April Showers?

How about April snow showers.... Cleveland weather is like the Mafia, just when you think you have made it through another long hard winter and the warm weather is finally here, it sucks you right back in again....

I thought we might be ready to start doing some out door engagement shoots soon, but as you will see in the pictures, we are back to 32 degrees and snow..... Now not much snow by Cleveland standards mind you, but there are places where this much snow will close schools....

Oh well, it does make for some beautiful landscapes.... and you never know what your going to get from day to day.... Sometimes hour to hour....

So tonight I will be attending a seminar with the great David Ziser, one of the top wedding photographers in the country! Very much looking forward to that.

Then it's off to Knoxville, TN for the weekend to visit family for the holidays. I hope to get out to take some lanscape shots of the Smokey Mountains while we're there.... So watch for that!

Thanks again for stopping by!

Light Fun....

I once again find myself wishing I could be out shooting with a model other than myself.... but the weather just hasn't gotten to the point that people really enjoy being outside getting their picture taken. I recently purchased a Wescott 50" Soft Box & an Alien Bee 1600 Studio Light however and have been dying to get out and shoot a bit with both. The Wescott 50" box is a huge, soft light modifier and I am able to use the AB 1600 or a 580 EX II flash unit with this set up. The 580 rig is nice because it allows me to go totally wire less and very mobile where the AB needs AC power to run it. They do make portable power units for these lights, so I will have to look into that very soon so that I will be able to take the AB on location shoots and not have to worry about running a 50 ft power cord to the unit.

Okay, okay, who cares about all this tech stuff right? Get to the pictures....

So in this first shot, you will see just the AB 1600 in the 50" box lit from the subjects left at 1/4 power. The box is only about 1 ft away from the subject and the subject is only about 1 ft from the back wall which is pure white. Now here is some more tech data that will bore you to death I'm sure, but I feel I need to explain why I am doing what I'm doing.... Being that I am shooting alone it is a little difficult to get the focus perfect so what I did to make it a little more simple was to use the smallest aperture I could, F16 in this case on my 50mm 1.4 lens. This basically makes everything in focus when you set your lens to infinity in manual focus. Thus my shutter was at 1/30th and ISO was at 400.

Here is the shot....

You can see what a nice soft affect this light has on your subject creating a warm yet detailed look. There does seem to be a bit of a color cast from the bright orange jacket our subject is wearing.....

In the next set up, we added a 580 EX II to the scene and placed it directly behind the subject to basically nuke the white back ground behind him. This shot was done at F16 1/40th and ISO 250. Being I threw in another light, I needed to back off the ISO to get the exposure right.

Ok, so enough with the studio shots, the rain has let up for a minute, the sun is out and the sky is blue. Lets take it outside.... I switched the light in the soft box over to the 580EX II so that I could go mobile and moved all the gear just outside my studio. I love the lot my home/studio is on, I can walk right out the door and be in a nice wooded setting with endless shooting opportunities.... With that here is the next shot.

The picture on the left was done with the Soft Box and the 580 set to full power. Camera was set to F10 1/40th ISO 250. The shot on the right was Exactly the same set up only without the lighting. In the next and final shot, you will see that by raising the shutter to 1/250th we were able to cut the amount of natural light in the scene and bring out the blue sky keeping all the other setting the same.

Went for a little more of a Rembrandt look in this shot, but I really wanted to bring out the blue sky in the back ground.

Well, thanks for dropping by to check out the blog.... I promise over the next few months the posts will get much more interesting and geared toward my true passion in photography.... Weddings! I have a couple engagement shoots coming up soon so stop back to check those out!

Hope to hear some feed back from you all so please feel free to leave your comments!

Cold Shoot....

So Friday it started of pretty nice out, I loaded up the Yota with my gear and set out to do another little shoot since I am really starting to Jones now.... Spring, please get here soon! While it started out somewhat nice, by the time I got to where I wanted to shoot, it had dropped down to 27 degrees and was raining.... Not sure how that is possible, but I was still able to take some pretty cool photos. Ok, so I'm not going to ramble on about how I got these shots, just wanted to share, hope you enjoy....

