Photography Tip - have a foreground element in vertical orientation photos

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Photo Tip - without a foreground object this vertical orientation shot would have not enough interest as composed - made with an iPhone 5When shooting in portrait orientation (vertical shots), which I recommend to do more often than you are probably currently doing, having a foreground object really helps fill the frame with interest for the viewer.  In the above shot made with an iPhone 5, there is a salt marsh and Kiki of course as subject matter, but without the boardwalk in the foreground leading to those other subjects, it would just be empty space of little interest and probably would end up being cropped out.

So when shooting landscape type shots in portrait orientation, try and include a foreground object to add more interest to the photograph overall.  Post a link to your results in the comments below!

Bilmar Beach Resort Sunset Portraits Treasure Island Florida with couple from Utah

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Visiting all the way from Utah, Matt & Shanna have fun at Bilmar Beach Resort during our sunset portrait session - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th - Strobist: SB-800 to frame right front & SB-600 to frame right rearIt would seem the Bilmar Beach Resort is a popular hotel with out of state visitors as the last time I did a sunset beach portraits session there it was with someone visiting from Chicago.  This time, a couple all the way from Utah was staying on Treasure Island and met me for a candid couples beach sunset portait shoot.  There are few things I am lucky with in life, but having good weather at sunset time is one of them.  Just the night before it was raining all evening.  As you can see, no rain in sight thankfully!

Twilight beach portrait at Bilmar Beach Resort Treasure Island Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/60th - Strobist: SB-800 to frame left front & SB-600 to frame right rearBeing a Tuesday evening in September as well, there were few people on the beach allowing for wide shots like the one above to not require any tricky people removing editing in the background.  The twilight sky was also very beautiful.  We stayed a little extra longer to get the above shot.

Leaning in for a kiss at Bilmar Beach Resort Treasure Island Florida during sunset portraits - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/5 ISO 200 1/200th - Strobist: SB-800 to frame right front & SB-600 to frame left rearIt was a fun session with Shanna and Matt and I am always glad to be able to help people remember their time in Florida through photographs.

Ballet Dancer Model Portfolio Shoot Wesley Chapel Florida Photography

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Ballet dancer Katie in her own home studio for this model portfolio shoot in Wesley Chapel Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th - Strobist: SB-800 & SB-600 each in own 43" brollyKatie is a new friend I have made in my brief time in Wesley Chapel Florida.  For many years she was a professional dancer and on stage around the country.  Now in her Wesley Chapel home she has her own dance studio.  I went over on a Sunday evening to make some ballet dancer model portfolio shots in that studio and found out the real challenge of shooting in a room with a wall of mirrors!  It took me quite a few different setup tries to eliminate or reduce lights and myself ending up in the background of shots.  Katie also had the hard task of repeating physical ballet moves like the one above!

Katie on her ballet bar in her home studio during our model portfolio shoot in Wesley Chapel Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th - Strobist: SB-800 & SB-600 each in their own 43" brollyIn this shot Katie takes a break from jumps and relaxes with a leg up.  I tried out the bar myself and took two tries before I could swing my leg up on its own (no hand help) even though I am three inches taller than Katie!  Range of motion is something I know I need to keep working on.  

Katie on point during our ballet model portfolio shoot in Wesley Chapel Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th - Strobist: SB-800 & SB-600 each in their own 43" brollyNot suprisingly, being on tip toes is not the most comfortable thing to do in the world.  I realized quickly that my usual lens I like to use for model shoots, my Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8D was not going to be practical in such a space, and switched to my Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 lens which was used for all the shots seen here.

Katie showing the flexibility of a ballet dancer during our model portfolio shoot in Wesley Chapel - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th - Strobist: SB-800 & SB-600 each in their own 43" brolly - background added digitally

Katie also uses her dance studio as a fitness and workout center.  It was not possible to remove all things from the room, and they were too hard to remove digitally on their own, so in the above shot I just cut out Katie herself and put her on that digital background, which is actually a portion of a photograph I made at a car event (see the second photo from the bottom) that had cool red lighting.  

Katie touching the sky during our ballet model portfolio shoot in Wesley Chapel Florida - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/250th - Strobist: SB-800 & SB-600 each in their own 43" brollyWe shot for quite sometime and Katie was great about repeating each jump & pose as long as needed to get just the right shot in terms of lighting, limb placement and composition.  I got to learn just how challenging it is to shoot in a hall of mirrors and to be a ballet dancer!

Nikon D5300 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson in Wesley Chapel Florida with Reham

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Reham practices setting the focus and recomposing with her Nikon D5300 in Wesley Chapel Florida during our 1-on-1 photography lessonOn a warm and humid Wesley Chapel Florida evening I met Reham for the second time at Shops at Wiregrass for a 1-on-1 DSLR Photography Lesson.  We first met one week earlier where I taught her my 5-step system for getting a well exposed and sharp shot in any shooting conditions.  Between now and then she practiced in a variety of settings from an outdoor restaurant to a dark bowling alley!  This practice allowed her to come to our second lesson with specific questions and specific photos to ask.  This is exactly the way to make progress in learning how to become a digital photographer, by taking what is learned during the lessons, applying it in the field, then returning with questions before learning another photography skill.  I was pleased with Reham's practice and progress in just one week!

The photography skill we focused on this time, was actually setting the focus and recomposing as I noticed she centered the subject every time in all of her practice shots.  Putting the single focus point on the subject of the photograph, pressing the shutter halfway, and keeping it pressed halfway while slightly recomposing the shot is the technique needed to prevent boring, centered subject photographs.  In particular, when photographing a person, the focus should be set upon the eyes, and then recompose from there, as I did in the portrait of Reham above.  

