iPhone photo(s) of the day
July 9, 2010 by Brad ·
As I prepare for an engagement session like the one I’m photographing this evening, I go through a series of gear preparations. Batteries are charged, memory cards are cleared, lenses cleaned, etc. Since I’m working with a very creative couple today, I even went through my iPhone, making sure I had old images safely offloaded. I scanned the photos from a school trip to the beach that I chaperoned a few months ago, because the bride-to-be from tonight’s photo session was on that trip too. I didn’t find any of her on the iPhone (the only camera I took on that trip), but I did find this one these.
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The wind that day was strong, allowing me to get surprisingly close to the seagulls, who were reluctant to fly very much or very high. This one is cropped slightly in Lightroom, where I also dropped the color out. Aw, heck, I’ll share some more.
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iPhone photo with a slight crop and noise reduction in Lightroom.
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iPhone photo with slight crop, color removal, and noise reduction in Lightroom.
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Captured and processed completely within the iPhone. Best guess: used BestCamera app & LoMob app
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Captured and processed completely within the iPhone. Best guess: used BestCamera app & LoMob app
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·2nd Week of the Photography 101 Seminar
July 7, 2010 by Brad ·
Below I’ve included a gallery of images from Week 2 of my first seminar on the basics of photography. The images range from examples of showing motion via longer shutter speeds, to students’ homework, to in-class creations. We had a great time, and every single attendee stayed late as we reviewed homework photos.
I was holding my hand up behind the orchids to give participants something with more detail than just the wall to throw out of focus. Apparently, my face was more useful from this angle.
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From this angle, the goal was to create a proper exposure with part of the orchid in focus and the fuzzy lampshade out of focus.
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Caralie was having so much fun with the f/1.8 lens that she couldn’t resist finding new ways to exploit the shallow depth of field. Here she isolates the clock against a shallow background.
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Johnnie captured Bethany in beautiful reflected light off the rug. I was so pleased with how Johnnie out-thought the camera’s meter to expose for her subject, letting the background blow-out (overexpose) intentionally. Taking it a step further, Bethany’s use of the camera was identified as the true subject of the photo by the use of focus and depth of field.
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Caralie captures an attentive Johnnie as I explain the virtues of solid camera support.
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Someone was listening to when we discussed composition and how showing flowers from angles people don’t usually see can create much more interesting photographs. I love this one! We gave it a little extra attention as we team-edited it in the digital darkroom.
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Good exposures of this still life scene were not easy. The hallway was not at all bright enough for no-brainer photography, and the seminar participants are are still required to operate their cameras in full manual mode.
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Nikki’s waving hand was a prop we used to practice conveying a sense of motion a few different ways. We’ll do more of this in later classes, particularly when we get into flash photography.
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Nikki nailed a beautiful exposure of this scene she spotted. Again, she was working in full manual mode, balancing the darkness on the right with window light from two different directions (left & behind). The highlight on the rim, with shadows that don’t lose detail on the (admittedly fancy) cup and the table’s wood grain combine for a beautiful scene of everyday items.
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1st Week’s HOMEWORK notables:
The shallow depth of field here, considering the lens they had to work with, was an impressive feat given the proximity of the ground to the top of the shoe. Sorry for the pun. Feat. Yeah, I’m a dork. That’s part of what makes the classes fun. (The dorkiness, not the puns.)
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Exposing for the shadows. Bam! Backlighting fun.
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Serious backlighting in manual mode. When you’re the one deciding every camera setting, something like this doesn’t just happen by accident. Well done.
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We all loved this original. Except Johnnie. She didn’t like the way her nose looked. (Oddly, we’d been waxing philosophic about the special nature of nose skin. It doesn’t sound fun in the re-telling, but there were laughs.) Anyway, I took the opportunity to illustrate a few things: 1) how over-exposure can be used to diminish subjets’ areas of sensitivity, 2) how high-key lighting can accentuate eyes & hair, 3) how adjustments in the digital darkroom (e.g. Adobe’s Lightroom, Apple’s Aperture, etc.) can be creative tools, and 4) the benefits of capturing files in RAW vs JPEG (yes, it’s geek-speak, but that’s why there are seminars, right?).
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Here, Caralie put into practice my admonition (borrowed from the great Scott Kelby) to give the subject’s gaze “a place to go”. I likened it to the dotted lines of vision one might see in a cartoon that show where a character is looking. If that’s too close to the edge of the photo, it will seem awkward. We didn’t discuss the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Ratio, or the Fibonacci Spiral until after these homework images were made.
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This is a re-edit of a photo that the students had deemed un-usable due to over-exposure. I don’t adhere to the saying that there’s no bad original, but sometimes there’s beauty to be coaxed out of an image that diverges far from what would be considered a “correct” exposure. It’s not perfect, even after we made changes in the digital darkroom, but it’s worth keeping now, and it serves to give us ideas on how to re-create this kind of feeling intentionally from the start, but with the ability to make it a little more pleasing next time.
