Sample Florida Holiday Photo Card made with your family's portrait - click for larger version
Please refer to 2012 pricing & promotion
IronKids National Championship 2010 St. Petersburg Florida
Lots of good vendors at IronKids National Championship 2010 St. Petersburg -- iPhone 4 HDR modeIt had been a while since I photographed sports, a type of photography that is very fun, exciting and challenging to shoot. I recently became a freelance sports photographer for ASI (Action Sports International) and the 2010 IronKids National Championship right here in St. Petersburg was my first gig with them. I had a good first experience with ASI, though I used their memory cards and have not seen any of the fruit of my labor (hence only the shoddy iPhone 4 photo above). It was a very strange experience to come home after 9! hours of shooting and not be able to see a single image. It seems I can make a request to have some of my photos and I will definitely be following up on that. I took over 2,000 shots after all!
Things I learned from shooting my first triathlon:
- I did not know how to spell triathlon before
- having both parents as triathletes tends to produce a winning triathlete son/daughter
- standing in the middle of the road with kids whizzing by on road bikes on both sides does not phase me
- your monopod is really your best photography friend
I get my next triathlon photography chance on November 13th in Clearwater for the Foster Grant Ironman World Championship 70.3.
DSLR Photography Lesson with Craig & his Nikon D60
Craig was very eager and happy to learn what his Nikon D60 is capable of beyond auto mode
It was a beautiful mid-day in downtown St. Petersburg when I met Craig for ours first DSLR Photography Lesson together. Craig has owned a Nikon D60 for awhile now, but like so many of my past students was mainly using auto-mode. It gives me great pleasure to declare to students that they will never (at least should never) use auto-mode again after even just our first lesson. I have learned from student feedback that there is a certain fear hurdle to overcome about learning to become more serious about photography. That it seems like every shot requires adjusting a laundry list of settings. However, that is totally not true. In reality, given the same shooting conditions, there are relatively few settings that need to be changed at all from shot to shot.
Craig and I had a long Q&A session at the beginning going over settings, various scenarios, gear recommendations and some how-to's. Once we got up and started shooting, Craig was won over with the bokeh he could produce in his shots using his Nikon D60 at f/5.6 and Nikkor 18-200mm VR lens at its full 200mm focal length. This was not surprising, bokeh is always a crowd pleaser!
A great egret was a willing model for us once we walked over to Vinoy Park allowing Craig to practice composing for a clean background, best exposure and fill-the-frame details. The 2-hour lesson time went by quickly and I am sure I will be seeing Craig again soon.
DSLR Photography Lesson with Hal & his Canon T1i
Hal with his Canon T1i & Quantaray 18-128mm lens with downtown St. Petersburg in the background
Just minutes after I met Hal in front of the Museum of Fine Arts in downtown St. Petersburg for our first DSLR photography lesson, it started raining. We were still on the steps of the museum going over some introductory things about his Canon T1i so we took refuge under the long open corridor that runs along the front face of the museum. I knew being stuck in this spot was not so bad because in February a photography group I was with made good use of it (2nd photo).
While the rain continued to fall Hal and I continued to go through the basic settings that need to be adjusted for any kind of shot, i.e. aperture, ISO, white balance and focus mode. Fortunately, the rain did let up and we were free to roam to Vinoy Park to practice landscape shots. The combination of the onset of the golden hour and the post-storm skies made for an above average backdrop to both The Pier and the downtown skyscrapers.
Despite the rain we were still able to cover all the topics I normally would on a first lesson, and then some.
DSLR Photography Lesson with Stuart in his Safety Harbor salon
Practicing off camera flash (strobist) with Jackie as Stuart's model in his Safety Harbor salon
Stuart was interested in a very specific DSLR photography lesson -- how to take "before & after" headshots of his customers in his salon (website). This very specific photographic need actually makes the lesson easier for me to teach in a way because the student and I can concentrate on just the settings needed for the type of shot he wants. Since he has his own salon with consistent lighting, it was just a matter of finding a spot with a clean background and getting our off camera flash settings dialed in.
Right now Stuart just has a Canon XT with the standard 18-55mm kit lens. In the photo above I set him up with my Nikon SB-800 Speedlight, light stand and Yongnuo radio remote triggers (which allows a Canon camera to use a Nikon speedlight). However, we started out just doing natural light, then his built-in pop-up flash, then simulating the speedlight being hotshoe mounted, and then finally true strobist style. Of course the best results were produced using the strobist (off camera flash) method.
For the lesson Stuart's pal Jackie was our willing model. In addition to teaching Stuart strobist techniques, I also helped him to pose the model (Jackie) for best impact and lighting, as well on how to best frame a shot in the limited shooting space of the salon. I recommended a tight composition to eliminate the need to later crop the image and to eliminate what I call intruders (like those brushes on the wall) messing up the clean background.
It was nice to have a lesson in air conditioning and fun to meet Jackie and Stuart. Once Stuart gets his own speedlight, we will meet again for another lesson.
Is the Sky the most beautiful thing about Earth?
7:34pm - Sunset Beach, Florida - 5-bracket HDR image
I once heard someone say, "everything changes except the Sea." It instantly entered my long term memory and comes to mind quite often. On the other hand, does anything change more frequently than the sky? Is this constant change one of the reasons why people (well, at least myself) love to behold the sky? Is this the reason why the sky is so often photographed? Or is the sky just the most beautiful thing about Earth?
Just 16 minutes earlier, the sky looked like this that evening . . .
7:18pm - Sunset Beach, Florida - 5-bracket HDR image
JCP POLL: Do you own a camera bag that can hold all your photo gear?
