Hawaii Panorama

I'm back! For the past few months I've been caged up in the library studying for the GMAT. It was a hard test, but it's over now and I did well! While I was studying I found some time each day to work on photos from my recent trip to Hawaii. Here is one of my favorites pics.

Check your exposures
This panorama was made by combining five separate pics. During the actual shoot, I messed up; I completely forgot to check my exposures. It was a bad move and I paid for it when I got home; I came home to find that the whole sequence was under-exposed. It took a lot of work to correct my mistakes. Here is a copy of the pano before the edits. Big difference huh?
This just goes to show how important it is the get the exposure right the first time. I spent hours with layers to make this photo look right.

Solution - Hoodman
Okay, so I dropped the ball and I paid for it. But what pissed me off even more was the fact that I brought a Hoodman Loupe with me on the trip and I didn't use it. If you haven't heard of these, check them out. They're really helpful when it's super sunny (the display on the back of most digital cameras is usually completely illegible in these conditions). With the loupe you can see everything.

I learned a bunch on this trip. First, make sure that you check your exposures. A few seconds taken to get the perfect exposure is a lot better than a few hours taken to fix a bad one. Next, if you have a loupe, use it! And lastly, Hawaii is awesome! I want to go back :(

-Morgan

First Engagement Shoot

It has been a while since I last blogged, but I've been really busy. I got my camera back from the shop and I went right back to work. My first assignment was awesome; my good friends invited me to take their engagement photos. How could I say "No"? This turned out to be a great shoot, but I'll have to admit, I've never shot an engagement session and everything was done in ad-lib. This gave all the pics a nice relaxed feel which was exactly what the couple wanted. The picture above was their first pick.

This picture was fairly simple to create. Here's what I used:

• 1 flash set to half power triggered remotely
  
• Shoot-Thru Umbrella
• 1/4 CTO gel
• Beautiful assistant

The flash was up high and to my right. It was held by my lovely girlfriend/assistant. She is great and without her help it would have been hard to make this picture. She was holding the flash up high with the umbrella attached for some time before we got the perfect shot. Kudos to her for holding it up in the air for that long (nice guns babe :) ).
Other than that I added a 1/4 CTO gel on the flash to add some warmth. Remember the light coming out of most flashes has a blue tone. This isn't the most flattering color for skin tones so be sure add that CTO.

I know Zack Arias is probably going to lynch me (if you don't know Zack, you need to check out his blog; very inspirational), but I did the slanty Mcslant slant thing that he hates so much but I think it works here. I definitely try to stay away from the Dutch Angle if I can, but there are some instances where it just works and I think this is one of them. What do you think? If you're out there Zack I'd love to hear your opinion too.

Unfortunately I think this will be one of my last blog posts for some time. I've decided to put down the camera and study for the GMAT. This is the entrance exam for business school and I'm hoping this will lead me to a great career. Wish me luck and I'll definitely post again when the test is over.
-Morgan

5D not loving life:(

Sad day. So in the middle of a recent photoshoot, my Canon 5D went black...literately. I was looking through the viewfinder and all i saw was black. I checked the lens, seemed fine, but when I took the lens off, I found that the internal mirror came off! WTF! Luckily i had my old camera as a backup body and I was able to finish the shoot, but that was horrifying to see. Well it turns out this is a common situation for Canon 5Ds. I guess the adhesive that holds the mirror onto the camera is weak and deteriorates over time. Canon said they will fix this problem at no cost, so my camera is going into the shop tomorrow. I hope all goes well. Keep your fingers crossed for me. Thanks Alex for the link. Please post if this has happened to you too and how Canon handled it. Here's the official statement from Canon:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=PgComSmModDisplayAct&fcategoryid=139&modelid=11933&keycode=2112&id=55659

MotoGP Weekend

Last weekend was pretty awesome! My girlfriend and I went to MotoGP at Laguna Seca. This was another first for me when it comes to photography and boy did I learn a lot. Okay, so I have to admit...I cheated...the photo above was photoshopped to give it the motion blur. This is actually easy to do. Just duplicate your layer and choose filter -> Blur -> Motion blur. Blur it and then add a mask to the bike and rider to make them sharp again.

Why did I use this technique? Well I couldn't get any of my pans to come out clear. These motorcycles move fast...I mean super fast and trying to pan with slow shutter speeds takes some real skill. Unfortunately none of my pans came out well so I dropped that idea and just shot at fast shutter speeds (1/1000+) to ensure that the pics were tack sharp. Here are a few more that I liked:
After the race I wasn't too stoked on my photos especially when I saw pics from the pros...Wow, they have some nice stuff! One pro in particular that made some sweet photos during that weekend was Drew Phillips. I actually wrote him an email for advice and he recommended that the next time I go out to shot to bring a 70-200mm and/or 400mm lens and shot at 1/125-1/160th for pans. I just had my walk around 28-135mm lens, so that may have been my downfall. I also could have used a pass to get closer to the action. Does anyone know a newspaper that can get me access. Any help is welcome! And thanks again Drew for all your help.