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·Featured on Mashable!
July 1, 2010 by Brad ·
Honored (okay, “geeked up”) to have one of my photos make the short list on the summary of Social Media Day at the mother of all social media blogs, Mashable.com (photo #11 in the slideshow). It’s not every day a wedding photographer gets big web guru coverage, however vague. (And I hate to watermark my images, but this is one time I’m second-guessing that decision!) It’s even more rewarding because the particular image was one that I first pre-visualized, had to schmooze to get access to the vantage point, then had to overcome technical challenges; working hard on the scene and innovatively in post-production. (I shared the technical recipe in this previous post.) It’s not that I want to make my job sound so hard. It’s just so rewarding to have something that I put so much into be one that gets recognized. Thanks to Mashable, and thanks to whomever local may have had a hand in getting my image in front of their eyes.
Last night’s sunset
July 1, 2010 by Brad ·
As I left Social Media Day Phoenix, I spotted what looked like a beautiful sunset peaking over the buildings in downtown Tempe. I raced out to the railroad bridge as the sun disappeared under the horizon in time to capture this image of twilight. It was no surprise that as I was walking off the bridge, I passed a couple who had scheduled their engagement photo session with another photographer walking out onto the bridge. What fortuitous calendar decision they made! I should have gotten the guy’s card so I could see how their photos turned out.
Social Media Day Phoenix
July 1, 2010 by Brad ·
This afternoon I attended the inaugural Social Media Day, as proclaimed by Mashable. The local incarnation was spearheaded by SocialMediaAZ.org and hosted at MADCAP Theaters in Tempe. I was as much a participant as I was an impromptu photojournalist. It just happened that my camera bags were packed as I was headed out the door, so I took a portion of my stuff with me. I have posted a small gallery of more images online at this link. As the photos show, I was particularly enchanted by the band, Bears of Manitou.
Other sponsors included SmashBurger, Mill Avenue District, City of Tempe, GoDaddy, and Social Media Club Phoenix.
* for the techies and photogs: If you were there, you may remember that the theater was never this bright. In fact is was downright dark! So how did I get this image? Here’s my recipe: Nikon D3s at ISO 5000, 1/30th sec shutter speed, f4.5, 24-70mm f2.8 lens at 32mm, 0 E.V., Manual Mode, with the camera actually resting on the projector that’s casting the image on the screen behind the speaker. In post: Lightroom 2.7 + Topaz Labs DeNoise4 + Topaz Labs Adjust4. The DeNoise4 was probably overkill, but I figured that this would be the key image of the evening, so I made sure it was as clean as it could be.
·Dani & Matt’s wedding sneak peak
June 30, 2010 by Brad ·
Dani & Matt’s wedding was SO MUCH FUN! I delivered their images just this morning, so I don’t have their approval on specific images yet, but I did get permission to share a few general photos of the night. Thought I’d start off with this one, which sums up the great time everyone (including me) had at the reception. My thanks to Journey, the tv show Glee, and the DJ from StarzEntertainment.
…somewhere in the niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!
·Photography 101 Seminar Pt 1 review
June 28, 2010 by Brad ·
Before you utter “who does this guy think he is?” see this previous blog post for an explanation of the seminar.
What a great group! They arrived enthusiastic, and it just got better. By the end of our afternoon, they actually asked for homework, and were giddy when I came up with an assignment for them! Who could ask for better?
We covered the very basics of photography, zeroing in on the exposure triangle of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. There was a little bit of knob-twiddling, but the technical camera-specific how-to stuff was kept to a minimum for now. We all operated our cameras in full Manual mode today, indoors and out, and learned about how to create an optimum exposure without and with the camera’s light meter. I was really impressed with how quickly my three students picked up on the concepts. Their excellent questions spurred some really great conversation too. What may have been the most exciting part of the day was when we dabbled in straying from optimum exposure in favor of more creative exposure. I could really sense how empowered the three felt when they began to see how they were learning to make deliberate choices in how their images would look. They took their first steps from taking photos to making photos. It was so cool to see!
We actually created very few images today. Well, to tell the truth, I guided them through making a lot of poor exposures intentionally – letting them identify the problems, and letting them correct them using their new knowledge of shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and depth of field. Sadly, most of the images were either of me or the boring backyard. Here are a few that they created as we sat around the dining room table, using the cameras in full Manual mode:
Nicki captured Johnnie here, with a low-contrast background. We didn’t talk about composition today, but Nicki took some classes in film-based photography in college. It shows, as she used the Rule of Thirds to great effect here.
Nicki intentionally overexposed these tiki mugs, using (but outsmarting) the camera’s light meter, to keep the dominant backlighting from the window from making her real subject (the faces) from being too dark.
