I Found the Light! (was it lost?)
I have heard so many photographers say, “there’s not enough light here for a shot.” WRONG! Even on the darkest of nights light is everywhere. Now is there enough light for a short exposure of 1/60th second or less? (That is about the limit of a hand held shot even with VR (vibration reduction) lenses give or take a bit.) But what about longer exposures?
In my last post I showed you some longer than average exposures of ¼ of a second and a full 1 second. But what if you want to shoot in the dark? Well for starters, you have to try to get into 100% darkness and that will require some effort as you will see below. In the first shot, I could barely see my hand in front of my face, but there was light there!
Hit the link to see how I found the light! (It was behind the sofa the whole time!) Continue reading
Go with the Feeling
Sometimes you get everything to work just right. I have spent many a shoot trying to get the lighting to work in a way that shows my subject in the way I envisioned when planning the shoot. Other times I go with just a hint of an idea. It’s usually the latter that works out best. At least for me.
I have spent days planning a shoot, getting all the equipment ready, making sure that everything works properly . It’s those times that I load up damn near the entire studio and pack it in the car. Still I’ll be missing the one reflector or lens or whatever I need and the shoot goes well, but not as well as I want it too. Other times I just go with a basic idea or feeling and BANG! I get the shot I wanted and more.
Jim, the man in this shot was one of those ‘go with the feeling’ times. We spent an entire day at 3 different locations. This shot was from the first location.
Click the link for more Continue reading
Is Photograpghy Art?
What is photography? Many say it is taking a picture, capturing a moment in time or creating an image. All of the images you see, whether made with a still camera, movie camera or even the images you see with your own eyes, are just reflections of light captured on a light sensitive surface. Even the computer screen you are looking at right now is just a bunch of different lights cast in patterns that create shapes, but still just light. Photography is all of these things but at its most basic, photography is just the capturing of light. It is that simple… or is it?
Photography without light is black, or the absence of light. So what is it about photography that captures our imaginations? Every time you take a photograph you are trying to capture the emotion of the moment whatever that emotion happens to be. But how many times have you been disappointed because it didn’t have the same ‘mood’ or feeling as when you were there?
Photo Albums or YouTube.com
Once you have chosen a camera and you start shooting, over time you are going to build a body of work. Now that most images are digital we don’t tend to pull out old albums or boxes of pictures like we used to. When I was a kid my sister or I would see an album under the side tables by the sofa and one of us would pull out the album. Our parents would sit next to us and point out how cute we were when we were still in a diaper or worse, when we had been photographed naked as a baby. No bear skin rugs at my house…
Now that everything is digital, the box or album of pictures isn’t under the table or in the drawer anymore. Now they are on our computers (and hopefully backed up somewhere). So what do we do to encourage ourselves to pull those images out and look at them?
Click on the link below to see what I do with them
