Time to get going again

I've been so busy I had almost forgotten about this blog. I have had a great Summer and Fall with weddings and some incredible engagement sessions. I did not have time for my annual Fall Foliage expedition but did do some local shooting of Fall images. In June I started working for Living Resources and this Fall I have been assisting with teaching a photography class for adults with developmental disabilities. It has been great fun to work with such talented people.

Thanks to Aimee and Jeff for the great images from their

engagement session. The lighting was magical at this spot in the woods with all the leaves on the ground.

I thought in this post I would talk about how to get better exposures with your digital camera.

I am now 4 years into the digital revolution and have not shot a role of film since. There are a few things film still does better than digital, but the differences are so small for my type of photography that the benefits for digital far outweigh those differences. I have found that the biggest difference was the way digital captures the exposure. I found it to be very similar to shooting slide film. With Slide film you had to be quite exact in your exposure to get a good print. With film you could be off by several f-stops and the lab could usually still give you a decent print. Digital requires you to be fairly precise with your exposures. The beauty of digital is that the camera tells you instantly if you nailed the exposure or if you need to make an adjustment. It's called a Histograph. If you have never used this feature on your digital camera, it is worth the effort to break out your manual and read up on how to use this great tool.

The histograph maps out for you in a graph all the different colors in your image and how much exposure was recorded for each. The graph looks like a mountain range inside a rectangular box. The mountain peaks to the left side have recorded the darker colors and as you move to the right it shows the colors as they get lighter with pure white being the peak at the far right. The most helpful info is on the far left and right. If the peaks are climbing the sides of the box then you have under or over exposed your image. You would need to make an adjustment to your shutter speed or f-stop to obtain the correct exposure. With film we hoped we had the camera set correctly and relied on the lab to fix our mistakes. With digital it is harder to fix mistakes after image capture. But, with the histograph you know you made a mistake and can fix and re-shoot the image in most cases.

The wedding party image was taken on the State Capital steps. Dan and Lauren loved it so much they had a 16x20 canvas made from it. It is one of my favorites from this summer.

Thanks to Keri and Brian for the image to the right from their

engagement session. I had a lot of fun shooting this session.We must have walked several miles to find just the right spots.

The Evil RED EYE

I seem to get asked at almost every photo shoot or wedding I do..."Do you fix the Red Eye in the pictures"? Well....no, I do not have to fix Red Eye as it has never been in a picture I've taken. Few people understand what Red Eye is and how to avoid it. Red Eye is the end result of amateur equipment being used in a low lit room. In a darkened room, your pupils are dilated (wide open) to let in more light. When the flash goes off the light is reflected off the retina in the eye and that reflection is recorded by the lens. The retina just happens to be red. Hence, Red Eye. The best way to avoid red eye is to raise you flash about a foot or more above the camera lens. In doing this the angle of the flash reflection off the retina does not go directly back into the lens. Flash brackets are available that will raise your flash above the lens. If your flash is built into your camera then you can set your flash to a Red Eye Reduction mode. In this mode the flash fires a few short burst of light to cause your eye pupil to close down. This allows less light in to your retina. The biggest problem with this mode is that the pre-flash usually causes your subject to react and can ruin the image. Today, many of the photo editing programs have a Red Eye fix. I prefer to avoid having to fix every image and just put my flash on a bracket.

Way To Go

Just want to send out a big congrats to my son Seth for being named an ALL AMERICAN in Indoor Track & Field. His Sprint Medley Relay team from Shen HS finished 4th at the National Indoor Track Championships in NYC last week. They shattered the school record and recorded the fastest time in NYS for the year. Outdoor track starts soon with a team trip to the Arcadia Meet in Los Angeles in April and the Penn Relays in late April. Seth has been accepted at RIT in Rochester for Computer Science and hopefully will run track for RIT next Fall.
UPDATE: In June 2007 Seth's 4x400 meter relay team won the NYS championship in a school record time of 3:18.50. He was named a TIMES UNION Track & Field ALL-STAR and featured in a special edition of the newspaper. Unfortunately, he fell during his last High School race at the National Championships in North Carolina and was injured. In 2007 and 2008 he competed for RIT's Track team setting a school record in the 300 meter dash. A nagging knee problem has ended his track career in 2009.

Studio on Wheels

Five years ago when I started my photo business I wanted to create something unique. Having worked as a studio photographer and as a District Supervisor for almost 100 studios I decided I did not want the headaches involved with opening and operating a traditional studio. I hit on the idea of a studio on wheels, where everything is portable and could be setup on location quickly. I had a feeling that there were people who would love the service of the studio coming to them. My concept has evolved over the past five years to where I can set up a professional studio in my client's home in 15 minutes and produce professional portrait exactly like a traditional studio. Plus I have the flexibility to go outside for sessions. It has been very popular with my clients judging by the number of repeat and regular clients I have. This year I have added the ability to show the images at the end of the session on my laptop computer. My clients can now place their orders immediately and view a high quality image of what their enlargements will look like. I also have new software that allows me to drag and drop images into over 300 frames so you can see what your portraits would look like in different frames. Very Cool!
So, if you are looking for a different portrait experience where you can have top quality portraiture created in the privacy and comfort of your own home, give me a call at 461-7881 and we can chat about your portrait needs.

A new Website

The Valentine's day Blizzard has given me the time to set up my new website. My old site was so old it was no longer editable and I need to make some changes, so I bit the bullet and started a new site. It is maddening trying to figure out how to use the new site builder. Hours and hours of trial and error to get the look I want. It is up and running now, but is not finished. It is always a work in progress. Why all the effort? Because it has become my #1 sales generator. Dollar for dollar no other method of advertising I use generates a fraction of the revenue that my website does.

Winter Photography

A great time to break up your Winter Blues is right after a snow storm ends. Grab your camera and head out in search of winter wonderland photos. One thing to remember is that the bright white snow will fool your camera's light meter. Light meters are calibrated to record average scenes. When you try to record snow the light meter will try to record the snow as an average brightness or gray. You will be disappointed with the results unless you override the camera's auto mode and set your camera's metering to manual. Then you will need to open about 2 f-stops from the meter reading your camera is giving you. For example: Your camera's meter is telling you to set your camera to f/16 @ 1/250. This reading will produce an image with gray snow and underexposed shadow areas. Instead set your camera to f/8 @1/250. This will keep the snow nice and white. You may have to take several images at slightly different f/stops (this is called bracketing) to get an image just the way you like it.
I took this image of the old barn just as the storm was ending.