Bits and pieces... odds and ends...

First:



There is a new survey question for you (on the upper right of the blog page) asking "what is your primary shooting mode", so please take just a moment to plug in your answer.



And from the last survey, the review of the latest David Hobby/Strobist DVD set "Lighting in Layers" will be posted next week and I promise you, you do not want to miss it.



Second:



The response from our latest contest has been pretty impressive, be sure to head over the our Flickr page and check out some of the submissions.



And lastly:



Crazy, crazy week, a rare Wednesday wedding yesterday, a Friday wedding (tomorrow), and a Saturday wedding to cap off the week! So if it seems you have heard less from me this week than usual, you have and weddingpalooza is why.

Would you like the book "Chasing the Light"?...

We are going to give one of our lucky readers a copy of the book we reviewed last week "Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light" by Ibarionex Perello.



All you have to do is two little things:



1. Leave a comment on any blog post or any one of our YouTube videos.



2. Upload a "street" style (photojournalistic) image (no portraits or studio images) to our Flickr group.



The winner will be announced next week here on the blog (Friday August 26th).



You can find more detailed information on joining our Flickr group here.



Good luck to everyone!

The things we do to our children...

Sometimes I really look forward to the weekends, because it's when I can go (way) off topic on the blog and talk about anything I want.



This past Tuesday I was cleaning up some hard drives and came across several images I had forgotten all about.



When my girls were younger I truly "embraced" the magic of childhood, probably a bit bit more than most. Childhood comes but once and I really wanted them to enjoy it.



Forget the big holidays (like Christmas), I would even run with the "minor" ones as well. Everyone knows that leprechauns are mischievous, so on Saint Patrick's Day the girls would wake up to find pictures turned upside down, cupboard doors left open, and once they even turned our milk green.



As the girls got older they really wanted to catch a leprechaun so we would set traps (using shiny fake gold coins) and one year we even put tape on the floor hoping to stick one of them in place. That was the year I had to get very small socks and shoes to leave stuck to the tape, the girls were so excited thinking they had come soooo close to capturing one.



Here is a picture of one of those traps, notice the "come in free food" sign.





Molly (you can read more about her here and here) was convinced unicorns existed and one year while on vacation she was sure that the woods next to our cottage was a perfect place for unicorns to live so she wanted to stay up and to catch a glimpse of one. I told her to put out some "unicorn mix", I would setup a camera, and we would try to capture one on film.



So Molly made the mix, I set the camera up on the porch, and then I had to get up really early the next morning to do some bad Photoshop work getting the unicorn into the picture.



Now that they are older, they fully realize my culpability in these "magic" events and I am sure there is going to be a price to pay.





(click on either image to view larger and in a new window)

Review of "Chasing the Light" by Ibarionex Perello...

One of the fun things about writing this blog is publishers send me books all the time to review, some get reviewed and some don't.



I have been a big fan of Ibarionex Perello for some time, his was one of the first photography podcasts I listened to when I plunged into photography, so I was excited when the UPS truck rolled up and left his book "Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light" on my doorstep.



Excited but nervous to, because what if i didn't like the book of a person/photographer I admired and respected.



It only took the acknowledgement and dedication of his book, you know that part of the very beginning that most people skip right over, to increase my admiration of Mr. Perello. I think that's the part of the book that an author puts more of themselves in than anywhere else and it reveals a glimpse of who they are and what they hold near and dear. So I was far less concerned about what followed because I knew it would be the best a good man had to offer and you just can't ask for more than that.





I can sum up the review pretty simply "Chasing the Light" is a great read. It is the best source for understanding natural light I have read. Period.



Two of the hardest things to do is shoot in harsh mid day sun because, well, it's harsh mid day sun, and "street" photography because things move and change so quickly that you don't have much time to press the shutter button before the opportunity is gone forever.



The two hundred and fifty pages of this book will give you the information to do both very, very well.



There is a bunch to love about this book, including the fact that every time you turn the page there are pictures, lots of pictures, at least one but sometimes as many as three. Each image demonstrates the point Ibarionex is trying to teach us with his words. There are the camera settings and mechanics that went into capturing the image including the thought process (the how and why he took this shot). So you read AND see everything that went into it. To make the learning experience complete Ibarionex includes the why as well.



Just because you can take a good picture doesn't mean you can teach the process to another how, Ibarionex. Throughout the book it feels he is talking to you (not at or down to you) in a way that is easy to understand and follow.



One of the points he strives to get across is the importance of getting things right in camera, because shooting is way more fun than "fiddling around in Photoshop".



And I love when I read a book and learn new things, like the rule of thumb that minimum shutter speed is 1 over the focal length (so minimum shutter speed for a 100mm lens is 1/100, 200mm lens is 1/200, etc.).



There is a cool self assignment in chapter 4 (which is about color), Ibarionex looks at color as an important ingredient in a recipe, so to help develop your eye for color the assignment is to shoot single colors... only red, only yellow, or only blue... a great idea for developing how color impacts an image.



