False Colors

This tombstone was photographed in Lexington, MA. The thing that makes it look strange is the false colors, somewhat inspired by the old infra-red Ektachrome film from the 70's. I selected areas throughout the image and then either re-colored those areas or washed over existing colors with Photo Shop paint brush.

Through the Looking Glass

When you train your camera on water, mirror or glass reflections you get a perspective that's different than observing real life directly. In photography different is good. However it's important to maintain compositional principles while creating a "different" looking image.

The Prince

When I travel back in time I go to the Renaissance Fair up at Mount Hope in PA. Of course I take my camera. I found this to be an interesting exposure for a number of reasons. Firstly, I decided to use a movie tri-pod with a fluid head to try to capture the smooth motion of people walking or riding their horses. What I discovered is that when I followed this horse and rider through the crowd with the camera two things happened. 1) The crowd, of course, was rendered blurred and apparently out of focus and 2) the saturation of the colors of the crowd was diminished accenting the vivid blue of the prince's coat.

Wedding of the Teapot Clown: Fantasy or Reality

This is a photo from a wedding I shot recently. The Groom is actually in the background. The Clown is entertaining at the wedding.

Close up "Helicopter seed in Motion"

This is an extreme close-up of a seed we like to call the "helicopter" because of it's ability to navigate, with a helicopter motion, away from its source. When you photograph something this close it's impossible to capture motion and critcal focus at the same time (and forget about background elements being where they should be.) A shot like this has to be manufactured using Photoshop. In my studio using close-up diopters, I photographed a close up of the seed, critically focusing. I used a studio flash to get a translucent image of the seed. I also used aluminum foil as a lens hood to fill the front of the seed with light. The background was black.

Then I cut out the seed by removing the black background and proceeded to layer on the effects. The background tree canopy rendered out of focus with Gausian blur, about 20 layers of "seed motion" and then the seed itself. Lastly I flattened the image and accentuated the sun glare using paint brush so that it washed all the layers.

Principles of close-up still life

This photo is a close up of a blueberry. Using Macro diopters on the front of my lens, I arranged various nuts around the berry. The nuts are earthy tones, warm tones while the blueberry stands cool and dark in contrast.

I saturated the blueberry with Photoshop to give it a bluer appearance.

Special note: When you do close-up photography the same rules apply as if you were doing a full-size still life. Note the rule of thirds applied, the foreground framing and the background design which balances the composition and leads the eyes to the subject.

Back light is used for lighting with a silver reflector adding foreground fill

Pre-focus

Sometimes you can't rely on auto focus to give you that sharp focus. Probably the most difficult focusing situation is when you have a moving subject obstructed by foreground elements. In this case Joan is riding her horse rapidly toward the camera with her face framed between two lances in the foreground. You can't possibly focus manually fast enough. How do you handle this?

You PRE-Focus. Pre-Focus on a spot on the field where you know the rider will be passing through, set your aperture on f/11 to f/16, shutter speed around 300th of a second and shoot about 5 frames a second as she fills the pre-focused area.

Anytime a subject is moving toward you at a fast pace it is always a good idea to Pre-focus.