Thursday, May 29, 2008

Senior Prom

Senior prom season.  We took many shots yesterday during a pre-prom photo session.  Large groups of kids were posing as parents snapped off the photos.  I was able to isolate this couple after the group shots were completed.

The sunlight was very bright and the wooded area created many areas where bright light would fall on one person or parts of a person.  I found a relatively shaded area facing away from the sun and without all the other people in the background.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Holiday BBQ

Here is a traditional summer  weekend tradition:  The outside barbeque.  This image shows slabs of ribs being cooked on an outside grill during the Memorial Day holiday.

I wanted to get a close-up shot to eliminate the numerous background distractions.  This is not my typical action shot but it does show the "action" of the cook as she tends to the meat.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Off-road Jeep at dusk.

This image is a combination of two photographs shot at dusk.  The goal was to show the effect of the light bar on the Jeep so we wanted the individual lights to show clearly.  We took an exposure of f/4.5 at 1/25, ISO 800.  This gave good definition to the lights and also kept the sky dark.  We then used a shot taken at 1/6, same aperture, to get detail in front of the Jeep and on the driver.  The driver was lit separately by a flashlight mounted in an adjacent tree.  We combined both images and used some masking to bring out the best parts.
I do not make many images that are set up in advance like this one.  We posed the Jeep carefully, set the camera on a tripod and waited until most of the light had faded from the sky.  The flashlight on the driver was actually an afterthought while we were waiting.  We were fortunate to have a nearby tree that had branches suitable for holding the light with a plastic bag over the front to diffuse the beam.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Landing Mallard

This drake mallard is about to land on the water.  He is backpedaling rapidly so as to slow his airspeed.  The wingtips are slightly blurred even with a shutter speed of 1/1000.  The tail is fanned out for extra braking and the feet are coming forward.