Night Shoot on Lake Erie.....

As promised from yesterday for anyone that read my short little rant, I went out last night and did a little shooting. Pressed for time I didn't stray far from home. It was already getting dark when I pulled into the small park down the street from my home. A family that was fishing for Steel Head in a small trib of the lake were just leaving with 2 nice fish, I actually hate to see that, put them back to fight another day. They aren't a very good eating fish and I hope they weren't just keeping them for the eggs.... Anyway, I get set up and take a few shots. All is good in the world, I'm finally out doing what I love to do, it's a great night, the lake is like glass, not too cold.... I could stay here all night.... A car pulls up, "Sir, the parks closed, going to have to ask you to leave...." Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr It's a private park, paid for buy our little community and our tax dollars, they have a family that gets to live on the property to kind of look after the place, so after a brief negotiation, I was able to stay for about 20 more minutes....

Finally, alone at last.... peace and tranquility return my little slice of the world for a moment and I'm doing my thing. It was dark by now so shooting required a long shutter. I also wanted to test out the noise levels in higher ISO settings so I went all the way up to ISO 800 and started shooting. I was pretty happy with the results....













Then I decided to try a couple self portrait shots since there was no one there to assist me.... Not my number one choice for a model, but when it's all you have, you make due....

Same type of deal, long shutter, high ISO only this time I also used a 580EX II flash set to 1/8th power using a shoot through umbrella to light my model (me) Then let the long exposure bring up the details in the back ground. Aside from the dorky model (me) I think the shots turned out pretty cool.














One of the hardest things about shooting alone & in the dark is that focusing can be very difficult. Especially with no modeling light to light the scene prior to the shot to what your actually focusing on. Auto focus? Forget about it.... not in total darkness.... So I would do my best to try and focus on the spot where I intended to stand and go from there. Not the most crisp shots I'll admit, but I was out shooting and enjoying myself.

So start to finish, I may have put in an hours worth of time. Even after a long day, dinner with the fam, being almost totally dark and everything else I still needed to do that night, I was able to get in this shoot. This goes for anything you enjoy doing in life, if it means that much to you and you truly enjoy doing it, you will find a way to make it happen....

Hope you enjoyed this post and I look forward to hearing your comments!

Itching to get out and shoot!

So who else is tired of sitting around the house hiding out from the cold crappy weather of another Cleveland winter? Don't get me wrong, I love the snow! I just wish we could get a month of it and then go back to the nice warm 75 - 85 degree range where I seem to flurrish.... It's nice and sunny outside right now, but I'm sure it's just a trick to get me out there and make my current cold even worse. Well not today! I'm just going to sit here and look out the window and wish I was out there doing stuff....

Ok, enough of that! Lets get out there and do something! I am going to make it a point tonight to go somewhere and take some pictures of something!

Check back tomorrow to see the results!

Bridal Show Weekend....

Thanks to everyone that attended or helped me with the Great Lakes Bridal Show this past weekend. I had a great time meeting with everyone and hope to hear from many of you in the near future.

If you didn't make it this weekend, here is a picture of the booth, maybe we'll see you at the next one!

Bridal Show Week....

Ok, so the Great Lakes Bridal Show is this weekend, Feb 6th & 7th and I will be attending for the first time. I have been putting a lot of time and effort into building what I hope will be an impressive booth.... I am going to post one teaser image here, but keep in mind, this was just the begining and the booth has come a long way since this photo was taken....

If you happen to be in the area this weekend and are looking for a wedding photographer, please stop by and see what we have to offer. If you are already booked with me or I have already shot your wedding, stop by anyway. I'd love to catch up with you!

Well, that's all for now, gotta get back to work! Look forward to seeing you at the show!

Location - Great Lakes Mall Mentor, OH

Hours - Sat 11am to 9pm & Sunday Noon to 6pm