Zeiss 35, Meet Zeiss 85

If you like smooth, sexy, creamy, rich bokeh (and hell, who doesn’t) then you really need to look into some good glass.

Bokeh, from the Japanese – which means “blur” or “haze”

A great camera helps, but is not necessary.  Wether your shooting from a Sony α A900, a Canon 1Ds Mark III, a Nikon D3x (or D700s/ D700x – should bring some hits to the site) or even a Nikon n60, there is a Zeiss lens for you.  Yeah, I know the story.  It’s not the gear, it’s the photographer.

Bull hockey.

There are just some things the best photographer in the world can’t do without the right gear.  And a creamy depth of field is one of them.  Sure, you can shoot a shallow depth with a crappy camera and ok lens, but you can not get milky smooth bokeh with it.  Not without photoshop, ya liar.

You don’t need to spend a fortune either – but with Zeiss glass, you really do get what you pay for.  Yes, the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 has about the best bang for the buck out there, but the bokeh is really lacking.  It isn’t bad, mind you.  But it isn’t as sexy as Kate Beckinsale in tight leather.  (See, Zeiss is just that).

Damn, I sound like a product ad.  I wanted to talk about bokeh, but I got all derailed when I mentioned Kate.  I need to get back to this later!

Tagging Photos - Be Creative - But Be Honest

If you are maniacal egocentric shooter and sheerly enjoy having people gawk at your photos to give you words of commendation and love, then smart tagging is a skill you really need to develop to feed your Ego.  Proper tagging will get your proper hits.  There are a mind boggling 60,000,000 sites out there with information on how to do this properly, so I am not re-inventing the wheel here.  Just adding my 2 cents to the topic.

I ran a test with the above photo on Flickr this week.  Among the tags, I added “sexy,” “naked” and “porn” as a play on words for this lens.  (I am also adding those tags to this blog to see what traffic is driven here).  I got over 100 hits in the first few minutes of posting the image.  Triple what I usually get in the first few hours! Sure, I got some pissed off people who were expecting to see Danica McKellar from The Wonder Years who just did a half naked photo-shoot with Maxim, but I also got the people that were searching on the legit words like “Nikon” “85mm” “portrait” and “lens” to stop by.

These are the guys I want to check out my work, leave comments on my stream and possible begin to follow me.  The ones that got here under false pretenses are not going to leave any constructive criticism – other than perhaps a few choice words about my mother.

By using proper tagging, you are making it easy for people to find your work.  You are making Google index your photos properly.  You are not being a pain in the ass.

For those that got here on my misleading tags, I apologize.  It was just to prove a point.  But I did give you links to the Maxim spread above!

Natural Light Shooting

To make shooting even more confusing for me (while starting to learn strobist shooting at the same time) is shooting in natural lighting.  There are so many varieties of natural light – set by time of day, overcast sky, rain, shadows or what have you.  So, I will begin to post my experiments into natural light to see what kind of affect it has on my shooting.

Bright Daylight

It’s funny – but some people think shooting the bright sun is the best time to take photos.  It’s actually the worst for portraits.    Without the help of flash (yes, flash in bright in daylight) or reflectors, bright daytime sun casts hard shadows and can easily over-expose skin, wash out skies, etc.  But sometimes you just can’t avoid shooting in the bright sun.

The photo above was taken with the sun high in the sky with no clouds and no shade.  But the moment was perfect, so I quickly adjusted the exposure and aperture to get the skin somewhat balanced.  But as you can see, the shadows are very hard.  To soften this more, the use of a reflector to the bottom right of the model would have reduced all the shadows and dark spots.  Sadly, I didn’t have one with me, but the shot worked.

Rainy Day = Soft Shadows

Overcast / Rain

These days provide some exceptional lighting for portraits.  Better than you can do with flash and diffusers – and best of all, free. This shot to the right was taken on a rainy afternoon – at about the same time of day as the one at the top.  But notice that the rain and clouds diffused the shadows to almost non-existent.  There was no flash or reflector here – just the naturally diffused sunlight.

The Magic Hour

The best natural light (in my book) is dusk.  Why not dawn?  Too damned early in the morning.  But dusk sunlight is very diffused – and best of all – very golden.  I am hoping to get some good examples of that up on my stream soon.  I thought I had some to show for examples, but sadly I don’t.  The ones I have taken at sunset seem to be B&W for some reason.  Maybe I’ll get my daughter out tomorrow to try again at dusk.  I’ll update this post when I do.

