St. Petersburg Florida Professional Business Headshot Photography Service with Buddy

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Professional Business Headshot made in St. Petersburg Florida home studio - Buddy in formal attire - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/7.1 ISO 200 1/100th Strobist: SB-800 in 43" brolly to frame right & SB-600 in snoot pointed at backgroundBuddy came to my home studio in St. Petersburg Florida to have his professional business headshot made to improve his online business appearance.  This is exactly why I offer this business headshot service either in my home studio or on location right in your own office or home.  The more Linkedin profile photos I see made with an awful camera phone the more I wonder why anyone would want to represent themselves in that type of unprofessional manner.  

Business casual style professional headshot done in my St. Petersburg Florida home studio - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/7.1 ISO 200 1/100th - Strobist: SB-800 in 42" brolly to frame right & SB-600 in snoot pointed at backgroundBuddy was a natural in front of the lens and very fun and uncomplicated to photograph.  He was even wearing eyeglasses with an anti-glare coating that showed no reflections in them at all!

Flower Arrangement Photography Lesson in Tampa with Gopal

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Getting things setup to photograph flowers using an industrial light system in TampaI have taught over 200 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lessons to people who were mostly hobbyists wanting to get better at making photographs for themselves.  However, I am increasingly teaching people who want to get better at photography for improving their own business.  These are what I call Commercial DSLR Photography Lessons.  Such was the case when I went over to Tampa to teach Gopal (holding camera above) how to photograph flower arrangements using the lighting and gear he currently had.  

I still began the lesson like I do any other, by teaching Gopal my step-by-step processing for setting the camera in order to procduce a well exposed and sharp image in any given shooting condition.  From there we went to using his very specific setup in the same room he would be photographing the floral arrangements.  I gave advice on where to better position the lights and how to manipulate the exposure to produce the darker overall tone to the images that he wanted.  

In addition to this shooting process we also covered a little bit of digital editing workflow.  I look forward to seeing his final images using all we covered that afternoon.

Bring only one lens - photography tip

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My own well used lenses, from left to right: Tamron XR Di II 17-50mm f/2.8 -- Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D -- Nikkor AF 50mm f/1.8DMany people start out with just one lens.  Then, if they are like me, they almost immediately start thinking about what lens to get next!  In total, I have four lenses, the ones you see pictured above and the one I made the photograph with (Nikkor AF-S 105mm VR micro f/2.8G).  When I go on a portrait job I often bring all four, though I usually only have time to use three of them.  When I go to an event job, I usually only bring two (80-200mm & 17-50mm).  

However, when I go out shooting just for myself, I almost always only bring one lens.  Why only bring one lens when I could bring four?? 

  • One lens helps me focus on making one type of photograph
  • One lens let's me travel light using my small camera bag
  • One lens means I have to be more creative

I think those are three pretty good reasons for going out sometimes with just one lens, especially to an area you frequent often and can go back and make a different kind of shot.  Of course you can bring one lens that covers the focal length of all those lenses above (18-200mm lens), but that can lead to scatter shooting and lack of focus, the first benefit aobve.  The first lens I actually ever owned was an 18-200mm lens.  I sold it within two months for the two lenses you see pictured left & center.  

Go out next time with just one lens, have a focus in mind, choose your lens based on that targeted focus, then in the comments below tell us about the experience.

Hanko Japanese Stamps used as signatures

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I used to walk by this display case of hanko stamps every day when I lived in Tokyo.I cannot recommend enough that one should live at least one year abroad.  Living here in the U.S. there is no sense of just how isolated things are, especially if you do not live in a big city like New York or San Francisco.  If you are a curious person and like to explore, then living abroad is a must.  One thing I discovered while living in Japan is that official documents need to be stamped using the person's family hanko stamp much more than they actually need to be signed to become official documents.  Think about how important one's signature is here in the U.S.  Not so in Japan.  When I first setup things like a bank account, they asked me for my stamp.  I of course did not have one.  Eventually a friend gave me my own with an approximation of how my name sounds in Kanji characters (see below photo).  I even had one with just "Jason" on the end of it which I used sometimes!

