Smokey the Bear spokesanimal for preventing forest fires!
A recent commercial interior photo shoot took me to Ruidoso, New Mexico for the firs time, which in turn by taking the scenic route took me to Capitan, New Mexico which to my great surprise is the home of the real Smokey the Bear! Who knew? Smokey has his own historic park detailing his life story. His life definitely started out very sad, being orphaned in a forest fire and being found burned and clinging to a tree (see photo below). This early tragedy led him to a life as an ambassador for the forest serivce and a spokesanimal for preventing forest fires. He served in this role for 25 years! What an amazing story and to discover it right here in New Mexico.
This maternity photography photo shoot in Altura Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico was a rare opportunity, so rare in fact this was only the second ever maternity shoot I have done! This is because for most of my photography career as the owner/photographer of Jason Collin Photography I have been a commercial photographer.
This was my second photo shoot with Alexis Johnson, who is running for U.S. Congress for District 3 of Santa Fe, New Mexico. For our first shoot we a little pressed for time, so I was very glad she had more time for this shoot done right in Cathedral Park in the heart of Santa Fe. This extra time allowed me to really find the best backgrounds in the park, which were still important to get right even though as you can see they are out of focus in both shots. The bokeh (out of focus background) quality is still very much dependent on what is being made out of focus. So purposefully choosing where Alexis stood for the above photo with a tree being hit by the sun resulted in that great, bright bokeh behind her.
Terri with her Nikon D80 showing good handholding technique on a bench in North Straub Park in downtown St. Petersburg - setup: f/11 ISO 200 1/60th SB-800 Speedlight in TTL mode hotshoe mountedMy first morning lesson in awhile was my first DSLR Photography Lesson with Terri and her Nikon D80. Terri has experience from the film SLR world, but needed to know how to translate that to the DSLR world. I enjoyed hearing Terri refer to adjusting the ISO on her D80 in terms of using film speed! Isn't it hard to imagine now that changing your ISO in the pre-digital world required changing your entire roll of film?
It was a pleasant overcast morning in downtown St. Petersburg, the first time I had a lesson all summer that did not require taking an immediate shower upon returning home. I began the lesson as I do most by explaining aperture, then the rest of the 4-step setup for making any photograph. Terri liked my "top of the mountain" explanation for aperture and how the smaller numbers are larger apertures with shallower depths of field. The next great revelation was that of which focus mode to use when. She had been using AF-A which is useless. The camera is not good at deciding which to use on the fly as AF-A claims to do. Only AF-S and AF-C should ever be used.
We concluded the lesson with some park bench portraits with me having Terri take one shot without flash and then the next using her pop-up flash. Even with just the pop-up flash on her D80 the difference flash made in the overall exposure was great. The background was less blown out because the flash exposed the subject and the rest of the exposure settings exposed the background much more accurately.
I look forward to next working with Terri out at The Pier using her 200-400mm lens!
