Fireworks

I shot several bursts of just fireworks against the sky, but decided later to try and back up and get the wide view. Using a tripod, I shot a longer exposure on RAW, and then pulled lots of detail from the shadows during post processing, which allowed the fireworks to light up the house and surrounding trees.

Technical info: Nikon D610 w/ 24-70mm lens at 24 mm. f/8, ISO 200, exposure time 4 seconds.

Bridge Pano

Looking across the Ohio at Louisville, Ky., from Indiana.

Technical info: Shot with iPhone 5 in panoramic mode.

Flower Find

I love coming across a photo I took months ago, and kind of forgot about...like this one taken outside the Opryland Hotel in Nashville back in March.

Technical info: Nikon D90. 1/200 @ f/5.6. ISO 400. Focal length 200mm.

Barn portrait

One of the senior portraits I shot for my niece inside an old barn. This is all ambient light. There was enough coming through the front to light her up well, while allowing the details of the inside of the barn to show up. The exposure was also long enough to blow out the outside light coming in through the cracks.

Technical details: Nikon D610. 1/30 @ f/2.8, ISO 200. 24mm

In Bloom

Starting to see a few signs of spring...

Technical details: Nikon D610. 1/500 at f/2.8 @ 70mm. ISO 100.

Turning the camera on myself

I've always said that I like behind the person behind the camera, because it keeps me out of the photo. Just never been fond of photos of myself. However, I've been reading a lot of photography blogs lately that all say every once in a while, you should turn the camera on yourself. For one, it's a good way to practice portrait lighting. For a second reason, it puts you in your subject's shoes so you get a sense of how they feel with lights and the camera pointed at them.

With that in mind, I thought I'd give it a try with a three-light setup. The main light is a gridded small soft box to camera left, and I have another gridded box as a rim light that's up high pointing down toward my back. The third light has a 10-degree grid spot to give a small circle of light on the wall behind me. I turned things around from normal by using a dark green wall as the backdrop, with the studio white backdrop at camera right providing a little bit of fill bounced from the main light.

Lastly, I converted the image to black and white, because I think that seems to be some unwritten rule that when photographers do self portraits, they have to be black and white. Here is the final result.

Just for Fun

Having a studio setup right there in the office provides a lot of good opportunities for goofy photos of co-workers, especially when testing lighting setups. These shots usually don't see the light of day, but for a goofy shot, I really liked the lighting on this one. Setup is two gridded 24" soft boxes, one just above to camera left as the main and a second slightly behind the subject as a rim light. There's a bounce card directly in front of and below camera to throw a little fill, and a blue-gelled backdrop light behind the subject. The main box is in close, which provides the good light falloff allowing the arms and lower body to go dark.