Tag Archives: lighting

Photography

Wild Kingdom in the Phun Kitchen

5 Comments

profile_spider

spider_closeupI love it when I don’t have to leave the house and still get to use my camera.

I had been watching this spider make its web near my kitchen sink but there was never any activity.

I had watched for the past week as the web got bigger and bigger each day.

Finally I had a recognizable respectable web.

Today the luck of the housefly I had been hunting for days ran out.

I snagged him with my flyswatter and he landed dazed onto the web.

It only took about 5 minutes before he was bundled up and probably digested. Continue reading Wild Kingdom in the Phun Kitchen →

Photography, Tutorials

Using On-camera Flash

parra

Fill-flash to the rescue–Taken in San Bernardino during a citywide tribute for  Winter Olympian Derek Parra, this picture would have been a disaster given the high noon lighting, baseball cap on my subject’s face. My flash was not on-camera. I held my flash on its extension sync cord with my left hand and aimed downwards. Had it been on-camera, the foreground subjects would have been over-exposed. Compare this against the vertical picture after the jump.

In my earlier post “More Beginning Photographer Mistakes” I mentioned how not having an understanding of flash can be a source of problems. (See #15 in that post)

Camera manufacturers for prosumer models often include a built-in flash for convenience.

The high end professional models don’t feature such built-in/pop-up flashes because Continue reading Using On-camera Flash →

Tutorials

Available Light Portraits

fairmount_main

Side Lit–Delia lit by strong sidelighting coming off of Lake Evans. The fill light is provided by a gold reflector on the right. Fill flash would have also worked but it would have required a Canon Speedlite capable of high sync speed. Exposure was ISO 100 1/350 sec @ f4 with a 50 mm lens.

Contrast can be friend or foe.

The more adept you are at controlling it, the better your pictures look.

In a portrait, if there’s too little contrast, the colors may look muted. Skin tones look drab.

Too much? You have to decide where in the scene you want to retain the detail.

If this all sounds alien to you, the beginner, it’s actually a real-world lesson on exposure. Continue reading Available Light Portraits →

Photography

Life after photojournalism & a yacht wedding

10 Comments

gary_vianey1Tomorrow will be 5 years to the day I gave my 2-week notice to my former employer, the newspaper.

Last November they offered a buyout to all its employees.

Some took the offer, others thought they’re bullet-proof, indispensable and safe.

I figured out had I stayed on I would have been eligible to $50K minus Uncle Sam’s cut.

I kicked myself, of course, for not staying on.

Actually it wasn’t that hard a kick I gave myself.

In the time I left, I easily made that much.

The silver lining in this is: I learned never to be complacent again especially not in today’s job market.

Vianey and Gary dance during their reception on board the Dandeanna.

Continue reading Life after photojournalism & a yacht wedding →