Meet My Assistant

I just wanted you to meet my assistant, Larissa. Here she is with model Brett, making sure the water conditions are correct for this shot. She is also responsible for carrying the tripod and scaring away ladybugs. Occasionally I’ll let her take some shots, like this one she took of me trying to climb the kid’s climbing mound (it’s harder then it looks)….

Don’t forget about the Hunger Games party March 22nd. I’ll take pics and post some of the best costumes.

I have two shoots coming up with Sarah, which I am pretty excited about. One at the art museum, the other at the Palisades park.

Well, time to go to work….

Ranch Chili Recipe (and a Leslie photo, too)

Here is the article on the ranch chili, recipe included….

Rojo
Laney DeJonge, co-owner

Laney DeJonge is co-owner of Rojo, which serves both Latin and American cuisine. When she craves comfort food, she gravitates to warm enchiladas, spaghetti and soups.

“With colder days, I love to make a crock pot of chili. It is easy and the smell of it cooking all day makes the house cozy,” says DeJonge. “I modified a Paula Deen recipe for taco soup. It is a twist on regular chili, adding the ingredients of ranch dressing and black olives. The black olives are optional.”

Taco soup

2 pounds ground beef or ground turkey
2 cups diced onions
2 (151/2-oz.) cans pinto beans
1 (151/2-oz.) can pink kidney beans
1 (151/4-oz.) can whole kernel corn, drained
1 (141/2-oz.) can whole tomatoes
1 (141/2-oz.) can diced tomatoes
2 (10-oz.) cans tomatoes with chiles
2 (41/2-oz.) cans diced green chiles
1 (4.6-oz.) can black olives, drained and sliced
1 (11/4-oz.) package taco seasoning mix
1 (1-oz.) package ranch salad dressing mix
Corn chips, for serving
Sour cream, for garnish
Grated cheese, for garnish
Chopped green onions, for garnish
Pickled jalapenos, for garnish

• Sauté the onions, remove and put in crock pot.
• Brown the ground beef or turkey in a large skillet; drain the excess fat and transfer to crock pot.
• Add the beans, corn, tomatoes (squeezing the whole tomatoes into the pot), green chiles, black olives, taco seasoning and ranch dressing mix, and cook in a slow cooker on low for 6 to 8 hours or simmer over low heat for about 1 hour in a pot on the stove.
• To serve, place a few corn chips in each bowl and ladle soup over them. Top with sour cream, cheese, green onions and jalapenos.

Ok, back to the photography (I know everyone is waiting for the Leslie photo)…

One of my favorite shoots so far has been what I call the Big BAM Wedding. Several of my associates and a couple models gathered for a day at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and we shot some faux wedding photos. I got some amazing photos, which can be seen on my Facebook page (feel free to be my friend)

I linked from my 123royaltyfree.com page as a tribute to 123Rf because I had an amazing month with them in January and it seems to be trickling over into February.

The above photo is of Leslie running away from her wedding (or running to her wedding, late) and is one of my better sellers from that shoot. Most of that day was shot natural light, though I did use some umbrella with flash in the bamboo forest, where is where I got shots like this (with Arlos)….

I LOVE this one with Arlos and the lightsaber. Every time I see it I instantly think of a Star Wars video game cover.

Anywho, I must keep the laundry going before I go to work here soon so I will write again tomorrow.

 

 

Ranch Chili

Found a recipe in Birmingham Magazine (which if you live in Alabama I recommend this) that was essentially a chili made with a packet of taco seasoning and a packet of ranch dressing. I tried it today and I must say that it is a mighty fine chili. I did make a few changes from the original. I didn’t add corn (because I have none) and I used chicken instead of beef. So anyway, it’s awesome (I’m on my third bowl right now).

Took the girls to Railroad Park today. Made a comp of them. This is the third one I have made of Eliana, and only the first with multiple Larissas.

Making a multiple comp like this is pretty easy. Make sure you have the camera on a tripod. Set the focus and then change it to manual focus so the camera doesn’t refocus after each shot. Set the camera to manual exposure. Then direct your subject into various poses or areas, trying to imagine where you have already put them to avoid to much overlap. In this instance, I had the girls simply run around or climb. Eliana holding her hands up on top is the only direction I gave her. I took 40 photos of them before we moved on to other projects. Post production is where it starts getting a little tricky. I opened the files and culled out the photos where the girls overlapped (for instance Eliana climbed up in the same spot three times. I just choose the best one). I then had it narrowed down to about 20. I choose my first layer, which was Eliana with her hands up. From the I just opened each file, selected around the subject copy and pasted. I then changed the opacity to about 50% lined it up with the background, and then used a soft eraser to cut away around the subject, changed the opacity back to 100% and then checked for discrepancies. I repeated 16 more times and there you have it.

