Bacon Lettuce Photo

by Joe

When it comes to this picture: I had just bought a Canon 5D Mkii and wanted to see what sort of DOF it would get with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8. As my daughter Janneke was the only one willing to pose I took a picture of her. I was very pleased with the DOF, which is quite shallow. I didn’t blur anything in post-processing.
I did tweak the colours and contrast but I suppose that’s fairly obvious. I brightened the eyes a bit as well. My wife thought I had done something with her lips as well but that wasn’t the case.
The thing I like most about this picture is the fact that it shows that Janneke has what we call “a lazy eye”. She has to wear a patch on her right eye to train her left eye on a daily basis.
I also - in a weird sort of way - like the dress she’s wearing: it’s dead ugly but Janneke and my elder daughter simply adores it.

You can see more of Steven’s Photos here. This is a great example of a portrait, the lighting, colors, and composition. Notice how the vignette draws the viewers eyes to the subject? Very Nice.

by Joe

For me, photography is about a moment. I love landscape photography for its unpredictable nature. You can go to the same place again and again and always get different results. Sometimes you get a great scene and don’t capture it the way you wanted. Other times, everything comes together just perfectly. On this particular morning, I awoke, stuck my head out and looked at the still dark sky…clear sky…the enemy of the landscape photographer. I almost gave up and returned to bed, but I thought I should go and enjoy the sunrise anyway.

The clouds did come in a little later as I was driving to the jetty. I shot a few just as the sun was rising, but they didn’t have what I was after. Having the sun in the frame it was also very hard to get a good balanced exposure. This shot was a very conscious decision to extend the exposure time using a 10 stop B+W neutral density filter and a ND grad to balance out the sky. The sun is not far out of the frame to the right. For me this filter is worth every cent. It allowed me to get a 30 second exposure at ISO 100 with the sun well and truly up in the sky. So I managed to get this ultra long exposure for the time of day when I would have normally been getting exposures of a fraction of a second.

For me this was a great day, a reminder always to try some different things, and not take the conditions at face value. Having the filter, the tripod, the grads, the mirror lock up, the cable release, all seem like a chore initially, but after a while it is simple and quick, and the results are well worth it. I used to blend two exposures to get foreground and sky well exposed, but that is impossible to get right if you are doing ultra long exposures with clouds around water as the two won’t match with the clouds moving. My advice is to buy what you can afford and slowly build up your equipment as you can, and experiment often. If you feel like going back to bed…don’t do it…you need to be out there and practicing to get better!

Exposure: 30 seconds

f-stop: f11.0

Focal Length: 24mm

ISO: 100

Camera: Canon 5d

Lens: EF 24-105L

Editing: Lightroom 1.0

Andrew is a photographer from Perth, Australia

by Joe

This is a picture of three year old Ella. I have three sons and so I am always amazed and entertained by the personalities of little girls. at three years old, Ella already has a strong sense of style and carries a matching purse with her everywhere she goes. Since I was doing this session on Valentine’s day - I told her mom to bring some red accents - the red bow in Ella’s hair was perfect.

It was a dreary day - but for me - these days are better for portraits than bright sunny ones. I wasn’t originally planning to stop at the railroad track - we just had to cross it on the way to our planned destination - but most of my best shots are unplanned.
I just set her on the rail and let her play with rocks for a few minutes - then called her name - and this is the look i got! Lucky me.

I used a Canon 5d, 400 ISO, 100 shutter speed, and 70-200mm 2.8 lens zoomed all the way out.

Using an aperture of 2.8 gives this photo a great depth of field. What does that mean? Notice how the subject, in this case Ella, is clear and the background is out of focus. That is a great quality that helps bring attention to the image. It also looks like Jaki added a layer of noise or some texutre to the image in post processing which gives it a classic feel.