GEEEE-tar and photography

This post combines my two favorite subjects: guitar and photography. My student Kevin Mullen gave his senior recital at CSUSM this past Tuesday and so I decided to give it a listen and of course bring the camera to see what I could shoot. Kevin went for the trifecta, playing guitar, ukulele and singing to boot. I thought he did a great job both writing an playing the tunes, which seemed to be inspired by jazz, American surf music, and traditional Hawaiian tunes.

I took all these shots from my seat using the Canon 70-200mm f2.8. Almost all were shot around 1/60sec, ISO 3200 at f2.8, using only ambient light. I didn't want to freak him out by firing my flash over and over.

Surprisingly, the grain is not too bad at 3200 as long as you get the exposure pretty much dialed in straight out of the camera. I actually enjoy the grainy look for Black and whites.


This is a quick B/W conversion using Photoshop CS3's Black and white adjustment layer feature.

CSUSM has some sort of camera robot in the arts building. I wondered if I could maybe rent him out to assist me with shoots and save a buck or two on outsourcing. People might find his pelvic area a bit frightening but money is money, after all.

Here is my "haha you can't do this with a point-and-shoot camera" shot. I shot and zoomed in at the same time using a slow shutter.

This was a fun little shoot. No pressure, just use whatever camera settings you want and have some fun with it. I am inspired to get out into the world an do some more experimental and "edgier" shots lately.

Thanks for checking in! ~ Rob

Remembering Beth Block

The photography world has lost a great artist and friend.

I first encountered Beth in Vegas on a photo shoot. I had dropped my camera and broken a lens so I asked to borrow one of her lenses for a test shot. She without hesitation, handed over her $1200 lens for me to mount up and test my camera. Beth had a special kind of openness and positive vibe about her at all times. She was a photographer who made you feel like you were part of a special community.

At our recent lunch in Temecula, Beth took a few shots of me and the family. We will always remember your creativity and generosity with it. I hope someone will look after www.bethblock.com. So your talent and work as a fine art photographer will be remembered an cherished.

Beth frequently had this "about-to-laugh" expression on her face. Bethy-I will miss your fun- loving attitude, our Scrabulous games (I was finally starting to win one or two), and our chats about photography. Without you, I would probably have never heard of Gregory Crewdson or Andrew Moore or Mitch Epstein. I still have your list of Photographers in my inbox and I promise to give them a look. We shared a birthday and I promise to raise a toast to you on August 4. I only knew you for 4 months, but I feel like we bonded and would have stayed good friends for some time. I hope you and Logan are in a better place and I hope you will save me a spot at the VIP table!

Your friend,
Rob

Back in Black

Text might be harder to read, but I love the way a black background looks for displaying photos on the web. You don't want to read my rants anyway right?...

Shutter Speed

What a week! First it was off to the desert to enjoy the Pacific Life Open. This is a yearly tradition for us and was a little tougher with Daniela reaching the 1.5 year mark. She can't sit still for very long! Nonetheless, we enjoyed chasing her around the grounds and trading places watching some great matches. My camera was of course, always in tote.

Tennis is one of those sports that is very accessible. Typically, you don't have to fight huge crowds and with a little persistence, one can get box seats at a reasonable price. For many of the matches, I was able to sit right above the photographer's pit only a foot or so above the pro shooters.

Camera settings for above: Canon 70-200mm lens, f2.8, 1/4000 at ISO 100. By pushing your ISO to 200 or 400 you would be able to shoot at a 1/6000 or so and read the words "Penn ATP" on the ball. Most published shots will include a little motion blur, however, and reap the benefits of using a finer ISO. Generally, I try to maintain a shutter above 1/500 of a second to freeze only the player, not necessarily the racket or ball.


Here is one of Hewitt's trademark "C'mooooooooooooooooooooons". f2.8 1/500 at ISO 800, during an evening match. It's fun to watch the score here and there and try to capture the player's reactions on big points. And Hewitt tends to react strongly.

Mikhail Youzhny put up a good fight, but eventually succumbed to Hewitt's grinding style.

Shooting over the shoulders of the pros has its advantages. You can pick up some techniques just watching them shoot, and you can sneak a peek at their camera settings!

When I returned, it was off to Chicago for a pretty involved product shoot. More on that later....

