Monday, August 30, 2010

Portrait of little girl.

I photographed this 2 year old girl a couple weeks ago and got a nice series of expressive shots. The setting was outside on a lawn and the sky was overcast. This gave us soft, even light. She was sitting on the grass and we had a toy next to her to keep her in one place. I shot some very nice images while lying down but usually had some part of the distant sky in the background. This made a small distraction but by sitting up I could get the background that was more uniform. The camera is still low enough to be almost at eye level.

I used the 70-200 lens at 150mm and the aperture was almost wide open to limit the depth of field.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

High-speed Maneuver; Malibu ski boat.

This is a Malibu Sunsetter VLX inboard ski boat in a high-speed turn. The driver and I were practicing a technique we want to use later this month when shooting some antique, wooden speedboats. The boat has to cross in front of the camera and the driver must turn very sharply. The image is taken during the turn when the boat is pointed directly at the camera.
This ski boat stays quite flat, even during a sharp, high-speed turn, so the image isn't as dramatic as I would like. But the boat is banking slightly, and there is air visible under the boat's left side, so one gets some sense of action. I expect the antique boats to bank more when doing this maneuver because of the different hull design. Stay tuned; we hope to try it again later this month.