Jump!

"For nimble thought can jump both sea and land" -- Shakespeare

Family Time

Just back from a week with family. 64 people. Ages from 3 to 80.

Catch up with everyone, revisit old hang-outs, recharge the batteries. Every two years. Nothing like it.

Below is my nephew enjoying a cold one on the beach. Dusk. Distant cumulonimbus catching the last of the sun's warm light. Contentment.

Pretty much says it all.

Good to be back. Big hugs to everyone!

Looking Forward To It.

Woke this morning to 14 degrees Fahrenheit. A fair amount of  ice from yesterday's snow melt to contend with. Temps made it to 35 or so in the afternoon. More melt. More ice. Tomorrow... slight chance of snow and freezing rain. Friday brings a greater chance of significant snow storm. 

*sigh*

Spring's just around the corner, isn't it? 

*Brrrr*

Tonight's forecast: 19 degrees F. Possibly some snow. The high temp for the next few days won't make it out of the twenties. Snow expected over the weekend. Upper Midwest is getting hammered with tons of the white stuff and temps 20 below! Northeast, not looking much better.

Yep... thinkin' about the summer.

Nature Boy.

When I'm photographing subjects I like to get them in varied situations. Different settings.

This is Chris. A true outdoorsman!

Here he's watching a group of pelicans doing a fly-by as he continues to catch nothing.

In this shot he's just kinda hanging out showing off his pasty-white muscular body. To be fair, he does tan rather nicely girls!

In this shot... well, hey, Nature calls!

In the end, keep your camera at the ready. Never know what your subject will do!

Cheers.

Portraits.

I have, on occasion, been known to do portraits. They're not my forte, but I enjoy them.

These first two are from many moons ago. That's black & white film... set up, shot, developed and printed right here in our basement! Heh!

The last one is from this year's trip to New Smyrna. Susannah and Jay wanted a family portrait, they and their three beautiful kids. That shot might be used as a holiday card so I'll not jump the gun by showing it. But here's one I got of just the two of them.

Be Prepared.

The sun is setting fast and the sky is looking good. I've got a wide angle lens and I've crouched down so as to highlight the clouds. The flash unit is in my left hand, held out and up. I've dropped the exposure by about a stop (I'm guessing here!) and flash exposure is preset in manual mode and likely is at 1/16th power, which usually works at this distance.

Knowing your settings and distance beforehand makes it much easier to capture shots like this.

Also, in the background you can just make out the young man on the lifeguard's chair I shot earlier. (You can scroll down to the "Quality of Light" post to see it.)

Color Temperature.

Let's talk about color. Or, rather, the psychology of color. There is a school of thought out there that says we humans are comforted by "warm" colors and discomfited by "cool" colors. A crackling fireplace, candle light, a campfire, sunrises and sunsets... these tend to instill in us a settled, even soothed emotion. And the warmth (color wise, not just heat wise) is in no small part the reason for this relaxed feeling.

Before the digital camera explosion photographers employed various techniques to create this warmth in their photos. An amber glass filter over the lens or shooting with daylight balanced film under tungsten lights. Today, we have white balance (WB) control in our dSLRs.

We can adjust the settings so as to create a cool, bluish tint in our photos or, as I usually like to do, create a more warm, yellowish/orange tint.

Below are two examples. One is shot at sunrise on a hazy beach morning. The other is around a fire-pit and tiki torches. You can see the effect you get setting the WB to a warmer setting and what happens when you set it to a cooler setting. Everyone is different, of course, so you may not like the warmer tones. But generally speaking, it is the warmer tones that people gravitate to when looking through images. Keep this in mind when your making your photographs. Are you creating an image that attracts people or gives them a sense of unease?

This is necessarily an incomplete post. Feel free to pepper me with questions if you need this fleshed out a little more.

Meantime, dig out your camera's manual and have some fun playing around with your white balance settings.

 

Cheers.

Quality of Light.

Good light is essential for good photography. Early morning, late evening, overcast with dramatic clouds, and of course a judicious use of flash.  Whenever possible avoid sunny, midday photography. Harsh light from directly overhead makes for pretty crappy images.

There are times of course when you have no choice but to shoot at or around noon. In those cases, go for it. Make the best of it. But when the sun starts sinking low get back out there. Even the weakest of compositions will benefit from better quality light.

Below are a few shots from a recent trip to that big peninsula at the southeast corner of the United States.

Up first, a shot at 5 in the evening with storm clouds in the distance. A lone fisherman wading into the deep in search of his quarry gives us a sense of scale.

Image two was taken around 7:30 PM while the sun briefly peeked through the clouds, casting long shadows and a warm glow on two beachcombers.

The next shot was taken about ten minutes later, the sun had gone back behind the clouds and I had an assistant hold a flash, camera left, pointed directly at the dude in the chair. Nice clouds, good background.

Last photo: 7AM, hazy sky, orange sun, silhouettes... 

Quality light is the key to quality photography.  Get out early, stay out late and shoot like mad!

Cheers.

Silhouettes

A good way to spice up your photo slide show is to be sure there are one or two decent silhouettes included. Most people are not expecting them. They're expecting "the usual." It's your job--should you want your audience to remain interested--to occasionally provide the unusual. All you need for a good silhouette is backlight. Well, there's a little more to it than that, but backlight is essential. Everything you ever heard about keeping the light behind you--or just over your shoulder--forget it. In this case you want the light in front of you. Maybe off to the side just a bit, but basically in front of you and behind your subject. For those of you with more advanced cameras try metering the sky (not including the sun!) then shoot away. For the more point and shoot types the camera's light meter will most likely be able to read the scene properly and give you what you want. In other words simply make sure the sun is behind your subject then just point and shoot! Oh! It is also important to have a clean background so that your subject stands out. A cluttered background will just obscure everything. Try getting down low so the subject is against a clear blue sky or as in the case below get up high and use the reflection off water as background. Whatever the case, adding a silhouette or two to your vacation photos will help enrich the viewing experience.