With the upcoming photography teaching event and photo walk I will be teaching at Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve I decided to shoot a little before going over some of the presentation. I am without my wildlife lenses unfortunately as they are being serviced, so to landscapes it is! The skies were cloudy and a fresh painting of snow had touched the landscape. Before I even took the camera out of the car I knew I was going to shoot for HDR (High Dynamic Range.)

One thing I love about HDR is what it does to the clouds. It adds an incredible amount of drama. If you ever underexpose a shot heavily with stormy skies you will see what I mean. I am working on a tripod 90% of the time when working with HDR. You need to make sure all the images will easily overlay and line up to reduce any artifacts. The one problem too is wind. Zoomed in you can see a few branches that look like they are ghosting due to the wind. I could have not shot the image, but I felt it didn’t suffer because of it. Once I had my tripod I stopped down for a large depth of field and I usually start with no exposure compensation. In typical scenes like these a 5-stop range of light will cover my needs. I go into my cameras bracketing function and set it for a total of 5 images. A normal meter reading, -1 underexposed, -2 underexposed , +1 overexposed, +2 over exposed. Then from those images I will compile them all later in Photo Matrix Pro to get the image I desire. There are a ton of sliders in photomatrix and I push and pull them until the image feels just right. A tip I use to know when I shot a 5-image sequence when reviewing my images from the day is to go back to a single exposure shot and photograph my hand. It’s a signal to me that before that shot is my sequence. I took a total of 8 HDR sequences and trying to keep up amongst all the other photos can be a blur. I got the tip from Matt Kloskowski at DTownTV for shooting panoramas. I would take a lot of images and not knowing where one starts and one begins can drive you nuts!

Notice something in this image that wasn’t in the last? Same location, but there are no foot prints! I actually walked back in my own foot prints to keep this look going. The HDR technique really brought out the detail in the depth of the snow.

I was captivated by this one walkway. It is just across Sharrotts road near the park and I was the first one to step foot there. Well besides the wildlife at least. I ran this through Silver Efex Pro and choose the Dark Sepia filter. No adjustments beyond that. This is the same image as the first one posted.

I wanted to shoot some images that weren’t HDR. Although I enjoy HDR photographs I don’t like to fill a location with them. The advantage is I keep all 5 shots so I could pluck out an exposure I like. These non HDR images however were shot for the sole purpose of not using HDR. I used the Pro Contrast filter in Color eFex pro that made my whites bright and crisped up the edges.

I also ran it in B&W. Although I realize most of these images are  the same location/position there are subtle differences. We all too often walk by a scene as something we have seen before. Something that has been photographed and we have grown tired off. Don’t get me wrong I have done it too. I try and correct myself when I do so however. I try and remember that every moment in time is unique. Why was this last photo (color and B&W version) so unique? Well if you notice the shadows came out. The day being overcast left no shadows. I had MAYBE 15seconds to take this image. I panicked and shot it at f/8. Not the f/16 I had wanted, but we take what we can get.

The reason I was shooting at f/8 was I wanted to be ready for anything. Remember I alluded to wildlife before? Well if something walked in the frame he/she wasn’t going to stand still for an f/16 exposure. I have left my settings in bracketing or stopped down real hard before and payed for it with missed opportunities. So this is the flip side of trying to avoid that. Can’t win them all they say

My goal was to get to Sharrotts Pond. As you can see everything was untouched and just a beautiful sight. I kept the cooler tone that the HDR had created as I felt it told a batter story as to how the temperature felt.

The pond was perfect. Frozen just enough for a fantastic winter landscape. I wanted to bring you along for this one

I wanted to finish out the day with a portrait of the pond. Sometimes an image speaks to you and when it does don’t let it get away! Whether it is HDR or a quick snap the hesitation of holding off that photograph is not worth it. Just Click! (sorry Nike :-p)

So you may have noticed a change to the blog. With recent fantastic events coming up I wanted a blog theme that had two sidebars to provide more information more quickly. My good friend, awesome photographer, and book writer has put the time in to guide me through and even tweak the blog to see what you do today. I hope you find it familiar, but with a sharp edge.