Saint Patrick's - Poster

Trying something new now – rather than just posting photos to my pro site for printing and framing, I thought, why not try shooting them to be printed as posters? So, I have a few examples out there now and want to see if it catches on at all. I am not looking to get rich with this latest scheme – just hoping to cover the cost of the SmugMug website that is hosting the images.

Feedback

So far, I have had a lot of positive feed back on this photo on both my Flickr account and my raylarose.com account.  (The only version for sale is on the raylarose.com site – the one on Flickr is for just looking at!)  But if you can leave feedback here or there, I’d really appreciate it.

To check it out, I am thinking of printing this as a 30″ poster and framing it to replace my  Ansel Adams shot of the Snake River and Grand Teton’s over my fireplace.

Yeah, good for the ego!  Also will server as my reminder to why I want the D700 or 700s.  If the phantom thing ever hits the street.

Finding the Target

My first step,though, is getting the word out that this shot can be purchased.  Not only out, but out to the right people.  I need to find my target – those with ties to New York City and the Cathedral there.  Not sure how I want to tackle that yet, but is something I need to figure out.  Anything you can give in way of advise is greatly appreciated.

Getting the Shot

I covered this in a previous post.  This is that same photo, brought into Black and White and some contrast adjusted to bring out the lights and darks just right.  Really, just played with the curves until it was damned sexy.  Then I reset the canvas and added a little text to the bottom.  That was all!

Well, gotta go look at my bank account and cry now… no closer to my 700!

Continuing my quest for the D700 – I decided I need to start peddling my photos.  A photo-friend of mine suggested I try a pro account on SmugMug.com, which I am now doing.  As I said before, a camera isn’t going to just fall onto my lap, so I need to be proactive.  It’s not a huge step, but it is a step in the right direction.  Every little dime I can make will really help with this quest.

I have not personalized the domain yet, but will most likely come up with something canned, like Raymond Larose Photography.  I may jump back on my URL of lenscrack – though I don’t know if that is very commercial.

So, time to do your part and check out the new smug mug page I set up and give me any and all feedback that you can!

• Nikon D700 12.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)
• Nikon MB-D10 Multi Power Battery Pack
• Crucial 8Gb Lexar Media Professional Udma 300X Compactflash (x2)
• Nikon EN-EL3e Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery

The current list has a lofty pricetag of $2,756.26. Yes, quite the chunk of change – but so worth it in my estimate.  Planning to take this up professionally, I want to have these things in place.  From there, I can start adding studio equipment like reflectors, umbrellas, stands… it goes on.

Saving the Cash

I am trying to also put together some game plans for getting the money.  I’ve resigned to the fact that I do not have a Faery Godmother that is willing to wish me the camera and gear.  Fine.  I need to earn this the old fashioned way.

First, a place to hold the money.  I’ve created an account to filter off money – kind of a rainy day jar to hold my savings.  I started off with an ING account – but I found out they close it when you have no activity.  And I can’t always add to it, so I have created a separate bank account to hold my funds.

Now, I need to raise money to place in here.  I’ve had a couple gallery showings, but I haven’t made enough yet to cover the cost of the frames and mattes.  I need to get more public.

I’ve agreed to two weddings this summer.  As they are my first, I am doing them as gifts – to get me a portfolio to hopefully start branching out.  I don’t want to do wedding photography at this point – for the reasons I mentioned before.  But would love to do engagement photos and family shots to bring in cash.

Also, my passion is nature.  I love shooting nature.  So I also have the lofty goals of getting into magazines.  I’ve been in a couple so far, but payment has only been free subscriptions.  One magazine that pays well is Yankee Magazine.  It’s local – yet world-wide in publication.  I’ve sent an inquiry to their editor and am hoping with persistence, I can get some assignments.

Aside from that, my other big hope now is a large promotion.  Far fetched?  No.  Though I am currently living on a teacher’s salary, I’ve applied for the Director of Technology position in my district.  Quite a bump in pay.  If I get that, my reward will be the D700 and all the accouterments.

Close, But No Cigar

Got a price-alert from Amazon saying the price of the D700 dropped $0.92!!!  My wife said, “Forget it.”  Damnit.

