I had the wonderful opportunity to take my oldest daughter's photo before she went to her school dance. I really have to hand it to her, she looks beautiful. My wife really did a great job on her hair and helping her get ready. Don't think I didn't give the boyfriend the evil eye. He's a really good kid though but I just had to! I'd have to draw a diagram to show you where I set up the lighting. It's not easy shooting the glass!

Yeah, that's right! I took pictures of the Stanley Cup yesterday. I set my camera on a tripod with a timer and pre-focused. Peep the GreenStudios shirt!

Is getting a good family photo taken a myth? No, I don't think so. A little planning on everybodys part to somewhat match and agree on a color scheme is important. You don't have to go out and buy all of your shirts at the same time to match exactly. Everyone has their own personality. Is time of day important? YES! If you want to do an outdoor photo indeed. You may have to wait from day to day to wait for the perfect weather opportunity but it will be well worth it. When possible, try to do early in the morning, about an hour or so after sunrise. You can also do an evening shoot. Plan on starting about an hour and a half before sunset. Spontaneous placement lends itself to a much better appeal in the finished product. We took the photos Wednesday morning and then enjoyed the day together. Thursday morning Rhonda and I uploaded the photo to MPix.  We had it printed on their metallic paper and received it Friday.  It's on display, I wish you could see it!  It looks awesome...

Stew. Short for Stewart. Say hello. Three feet away from this cat can be quite intimidating.  But what a great opportunity to get this shot!  I took this with a small point and shoot.  A Canon SD800.  I had it on manual so I could set the white balance and ISO.  I couldn't set the shutter or aperature but the camera chose 1/200s and f5.6.  I turned off the flash.  I can't imagine what how Stew would have reacted with a flash going off in his eyes.  I certainly don't want to find out either.  I really wish I would have had my D90 or D200 with me but I am quite happy with the results from my point and shoot.  I am thinking of the movie Ratatouille when the chef says "anyone can cook".  I think the same holds true for photography that anyone can take great photos.  It just takes practice and patience.

Tennille needed a new profile picture for MySpace. I like these kind of assignments when I am given liberty to do whatever I want. She just got some new eyeshadow and made a rainbow out of all the colors. So creative, just like her dad! I used a shallow depth of field and stood on a crate! Anyway it is my first day of vacation and I am happy to be at home with my family doing these kinds of projects!

I was doing some photography for a group last week involving golfers and printing and then putting them into frames. I take a photo of the golf foursome before they tee off and while they are doing their 18 holes, I process the photos and print one copy for each participant. Everything is all fine and good until I see the generic photo put into the 5x7 frames that this company provided. I really wish I would have kept it to show you. It was terrible! This girl is all wet but she looks like she is slimy and sweaty. Her look is something between a heroin addict and Cindy Lauper with jogging shorts and a tank top! Well I was lucky enough 2 days later to do Senior Photos for this great gal pictured here. I am afraid I may compare her to all future Senior Photo clients. She remembered my instructions from the beginning of the shoot and smiled graciously throughout. I would like to unofficially submit this photo as the replacement for the hideous "frame picture". Thanks Autumn, you were great!

Today is September 1, 2009. This has to be the most georgeous day on record. I could not pass up this day without taking some photos. I planned on taking my daughters out to take photos after dinner. I was going to supply each of them with a camera and see what they came up with. My oldest has other plans to hang out with friends, typical teenager. Victoria was game! I gave her a Canon SD800 point and shoot. You can see her holding it in the photo. I used a Nikon D40 to take this photo of her. Since the sun was still pretty strong, I put the color on MORE VIVID and the white balance to direct sunlight. When the camera is set to being extremely vivid, the contrast can sometimes be too much and darken the photo. I set the exposure compensation up a 1/3. This was definitely a picture for me. I can't wait to print it tomorrow.

Will you look at this B-E-A-utiful dog! It is a Bernese Mountain Dog. It belongs to a nice young lady who works at the Nemacolin Pet Spa. You should see this dog in person! The paws are HUGE! Gert. That's the name. Short for Gertrude I believe. Gert weighs in at 101 pounds. I had to take a photo of Gert for some flags or banners that will be hung around the property. She was freshly groomed and washed just before she came out into the sunshine. So what did Gert do? Ran straight for the lake! 1/200s - f10 - ISO200 - WB:Direct Sunlight - Vivid Color. I photoshopped out some "shoestring" saliva from the mouth. I think I am going to submit this photo to Bernese Mountain Dogs Quarterly as the cover image. Whaddya think?

Layers. That's how this is done. How could I get a photo of the family AND fireworks at just the right time? The next day in photoshop. Camera on a tripod to get the fireworks. I handed the camera to a friend for the family shot. There's a few different ways to do this but I chose to lasso around what I wanted to keep with a feather of 25 pixels. I copied what I had lasso'd (ctrl-C) and then pasted (ctrl-V) on top of the fireworks photo. I positioned the family photo where I wanted and then began to erase away any extra that I didn't want from my lasso'ing. That's about it. It looks pretty cool though and you know it was a Fourth of July photo! I am sending to all friends and family who don't subscribe to my blog. They should all be subscribed to my blog right ... um... hello...

