Stormy Rainbow Sunset Beach Florida Wedding

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Rainbow on their wedding night! Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 250 1/125th strobist - Nikon SB-800 on light stand

Storms were surrounding Sunset Beach on Treasure Island, Florida that evening.  They were rolling on from the west, and from the south, most unusual.  However, Lynda and David were to be married under the open sky right on the beach.  Fortunately, the ceremony was not a long one, and all we saw in the distance was a rainbow, not lightning.

Sand pouring ceremony Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 250 1/125th Nikon SB-800 hotshoe mounted TTL modeLynda and David were a very elegant and polite couple.  Photographing them was a pleasure.  I was glad that David wore a dark blue jacket to contrast nightly with the white of Lynda's dress.  They ended their wedding ceremony by pouring sand into a heart shaped glass keepsake.  

Lifting the bride! Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 250 1/125th strobist - Nikon SB-800 Speedlight on light standIn a way, I kind of prefer shooting on the beach with stormy skies rather than a pure sunset.  The former make for a dramatic backdrop and adds energy and dynamism to a shot.  Standing on the beach we can feel the surrounding energy too, and the slight element of danger.  Nevertheless, Lynda was willing to show off her quite good vertical leap.  We were able to get the above shot on just the third take.

westward is peaceful Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 250 1/125th strobist - Nikon SB-800 Speedlight on light standYou may have noticed I used the same settings for all four shots: 

  • aperture - f/8
  • ISO - 250 (I confess this might be a mistake, probably meant ISO 200)
  • shutter speed - 1/125th
  • exposure - manual mode
  • strobe power - 1/2 (manual mode & off camera flash, save for one shot) 

So if you find yourself shooting on a stormy evening on the beach facing westward, try giving those settings a try and post a link to your shots in the comments below.

The storm?  Not a drop fell until I was already in my Lexus listening to Common take me home.

On camera external flash DSLR Photography Lesson with Mohammad

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Nikon D300 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens @ f/6.3 ISO 200 1/60th manual exposure Since our first DSLR photography lesson Mohammad bought an external flash (Canon 430EX II speedlite) to pair with his Canon T2i, which is something I highly recommend to all my students as the best next piece of photography gear to buy, after the initial DSLR and lens purchase.  The popup flash on DSLR bodies (or any camera) produces very poor results and has a very limited reach.  If you like to photograph people, then an external flash (strobe) is basically a must.  

We once again met in downtown St. Petersburg finding various overhangs and walls to practice bouncing the strobe off of.  Even with an external flash, you do not want to just blast the light directly onto the subject, which will produce blown out skin tones and harsh shadows.  So what you can do is have the light from the strobe bounce off something so that it hits your subject indirectly.  This indirect light is scattered and soft.  That kind of light is good for producing professional looking portraits.

While I was being the model for Mohammad's practice shots, he remembered to use the rule of thirds while photographing me.  So since the lens was not pointed directly at me, the head of the flash would need to be redirected more toward me (the subject) or a bouncable wall.  External strobes like the 430EX II have a multidirectional head.  So the lens can be pointed one way, and the strobe another.  This is another advantage an external strobe has over the built in pop-up flash.  

New in the lesson was also shooting mostly in manual mode.  Mohammad quickly realized that being able to get away with f/8 and f/11 for almost all shots taken in direct sunlight is not the case when using external flash as we often had to very finely tune our apertures and shutter speeds to produce the best exposures.  As you can see, I used f/6.3 for the above shot.  

Now, as better an external flash mounted on a hotshoe is over the built in pop-up flash, getting that external flash off the camera is that much better than having it on the hotshoe.  I look forward to a future lesson with Mohammad where we practice off camera flash.  I recommend reading the STROBIST blog if you want to get a daily dose of lighting information. 