Ibarionex covers color temps and white balance in great detail as well, did you know that open shade has a bluish color cast? Or that setting your cameras white balance preset to "sunny" (instead of auto) will give you richer and more vibrant colors during the "golden hour"?



I could ramble on and on about the great information covered in this book, but you can check it out yourself by reading a full chapter. Find out for yourself just how good a teacher Ibarionex is and how good this book is by following this link... you can read all of chapter 4 online or download it to your computer.



But wait, there's more, you can watch his podcast on metering choices when shooting a scene. The series of podcasts this cam from can be found here.



There are so many things covered in this book that I haven't even touched on, but let me close by saying that if you want to know and understand how natural light impacts photography there is no better book than "Chasing the Light".

HEATHER & DUANE GET MARRIED!!

Here it is!! Heather & Duane's big day at Fairmont Le Chateau Montebello thanks to Derrick Rice of Union Eleven. A big thank you also goes out to All Seasons Weddings, Groovy Linen, and the amazing Paul Chacra Entertainment. Not only did they provide the duo for the ceremony and cocktail hour but the band 1945 rocked the reception. Outstanding! Needless to say, the dance floor was packed the entire evening. Even between courses! In my next life I will be hunting Paul Chacra down to play at my wedding. Enjoy the images (One of Viva's faves is the framed picture that was on display of Duane proposing to Heather. He got down on one knee at the Kentucky Derby. LOVE that it was captured on film!) and congratulations to Heather & Duane on what was a fabulous wedding day!

Reader images from our Scott Kelby tutorial...

A couple weeks back we had the pleasure of posting the long exposure tutorial video Scott Kelby filmed for us and today we are sharing a couple samples sent to us from our readers.



The first is from Jonathan Brown and the image he shot (and shared) is from the Lantern Festival in Nara Japan.





The second shot is closer to home (for me at least) and is from Mark Hensley. Mark shot this at Fort Popham here in Phippsburg, Maine.





Clicking on either image will open it larger and in a new window for better viewing.



Be sure to checkout Scotts long exposure tutorial and if you give it a try we would love to see the results, you can post them to our Flickr group or email them directly to us. If you do email an image (please) try to keep in the 200k range.

Check out these images from a WPT reader...

The above image, "Little Lady Bug", is from one of our readers (and Flickr group member) Matthew Mendenhall.



I love this shot, how it was setup, the composition, and the processing... so basically, everything about it.



Matt was kind enough to share the details behind how this image came to be, how it was shot and how it was processed.



"I started out photographing some wildflowers in my front yard that I planted earlier in the year, there were some large sunflowers growing among my wildflowers and thought that the bright yellow sunflower would look great on a black background.



I went out and cut one of the sunflowers to photograph and as I was opening the front door I noticed a ladybug crawling up the screen door, so I scooped the ladybug onto my hand and brought it inside with the sunflower.



With the flower in a small glass I put the ladybug on to the flower and hoped it wouldn't fly away. I used a piece of black fabric under the glass holding the sunflower and then raised it up for the background as well. I used this setup so that if I changed angles from a side shot to a top shot the background would remain black.



In an effort to hide from my 2 young daughters who really wanted to hold the ladybug she frantically crawled around the sunflower and ended up hiding on the bottom of the flower. I turned on the television to "distract" the girls and when I came back the flower had drooped over, showing the back of the flower and putting the ladybug in the perfect spot to be photographed.



The shot was taken with a Nikon D300s and a Tamron 90mm macro lens on a tripod. It was lit with a Nikon SB-600 flash with a umiQuest softbox attached to it. The flash was fired in TTL mode and it was handheld to the upper right of the frame.



I shot in Aperture Priority mode at F25 and 1/60 of a second at an ISO 200.



The lady bug was selectively sharpened using a brush in Lightroom, it was then imported it into Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 where I used the vignette blur effect. I adjusted the center point, size, transition amount and the opacity. I knew that I didn't have much at the top of the photo for the blur to effect so I moved the center point so it would take the outer aspect of the flower petals out of focus. I then saved the photo back to Lightroom and gave it a small amount of vignette and some noise removal.



So to say the least, much of this photo was luck! But as they say, being in the right place at the right time is part of getting great shots. In the end I had another fun shot and my girls had some fun with the Ladybug before it flew off. I hope you can get some creative ideas from this picture and workflow."



I also took the liberty of grabbing this shot from Matt titled "Good Boy", which has a very simple setup. It was shot with a Nikon D300s, an SB-600 inside a Westcott 28" Apollo Softbox, and fired via TTL. It's another outstanding shot using my favorite softbox, the Apollo 28" (you can read more about how much I like it including a video review here and here).

A BIG thank you to Mathew for sharing part of his photography world with us, please be sure to check out his website and Flickr stream.

(clicking on either image will open it larger and in a new window)