Caralie captured me going on and on about something against a challenging very contrasty background. She used a wide aperture to throw the yard out of focus, and then really nailed the right shutter speed keep me from underexposing. She balanced the darkness on the right with the other window light from the left very nicely via good shutter speed choice. (That dent in my forehead shows well in the sidelighting here. I ran into an iron stop-sign pole at full speed when I was five. Knocked me clean out.)
Caralie created this photo of Johnnie composing an image that stayed on her camera’s card and went home with her. Hopefully I’ll have some of her homework to show next week. In this image, Caralie used a shallow depth of field (via aperture choice) to isolate Johnnie’s face and the camera’s side from the background.
We didn’t set out to make any great art with our images today. We aimed at using none of the cameras’ automatic features and coming up with a properly exposed image anyway, with some deliberate choices about how the image’s background and subject would be captured. They all did great! Can’t wait to see what happens when we start getting into the creative stuff! These three are gonna be amazing!
·Photography 101 Seminar
June 25, 2010 by Brad ·
It’s full already, but I’m too excited not to announce my first seminar on basic principles of photography, which kicks off next week. It wasn’t something I had intended to undertake, but there has been a public outcry, a literal demand from some very nice and very enthusiastic folks I know. At first it was just a series of offers to assist me / work as a protegé. What made the most sense to me was to bring everyone up to speed on what I would need them to know at the same time. That struck me as a little limited and rather self-serving, so instead it’s going to be a series on the fundamental principles of photography with a lot of hands-on application.
The plan is coming together as a once-a-week afternoon of intensive instruction and experimenting, with at least one field trip scheduled. In addition to covering the basics of the camera & flash, we’ll be studying some distinguished photographers and learning to replicate their work as skill- and vision-building exercises.
Will I open do something like this again, opening it for wider participation? Most likely, yes. I will use this first series to explore how to best combine my experience as a teacher with my calling as a photographer. I am not looking to put myself on a pedestal or paint myself as one of the “rock star” photographers who teaches other pro’s. Those are the folks I’m still paying to see and learn from. Nor am I offering marketing or business tips. I’m just trying to give nice folks in my community a better understanding of how to use their cameras, these amazing photographic tools they already have, to make them less mysterious, more fun, and more deliberately productive. (Chances are we’ll move on to digital workflow and editing to, but that may be another series.)
Hopefully, some of what we cover will turn into blog posts (or more) here. I hope to share some images of us in action and what we produce here too.
Wish us luck!
·Whoa! Where I have been?
June 25, 2010 by Brad ·
Let me tell you. First: making my first short film. I didn’t film the senator or the LtCol with the plane, but I did everything else. First time with most of the gear and all of the software. Considering all that, I’m pleased with how it came out. This first edit was aimed at the riders/participants, so it assumes that the viewer already knows a lot about the event. A second version will get underway soon, aimed at donors & sponsors, giving a much broader intro to the Ride for Semper Fi.
The Ride for Semper Fi – Riders’ Welcome from Brad Jones on Vimeo.
Second: I photographed Dani & Matt’s wedding. The editing is allllllllmost done. Highlights here soon.
Third: I went to California to crew for Team 401 – All Wheels 4 Fibromyalgia in the Race Across America (RAAM). But as soon as the prep work was all done and we hit the road, I hit the ground. I was laid out by what turned out to be a blockage in my small intestine. That meant me having to abandon as a crew member, and eventually meant spending four days in the hospital narrowly avoiding surgery. The docs never could determine why it occurred.
Then, I was off to Indianapolis to photograph Patty & Bob’s wedding. It was a great trip, worthy of its own blog entry. I hope to get down to editing that one in the next couple of days. Great trip. Great couple. Great 1939 Caddy limo that took them from the gardens to the boat slip where they embarked for an aquatic arrival at the reception!
So, now I’m back, recovering, editing, and getting back into the swing of things.
More very soon, as I have new plans for the blog!
·iPhone photo of the day (Fri 5/28)
May 28, 2010 by Brad ·
Subtitle: What is the best camera?
No, it’s no wonder of artistic merit. (And no, the iPhone doesn’t actually take x-rays.) But how often does one typically run into a turtle’s radiograph on display? I was in the vet’s office for my cat Bigelow, whose photo you saw yesterday. While I waited in the exam room, there was this turtle’s x-ray.
There’s a saying*: the best camera is whichever one you happen to have with you. I certainly have more technically capable pieces of photographic equipment than my iPhone. But it’s impractical to try to be one of those photographers who takes an SLR camera with them everywhere they go. But I take my phone everywhere. And when that’s all that’s with me, it’s the best camera I’ve got.
iPhone photo
*and a book, and an app, and my hat is tipped to Chase Jarvis
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