving my composition around when the colors are erupting like this. Usually I prefer to set up my composition and just wait for the colors. But this sunset was giving me trouble because the puffy clouds on the left of the frame were moving out and the wispy clouds were moving in. My composition was being ruined by what looked like dark spots on the left side of the horizon because only those last few puffs of the puffy cloud were in the frame. You can judge my final composition for yourself HERE. CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today with Jen Rozenbaum and workshop titled “Building a Successful Boudoir Business.” Check it out FOR FREE 24hrs a day for the next three days at www.creativeLIVE.com/live1 Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 14, 2013, taken February 2, 2013
Shy Smile, Nacogdoches TX This is Nini’s favorite pose from our anniversary shoot over the weekend. The only problem was that the flash didn’t fire. The batteries were running low and the flash wouldn’t recharge very fast. But her pose was great! So she made me salvage the image in processing even though I probably would have never processed something so dark. I really like the result. There is more noise and less sharpness than I’d like, but the emotion of her pose more than makes up for what this photo lacks in technical quality. The crop is straight from camera, I’ve been practicing cropping into heads and I like it! If you missed it the other day, my favorite photo from the shoot is here. CreativeLIVE is live and FREE with Jasmine Star’s wedding photography restart. Check it out at www.creativeLIVE.com/live Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 13, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
Blue Hour Reflections, Lake Sam Rayburn TX The high water at Lake Sam Rayburn makes for some beautiful reflecting pools. I tried several different compositions, but this one was kept catching my eye as I scrolled through my recent photos. I hope you like it! A previous photo of this sunset can be seen here. This is a single four minute exposure with no filters. The clouds were moving right at us and I really wanted to capture some cloud movement. This was the last photo I took before hiking back to the car in the dark. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 11, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
Nini in Black, Nacogdoches TX
We had a busy day yesterday with our anniversary gifts. Nini had her massage, hair and makeup done at a local salon, and then I got to take her photo. The sky was perfectly overcast for the first hour or so giving us great natural light, but when we took a lunch break it got too cloudy to shoot without adding some flash. It was 60 degrees, which was perfect for me, but Nini was chilled. You can see her goosebumps in larger sizes.
For this portrait Nini is lit with a single speedlite shot through a beauty dish with a grid on it. The grid helps to prevent the light from spilling too far in any direction, creating really cool light falloff that is fun to work with when you have a nice background. We shot it downtown Nacogdoches with a beauty dish on a stand, on several sidewalks and alleyways, and no one ever bothered us a bit. One of my goals was to do a wider shot like this that will look good printed in large sizes. It was a fun day!
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 10, 2013, taken February 9, 2013
My Love in Black and White, Nacogdoches TX
I don’t usually post the same photo twice but I was really happy with how this turned out in black and white. And I think it’s fitting since Nini and I are celebrating our anniversary today with a photo shoot.
For this photo Nini was lit with natural window light. There is a big styrofoam reflector just out of frame to the camera right of Nini. I also held a 20 inch silver reflector to the right of my camera to add the catch light in her eye. She is the catch light in my eye!
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 9, 2013, taken February 3, 2013
Colorful Sunset, Lake Sam Rayburn TX
A colorful sunset on our favorite beach. Hopefully we’ll be there again this weekend to have an anniversary picnic. Today is our actual anniversary and we’re celebrating with friends tonight. Tomorrow we are giving each other our anniversary gift. Nini is getting an hour and a half massage, hair and makeup at a local salon. I’m getting a photoshoot with my wife! Then we’ll go out to dinner. It should be a fun anniversary for the both of us. Thanks for all of your anniversary wishes yesterday!
CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today for the third day with wedding master photographer Marcus Bell. Catch the FREE re-watch all night long if you miss the live version. I actually like the re-watches better because they cut out the breaks. http://www.creativeLIVE.com/live
UPDATE: I forgot to mention that this is a three exposure HDR.
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 8, 2013, taken January 21, 2013
My Love, Nacogdoches TX
Nini is the love of my life. We’re celebrating one of our third anniversaries this week. We had three weddings so that’s why we have three anniversaries every year. Tomorrow is our third, American and legal wedding anniversary. But we’re celebrating tonight so I wanted to share this photo of my angel.
CreativeLIVE is live and FREE today and tomorrow with wedding master photographer Marcus Bell. Catch the FREE re-watch all night long if you miss the live version. I actually like the re-watches better because they cut out the breaks. http://www.creativeLIVE.com/live
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 7, 2013, taken February 3, 2013
The View, Lake Sam Rayburn TX The view from the camera that is featured in my photo from yesterday. The colors erupted after sundown as these wispy clouds moved across the horizon to cover the area where the sun had just went down. It was a very unique sunset for sure. This is a single 30 second exposure. I used a three-stop soft-step graduated ND filter and a two-stop soft-step graduated ND filter to reduce the exposure above the foreground. Critiques are always welcome. UPDATE: CreativeLIVE is live and FREE with wedding photography master Marcus Bell. The FREE re-watch just started. Visit www.creativelive.com/live often over the next three days to get a free education from one of the world's best. Daily photo: February 6, 2013, taken February 2, 2013
Front Row Seat, Lake Sam Rayburn TX
We were back at Lake Sam Rayburn last weekend and were witness to a very unique sunset. The puffy clouds started to move out and the wispy clouds on the right side of the frame started to move in. The sun actually set in between these two different types of clouds and it made for a weird looking composition that I didn’t really like too much. But I got some very cool time lapses of the clouds moving across the horizon.
This is a single 10 second exposure taken with my 7D on a tripod. The other camera is my 5D Mark II with a couple of graduated filters on the lens (I bought the camera used and it came with a set of 7 filters). The little square on the tip top is a three-way level mounted into the hotshoe on my wireless tranceiver, which is mounted into the hotshoe on the camera. The tripod is a Bogen 3036 and the ball head says Mod 168. Both are very heavy duty and together weigh probably 15 pounds. I bought the tripod with head for about $100.00 on craigslist.
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 5, 2013, taken February 2, 2013
Nini Shine, Nacogdoches TX
My beautiful angel Nini taking advantage of the afternoon warmth in bed. This photo is straight from my camera with no editing. The catchlights in her eyes are what caught my eye.
Crazy day yesterday. I hope everyone had a good super bowl weekend!
Critiques are always welcome.
Daily photo: February 4, 2013, taken February 3, 2013
Reflections, Lake Sam Rayburn TX The aftermath of a very pretty sunset. The clouds rolled in fast just before sunset and here you can see they started to dissipate soon after. On the way to the lake that day I was telling Nini that we’d probably end up with no clouds, no sunset and head home early! Every shoot is an adventure and that’s why I always say that you never know if there is going to be a good sunset or sunrise unless you’re there. This is a single 15 second exposure. I used a circular polarizer to increase the glare on the water, bringing out the reflection. Critiques are always welcome. Daily photo: February 3, 2013, taken January 25, 2013
