Brown Pelican White Background Florida Fine Art Nature Photography

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Brown Pelican photographed in St. Petersburg Florida - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/800th white background enhanced in Photoshop

Living in St. Petersburg there is ample opportunity to photograph brown pelicans about as close up as you dare.  For the most part, the pelicans themselves are not that bothered about a long lens being pointed at them and seem to tolerate it, though I would not go so far as to say they like it.  I wanted to make some fine art pelican images with white backgrounds by purposefully over exposing the shots when I made them in the field, or in this case the St. Petersburg Pier.  I cleaned up the white backgrounds digitally in Photoshop as needed.

Brown Pelican awash in daylight - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/400thShooting in bright light makes it easy to overexpose the images on purpose by using a large aperture along with a relatively slow shutter speed and shooting into the sun.  

Closeup of a brown pelican - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/4 ISO 200 1/1250thSince I was shooting at a focal length of 200mm with a brown pelican standing right next to me, I saw it as an opportunity to photograph details of a pelican, rather than the entire bird, as seen in the above shot focused on the pelican's eye and upper beak texture.  

Photography Tip - Which Aperture with which lens?

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When I put a lens on my DSLR, I already have an idea of which aperture I want to use because I know which aperture is usually best for that particular lens.  I may of course fine tune that aperture, or I may be shooting an unusual subject matter for that lens, but in general I start at these apertures for these lenses.

RECOMMENDED STARTING APERTURES FOR LENSES

  • 18-50mm lens --> f/11
  • 70-200mm lens --> f/5.6
  • 50mm lens --> f/2.8

So if you are looking for a good default aperture to start shooting with when using a particular lens, the apertures above are what I recommend.  

Audi R8 HDR highly stylized black & white image Florida custom car photography

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"Essence of the Audi R8"

I photographed this Audi R8 at the Cars & Couture event at Tampa International Jet Center.  There was very limited space to get any shot and from no angle was there any kind of clean background.  The rear three-quarters view I felt was the best composition given the constraints knowing that I would ultimately remove the car from its real surroundings.  The following is the digital editing process I went through in making the final image you see above which I feel shows the essence of the Audi R8.

I initially thought I could keep the existing cement floor background only making the upper half of the image a digital white background.  However, I was not happy with the lack of consistency in how the floor looked from left to right as well as having no good natural cut off point for it.  I never actually removed the floor from the background.  Through several editing steps it became lightened and smoothed out.  The silhouette filter in Silver Efex Pro essentially made it disappear, but critically leaving the natural shadows under the R8.  Although much of the body of the R8 was also lost in appying this filter, I liked that.  The remaining view of the car, basically all the black trim including the unique "blade" air intake and the black wheels, still showed enough for a knowledgeable viewer to know it was an Audi R8. 

Cassis Restaurant Cirque du Soleil Commercial Window Advertising Photography St Petersburg Florida

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Last week I began a commercial photography project for Bayprint documenting the printing, installing and displaying of a particular type of print made especially for windows.  When viewed from outside you see a colorful image of a Cirque du Soleil performer.  From inside, it appears as just a light gray shade.  These prints were installed on Cassis, a downtown St. Petersburg restaurant right on Beach Drive, a heavy foot traffic location.  As you can see, they add quite a bit of color to the restaurant's facade!

These comparison before and after shots were taken a few days apart, but I went back at the same time of day to match the light and shadows as much as possible.  I looked at the before photo on my iPhone 5 to help me line up the after shot in the same framing.

On yet another day I went to Cassis to photograph the installation process.  Since I am a person who has trouble putting a small sticker on a car window in any kind of alignment, I had a lot of respect for the guys doing the install working with such large prints.  As most pros do, they made it look easy!

