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HDR Photography - light

Ya... Sort of like bud light or miller light. I'm trying not to over-do it. Here are some of my latest experiments in HDR photography:









What do you think?

Food Photography - scraping light

If you've read my articles on food photography, you know how I harp on "scraping light". Here's a good example of when we were setting up and the main light was jest a few inches from where it should of been. Can you tell the difference? If not, get your eyes checked ASAP... :+)


Before


After

HDR People Photography

Ive been playing more with this new HDR technique. I still have lots to learn, but I've been working at it these last two days. One nice thing about being a professional photographer, the local modeling agencies and models are glad to help you out when you need some free models for testing. They know that, in return, they'll get some nice prints for themselves...

I really have fallen in love with this technique. You can add just a little "something extra" or go hog-wild and make it look more like an illustration than a photo. So what do you think?











I think this one is my favorite.

HDR Food Photography

Today's shot

I'm back from vacation, and I had a great time while I was gone. I traveled about 2000 miles on my motorcycle. Check out my FaceBook page if you want to see my vacation shots... :+) I did Skyline Drive and all of the Blue Ridge Parkway, top to bottom.

Since I've been back, I've been playing with HDR photography, with both people and food shots. It's pretty interesting and I still have a bunch to learn. I have a couple of test people shoots lined up on Thursday and Friday, So I'll have a bunch of images to show you guys. Just for fun, I shot a food photo yesterday (just playing around) and I converted one of today's today's food photography shots into HDR. I really like this technique and think it has a lot of potential with illustrative type of projects.


Yesterday's test shot

You really have a wide range of "change" you can make to your food photography. It will take me quite some time before I master this, if ever.

You like this stuff?

Soup Photography

Yes, I'm a little strange... But it's the little things in life that make you happy...

I've photographed soup should many times before, and to tell you the truth, it's not all that tough. You just want to light from behind and try not to add too much fill light. Watch the glare and use an overhead box for downward fill. No big deal... btw - there were no models in the final shot.

The tough part about this shot was the lighting I had to do for the damn pot! I thought about trying to take a picture of the lighting setup, but I didn't have a wide enough lens for my Nikon...

I used six sheets of 4x8' foamcore around the set. The entire set area was aroung 18' x 18'. It was huge! Chrome is a tough thing to shoot and it's something that is very subjective. Luckily for me, this was a brushed chrome, or the retouchers would of made more on this project than I did... So that's food photography for you... Take care until later!

Food photography lighting setup

I'm testing out uploading posts from my iPhone, so I can upload stuff from vacation.

Here are three samples of lighting setups from my last pizza shoot. This might give you some clues as to how it was done.

It looks like the photos show up smaller then normal, maybe I can change that in the future...

As far as the pizza photography lighting goes... You can see that it's much more complicated than most people think. I've made a small breakthrough with this last shoot. With my food photography lighting, I flagged off the main light from the pizza so I could see what the mirrors were doing. I've often thought about this but never took the time to do it. On this shoot, I did it and I really like the results. With all the lights on, it's hard to see what each mirror is doing, but when the subject off from the main light, and the light still sees the mirrors, I can see much better, what the mirrors are actually doing. I was very happy with the results of this shoot.

Now that I have the iphone capable of uploading images (remotely), I'll probably make a lot more posts. (hopefully ;+)








-- Post From My iPhone

What they don't teach in Photography school...

I've been a busy little bee, writing away, but it just hasn't been here... :+) Here are a couple of posts from my other web page that you might find interesting... They're more additions to "what they don't teach in photography school". It's more basic photography / professional photography career information. Hey! Anyone out there on facebook? I just rediscovered it after a few years. Back then, I thought it was only for kids, but now, I'm really enjoying it. If you haven't give it a try.

Well. I have to pack now for a two-day location job in Ohio. I'll post some pictures while I'm gone. In the mean time, check out the link above.

Ta-ta...

Food photography / self portrait

Here are some "behind the scenes" photos from Friday's shoot. I have some other stuff to share, but it will have to wait until next week. I would think that these are the best kinds of photos for people wanting to learn more about food photography...

Have a great weekend!



Hey! That's me in the back there!




Behind the scenes..

This is the shot we ended up with, without the goober behind the set.

Photography school - New articles

I’ve been busy as a bee writing. I’ve written so much that it’s too much to post here. Check out the following links if you’re interested…

What they don’t teach you in photography school (1-6)

Digital Food Photography tips (1-5)

Things they didn’t teach me in Photography School #1

What follows is a list of things that I’ve learned from experience after leaving photography school. The idea to create this list is not mine, but I wanted to start my own, thinking that it may prove useful to some of the people that visit here. If nothing else, it will help fill in the gaps when I have nothing else interesting to talk about. So I’ll make posts from time to time adding new things they didn’t teach me in photography school.

1. Success in professional photography is as much about marketing as it is about photography. When an Art Director or a VP or Marketing finds that they need the services of a professional photographer, they usually reach back into their memory and try to figure out which photographer they should decide to call. They usually do this based on the special needs of the project verses the particular talents the individual photographer. Some projects are very complicated or extremely important and require a very specific style. Other projects are less important; there maybe a smaller budget, or the shots my not require a particular style. Either way, the photography buyer make’s their decision based on all kinds of information. The key point here is the word “information”. If the photography buyer doesn’t have your information, or doesn’t know who you are or what you do well, then the chance of you getting the job is very small.

