Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

The image is part of a series called watch. Sometimes you get a vague suspicion that you’re being observed, and I was/am trying to relay that feeling with this series. It’s not particularly strong on its own this way, but I’m planning to have the rest of the series finished sometime this summer.

As for the technical aspects, it was fairly quick and dirty. I used 2 Nikon SB800 speedlights triggered via CLS. One was set on the ground behind the crate and aimed through the handles to cast the shadows. It was set to 1/4 and had a florescent gel on it. The second light was fired into a wall at camera left about chest level at [I think] 1/64 power and had an amber gel. I used a Nikon D300 and 28mm f2.8 prime - the exposure was 1/250th at f8 to kill ambient light and provide the depth of field I wanted. Also, shot in 14-bit to retain better colour tonality and shadow detail.
For processing, I did minor curves and white-balance adjustments in Adobe Lightroom 2, exported as a 16-bit TIFF. Then, some selective dodging to the tv and legs, and colour balance adjustments in Photoshop CS3.

Lighting, whether natural or artificial, is the most important element of photography. Lighting can create the mood and add an element of emotion to your images. This is a perfect image to display the eerie feeling created by just adding some lighting.

Make sure to check out Levi’s blog to see what else he’s up to. Also his awesome Royksopp post.

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by Joe

If I tell you how this shot evolved, you will probably laugh at me. It goes something like this: as I walking my son to school, I noticed this stick in a neighbor’s yard. I immediately thought, “Hmm. I could use that stick.” I decided to pick it up on the way back home. After I dropped the boy at school, I decided to see if I could find anything in the charity shops that would go with …. a stick. This dress was hanging there, in my size, and cheap enough to buy with the change I’d grabbed on my way out the door. So. We have a stick and we have a dress and we have…absolutely nothing else. I let my mind wander on the bus back home and as so often happens, inspiration struck out of nowhere.

I was going for a civilized wildness with this shot. It took about 15 takes to get the look I was attempting to capture - the kind of look you might see on the face of a woman who has integrated herself into polite society but remains shrouded in a cloak of the wild wood that spawned her.

I shoot in natural light exclusively - in this case, it was the window the my left. My settings were f/2.8 and ISO200 with a Sigma 30mm 1.4 lens. I work with textures a lot, and there are several overlayed here to give the wall behind me some texture, and add to the overall organic feel of the image. This would be an easy PP technique to replicate as it only includes a basic sharpening, color balance, texture overlay, and vignette.

What caught my eye with this shot is the “dark” feel of it. The vignetting and texture overlay give it that grunge feel while the model has this eerie look about her.

Cassie has a great imagination with her work. Make sure to look at some of her other photos.
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by Joe

Technically the shot is very simple; it’s taken with a Canon EOS 40d and a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro.
No flash was used: light enters from the door you can see reflected in the left side of the sphere.
These are specs:
shutter: 1/40s
aperture: f/5.0
ISO: 800
I used an high ISO setting in order to shot with a decent shutter speed to avoid motion blur.

There’s nothing that inspired me the shot, even if there is a famous Escher’s work with the same subject (a sphere in the hand). I think that every photographer, with a reflecting sphere in the hand, think about taking
a self portrait.
The particularity of my shot is the murder.
Well… I’m not new of this kind of “crazy” photos
It’s simple: sometimes I need to break with tradition
Ah: yes, I survived!

P.S. the sphere is a boading ball

Thank you Andrea for sharing your work with us. What caught my eye was the simple fact that your shot was not traditional. Check our some other shots Andrea took.

Some thing that was hard for me when taking photos was adjusting my ISO so that my shots weren’t blurred. I just didn’t want any grain in my images. I wanted them to be perfect, however, they would often times come out blurry because I didn’t have a fast enough shutter speed. So I traded blurry photos instead of clear photos with some grain. So learn from my mistake, capture the shot, even if it means that it is going to be a little grainy. Grainy photos are not the end of the world.

Phew, went on a little rant their didn’t I?

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by Joe

Technically the shot is very simple; it’s taken with a Canon EOS 40d and a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro.
No flash was used: light enters from the door you can see reflected in the left side of the sphere.
These are specs:
shutter: 1/40s
aperture: f/5.0
ISO: 800
I used an high ISO setting in order to shot with a decent shutter speed to avoid motion blur.

There’s nothing that inspired me the shot, even if there is a famous Escher’s work with the same subject (a sphere in the hand). I think that every photographer, with a reflecting sphere in the hand, think about taking
a self portrait.
The particularity of my shot is the murder.
Well… I’m not new of this kind of “crazy” photos
It’s simple: sometimes I need to break with tradition
Ah: yes, I survived!

P.S. the sphere is a boading ball

Thank you Andrea for sharing your work with us. What caught my eye was the simple fact that your shot was not traditional. Check our some other shots Andrea took.

