This was an experiment in 'Painting with light'. My good friend Joe Carr http://www.joecarrphotography.com and I used flashlights to bring an otherwise completely dark scene to life by simply walking thru the scene and highlighting the areas we thought should be exposed, all the while the shutter is opened and exposing the sky. You have complete control in what elements you'd like to emphasize. It gives you the ability to really paint. We did use the tungsten feature of the camera white balance. A fun excersize to try.

Spring has finally arrived and no clearer sign than the dogwoods budding. The way they leaf out to those beautiful white flowers always amazes me, so delicate and unfortunately shortlived. Much like us!

Dessert

-- Just a grab shot at a function exhibiting trend in selective focus and tilted framing......Also added a little lighting effect vignette in Photoshop for further emphasis on the main subject. Hope your desserts are as yummy for your Holiday. Lighted with on camera flash bounced.

Magiquest

The client said it was impossible. I couldn’t resist, so proceeded to evaluate. Considering that this was done on the run among 90 other setups same day, its relatively successful. The challenge is to light a very dark room and the subjects in the foreground, yet still retain the image on the highly reflective movie screen. Previously they have inserted an image over the white screen in post. I simply bounced the light off the wall behind me therefore eliminating direct light on the screen. And since light intensity falls off as the square of the distance to the subject, there was not enough light to reach the screen which was 20 feet from the light source. The foreground however was illuminated enough for the shot. The other challenge was the movie itself, trying to stop the action with a slow shutter speed and yet retain the depth of field required to keep everything in focus. By increasing the ISO I was able to shoot at 1/8 of a second @f8, hand held BTW and maintain a balance that worked reasonably well. The client loved the results and we moved on.

Cecil Story

As sometimes happens, while searching for one thing you find a gem you've forgotten. Its a Christmas theme, but need to share it now. I typically photograph the Brandon family for their Christmas card each year, this was sometime ago with film. Using umbrellas and Elinchroms. The real challenge was expressions, so with five children, positioned them appropriately and let Cecil work his magic by simply reading The Christmas Story. This portrait has a nice feel about, notice the pyramid posing and the directional light.

New HDR

As I've noted previously, night shots look best at twilight. And the window of opportunity for balance of twilight and artificial light can sometimes be just 15 minutes. HDR (high dynamic range) has changed that scenario, in that now you have the contrast control to expand or contract your highlight to shadow ratio. My good friend Joe@ joecarrphotography.com convinced me to update my Photomatix for even more control in such instances and It now gives you options previously unavailable. Here's a couple results that give a wide range of exposure that could not be captured in a single frame.To make this more of a challenge the hotel shot was previously done on film with a full frame camera, the new D300 is Not full frame and the vantage point required a mini panorama merge to encompass the whole property, even with a 12 mm wideangle lens. note, you can now click the image directly to enlarge!

Mike and music

Mike
Originally uploaded by Michael Slear

A friend is cutting an album locally, and asked me to document. So was experimenting with snooted speed lights in the sound studio and loved the feel of this image. It really projects the mood of the moment.