On top of the blog changes the fantastic news is that I will be teaching photography technique with a photo walk soon once a month for at least three months. The dates, location and details can now be found in the right panel section marked “Events.” I will have the other two dates firmly very soon. The price of admission is free so you have nothing to lose and you may just learn a lot more then you thought you knew about your photography! Plus I am there to answer all sorts of Q&A in the field as we will shoot images all along our walk.) So what are you waiting for? check it out! Go ahead I’ll wait

Excited? I sure hope so. It’s going to be a great program and I am really looking forward to meeting my readers and to share our passion. If you have any questions please let me know. I am testing the waters with these classes and your input and experiences will help shape them for the future! If turn out is high and requests for more advanced learning grows then we might just do some classes on HDR, lighting, post production who knows… The possibilities are limitless.

To put the icing on the cake I also wanted to bring you a really cool technique I performed in Photoshop. I call it Image Overlay Sequencing. It is the process of taking many photos shot in a single sequence and overlaying them within the same scene. It is exactly like the sports sequences as multiple frames are displayed as a snowboarder flies across the half pipe. Our subject today? A young bighorn sheep that descends down a cliff-side fighting gravity. How they do it amazes me. I shot many frames, but it didn’t all come together until I used this technique. I hope it pushes your photography into new areas. Let me know if the quality of the video is an issue. In the meantime I will work on a higher quality video. Enjoy!

Updated; hope it’s better. Gotta work on making that mouse movement smoother.

A family member (in-law) had asked me to photograph their sweet sixteen and I was flattered to capture these special moments in their life. I don’t normally photograph people, but it was definitely something I have trained for in the past and enjoy practicing when the time arises. For the event I used two light modifiers. On my standard light stand I used a Westcott 60 umbrella with removable cover and a 2′ square softbox. Combined with a fill-able sand bag to hold it stable and an umbrella bracket to hold everything to the light stand. Word of advice, get a solid light stand so it will hold heavier objects and not easily keel over or flex.

The location was a beautiful one. Originally the formal portraits were going to be shot outside, but thankfully we decided to just wing it outside and fight the sun. The reason I say I was fighting the sun is that our originally overcast skies decided to magically part and backlight our subjects. Thankfully the backdrop never really developed any harsh blown highlights as the brush and vegetation ran high enough to cast a full shadow over the scene. The photo of the family you see above was one that I put my personal touch on. I do have normal full length verticals for the family, but I wanted to tie in the water feature per request of Briana in her beautiful red dress. For her sweet sixteen portraits she wanted this scene the most rather then in doors. It was definitely for the best that it played out this way.

Lighting for the larger group portraits was done by shooting the SB-800 into the silver side of the umbrella. This creates a huge soft light source and will evenly spread across our subjects. That’s the key there, even light. If you bring the light source too close to some of the group or use one that does not provide a large enough light source fall off will be very dramatic. Leaving some of your subjects in the dark.

As the sun came out Dina was a phenomenal good sport in her heels on grass. She was holding up my translucent pop-out circular reflector to cast a shadow protecting highlights from forming on Briana’s left shoulder. When shooting one to two people I would use the softbox. The quality of light is fantastic and just really wraps the subject. The better your lighting the less work in photoshop later. You don’t want to create harsh shadows showing off features the way they aren’t meant to be portrayed. There was no crazy post production work done in these first two photographs. Other then touch ups to faces using the healing brush and black point/levels; we were set. I shot cloudy white balance all day as a warming effect to make skin tones more pleasing.

Her theme for her sweet sixteen was the Nightmare at the Opera. I wanted to make sure that some of the portraits, formal and of the party, were not all candid smiles. Sometimes people in their relaxed state or in a moment speaks larger volumes. Here I asked her to strike a more serious post to be more dramatic and fitting to what I would do in post production. In photoshop I used silver efex pro and went with a dark sepia overlay. Dialing a tad more structure and darkening it a bit more to really put emphasis on the texture of her dress.

Details, details details… A key often over looked at a party/ceremony. The family more often then not -you would imagine- puts an awful amount of effort and energy into the presentation of the event. If you did all that work wouldn’t you want to remember it for decades to come? For that reason you should try and be creative photographing all the elements of the event. Creative to an extent however. You don’t want angles too crazy or things too cropped or wide missing the point of the event. These two photos had a tonal contrast filter pass in color efex pro. It adds that extra punch and crispness to bring extra relevance to the photo.