The first time I ever tried it I tried to avoid overlap altogether. The next time I got a little bolder and had Eliana stick-fighting with herself. That was a good one in the end, Larissa refused to cooperate and just gave me one pick with a mean look. So I took advantage of it and made it about her being outnumbered.

Dinner with Marlee Matlin….?

It feels like forever since I last posted, but I guess it’s only been a few days. I’ve been watching “Switched at Birth” on a recommendation from my friend Marlee Matlin. I knew she had a role on the show, but I didn’t realize that a main character was deaf. As a partially deaf person I found this to be quite awesome. I get pretty frustrated when I find someone has been talking to me on my “bad” side and I didn’t hear a thing. My oldest daughter has expressed interest in learning sign language so I have been learning so that I can teach her. So far we have learned mostly animals and we know some other basic words, but it’s definitely not conversational. I would like to learn enough so when Marlee comes for dinner and a photo shoot I can have great conversation. Anyway, go to abcfamily.go.com and find Switched at Birth. All 11 episodes are available to rewatch.

Back to photography. Had my Railroad Park, Birmingham Skyline shot accepted at nearly every stock site. My Cincinnati shots are selling, and I am still attempting to get them accepted at Shutterstock (caption issues, they seem to keep changing the rules).

I don’t really have anything else to say, so I’ll post a pic and talk about it….

This is for sale at Shutterstock so go and a buy a copy or eight. This was one of my first attempts at a comp. I don’t remember how I got the idea. But it’s really simple. I stuck a match in a  container of playdoh I set up a light in front and just behind (the reason for the behind was to highlight the smoke) and then I simply took four photos, unlit, lit, blown, and out. I then put them together with a simple copy and paste and then saved. I call it “History of a Matchstick”. It was a top seller for a few years, but has slacked off the last couple. It seems to be real popular with hospital and other medical places for their websites.

Well, I am tired and I must get this toenail polish off my toes (I have two daughters, don’t ask) so I’ll call it a night.

Moet dit nie lees hierdie boodskap

I don’t really have anything to say here, but I figure if I keep up the posting, it’ll become a habit, a part of my daily routine, and not just something I do when I’m bored.

This is Tyron, one of my top models. I have worked with him several times when I lived in Georgia. He is the first person I started shooting, before him I rarely shot people, usually just scenic or still objects. I am not a people person and I never felt comfortable directing people like a model. He, for a beginner, was very good at posing himself, and giving ideas for shots. Thanks to the few times I shot with him, I found it easier to talk to people, and give direction. Now I shoot people primarily, with the occasional scenic or still object.

 

 

Hey…. who took my title?

Just want to start this post with a quick shameless plug. If you would like to buy a Cincinnati or Nashville pic, feel free to go here, Canstock, which has seven of them ready for purchase.

And now for the post…

This is Brett, you should have met him a few posts ago, but for those of you new to my rants, this is Brett. We should be going to downtown Birmingham on Wednesday to do a shoot. So look forward to me posting over and over again about how awesome the shots are.

Just a reminder the Cinci shots are for sale here…

I missed my camera club meeting this month, which is becoming way too much of a habit. They had a special speaker who showed the group how to make water droplet photos, something I have never been very successful at. I did, however, create this neat little picture with air bubbles. And if you purchase one of my photos I’ll teach you how to do it, too.

Ok, fine! I’ll teach you anyway. This was actually a lot easier then you would think. The hardest thing for me was finding a bowl with a clear bottom. Sure, your cabinet is probably full of clear bowls, but most of them have words imprinted into the bottom… “dishwasher safe” or “made in libya”. Once you have one, fill it with an inch or so of water. I then added a few drops of blue food coloring. You then add a few teaspoons of vegetable oil (or you can use melted animal fat if you are against the killing and consuming of innocent vegetables, a carnivornarian). I placed the bowl on a textured surface, in this case it was a black plastic background. I placed one of the table top lights to the side (here it is top left). I stirred the oil/water mixture, waited for it to settle, located a nice glob of bubbles and started shooting. Easy as… well… easy as stirring oil and water. As usual, in post process I increase the brightness slightly and then boost the contrast.