Glass Award Photo

Earlier this week one of my coworkers showed me this cool award the department received. An all glass plate engraved with this cool design. I couldn't help myself...I needed to take a picture of this thing. So here it is!

The setup - First I got a big piece of white paper roughly 3ft x 4ft long and taped it to the wall next to my desk at work. I placed the award around a foot away from the backdrop. Unfortunately I didn't have my tripod that day, but there were some big boxes around the office...ghetto tripod :). I needed to keep the camera still because I knew I couldn't light the award with just one pic (if someone knows how to do it in one pic, please let me know)...This picture is actually made from 3 different pics stitched together. Here they are:


...My bud Vasilis suggested that I use my flash really close to the glass. This worked, but it still didn't light the whole award properly. So I experimented with different flash angles and positions. In the end I chose three pics; one lighting the bottom, one for the leaves and one for the top. I used a single bare Nikon SB-28 (only $90 bucks at Samy's used) zoomed to 24mm triggered with my Skyport. I used the timer function on the camera so I could be away from the it to position the light by hand. The actual shoot was fairly easy, but the layers are what took some time...

Photoshop - Adobe Bridge CS4 makes it easy to layer multiple photos. Select the photos you want to layer and choose Tools ->Photoshop->Load Files into Photoshop Layers. In the past I would open each file individually into Photoshop and then use the move tool to stack all the files into one image. This is very tedious, but Adobe fixed this problem in the new version of Bridge CS4. Once imported, I used masks to hide the areas of each layer that I didn't want displayed...aka my arm :). DON'T DELETE stuff from your original layers, use masks...They're way better because they're non-descructive. If you masked too much, you can always bring back the content later, you can't if you use the eraser tool.

I hope this helps and if anyone knows better ways to get these results, please let me know. I'm completely self taught, so it would be good to get some advise from pros.

Santa Barbara Mission - Flashes and Layers

Last weekend I took this pic of the Santa Barbara Mission with the help of my friend Tuan. The day was perfect for a picture; a storm had just rolled through town and it cleared just around sunset...nice recipe for some moody light.

But there's a catch here... see the building? Grass? Cross? Well that stuff was lit with my flash...there were no lights on the building. Don't believe me? Well here's how I did it...

First things first:

So here's the shot with no modifications. There is no way I could get a good exposure for both the sky and the ground. I thought to myself, "why does this picture suck?"...

1)sky is too bright...no color
2)grass sucks...too dark..
3)building...dull

So how do I fix these problems?

Filters and flashes to the rescue! Forget HDR!
First, I put a Neutral Density Graduated Filter on my lens. If you have a camera, this is one of the best investments you can make if you want to shoot landscapes. Easy to use, balances the exposure and makes the colors in the sky come alive. But it's still not enough to bring out the detail in the building and the cross.

Time for flashes...With my camera on a tripod, I used two flashes with CTO filters (it's just orange plastic) on full power and this is the result I got. Wait wait, I know, the rest of the building is still dark and the grass too. So I took multiple exposures while my bud Tuan moved the flash to different positions on the building. This is one of about 7 shots to make the final image. The building, the cross and the grass in front were all lit independently...

Thank you photoshop... - With layers in Photoshop you can just take all those exposures and make them one by deleting the stuff you don't need. Also, as you can image, there are lots of people walking around considering the mission is a big tourist attraction. By taking multiple exposures I was able to take out all the people. Finally, I also boosted the contrast and made it a little brighter.

Hope this helps and this goes to show that you can use flashes for landscapes/architecture and get good results.

Studio Portraits

Studio lighting has always been intriguing to me, but I never really had the chance to work with them. Luckily my good friend Luke had access to some studio gear, so we had some fun.

Here is a photo that I did with a simple two light scenario. One huge softbox up high and another aimed at the background behind the model ...exposure was f/8 at 1/200th ISO 100


Studio lights rock!
These lights (monolights) are big in comparison to normal flashes and the size is shown in the power they put out. I hate when i have to wait...especially for small flashes. With the studio lights on the other hand, the power recycle times are so short. This allows the light to be ready quickly for the next shot so you don't miss expressions from you model.

Relax!
I find that taking pictures of people is more about getting them to relax than anything...Sure, you have to light the scene and make them look good, but if they're uncomfortable this ain't gonna happen. I like just talking to the model, reassuring them the pictures are coming out well even if I know there's something wrong. I've been reading a lot of Joe McNally's new book and even in there he explains this. Many times I'm behind the camera and I'm thinking "Do I really know what I'm doing?"..."Is this going to work?"..."oh shit!, Is this thing on?"..."lens cap idiot...take off the lens cap!"...once your internal monologue goes public it's over. They are looking to you to make them feel confident and that their pics are going to be awesome. If they relax it's easy to get some great expressions and get a glimpse of what their personality is like. Just relax and they will too...

Reflectors for the win!
I use a large gold reflector to bounce light back up at the model. Some people call this clam shell lighting; One light is directly above the camera angled down and the reflector is directly below angled up creating a "clam shell"...easy lighting technique for portraits

I hope this helps and if you want a head shot, let me know :P