Will post more on my progress with the quest as it develops.

Subtlety in HDR

As I learn the process of HDR in a more pure form, I am learning that keeping it simple works much better for me than going over the top.  There is a time and place for going over the top in HDR and I have really attacked it to some massive extremes in the past – where the image does not resemble the original in the least.  But like I said in my last post, I am now headed down a road of realism in HDR – something new for me this week.  So, as I grow with this, I will continue to share my experiences with you.

Like I explained in my previous post, controlling the light is a very important part of getting three good exposures of one scene.    You really need to choose a time of day with soft light.  Yes, you know the magic times of dusk and dawn.  But the rule of thumb is there for a reason.

Having the sun low in the horizon is the trick for me right now.  Like my friend D_A_N told me, you don’t need filters to get a perfect sunset.  Just patience and the right lighting.  The shot was taken at 4:21pm, just 6 minutes past sunset.  So I wouldn’t have to worry about exposure times, I set the camera to AP and I went with a -1 1/3, 0 and +1 1/3 exposures at f/11 to grab some different shades in my blend.  Also, I chose an angle nice and close to the ground having the wind-swept snow taking the lower 2/3 of the frame while the pastel sky took the remaining real estate.

I also was striving to have the wind-swept snow take up a wide swath (that’s a word, right?) of the lower frame – leading your eyes into the sunset.  I feel it came out pretty balanced!  There wasn’t much I needed to do to the three exposures.  Did the blending in Photomatix Pro, then a touch of sharpening to crisp up the lines in Photoshop CS4.

With that touch of work, I was quite pleased with the light in this shot – and I feel it isn’t an obvious HDR image.  The light was magical – unlike tonights…

I went down to the lake tonight with a much different sky – hoping to get some dramatically different shots with the moody hanging clouds.  Granted, they were puffy, but not exciting.  The sunset yielded no pinks and the sky gave off a dull gray.  Even with the HDR, it’s not sexy.  Like they say, you can put lipstick on a pig… ugh.  I may post them later on so you can see what I mean.  But it wasn’t the right lighting conditions – even though I loved the reflections off the lake ice.

3-exposure HDR Blend

I’ve decided it is time that I combine all my various forms of blogs into one to talk about my true passion – that being photography.  I figured I could go into further detail about my photos, how I created them, and share the details and tips for those starting out like me.  I’ll begin with this shot taken at Massabesic Lake in Auburn, NH a couple days ago, and the tools that were used to put this all together.

The Equipment

• Nikon D80
• Sigma 10-20mm EX
• Tripod

The Location

Massabesic Lake is one of my favorite locations to shoot.  No matter how many times I go to this location, the scenery always seems to change.  Be it a sunset with clouds licking the horizon, or a misty dawn, the lake always holds a magickal life.  For this shoot, I went down to Claire’s Landing on a bitter cold afternoon.  It had been sub-zero temperatures all week and I knew the ice would be forming around the edges.  At this point, about 20% of the lake was frozen.  The edge is thick enough to support my weight, but it drops off quick.  About 5 feet in, the ice crumbled beneath my weight.  Another 5 feet out and you were coming up to open water.  So, I chose a spot along the shore where you could really see the ice forming, yet have a good hint of the open water out in the middle.

The Shot

For this shot, I had my D80 mounted on my Bogen-Manfrotto 725B Digi Tripod in portrait format.  I set the bracketing to 3 exposures at -2, 0 and +2.  These were shot in RAW as follow:

-2, 0 and +2 Exposures

The Magic

The magic happens when the three photos are imported into Photomatix Pro.  This tool really does all the work for you.  I had it align all the images during the import to HDR process, then I adjusted the lighting to keep it as natural as possible.  I can’t really detail this process, as it is different for every shot.  My goal with Photomatix is to make the photo as real as possible, capturing it as close to my eye as possible.

Once I was happy with the look, I saved the file and imported it into Photoshop CS4 for some curves and color balancing, and a slight sharpening.  The colors and saturation are pretty close to what Photomatix spit out.  It truly is a wizard with HDR and DRI photography.

End Result

It does sound like quite a bit of work, but from export of my camera to export of the final product was about 5 minutes.  There are many opponents to HDR photography, but I think with the right subtle touch, you can make some stunning shots that look like they were painted by nature.

Let me know what you think!