Default Indoor DSLR Camera Settings with external flash f/5.6 ISO 800 1/60th

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Continuing my default DSLR camera settings series, in the above shot you can see the settings that I set my Nikon to as soon as I step indoors anywhere.  I am often asked by people, what settings should I use for such and such a situation, and it is always hard to tell them because slight variations in light, subject, etc. can have a big effect.  However, in my experience I pretty much always use these settings along with my external flash on my DSLR in any indoor shooting environment:

aperture:  f/5.6

shutter speed:  1/60th

ISO:  800

For the settings on your hotshoe mounted external flash, most of the time I find a manual power setting of 1/4th is good for lighting the intended subject and allowing the speedlight to recycle fast enough for successive shots.

As you can see the first shot was in a dark ballroom, and this shot is in a fairly well lit office, yet I used the same settings.  These default indoor settings with an external flash will not light up a large room, but will still expose the subject well (the dancers) and if the room does have good lighting and is not too large, the default indoor settings can light up both the subjects and the background.

So the next time you are shooting indoors, give these settings a try and you should be very happy with the results!

Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera HDR in black at Tampa International Jet Center

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A black Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera at Tampa International Airport - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseThe Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera is a special version of the Gallardo for high performance on the track.  I believe it is the best looking Gallardo of the many varients.  I had a chance to photograph this Lambo at the Cars & Couture event at Tampa International Jet Center last week.  As is usually the case when photographing cars at events, the background had people and other objects in it distracting from the beautiful Lamborghini itself.  Plus, this was a very black car being sidelit by the setting sun.  To produce the final, fully edited image you see above, it too 1-hour of digital darkroom effort!  This is how editing this digital photograph progressed . . .

As you can see, if I simply set the exposure mode to aperture priority at f/8 and let the camera's meter make the decision, the result would have been a decent looking sky, but a very underexposed Superleggera that lacked detail in the many shadows.  There was no doubt that I would need to make an HDR image to have a chance at getting both the car and the background looking well exposed.  I went to the max that my Nikon D300 can do, 9-exposures.  

After processing those 9 shots in Photomatix Pro, the middle image was the result.  The worst part of it really were all the reflections in the side of the Lamborghini from another car next to it.  That required a lot of careful clone stamping and even a little painting to get to an at least acceptable level of reflection.  

After that task I set to removing the people standing behind the Superleggera, then the building over the passenger's side, then the cones and finally the person half-visible in the left edge of the frame.  Once the image was all cleaned up I began selectively adjusting contrast levels and doing a little dodging here and there to balance the look of the pavement.

All that is not even counting my initial color correction and adjuting done in Aperture 3 and Color Efex Pro 3!  So you can get an idea of how much work is involved in trying to get a usable car shot from a car event!

Cars & Couture 2012 Tampa International Jet Center

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Ferrari 458 Italia & Ferrari FF at Cars & Couture 2012 event in Tampa - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable release

  • If I took your photograph at this event, CONTACT ME for your portrait!

I was given a media pass to the Cars & Couture 2012 event at the Tampa International Jet Center that was held to benefit the charity Autism Speaks.  Being an avid supercar fan, I was very excited to have the opportunity to photograph some of my favorite cars in a cool setting.  In the above photo, you can see my absolute current favorite car, the Ferrari 458 Italia on the left.  This was also my first chance to get to see the new Ferrari FF (on the right) in person.  I thought the FF looked smaller than I thought it would being a 4-seater with ample cargo space.  

An Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione looks out over the Tampa International Jet Center airfield - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable release

I arrived at 6pm as the sun was getting low in the sky allowing me to catch some of the sunset mixed with the hangar location of the event as seen in the above shot of a very rare Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione.  I like the design of this Alpha quite a lot.  It was given the best spot, perhaps because it arrived late!

Cars & Couture 2012 in Tampa featured private jets too! - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 7-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseI must say that an airplane hangar makes a great venue for showcasing cars and allowing guests to have both an indoor and outdoor experience, especially when there is a big view of the Florida sky at dusk as a backdrop.  It was a little hot inside the hangar though as even this late into October Florida refuses to acknowledge that it is in fact autumn.

NASCAR was even represented at Cars & Couture 2012 in Tampa! - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 200 9-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseI had a great time at this event and am very thankful I was given a press pass.  My supercar itch, is for the moment, somewhat scratched!