"Moment"

Here is a quicky I did tonight at La Jolla shores on the way home from a wedding job. The red sunset and pretty clouds were too much to resist. It was windy and freezing out there but people still stopped in their tracks to check out the sunset from a perch on the brick barrier.

I combined two exposures for this shot, one underexposed to preserve the sky detail, and one overexposed to get a bit of light on the shore.

I am not an expert landscape photographer, but I can offer a few tips for the beginner:

1. Shoot in bad weather. Yup, interesting colorful skies and churning coastal waters almost never occur on a beautiful, clear summer day.

2. Shoot late or early. The most interesting and gentle light occurs around sunrise or sunset. I can't wake up, so my landscape shots are always the sunset variety.

3. Try combining exposures or at least snapping a few different ones (underexposed and overexposed) to see which gives the best balance and detail. Learn to use your camera's manual mode.

4. If your lens accepts filters, Try adding a polarizing or graduated ND filter to your collection. These can help mellow glare in the sky and preserve detail in the bright areas of the frame.

5. Try mirror lockup. If your camera has mirror lockup, definitely check into it. It can improve sharpness quite a bit on slow shutter shots, even when on a tripod.

Tomorrow its off to Indian Wells to watch tennis and maybe shoot some of the action from a box seat. Next weekend I am off to Chicago for a product shoot and hope to capture some of the city as well. Should have lots more to post in the coming weeks.

Till next time- thanks for looking!

San Diego Portrait Photography

Ok, I have to admit, I titled this post in hopes of getting some love from the search engines! (Google does own Blogger, after all). But seriously, if you are interested in booking me for a San Diego shoot at the beach or other SD location of your choosing, don't hesitate to contact me!

There are so many good spots to shoot around here and the recently schizophrenic weather offers some interesting sky backdrops for portrait and landscape photography.

To get this type of shot, you need to:

1. Chase your child around in circles until he/she happens to strike and interesting pose.

If your backdrop is a sunset, or otherwise "funky" sky, I would:

2. Underexpose the shot by 1 full stop or more. (this helps preserve detail in the pretty sky).

3. Re-expose your subject by turning on your flash head. For this one, I had my flash compensation turned to -1 and used the pull-out bounce card on my flash unit.

I hate the look of head-on flash, so I usually carry a plastic diffuser or turn the flash compensation down so that only a hint of flash is used. Slight adjustments to levels and color temperature were done in Photoshop. You CAN shoot a person against a bright sunset background using this method, but you will likely need to underexpose a bit more and fill your subject with a bit more flash to avoid the silhouette effect.

An alternate way is to have an assistant hold a reflector to bounce sunlight back onto your subject. Daniela never stays still enough for that unless she's eating.

Camera settings were: f5.6, 1/1000 @ISO 100.

Happy shooting!

Portraits of Mom and Bob

Man, Its been a while since I posted anything! I have been so occupied with shooting pictures of knives that I delayed posting this one from new years eve at Mom's. New Year's, with everyone dressed up and ready to go, was a perfect opportunity to try out my Travelite 750 strobe as portrait lighting. I set the light up near mom with a 20"x30" softbox for these shots.

Getting shots with just one light is not easy! I do like the look of sidelighting, however, so I stuck to my setup with the light on Mom's side and had Lisa hold a small reflector near Bob to bring in light on the left side of the frame a little more. With no real backdrops, we used the fireplace for a bit then moved in for some down angle shots on the piano bench.


Bringing along a small step ladder can add some interesting angles to your repertoire without the danger of standing on chairs or holding you camera over your head and guessing about focus.

These were taken with the Tamron 17-50 f2.8 which I promptly broke in Vegas :-(

I like to work fast, I have to admit, I sometimes rush a bit. This in some ways has helped me get some nice gigs, dive right in and try some new things. It has also occasionally caused me to break stuff! I learned a lesson in caution here, as tripping over my sync cord caused me to pull my camera off of a table.

Luckily, after Vegas, I was able to get a full refund for the Tamron and upgrade to the Canon 24-70mm f2.8, which has proven to be a more practical lens for photographing knives and people to boot.

More on the new lens later.

To book a photo shoot: just call me! 760-815-6131. You can also send email or a leave a comment on this blog. I love hearing feedback on this stuff.