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    • Dragonhunter Dragonfly & Garden Spider macro

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    Dragonhunter Dragonfly on green leaf - Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/22 ISO 200 1/60th SB-600 hotshoe mountedPicking organic blueberries was only really a facade for actually doing macro photography.  Just before I moved back to Florida after living in Asia for nine years, I thought that insects would be crawling and flying all around just outside my door in Florida, wouldn't it be great to have a macro lens?  As I tend to do with such things I became obsessed with finding an affordable priced used Nikkor AF-S 105mm VR micro f/2.8G lens, Nikon's flagship macro lens.  Just a few days before I left Tokyo, I did.

    black & yellow garden spider Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/22 ISO 200 1/60th SB-600 hotshoe mountedHowever, there was no parade of fascinating insects marching past my front door in Florida.  Then I remembered it is much easier to hear an insect, than to see it.  I would soon learn that macro insect photography requires much, much more than just having a great macro lens.  

    Anyway, the blueberry bushes were quite popular with black and yellow garden spiders, who make a web much interesting looking than their common name would make you think.  It reminded me of either a polygraph test readout or the graphical representation of speech.  

    Dragonhunter Dragonfly Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/22 ISO 200 1/80th SB-600 hotshoe mountedThe dragonhunter dragonflies mostly hung out on wires strung between the rows of blueberry bushes.  They have faces that are very easy to anthropomorphize.  It really looks like they are smiling at you.  I would have to say that dragonflies are perhaps my favorite insect.  They leave humans alone and they eat mosquitoes.  Cannot ask for more than that from an insect!  Plus, one day looong ago, I had no car at that time.  I got every where on my trusty Trek mountain bike.  This meant rain or shine I rode.  Florida in the summer produces torrential rain storms of various lengths.  That day one of those storms was raging while I had to go to work.  I put everything into a plastic bag inside my backpack and rode shirtless to MOSI (museum of science & industry).  Riding in that kind of rain obviously is pretty hardcore.  I looked down at my handlebars and clenched to the brake cable was a dragonfly.  We looked at each other, neither showed aggression, and I rode on.  The whole 20 minute ride he was locked onto my bike and I felt a camaraderie with him.  He was gone when I returned to my Trek to ride home.  These are things that have meaning to me, even some 15 years later.  

    black & yellow garden spider Nikon D300 Nikkor 105mm VR micro @ f/22 ISO 200 1/60th SB-600 hotshoe mounted

    I have struggled with macro insect photography in the past year, but I feel I am refining and improving my technique.  All these shots were at f/22, the first time to shoot with such a small aperture using the 105mm VR micro lens.  I look forward to my next macro chance . . .

    Digital Photograph Editing Lesson with Danielle

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    Danielle's original jpg digital photo on the left, our edited version on the right using Photoshop Elements 8/CS5

    Some of my DSLR photography students have gotten to a point where their shooting is definitely improving, and it is time to now work on how to post process, or edit digital photographs.  Danielle is one such student.  I even wrote recently myself that one should develop shooting and editing skills simultaneously.  

    Danielle brought her laptop to the lesson loaded with Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.  I worked on my own laptop using Adobe Photoshop CS5 showing her step-by-step how I go about editing a portrait.  I typically use a workflow in this order: 

    1. crop the image
    2. correct the exposure
    3. color correct the image
    4. edit the subject's eyes
    5. remove blemishes
    6. clone out unwanted elements in the image
    7. sharpen
    8. save! 

    As you can see above, Danielle captured a very nice expression on the baby's face.  Since the right side of the baby's head was already over the edge of the frame, I decided to crop down the top as well.  The baby had a small cut on the inside corner of her left eye, we used the healing brush mostly to make that disappear.  

    The baby also had dark shadows under her eyes.  We chose a soft clone stamp brush, set it to lighten, set it to 40%, sampled an area just under the dark spot, then made a gentle brush stroke horizontally over the dark spot.  Then we used the dodge tool set to highlights and 30% and clicked once or twice on each white area of the eye to quickly and super easily brighten the eyes without making it look too fake.

    The last thing we did was remove some drool on her lips.  

    Danielle did a good job in camera of getting the image.  We then used editing to make the photograph more polished and professional looking.  With practice those editing steps only take about 10 minutes to do, or less.  Danielle learned and practiced those steps side-by-side with me and more as well in just a 2-hour lesson.  I am looking forward to seeing how she does on her own, and if she discovered any new editing tricks herself!