Moments. Capturing the moments is another element to the whole picture. This is something that will keep you on your toes. You have to constantly be aware and in tune with what’s going on. Make sure your buffer is ready and your flash charged. Your going to have moments where someone will step in front of you during a crucial moment (happened) or your caught off guard because your switching from the dance floor to the family meet and greets throughout the event. The best way to approach it all is  to know as much as you can time wise and when things are supposed to unfold and stay on top of your gear. Make sure if you made an adjustment to get a certain shot you brought it back to normalcy. How many times has a person left their camera in manual mode trying to get the camera to do exactly what they wanted, but when the quick moments happened we were caught off guard and ended up with an under/over exposed image. It’s not easy and it will happen to us all, but keeping it in the back of your mind goes a long way.

A 30% fill with a tonal contrast filter for the first photo and a blur vignette and silver efex black and white conversion for the other.

One thing Briana planned for her party was a grand entrance. No one at the party would see her until she was introduced to everyone on the floor. I wanted to edit this photo to put focus on our subject. There was a lot going on and two other competing people. Considering our subject was blocked I turned to the computer for help. Using color efex pro I used a blur vignette to soften everything else, but our subject. Sort of like a lensbaby effect. Next I used a mask to apply a tonal contrast filter only to the feathers and our subject. Adding a sharpness that draws your eye as the rest is blurred out of focus.

No editing here. There was a beautiful fireplace that was great for portraits. Throughout the event I stuck person after person in front of it for portraits. Had them step out 4-5ft to prevent a harsh shadow and we had it made. I did a portrait here with one flash on camera of over 10 people. The lighting was simple. I had the SB-800 mounted pointing upward with the bounce card extended. The flash head was clicked in by the 60 degree mark and used TTL. That was it. Surprisingly simple and produced great light from one person to a whole group.

The show was capped off with putting the lady of the night in the spot light. Quite literally. I took out the softbox set it up high and shot downward toward her. Shooting as slow as possible to get a sharp image. Around 1/8th of a second or so. I was slowing the shutter as much as possible to pull in that beautiful ambient over head lighting. The shadow cast was used to knock out the outlets for the electric. And that’s all she wrote. No special filters.

Lastly have fun! Don’t fear experimenting with the light. The big man up front has wanted to do something scary and his cousins were a great sport. I took the flash unit and had someone hold it 90 degrees off the subject. Creating this harsh lighting with deep shadows.  All that was left was the perfect expressions from the subjects. As stressful as it all can get you can’t forget to try new things and have fun!

I don’t know if any of you have ever gone fruit picking before, but there is nothing else like it. Not only is it great for the environment that your food doesn’t have to be trucked from across a country, but it tastes fantastic! I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to have a fun day with the kids or spouse. Plus the fruit lasts so much longer and hasn’t sat in some vast refrigeration unit all year. If your looking for a website to find a place like Alstede Farm where we went check out this great site http://www.pickyourown.org/ It has been an invaluable resource in finding the best locations in one single place. Plus apple season is already beginning and I can’t wait to stock up on cider and cider donuts !

Taking the one hour trip out to Chester, NJ from NYC was worth it in every aspect. Last year we started to get interested in picking fruit during the fall apple season. This year we wanted to kick it up a notch (sorry Emeril) and find a farm that offered so much more. Alstede Farm for example had peaches, apples, red raspberries, yellow/golden raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and flowers all to pick your own. Plus the large farmers market style store they have filled with veggies, pies, cider donuts, and other hand made in house goods. Always call ahead to check what’s in season of course before you take the trip. Wouldn’t want to waste your fuel and time. The beauty of all of this too? It’s a great place for photography! There is hardly a place or moment I don’t bring a camera these days.

Another great aspect is many places that are full fledged farms have farm animals for the kids to pet/feed. From pygmy goats and horses to cows and mules. They all make great subjects and quite domesticated in order to give you a fun time to make photographs. Don’t think because they are domesticated that it means they are easy to photograph however. Pointing and clicking will not be your only job. All animals have their personalities and it is up to us to capture it!

Bessy here (probably not her real name) I was amused by. She was semi-friendly and had this way of standing at a slight angle as if she was leaning over.

After the farm animals we moved onto the peach fields. They have rows and rows of the most gorgeous peaches I have ever seen. It’s nothing like I have experienced before; being a born and raised city boy. And who knew the climate was right in New Jersey? Most people think the only climate they have is for making pharmaceuticals. There are so many untapped farms just across the bridges.