Here's one that I am not so much focused on the settings of the camera but more about being in the right place at the right time. Sure, if I hadn't exposed the image properly, this shot would have never came out. I will tell you that I helped about five other people get this shot too. I knew that this was going to be decent shot because of the content, so I was patient. The people in the picture didn't know which camera to look at because there was a paparazzi. If it had gone that way without intervention, no one would have gotten a good shot. I told the people in the photo to look at that camera, FLASH, ok now look at that camera, FLASH, ok now here, FLASH. Now everyone has a good shot with all all eyes focused on their camera. That's a little photogragher etiquette for you, for free! Ok fine, to all my millions of fans, here are the settings that I used: Nikon D90 with 18-200VR lens, SB-800 Flash. Flash was on Full Power bounced off of 15 ft ceiling with bounce card. 1/125s shutter, f7.1, ISO800, Focal Length 26mm.

Ok, I seriously didn't want to post a black and white photo because it is just too easy. But this one really struck me and I wanted to share it. This is the same boy from two days ago and I was finishing up their family photos. I generally like to process and gussy up my favy's first to send out in an email. I don't know if it is the angle or because I processed it B&W. It really has a good feel to it. When I process a photo to B&W I use photoshop CS3's IMAGE / ADJUSTMENTS / BLACK AND WHITE. You can adjust the colors to your liking. I found that the image usually looks a little dull after B&W'ing it. So I then go to IMAGE / ADJUSTMENTS / BRIGHTNESS-CONTRAST, and give the image a hair more brightness and some decent contrast. It is usually about 5-10% on the brightness and about 20-30% on the contrast, depending on your desired effect. The same settings on the camera as the one I posted 2 days ago as well as the additional photoshopping. You need to click on the image to see it larger to get the full effect. I hope it strikes you like it did me.

My oldest daughter Tennille has been wanting to get me out for a photo shoot. This past Fathers Day was the best day for it. I was lucky enough to have the day off! How about that! We were at my In-Laws house in Brownsville. We ventured across the street where there is a huge hill to climb. It was well worth it when you got to the top though. A beautiful large field of wildflowers. I would have liked to taken the photos closer to dusk but the only time we had was right after church. The sun was high in the sky and quite bright. Luckily, the D90 has the awesome D-Lighting feature that helps in just this type of situation! I wanted to get that soft, wildflower, country-ish, kind of look. I really lowered my depth of field to have most of the flowers out of focus to 5.6. Shutter speed 1/250. ISO 200. For white balance, I selected direct sunlight. In photoshop I did a little clone stamping for the light blemishes. Dodged the eyes to make 'em pop. I created a layer and Noise Ninja'd it to soften it up. I then erased through the eyes for definition. I cropped the photo vertically a little past the top, then used the marquee tool to encompass the whole picture and pulled it a little to stretch it up, and then recropped back to a 2:3 aspect ratio. Easy right?!?

I did family photos today. It was a fairly nice day so I took them outside. Living in SW PA, if it is not raining, you have to consider it to be a nice day. My hope was that the sky would be blue so there would be a nice contrast of the blue sky and the green leaves. It ended up being more overcast than I thought so I tried to use the foliage as much as possible. The photo today isn't of the typical structered "this is where you stand" family photos, but rather of the last shot I grabbed before everyone left. It was a family of about 20 and as it was over, everyone was kind of just socializing when I saw the youngest boy off by himself. I pointed the camera at him and he smiled. I thought "cool, he's gonna let me get a few shots". I directed him over to a tree and asked him to lean against it. I shot a few off and this was the result. I had to touch up the face a bit, under the eyes, etc, with the clone stamp in photoshop. I used the dodge tool on his eyes to make them stand out a bit more. Finally, I used the Noise Ninja plugin to soften up the photo a bit. Camera: Nikon D90 - 1/160s - 200mm - f6.3 - ISO 200 - Vivid Color - Used DGK white balance card to set white balance before the shoot began. About 10am.

I tried something new yesterday in the library. I usually take a photo in that area at an angle. I tried it straight on with the big green shutters behind it. I wanted to shoot OUT the window so I could bring the outside, in. My inside shutter speed has to be fast enough to not have blown out highlights from outside. Shutter speed 1/200. I set my aperture to f/8.0 so that I could get as much of them in focus as possible and create a good contrast. Since I had my 1000ws lighting kit I had enough light to do that and have my ISO at only 200. I put one light (with umbrella) about 8 feet to the left and away from the guy. I had it aimed between the 2 people about at their waist line and I had the power turned down to about half since it was fairly close to them. My other light (with umbrella) was about 15 feet away to the right and away of the girl with the power almost full. I had it facing in their general direction but pointed towards the ceiling to illuminate the area. Because I was shooting into a reflective surface I had to really space the lights apart or you would have seen them in the window. Another reason why the second light pointed towards the ceiling was almost at full blast. I used no other flash. You can see the two spots of light on their eyes. My focal length was 52mm. I did a test shot in the area before they came to get my white balance correct by calibrating the Pre-Set in the camera. I utilized the “Vivid” color setting. I have done NO PHOTOSHOPPING to this photo. This lady asked before I took the photo, “What’s my motivation?” I said “To take a good photo”. What the heck! Some people!