I figure I’m going to be busy this next week, so I thought I would get an extra post in today. You should buy one of my photos for my trouble.

Until next time….

Happy Birthday Larissa

Just finished uploading the 17 finished photos from the Cincinnati and Nashville shoots. Dreamstime was the first to accept, so far all except 2, one for artifacts and the other for “too many of the same” (which to me means I had two photos that looked similar, in this case it was a panorama and a single frame of the same shot). Of course I waited a day and then re-uploaded the “too many” rejection. Canstock and Yay accepted all. BigStock rejected one for artifacts (same as DT). Shutterstock rejected my initial 5 for “bad captioning”. So I read up on their caption policy and resubmitted.

In other news, I waited 3 hours in line with my wife and daughter for a car tag. Did manage to get on the news because of it.

And in big news, today is Larissa’s birthday, she turns the big “3″ today. And here is one of my favorite photos of her. I call it split personality. If you cover either side of her face you can see a different personality.

Cincinnati (and Nashville too)

Ok, so here it is. The blog post you all have been waiting for, all two of you. So Monday morning I went to Cincinnati, Ohio at 3am to get some night and morning shots of the skyline. Other then one road being closed I had no problem finding my destination. The only close parking was a small lot belonging to the riverboat business, so I parked there since it was so early. I wanted to keep the car within view since my brother-in-law had made a comment about my safety. Anyways, so I got out my equipment and found a nice spot by a bench to set up. I took some shots and realized that though I had a great view of the skyline, my panoramas were blocked on the sides, one by a tree, the other by the riverboat business, so I moved closer to the riverbank. This spot had a full view, but the I couldn’t get the “full” reflection of the tallest skyscraper in the water, so I moved closer to the water. The ground there was too soft and the wind seemed to be a little harsher, so I backed up to location two. I spent the next few hours shooting various shots, getting some hdrs and some panos, too. I found that shooting at f5.6 seemed to work the best because of the wind. The shots at f5.6 were about 2-4 seconds, whereas the f22 was 20-30 seconds. That extra time with the shutter open in that wind was causing slight blur. At about 7am the light starting changing with the sun coming up, and I had to constantly meter the scene to keep up. At about 7:30, some trucks started coming through, with one stopping behind my car for a few seconds. I noticed they were employees of the riverboat business, so I started worrying I would get towed. At 7:55 I took a last shot, looked at the sky and decided with that overcast sky behind me I wasn’t going to get that golden sunrise I was lucky to get in New Orleans. I packed up and left. As I drove blindly around the city because my GPS locked up, the clouds dispersed and that golden sun hit the buildings and I realized if I had waited a few more minutes I would have gotten the greatest shots of my career. Oh well. I wonder if Ansel Adams worried about getting towed…

So in my last post I posted a completely raw photo straight from my camera (I was at my in-laws and had no access to photoshop) because I was so excited about my shoot. I just finished editing that photo and here it is….

Ok, so here is what I did. Leveled, auto color correct, increased brightness by a few notches, increased contrast. I cloned out the ducks because they just looked like black blobs in the water. I thought the sky still looked flat so I added an adjustment layer (bright/contrast) really boosted the contrast. Made the clouds look darker, but the sky, too. So I deleted and created a new adjustment layer, this time I increased the brightness and then the contrast. I then used a gradient faded from top to bottom. The buildings were darkened slightly by the adjustment layer, so I used the eraser to cut away the mask on the buildings and the river.

Here are a few other shots I have worked on from that morning, and also one of Nashville that I got on the way home….

Cinci Sneak Peek

Ok, I couldn’t wait any longer. I have decided to upload a sneak peek of one of my Cincinnati skyline photos. This is an unedited, literally straight off the camera photo, so it may look not as great as we all imagine. I have not seen this photos any larger then what you see off the back of the camera. So here it is….

I’ll post the edited version Thursday so you can see the difference. Two things I notice right away, I need to use a filter to striaghten the buildings because I used a wide angle lens for this shot, and of course levels and a touch of contrast. Maybe a little color saturation to make the sky pop some more. I just noticed that there may be three ducks in the reflection in the center by the pink and blue light.

I’ll write at you Thursday