Walking to the apples we passed the corn fields (not pick-your-own) and I wasn’t sure how to photograph them. I knew there was an image in them, but not sure what to do with it all. There were these puffy white clouds on a hot summer day shinning through these fields of corn. You might notice that I used some post processing to make it come alive. Something I will discuss in a bit. This place however needs no post processing for inspiration however.

A more alternative landscape view of the corn I tried out as well. This farm is not small. They provide free carts for you to tote around your delicious bounty. At the end of the day enjoying the fruits of your labor (bad pun) makes it all worth while. Photographically speaking this image above didn’t have anything crazy done to it. Use of a black point and dialing some contrast and saturation.

On the way out we decided to check out the early apple seasons pickings. and decided to set up a quick still life. Two apples on top of a wooden step stool. You couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day. This setup was as simple as it looks. Two apples offset using a depth of field of f/8 while getting real close to the first apple. The key is moving in to get the shot. Otherwise if you back out it is just a scenic without giving any direction for your viewers eye to follow.

Now none of these photographs were untouched and out of the camera. Although it was a beautiful day, post processing can bring it all into focus for us. Remember though to do as much as you can in the field and in the camera. When it comes to post processing ‘when garbage goes in, garbage comes out’. My lens of choice was the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 for all of these. When shooting these I aimed to shoot with a cloudy white balance setting to give a bit of warmth to the overall scene. Walking into a bright scene I think under exposure as well as to saturate on such a bright day. Walking around with the polarizer is also a helpful tip.

When it comes to the images I first put them through Nikon Capture NX2 and do a black point, highlights levels adjustment, contrast, and saturation boost. For saturation I forgot to put my D70 (D300 is in the shop) in vivid mode. Shooting RAW however this is just a quick drop menu adjustment. Once I am done fooling around with Nikon Capture I move into photoshop and work with the Nik Plugins. Every image besides Bessy, Bessy’s landscape and the corn landscape has a Nik filter applied to it. I have setup a pop-up gallery to show you a before and after as you click through the images.

• The main photo as you started to read this post has a combination of polarization, tonal contrast, and then the sunshine filters from Color efex 3.0. The tonal contrast filter gave contrast to all the green (originally) and the sunshine truly put it into the perspective that I saw that day. Bright sky shining down on all the delicious fruit.

• The peaches photograph was a combination of saturation and the tonal contrast filter that just made the texture and ripeness of the fruit really come off the page. Just that simple.

• The close up of the corn was the use of applying a filter twice. I applied the tonal contrast filter twice along side a polarization filter. I do have an alternative view in the gallery that uses a glamor glow on top of all of that.

• Lastly the apple photograph has a simple tonal contrast filter run through it with a polarization filter.

You might ask why I used the polarization when I already used a polarizer. Well a polarizer in the field cannot be duplicated on the computer. You can’t add what wasn’t there in the first place.When testing the filter I happened to like how the polarization filter spruced the skies up a bit more and decided to keep it. For the end result you can be the judge. Now go out there and pick fruit!.. I mean take photographs! (do both)

If you were in the Tri-state area then last night you experienced a pretty wild lightning storm. As the storm moves in I normally scramble for my wide angle lens point it out the window and shoot away. I am still tweaking my settings, but I feel I am getting closer. The official lightning trigger that is out there costs a small fortune although there is an ebay option out there for half that price. I prefer free whenever possible. All I do is set my camera for f/10 at a low ISO and lock in my cable release in any continuous mode., make sure your lens is set to infinity, you are on a solid tripod and your ready to go.  As for the urban light pollution? Well that’s a tad unavoidable.

This was shot over the opposing house. Working around a roof over hand and a house only so far away is difficult. It really comes down to luck hoping the bolt strikes in font of the clouds and in your frame.

I gravitated toward this view as I though it was a tad more natural with a bit of tree blur.

Not too much magic to it, but it sure is fun if your into burning some pixels. It stinks waiting to see what you got, but that can be part of the excitement… or disappointment depending on what you got, haha. Do keep in mind that each Nikon camera has a continuious single burst limit rate. In the case of the D300 if is 100 frames. So you can check on it from time to time. Please do exercise caution when doing this. Lightning can KILL. Your gear is or has metal in it and many tripods do as well. So do this at your own risk, be safe and have fun!