Some thing that was hard for me when taking photos was adjusting my ISO so that my shots weren’t blurred. I just didn’t want any grain in my images. I wanted them to be perfect, however, they would often times come out blurry because I didn’t have a fast enough shutter speed. So I traded blurry photos instead of clear photos with some grain. So learn from my mistake, capture the shot, even if it means that it is going to be a little grainy. Grainy photos are not the end of the world.

Phew, went on a little rant their didn’t I?

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by Joe

The New Jersey shore is one of my favorite subjects. Intending to shoot something a little different last week, I’d headed to Island Beach State Park, armed only with my Lensbaby Composer mounted on my Nikon D200, hoping to get some dreamily blurry seascapes. The first thing I saw when kicked off my shoes was this sign, posted at the entrance to the public beach and pointing directly at the sea. My first shot of the day is usually a throw-away — a sort of warm-up to the rest of the shoot — but I knew this one would be a keeper. The urge to shoot it was undeniable. It was bizarre, ironic, and cinematically irresistible.

I shot this in color and cropped and converted it to black and white in PS CS3. I cropped the image because the f/5.6 aperture ring I was using on my Lensbaby blurred the seagrass on the right side of the frame so dramatically that it detracted from the sign. And I converted to black and white because the “happy” mood evoked by the deep blue sky and vivid green grass made the sign seem more cute than odd. As an added bonus, when I pumped up the blue filter in the bw conversion process, the sky grew more dramatic and “smoky.”

If you ever go this beach, be sure to check out the sign on the other side of this dune: “NO BARE FEET.”

No kidding.

I love this photo for a couple reasons.

The first being its just a great black and white, the contrast is perfect. I think that is what makes a black and white so dramatic is the amount of contrast. If you simply just take a digital image and drop the saturation it’s still not the same. If you look at black and white photos from a roll of film the contrast tends to be deeper. However, that is my opinion and is subjective.

The second being the tilt shift effect. It adds this mystical feel to the photo along with the black and white and dark clouds that give it this ominous feel.

I don’t know if I would have stopped to look at this photo if it were in color. Not everything is better in color.

Check out more of Pam’s work on her website.

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by Joe

The photo is fairly simple and natural. All done in natural lighting outdoors at around the “golden hour” (5pm to sunset). I used my 85mm 1.8 lens to capture the huge depth in the photo. Editing is simple as well. Some color curve adjustments and a small lighting adjustment in the top right to accentuate the light in the top right.

When shooting in “golden hour” light it gives the photo a sense of warmth, that warmth is carried over into an emotion. If you were to add a blue tint to a photo it would make the photo seem more cold. There are times when a warm feel is better, in this instance a portrait. Other times a colder feel is more appropriate, for example, a scenery shot of a snow filled landscape.

The changes in color are the changes in “white balance.” You can adjust the white balance on your camera to convey different emotions with your photo.

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by Joe

I love taking picture of sunset, cloud formation and dramatic sky. I was in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic on vacation when I took this shot. I always wanted to photograph silhouetted palm tree against sunset.

Camera was hand held. I chose f/8.0 for aperture and pointed the camera at the sky just above the roof (the brightest spot) and locked the exposure then I recomposed and took a few shots.

Camera was in aperture priority mode at f/8.0, ISO 100, 1/1000 of a sec. 50mm focal length.
Camera: Nikon D80
Lens: Nikkor 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6G

This photo simply is amazing, the lighting, the colors, the objects. It conveys this emotion of wonder and amazement.

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by Joe

Patterns. Patterns can be so awesome. In fact, that’s what caught my eye with this photo. A stack of carrots, the color, the shadowing and lighting. It’s just interesting.

Exposure: 1/60
Aperture: f/3.8
Focal Length: 6.2 mm
ISO: 100

This photo was captured with a Panasonic DMC-TZ2

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by Joe

I took this photo with a Nikon D200 DSLR and Micro Nikkor 105/2.8 lens combo on a tripod with the lens stopped down to f/5.6 - just enough to blur the background so as to highlight the front camera, but not enough to completely blur the shape of the cameras at the back and spoil the effect of the five cameras lined up. I used a light box so as to avoid having to use the harsh light of a flash, and cropped the top and bottom slightly so the final image fitted a 4:3 format, then tweaked colour and sharpness slightly using Nikon View.

I was about to pack one of the cameras (3rd from the front in the photo) to send to the US, and my wife suggested I take a “group portrait” of it with my other Nikon rangefinders before doing so. The black Nikon SP cameras in the photo are actually quite rare (only 2,500 made) so having three in the one place at the one time was special for a Nikon rangefinder fan like myself! I think most people think of Nikon as an SLR and compact camera manufacturer, and haven’t really heard about the rangefinders, so its fun to take photos of (and with) these cool cameras to share with others.

I love film and I love the look of old film cameras. Immediately upon seeing this photo I started to drool.

Exposure: 1/4
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 105mm
ISO: 100

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by Joe

Exposure: 0.013 sec (1 / 80)
Aperture: f/2.5
Lens: 50 mm (4x lete)
Exposure: 0.00
ISO: 100

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