Marketing is about giving potential buyers information. They need to know what you do, what your style is, what your price range is, what you capabilities are, how difficult you are to work with, how dependable you are, what things you prefer to shoot, what you’ve shot in the past, and a whole lot more. If they don’t have this information, then it’s a whole lot harder for them to make a decision about selecting you for their project, and if they don’t know you at all, then you’re out of luck. They have to know about you to think about hiring you…

Even if you aren’t a great photographer, there are still projects out there that you would be perfect for, but unless the potential client knows about you, you’ll never get the job.

People Photography

I shoot a lot of food photography, and I really like it, but I have to admit that variety is truly the spice of life. If all I show as food, photography wouldn’t be as much fun as it is. I also like to photograph people. Shooting for colleges is fun because you get to go to new places and interact with the future of America. Here are some images that I like, that I’ve done for a college not that long ago.

What’s fun for me about this type of photography is that it’s very different than what I usually do. With food photography, I usually “create” the photo and in school photography, I need to “find” the photo. Usually, there’s an idea that I’m assigned to illustrate or a department that I’m attempting to represent, but besides being pointed in a direction, there’s a lot of freedom in what ends up in front of my camera. I think what makes me good / different, is that I tent to find and enhance, rather than just capture. I'm used to abusing the "truth in advertising" rule... :+)

Food photography for Kings

Food Photography again… Actually the pancake shot was lit like I normally light pizza. It was sort of an interesting discovery on my part. Basically, I lit the shadow side with mirrors and three different areas, alternating: light, dark, light, dark. It’s subtle, but affective.



The pulled pork sandwich shot worked out really well, I thought. What I like most is the texture across the sides of the bread, especially the shadow side.



I was a little disappointed with this chicken shot. Actually, it’s the cauliflower I think looks a little texture-less. But it was…. Ya just can’t put texture where it isn’t… I know, I’ve tired. The client wouldn’t let us switch it out with fresh, but I understand his concern. There is such thing as “truth in advertising”. You do the best you can with what you have…



I like this chicken shot. The only thing that bugs me is the fact that I think we lifted the rear end of the breast a bit too far. It looks a little unnatural to me.



I like this fish shot too. Nice texture in the rice and nice shape on the veggies.



All in all, not a bad day’s shoot. What do you guys think?

Pizza Photography

Shooting pizzas again. Sorry, but I''ve had a lot on my plate lately :+) and haven't been able to post as many things as I would have liked to. Here are three examples of outlined pizza photography. I'm pretty happy with the results. I've refined my technique a little this time around. I try to improve things a little on every shoot. (a lot, if I can) I've added a couple more mirrors, probably totaling 8 or 9. To create as much depth as possible, it's important not to "over-fill" and to let the darks go dark, but not too dark.... It's an accuired taste and technique. What I'm getting at is... you can light too much and it''s the darks that make the difference. Light, dark, light, dark... all the time scrapping the light as I go. That's how I light the crust. The backgournd should give you some clues about how this is lit.

Most of you guys have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, do you? Claudia does.... :+)

Portraits with a sb 800

I finally finished the portrait project I've been working on. I took this "budget" job so that I could try out some techniques I wanted to work on. The budget was so low that I couldn't afford an assistant and therefore I needed to get the equipment level WAY down. So far down, that I could get everything except the light stands, into one pelican case. Since I'm historically a studio photographer that went on location shoots with most of his studio, I wanted to learn how the "other half" lived. That meant that I had to come up with a lighting kit made out of "on-camera" flashes. I first started out with three heads and then cut it down to three, and usually ended up using just one. I found that the key to working like this is to look for locations that worked for the composition AND the lighting. I learned quite a bit...



This was shot with a SB 800 on an umbrella (shot with 80-200 f2.8 on my Nikon D3)



Shhot with an SB 8000 on a large umbrella (shot with 80-200 f2.8)



Shot with an SB 800 with a large umbrella

I found that one of the hardest things to do was to keep the umbrella, head and stand from blowing over in the wind. It's hard to justify taking sand bags when you're attempting to fly as light as possible.... (shot with 28-70 f2.8)



This was shot available light only. Not too often it works out this way, but the light in this room was really nice. (28-70 mm 2.8 zoom)



This was shot with the SB 800 insde a medium box using my 85 1.4 lens

Mitchell's Fish Market shootf

Here are the results from a recent food shoot. I was happy with the results. We tried to keep the backgrounds simple.

Heinz Soups

Okay... I've been gone for a while. No excuses, I just didn't have anything exciting to share. I did a job for Del Monte where I basically poured out the contents of their cans in a bowl and then did the same with their competitor's cans of food. That way they could compare what the consumer saw and not what the food stylist could create. I guess it was valuable to the company, but it was pretty boring to shoot. And then I had a bunch of environmental portraits, which wasn't too bad. I did get a few good shots out of that, but I never got around to posting them. Maybe later...

The shoot today was for Heinz soups. The tough part about this job was trying to match the lighting of some other photographer. That's a hard thing to do, but at the the same time, something that's very educational. There's a guy here in Pittsburgh that's a really good shooter, but his technique is very different than mine. Today, I learned a lot about how he does what he does. I had to imitate it. You'd be surprised at how much you can learn when you have to imitate another photographer's style. The good thing is that you can take what you want from what you've learned and then ignore the rest. Back when I was teaching at the Art Institute, I would suggest that my students copy, as exactly as they could, a photo they liked. Some people thought that this was a little unorthodox, but I thought (and still think) that it's a great way to learn. Sure, you can't continue to copy all your life, but it's a great way to figure out different techniques.

Gotta go. Tomorrow, Mitchell's Fish market! I love the "shootie bootie" from those shoots!

:+)