Background Holder on a Budget


I love using seamless paper for a background. I have lots of different ways that I use seamless paper and I always keep plenty of different lengths and colors on hand. Over the years I found that the papers I use the most are my 53″ white, 53″ black and 53″ grey seamless papers. They are perfect for product shoots and they make a great background on portrait shoots. The 53″ length is a great size for a single person or a couple (even though you may need to fix the edges in Photoshop) and you can easily set it up by yourself. 107″ wide paper rolls are the ultimate, especially for large groups, but they can be a bit difficult to take out to locations. I use 107″ rolls of paper but I usually shoot individuals and couples so 53″ wide has always worked fine for my location work.

My favorite thing about 53″ rolls of seamless paper (besides it’s portability) is that they’re crazy cheap. 12 yards of white seamless paper runs about $25 from B&H photo and I use white paper a lot. With a roll of white paper you can create a white, grey, black or colored background (depending on how you light it) so it’s super versatile.

But just having rolls of paper won’t do you much good if you don’t have a way to put it up.

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the Cape Lookout Lighthouse


On a recent vacation to the coast of North Carolina I had a chance to visit the Lighthouse at Cape Lookout (located on the Cape Lookout National Sea Shore). I’ve been sharing some pictures from my trip on my social media sites like Google+ and Facebook but I thought I’d compile some of my favorite shots from my trip into a single page along with a few facts and some history I learned while I was there.

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Dusk Photography (with Flash)


Location photography is all about showing your environment and making it look like someplace others want to visit. Location portraiture is all about getting great portraits and including a cool background (but not letting the environment dominate the shot). An easy way to get killer shots (and tone down the background in your portraits) is to shoot early in the morning or really close to sunset. Having a little less brightness in your background lets you bring out your own lights to take control of your final shot.

Whenever I walk into a location shoot I start by looking around and trying to figure out the story I want to tell with my final image. Sometimes I see my shot immediately and sometimes I have to search a bit to find my image. The bottom line is that you have to look past what’s in front of you and think about what it could become. For this blog entry I’ll be talking about how I get into the mindset of finding my shot and how I work through the process of setting up a shot using small flashes.

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Photographing Hummingbirds


Where I live in northern Virginia I see a lot of wildlife “in the wild”. In late spring/early summer I see lots of birds, owls and butterflies right in my yard. Outside of my office window I have a Mimosa tree and it really attracts the various winged creatures. I’m not what I would consider a wildlife photographer but I do enjoy taking pictures of animals. This year I’ve been seeing lots of hummingbirds so I thought I’d try my luck at getting some hummingbird shots. I learned quickly that this kind of photography is a huge challenge and with this blog entry I’ll talk a bit about how I got my shots and the camera settings I used.

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Single Shot HDR with Photoshop


Part 3  |  The Photoshop technique

Above is the end result I got from applying my new HDR toning technique. When I start to create an image like this I don’t have anything specific in mind. I prefer to just see what happens when I start making adjustments. Here’s the complete Photoshop workflow I am now using to create an HDR look with a single image.

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Single shot HDR with Photoshop


Part 2  |  RAW processing with Lightroom 4

Choosing an image

The technique I’m sharing will work with any image but it will look a lot better with certain types of images. Interiors, old places, junk yards, sculpture gardens, churches and anything with lots of detail and texture always seem to look best when given the HDR treatment. I’ve had success using this technique on portraits and landscapes but I usually have to do some masking and more blending than I’ll be talking about in this blog series.

The Photoshop portion of this technique will work on any picture (including a jpg image). For the best possible results I like to start with a RAW file that’s been processed with a program like Lightroom. The most recent version of Lightroom (4.1) seems to really excel at creating images for this technique.

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Single shot HDR with Photoshop


PART 1  |   The idea behind my technique

Introduction

People who are new to my blog may not know how much I like to work in Photoshop. I process every image I deliver to my clients and between jobs I often revisit images to practice old techniques and explore new techniques. While I try to keep my processing time to a minimum when I’m on deadline, I will spend a little more time in Photoshop when I’m creating special images (composites, HDR’s, or images that will be blown up and sold as fine art prints). A good rule of thumb for me is to keep my processing time well under 5 minutes per shot and to do as much in camera as I can.

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Photographing Peaches in a Moving Vehicle


During a recent trip to the Shenandoah National Park I spent my day photographing all sorts of scenic overlooks, animals (including some bears), sunsets and getting some shots of the world going by as we made our way along the Skyline Drive.

Getting motion shots is something I’ve been doing for years (my automotive clients use them for creating composite images of new cars that can’t be taken out on public roads). There’s something I really like about a shot that makes you feel like your moving. Add in some additional interesting elements and you can really make some awesome shots. The difficult part of making this kind of shot is all of the planning (and getting perfect weather) and getting your camera mounted as solidly as possible. For this blog entry I’ll talk a bit about how I take these kinds of shots and the equipment I use to make them happen.

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The Coffee Shop Shoot (part 1)


Recently I’ve been working with a local business owner on a new photography assignment.

The owners of the Common Grounds coffee shop just opened their business and they needed some images to use on their website, in print advertising and for any future projects. This kind of work is great because it will involve lots of different styles and techniques for me to successfully deliver everything they need.

I’ll be taking exterior shots, interior HDR shots, shots of employees and customers (portraiture), shots of their products (food shots) and even some animal shots (they are service dog friendly). After a week of scouting and planning I began shooting some exterior shots last night. For this blog entry I’ll begin talking about how I use my photography on special assignments for business owners like this coffee shop.

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Creating a complicated lighting setup (the finishing touch)


This is the last of my three blog entries where I built up a studio lighting setup that looks great for shooting portraits (If you missed part 1 and part 2 be sure to check them out since they help this blog entry make sense). A lot of what I’ve done so far has been in my portrait studio but the principles apply to any location where you’ll be shooting. The portrait shots we’ve captured up to this point have all looked great and there’s not a lot more we can do with the light on Dug. What we haven’t looked at so far is the background.

We’ve been shooting on white seamless paper (available in rolls of various lengths) and up to this point we haven’t talked much about it. In every shot so far the background has looked neutral grey because we haven’t allowed much light to hit it. If we completely blocked light from hitting the background then the color would have been much darker grey (or even black). For the rest of the shots we’ll be using a third flash to create some unique looks for the background.

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