Sticking with a theme [news]
Here is another shallow-depth-of-field photo featuring a red plant (product). This was taken for a magazine photo shoot for a story on organic food production.
I will be posting another photo or two from that shoot in the coming weeks, time allowing. This was a very fun, very rewarding shoot. And the story layout turned out nicely, which is always a bonus.
I don't often do flowers [news]
I don't like to shoot flowers that much. If you've seen one flower photo, most others will be similar in my opinion. However, these tulips just looked too interseting to pass up. And the treatment I gave the photo seems to be a very popular look at the moment with the shallow depth of field and vignetting.
But it is a bit different than what I normally do. Now if I could only have kept my red channel from blowing out horribly ...
Home on the plains [news]
Well, these are grain bins, see. And the light was nice, so I took a photo of them. That's about all there is to this shot.
A quickie [news]
It's been far too long since I've added a new photo. I recently spent some time at home, so there's a few others I'll be putting up in the coming weeks. For now, I hope you enjoy the results of my playing with off-camera flash near The Knees.
From the depths of my hard drive: Africa [news]
This image was taken in Mali, Africa in December 2007. This family of fishermen were described to us as being somewhat nomadic. They fish in different ditches and canals of the Office du Niger irrigated area.
When traveling through the Segou region of Mali, we stopped on a bridge to see some of the irrigation structure. This family was going about their daily activities, which for these boys included building a grass dwelling.
The family patriarch sat nearby, listening to a radio - a constant source of information for the people of Mali.
Today, somewhere in Mali, this family is probably eeking out a meagher living along an irrigation ditch or waterway. For me, it's merely a three-year-old memory.
It's in there. Somewhere. [news]
I can't decide whether I like this photo or whether I hate it. It was taken at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, and at first, I was excited about it. Now as I look back at the image, it just sits there - teasing me. I can't decide whether it's the color (converting it to black and white didn't do anything for me) or if it's the composition or cropping (maybe it needs to be square). Whatever the case, the photo seems to stare back at me, saying, "There's an image in here somewhere. Find it." Maybe someday I will. But today is not that day.
A rather gray day (also, Dustin gets parentheses-happy) [news]
I really like off-camera flash. On a gray day, such as the one on which I shot this photo, it helps bring color and contrast to the scene, while not looking flat, as on-camera flash often does. It also helps keep bright skies (relative to the foreground, at least) from being blown out. This photo, shot with a 16mm-equivalent lens, really works (in my mind, at least) to draw the viewer into the soybeans as Jon checks some test plots.
I really don't like being rushed. Off-camera flash is great when you have time to set up a light stand (with or without modifier), get the subject positioned and shoot a few frames. On the farm, that is rarely the case, especially when I need to get 12 different-looking images to use. As we got to the field, sprinkles of rain started tingling on my skin. Not a good sign when you have $2500 of camera gear divided up between two hands. So out in the field we dashed, camera with control Speedlite in the right hand, slave Speedlite in the left, snapping a few photos before we had to dive back into the pickup.
Luckily, I like how this one turned out. Could it have been better? You bet - with more time, without impending rain, with a couple more light stands and perhaps some modifiers. But for what it is, I'll take it.
Getting up there - a story of two images [news]
Some ideas come to me gradually as I build and tweak them. Others slap me in the face, demanding attention. This idea falls into the latter category.
For our magazine at work, I had to take a photo of a farm couple who grow seed wheat. An easy enough photo to take if there's a nice field of wheat in which to take it. Unfortunately, I was shooing in November, when winter wheat in Oklahoma is only unkempt-lawn high, and it looks like grass to the casual observer.
The idea that smacked me suddenly was to get on top of one of the grain bins sitting in their yard and shoot down into it, with the farm family in the bottom of a bin with a touch of wheat. Throw two lights in the bottom and shoot.
This had a few base-level requirements, however. First, the family would have to be willing to let me crawl up on a grain bin, then be patient as I fiddled with lights and focal lengths. Next, I needed a bin with just a few bushels of wheat in the bottom - enough to cover the concrete floor, but a small enough amount so we could get into the bin and walk into it. Lastly, I had to be able to get two umbrellad lights to fire using a speedlight on top of my camera.
Thankfully, these three requirements came together and we were off to the races, with me on top of the bin while the couple craned their necks upward to look at me. 
At the end of the day, I got two shots that stood out - one where I zoomed in on the couple and the other that I shot ultrawide, with the top of the grain bin visible. One got used for the magazine cover, and the other was used inside.
I know I have my favorite (which is mainly an emotional attachment, as it often is), but I'll leave you to pick your favorite.
And for something totally different ... [news]
Here is a photo I took last fall for a magazine article. I wrote about Grandma Opal's Cookie Dough, a frozen food product produced by an Oklahoma farm family using their own hard red winter wheat. And this is about the most product photography you'll find me doing.
I wanted to show the frozen product, and of course, the final product. The finished cookie product was easy enough - you slap some cookies on a plate and shoot it; or you can just shoot the cookies straight out of the oven with a little bit of moisture still on them if you're like me and don't want to delve into any food prep voodoo.
For the frozen cookies (oatmeal raisin, if you care to know), though, I wanted to show the fact that you baked them at home. The only thing that would do is a baking sheet of dough and a red-hot oven element in the background.
So I heated my oven to a very low temperature, pulled one of the top cooking racks out a bit (as to get as much separation from the glowing element as possible so my flash didn't hit the bottom of the oven) and set the sheet on the rack. I shot a single reflective umbrella with a 50mm f/1.8 lens at f/4.0. I used a slower shutter speed to get the right amount of red glow, which required me to use a tripod and cable release. And after several minutes of the mind-boggling inefficiency of taking photos with the oven on and door open, this is the shot.
The final version for the magazine layout was cropped square.
I say all that to show you a picture of frozen cookie dough. Oh, and the cookies were delicious.
