Have you taken more temporary or permanent detours with your photography?Your photography path should take detours.  Some of them will be temporary, while others will be permanent.  A temporary detour can come when you get a new lens and are able to make a photograph you could not before.  You may take a few month detour into only producing HDR images, which often happens when a photographer discovers this Pandora's Box of photography techniques.  

Permanent detours can arise with increased photography knowledge.  These can be detours in personal shooting style, subject matter and shooting techniques.  The horrible vignettes you used to put on every portrait you made early in your photography career?  The detour away from those cannot come soon enough!  Blurry night images because you did not have a tripod?  Gone once you invest in a proper one.

I have made several significant, permanent detours in my (relatively) brief professional photography career.  I started out thinking I would work with others, but that really turned into more of a temporary detour.  I was focused on weddings and portraits, but a free business meeting consultation lead to my biggest detour to date switching my focus to commercial, event and teaching photography.

That was last year's big detour.  I expect another one will come sometime this year.  

My photography tip then is to expect photography detours and recognize which ones will be temporary, and which ones will be permanent.

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Bill learning my Aperture 3 workflow right from my desk also getting emotional support from Kiki!Last week Bill came over to my apartment for a digital photography workflow lesson based on Aperture 3.  This was my sixth time meeting up with Bill, but the first to focus on the part of digital photography that happens after you return from shooting, which is just as important as learning how to shoot out in the field.  Once you start taking 200, 300, 400+ photos on any given outing with your DSLR then workflow and photo management becomes critical in making sure you showcase your best images and can find them one year down the road.  

After Kiki gave Bill an enthusiastic greeting, we opened up our MacBook Pros at my desk and I went step-by-step with Bill first getting my preferred Aperture 3 settings into his version, and then showing him what you do once you insert a memory card into the SD slot on the side.  Upon photo import in Aperture 3 you can imprint a lot of very useful metadata, as well as rename the files (so all your shots are not _DCC457) and put them into a new project to start off your workflow with good orginization.

Bill had photos from his daughter's prom night pre-dance getogether at his own home for us to use.  I showed him my culling process for picking the best shot out of 3-4 similar shots.  This involves a star-rating system and then a side-by-side full-screen comparison of shots.  We finished the lesson with using some of the handy sliders and brushes in Aperture 3 to make the first round of edits on a given digital photograph.  

These are actually post office steps! The neon in the background is real, though modified - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/5.6 ISO 400 1/160th Strobist: Nikon SB-800 Speedlight @ 1/4 power in 43" brolly to frame left & Nikon SB-600 Speedlight @ 1/2 power with diffuser cap to frame left

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I cannot say I explicitily intended for my model portfolio shoot with Alexandra to turn into a film noir style, but through editing of the images it certainly turned out that way.  We were shooting in the late evening from about 7:45pm to 8:25pm mostly around the Arcade in downtown St. Petersburg.  The Arcade is a great location offering a variety of shot opportunities, especially at that late time of day with all its shadow opportunities.  The above shot was actually the very last shot of the shoot.  The background features the neon sign of a cafe across the street with the contrast selectively turned up so that only what is illuminated by my speedlights and the neon remain visible.

Using long shadows created by a speedlight outside the gates - - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 400 1/160th Strobist: Nikon SB-800 Speedlight @ 1/8 power in 43" brolly to frame left & Nikon SB-600 Speedlight @ 1/2 power with diffuser cap to frame leftI chose the Arcade as a shooting location because of the great, very tall, ornate, iron gates.  I knew they would make for a fantastic background and/or prop.  For the above shot I placed a speedlight outside the gates to frame left in the alley to help cast long shadows in the foreground.  I composed so to accentuate them.  Alexandra came up with a great pose taking my one small suggestion to create space between each arm and her body, something I always make sure is set otherwise the model will appear to have a lumpy body or strange attached arm.  Alexandra in fact did a great job overall allowing me to focus on creating mood and atmosphere with my lighting and composition.

The 43" brolly creates soft shadows, I love it - - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 400 1/160th Strobist: Nikon SB-800 Speedlight @ 1/8 power in 43" brolly to frame left & Nikon SB-600 Speedlight @ 1/2 power with diffuser cap to frame leftThis shot features the same gates and lighting setup.  Without the speedlight outside the gates providing backlight, the gate on frame right would appear dull and lack the reflective light on it.  Additionally, the same speedlight provides rim light around the model, especially her hair, right arm and right side.  A photographer can do a lot with just two speedlights positioned in key spots.  I could carry all my strobist and photography gear that I used for this shoot myself, following the "lighten up and shoot" philosophy.

A single strobe setup with intentional background shadow - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4.5 ISO 400 1/160th Strobist: Nikon SB-800 Speedlight @ 1/8 power in 43" brolly to frame rightThis shot is different than all the others in that it features only one speedlight positioned to create Rembrandt lighting (nose & cheek shadows touch leaving a little light under the eye) on the model.  I wanted to include one soft feeling image in the shoot as most of the others were really strong from a posing and overall feel perspective.  

Thank you again to Alexandra.  You can follow her work on Model Mahem and Facebook.

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Blue Ferrari California in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm lens @ f/2.8 ISO 200 1/125th white background added digitallyDowntown St. Petersburg can be surprisingly good for spotting super cars and other exotics.  For example last night parked right on Beach Drive NE was this blue Ferrari California.  I was actually teaching a DSLR Photography Lesson at the time and used the car as a practice subject.  Even if I was on my own and had all the photographer gear with me I would want, it would have been difficult to produce a shot any better than this due to the neighboring cars and the busy background.  

So in making this quick car photograph I concentrated on the best detail clearly visible, in this case the front wheel and huge ceramic brake rotor and bright yellow brake calliper.  There was still the problem of the street it was parked on being in the foreground (see below image).

The original photograph straight from RAW conversion to JPG in Aperture 3 of the Ferrari CaliforniaAfter doing my usual editing workflow first in Aperture 3, then Color Efex Pro 3, I sent the photograph into Photoshop CS5 and did some selective edits (sharpening, contrast) before simply removing the car and wheel from the image and putting only that on a new layer.  Then I added yet another new layer under the car layer, painted it white, and boom, produced the best image I could of a car in a very non-ideal location.

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Sailboat masts in downtown St. Petersburg Florida marina - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseMy goal when making this photograph was to just show the part of the sailboat that inspires dreams.  A sailboat docked in a marina is not going anywhere, so the collection of hulls is not the part I find inspiring.  My eyes focused on the masts and in particular the long row of masts, allowing one to pick out their own particular sailboat to build a dream on.

This composition also utilized repeating patterns and leading lines.  I chose HDR for the exposure so that detail could be seen in the masts as well as the background sky maximizing the color gradient as twilight approached.

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