Fiddle Photography

I'm in a little jam for time tonight, but I wanted to take a minute and show you what I've been shooting today. This is a sample of the kinda stuff I was shooting, musical instruments. Sure, not the most glamorous of projects, but still beats working for a living... :+)

This is the kind of shoot where you learn about lighting. You're not free to do anything you want, lighting wise, but it's challenging and kind of fun, if you look at it that way. To tell you the truth though, I really don't like catalog photography or product very much, which is what this is... I sort of find that amusing about myself... Food photography and product photography are very similar, but I love one and less-than-like the other.

I'm working on another article. (really early stages) This one is about using depth-of-field in portraiture. I've been shooting a lot of environmental portraits lately, and I've come to a few conclusions that I wanted to share with you.

Portraits with Nikon 85mm 1.4

Okay... I'm getting a little carried away, but I figured that I needed to get some things up on the blog here so it would be worth your while visiting.


Here are three images that I did testing my new lens, my Nikon 85mm 1.4 lens. Luckily for me, my studio is in the same building as The Talent Group modeling agency, so whenever I need to models to test with, I just give a call down stairs and ask for a specific type of model and wa-la, they appear... Of course, I have to give the models a few images, but it's a good deal for me and a good deal for the models too.

These three gentleman were chosen for their unique looks. I wanted models that I thought would match the effect I was attempting to create. Maybe hot young models would look good with this special effect, maybe they wouldn't, I won't know until I try, but I figured that older / interesting guys would work out, and they did.


So what do you think? Check out that depth of field. That is tight! It's real easy to miss, so if you end up getting this lens, you have to be really careful of what you're doing. I thought that maybe I'd take these images around to show some agencies an effect that they might want to use on some project in the near future.


Comments welcome...

Healthcare Photography with an 85mm 1.4 lens

I do probably 75-80% food photography, so when another type of photographic opportunity comes along, I often jump at it. Here’s an image from this morning’s shoot. It’s a simple portrait of an Doc in an operating room. I did the shoot with a new lens of mine. It’s a 85mm f 1.4 Nikon Lens. I simply love this lens. If you shoot wide open, you not only get another two stops of speed, but you get an amazingly shallow depth of field. In the next day or two, I’ll post some other shots that I’ve done with this lens. With this lens, you can focus on the person’s eye, and the eyelash will be out of focus. You REALLY have to watch yourself. It’s real easy to blow focus!

The effect that this lens has is pretty amazing though. Before I sprung for this lens, I’d use an 80-200mm 2.8, shot wide open to get this type of feel. But to get that feel, you’d need lots of space between you and the subject in order to shoot at 200mm. With this lens, you only need a little distance.

Another thing I did with this photo is pull back the saturation. (in Photoshop) After that, I tweaked the hew a bit until I got something I liked. The shot looked fine without the tweak, but I like this more. Let's see what the client likes...

Sure, I still take along the 80-200 and all my other lens, but I really do love this new lens. I'll post some mire images, maybe tomorrow.

Welcome to the Professional Photography 101 Blog

Welcome to the Professional Photography 101 Blog. You may be familiar with my food photography blog, but if you’re not, you can check it out at http://www.foodportfolio.com/blog. The food photography blog isn’t really a blog, just as the http://www.professionalphotography101.com site isn’t either. Both sites are a collection of articles I’ve written about different aspects of professional Photography.

This blog is intended to be a REAL blog or a collection of thoughts and ideas related to my life as a professional photographer. I plan on including different images and descriptions of those images, on a day-by-day or week-by-week basis, depending on the time available. You may want to “follow” the blog to see what I’ve been up to. I’ll try to target the posts toward up-and-coming professional photographers. Feel free to comment or contact me with any questions you may have.

Thanks

Michael Ray