My own hanko stamp given to me by a Japanese friendThere are specialty shops just for hanko stamps.  There are a lot of such specialty shops along the streets of Tokyo for many things that we just do not have in the U.S.  Often they are very tiny shops, not much larger than walk-in closet sized.  I always found them super interesting and kind of mysterious.  The hanko stamps in the top image were in a display case out front of a hanko shop on a street I lived on for four years.  I walked by them every day and would always peek inside the small shop to see the craftsman as his workbench.  It just occurred to me now that I wish I had photographed the shop itself too!

Brown Pelican One Wing Out St. Petersburg Florida wildlife photography

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Brown Pelican (male) at The Pier in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/7.1 ISO 200 1/800th shutter priorityBrown Pelicans are very curious birds to me.  Here in St. Petersburg Florida you can get up very close to them, basically stand right next to them at some places.  As they are a large bird it feels pretty cool to be able to get so close to a large wild animal.  Plus, they always look like they are looking back at you thinking something (probably do you have any snacks?).  

The male brown pelican above caught my eye because I had never seen a pelican hold out just one wing to dry before like he was doing.  It seemed an odd thing to do when presumably trying to balance on top of a tall piling as he was.  

Commercial High Tech Equipment Shoot in Clearwater for Nordson March

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A real worker being the model for this Nordson March commercial equipment shot - Nikon D300 (tripod mounted) Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/3 sec Strobist: SB-800 to frame left in 43" shoot through umbrella and SB-600 in same setup to frame right - white background added digitallyLast week I had an interesting commercial photography job in Clearwater that on the surface would sound super simple--photograph a large square machine in a warehouse, no editing required as the company's graphic artists would handle that as they use the images I make in online and print media materials.  Easy right?

Well, nothing really is ever as easy as it seems in photography.  The machine itself was about the size of two refrigerators and an off-white color, meaning reflections from any lighting I may use would be an issue.  I used two 43" shoot through umbrellas to produce maximum light surface area in order to try and minimize hot spots on the machine.  It took me quite a bit of time to position the umbrellas so that the upper corners of the machine did not appear as hot spots.  However, once everything was setup, and since I was shooting on a tripod, each shot after that was rapid.  

The purple lighting is the result of plasma being produced! - Nikon D300 (tripod mounted) Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 1/4th sec - Strobist: SB-800 to my left in 43" shoot through umbrella & SB-600 in same setup to my rightFour minutes after turning the machine on, plasma is produced inside!  Seeing the plasma up close like that was kind of a David Banner moment for me!  To have no glare on the LCD screen I had some of the warehouse staff hold up a white background sheet over me and the machine to diffuse the light and make the screen readable (in another closeup shot).

The two 43" shoot through umbrella setup I used to make all the shots for the shoot.The above photo is the setup I used to make the top photo in this post.  All other shots were made with a similar arrangement of the two speedlights in the shoot through umbrellas.  I have to thank the workers in the warehouse for their help holding the diffuser sheet and for not minding the good amount of space the shoot took up in the middle of their work day.

Real Estate Photography Lesson in Largo with Kelly & her Canon XS

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Real estate photography often involves working in small spaces!This year I have started to teach more commercial photography lessons, that is teaching photography to those who will use those photography skills to directly help their own businesses.  To that end I met Kelly this morning in Largo for a 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson on how to photograph real estate, as she is an agent and wants to improve her listings with better images.  She was a referral from Angela, another photography student and also family portrait client.  Thank you Angela!

The photography lesson with Kelly this morning was a combination of the usual 5-step methodology (in manual mode) I teach everyone for creating a well exposed and sharp image in any given situation.  However, I limited the scenarios this time of course to shooting indoor interiors.  In this way I showed Kelly everything from how to properly change lenses, how to get the most stability out of a tripod, why you would want to purposefully overexpose certain images and also how to compose and frame shots to best showcase each room of a house.

It was a nice change of pace for me to teach this kind of commercial lesson and I look forward to seeing the no doubt improved real estate photographs Kelly uses for her upcoming listings!  Visit her official business website if you are looking for a home in northern Pinellas.