This morning, we had a senior portrait shoot with Katie S. in Oakland. It was a beautiful morning for being outside, but wow was that sun ever sharp! Fortunately, with some diffuser/reflector assistance from my great assistant/wife, and the genius of Nikon’s Creative Lighting System wireless control (favorite mode: Manual flash power controlled from the camera), this beautiful girl made some awesome photographs.
I’ve finished my picks from the day, finished adjusting those, and now we’re on to retouch and final post-processing. Here are two more from the day’s take:
And, of course, the requisite action shots that Jenny likes to take of me. From these, you can get an idea of our lighting setup (sun as hair/rim light and ambient, and flash through an umbrella as fill/catch). I used the light meter to help get an idea for initial exposure values, and then ran from there. With the ability to adjust the flash settings right from the camera, I could easily tweak the fill light for each pose, then shoot in as many different angles as I wanted while the flash remained consistent. Hooray for awesomeness. I will someday get a set of radio triggers for when I need to shoot in a way that the Creative Lighting System doesn’t handle well (lots of direct sun at the wrong angle can defeat its ability to trigger the flash(es), the master flash needs to “see” the slaves, etc.). For this type of shooting, though, CLS FTW!
A few weeks ago, we took the big family vacation to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We stayed in a pair of houses at one of our favorite spots there, St. Martin’s Point. This year, we were pleased to be able to have a bunch of people with us, including Jenny’s parents and two of her sisters, and my sister Marissa and her boyfriend Jack.
The photo above is of a teacher (my Dad) doing what he does best. Here, he is teaching Jack about tripod use with video cameras. I’ve been spoiled to have a Dad like him. For as long as I can remember, he’s been teaching me stuff. He’s the one who got me interested in electronics and radio stuff, photography, sound stuff, computers, and more. He still teaches me stuff now. Before everyone and their uncle had a SLR, he recognized that I was out of options with the point-and-shoot compact that I had, and he taught me how to use his not-quite-ancient-yet Pentax SLR. It was like a whole new world opened up, and I could do things I had only read about in books. From there it was just an outward trajectory, as he taught me more and I grew more.
Now I think it’s time for me to pass-on some of what he taught me long ago. To that end, I’m going to start putting together some podcasts on SLR use and techniques. If there are specific topics that you’d like me to cover, drop me a line on here or via email and I’ll see if I can add them. In the meantime, stay tuned for an outline that will show the topics I plan to cover in the various episodes.
Here’s hoping I can be at least a little bit of the teacher that my Dad is.