    Thank you Danielle for letting me publish your photograph. 

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    • Can you see it?

    Nikon D300 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D @ f/2 ISO 200 1/320th

    This is a little experiment.  You may be wondering why in the world is there a photograph of the back of a restaurant featuring a blue box and a mop handle on this site?  Well, as I was walking with a DSLR photography student this scene immediately caught my eye.  Before reading below, can you see what I found interesting about this subject matter and why I photographed it?  Let me know in the comments if you saw it at first too.

    What I saw was a smiling face.  It reminded me of perhaps the only commercial I ever liked in my life, an American Express ad that featured all kinds of inanimate objects that looked like frowning and smiling faces.  To me it was a kind of simple genius.  I also think it would make for a great photography project, if not finding smiles, then something similar to what they did in the ad.

    I find it amazing how simply appearing to have a face can anthropomorphize an object.  When I look at that blue box it makes me feel a bit warm inside to see its curvy smile.  Is the mop handle a long nose?

    Post links to your photographs of random inanimate object smiles (or frowns) below in the comments.  Here is the commercial:

    Rainbow Springs Zoo Haikyo Ruins

    Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 1/4th tripod mounted

    A recent trip to Rainbow Springs proved to be very fun, and also very fruitful for photography (waterfall, landscapes).  The most unexpected find of the day was a zoo haikyo.  In our excitement to go swim in the cool waters of the spring and escape the monumental Florida heat, we totally missed the posters at the entrance showing the history or the springs.  Now they exist only as a swimming hole and a gift shop.  However, when the springs first opened in 1934 it was an entertainment complex as well, complete with a monorail and the aforementioned zoo!  All of that closed in 1973.  We saw no trace of a monorail, not that we knew to look for one at a time.  The zoo haikyo was baffling to us as well, since we were just walking through the forest looking for the waterfalls, and all of a sudden cages and iron bars.

    Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 1/4th tripod mountedAt first it was even hard to tell the place was a zoo.  Around a corner a small sign saying this place was a zoo confirmed it.  I do not think many modern zoos construct the cages out of such natural elements like stone as they did in 1934, but then again, not that I frequent zoos as I view them as prisons, but I guess modern zoos have mostly done away with barred cages or confined areas.

    Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 1/5th tripod mountedThankfully these cages will house no more animals, and have not for a long, long time.  So long in fact that tall trees have sprouted right in front of a former viewing area.  As one often wonders with haikyo, why were these structures even left behind?  Could not the stones walls be used for something else?  Perhaps the owners wanted to preserve the historical heritage of the springs.

    Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/8 ISO 200 1/2 tripod mountedBeyond the regular cages, further into the woods, things got a bit creepy, if not scary.  I of course, having an active imagination, believe in monsters, and if it were not for some companions with me to go in first, I do not know if I would have squeezed through the outer fencing and walls to enter the above dark, dilapidated structure.  The 1/2 second exposure makes things look a good bit brighter than they were, and on top of that mosquitoes and horse flies were swarming around.  I tried to sacrifice my body to get some shots, but I did rush nevertheless.  

    Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 @ f/11 ISO 200 1.6 seconds tripod mountedNow, it is darn useful to explore haikyo when some of your companions are civil engineers!  For example, he told me that the brighter stuff on the ground in the photo above, which kind of looks like light green moss, is actually asbestos!  I really wanted to get a photograph of this, and had to really sacrifice the body as we were swarmed with insects, to get the shot I wanted I had to shorten the tripod to just two feet off the ground, and to expose things the camera need 1.6 seconds, a seeming eternity to hold perfectly still while holding the shutter down and you dare not look down at what is biting your ankles.

    Despite all that, it was really fun and definitely a cherry on top of one of my best days back in Florida.  Plus, my civil engineer friend has now caught the haikyo bug and wants to go out exploring more soon.  His wife is also one and has to inspect places deep in the countryside and has found haikyo for us to check out next.  I will wear pants for sure and long sleeves too!