I will meet Reham two more times next week to get her as ready as possible to make great photographs during her trip to Paris later this month!

McLaren 650S in black multiple strobist blend layer mask photography tip Clearwater Florida Car Photography

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What if you want to photograph a large object, especially in a low light situation, but you only have two speedlights, or even only one?  No problem!  Here is how you can do it and what you will need.

Photo gear used to photograph the McLaren 650S indoors:

  • Nikon D300
  • Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8
  • SB-800 & SB-600 Speedlights
  • 2 shoot through umbrellas
  • Yongnuo radio triggers
  • tripod
  • cable release
  • assistant (to help move and hold the lights)
  • Photoshop CS5

A tripod is a must because you will need to take multiple shots from different angles to properly light the subject, in this case the McLaren 650S supercar.  In all I ended up using five photographs to make the one fully lit photograph (below).  I lit the front of the car first, then moved the lights around the car (counterclockwise in this case) taking another photograph each time.  I even had my assistant hold a speedlight over the top of the car (see top most image).  The assistant being in the shot or a lightstand partially being in the shot is no problem at all as the final step takes place at home in Photoshop using layer masks.

In the above photo all 5 shots have been blended together one at a time using layer masks in Photoshop.  I started with the shot of the McLaren 650S lit from the front.  I then dragged it onto the next photo in the series with the driver's side wheels lit up.  I created a layer mask and then revealed the lit wheels photograph underneath, keeping the front lit part from the other photo.  I then flattened all layers and repeated this process using the other three photographs.  You can see shadows from coming from more than two angles in the above shot because effectively ten speedlights were used to light up the car, not just the two in reality I had for the shoot.  

I could have stopped with the 5 shot composite, but I got carried away with removing objects from the background until I finally decided just to remove them all!  I started this edit on Saturday night, and finished it on Monday afternoon it took that long and I kept wanting to do more and more to it.  I did nothing special to remove the background objects, just simply used the Clone Stamp tool on only carefully selected portions of the photo.  Then I removed a lot of the reflections on the car body and cleaned up the floor.  The final result was my most advanced photopraph edit in Photoshop to date!

Give this multiple exposure strobist blend layer mask type image a try and let me know the results in the comments below.

Cars & Couture 2014 Car Owners Gathering Event at Dimmitt Automotive Group Pinellas Park Florida

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McLaren 650S in black at Dimmitt Automotive Florida during Cars & Couture Car Owners Gathering event - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 5-exposure HDR tripod mounted with cable releaseI was invited to an event at Dimmitt Automotive in Pinellas Park, Florida for a special Car Owners Gathering thanks to Dona who organizes many great car events under her Cars & Couture brand.  I brought along eldest friend Terry to help out with some of the photography.  As you can see from the above photograph, Dimmitt is a MacLaren dealership.  There were several Mclaren 650S supercars in the showroom.  It was my first time to see this update to the McLaren MP4-12C in person.  The 650S is a much more striking looking sports car in person than the 12C, mostly thanks to a new front fascia inspired by the McLaren P1 hypercar.

Guests at Cars & Couture Dimmitt Automotive stand next to a MacLaren 650S in black Clearwater Car Photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/60th - Strobist: SB-800 in shoot-through-umbrella to frame rightOften there is not much space to photograph cars at such events, but there was a black McLaren 650S kind of off by itself in a separate area of the showroom.  This allowed me to setup two speedlights and shoot through umbrellas and not only photograph the car itself in great detail (subject of an upcoming blog post), but also to invite guests over to be properly photographed next to the supercar.

The new MacLaren 650S supercar in yellow at Dimmitt Automotive during Cars & Couture event - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/11 ISO 200 5-exposure HDRIf you happen to prefer yellow, there was also a McLaren 650S in that color looking right out the front windows inviting you to come in and put a deposit down on her!  We got there early to be able to photograph the cars before there were too many people mingling about..

Yours truly with my friend Terry who assisted with the shots at Cars & Couture Car Owners Gathering 2014 Dimmitt Automotive - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/8 ISO 400 1/60th - Strobist: SB-800 & SB-600 in shoot through umbrellasFor the last shot of the evening, Terry and I stepped out from behind the camera and the lights for a self-portrait with the black McLaren 650S.  It took a little configuring using the self-timer to position myself symmetrically after pressing the shutter, but I am glad we made the effort to get ourselves both in the shot and add another photo to our scrapbook that now spans almost three decades.

Guests wanted to pose with the MacLaren 650S at Cars & Couture Dimmitt Automotive Clearwater Event Photography - Nikon D300 Tamron 17-50mm @ f/5.6 ISO 200 1/60th - Strobist: SB-800 in shoot through umbrella to frame rightOne last shot to show how well the McLaren 650S photographs, especially when bookended by willing volunteer models!  Thank you Dona for another great car event and to Terry for assisting in the making of these photographs.

Business Casual Headshot in Clearwater Florida with Brian

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I went to Brian's office in Clearwater to make a creative business casual headshot - Nikon D300 Nikkor 80-200mm @ f/7.1 ISO 200 1/125th - Strobist: SB-800 in 43" brolly to frame right & SB-600 in 43" shoot-through-umbrella to frame left rearI went over to Clearwater, Florida on a recent afternoon to meet Brian and make a creative business casual headshot for him right in his office.  It was a nice long office with plenty of space to setup my portable studio equipment.  He wanted a white background for his headshot, so I put the white cover over my collapsible background so that I could easier cut him out and place him on a digital white background as seen above in the final image.  

During the headshot I learned that Brian was about to run his first Iron Man and had been running triathlons.  I told him how I have photographed the St. Anthony's Triathlon a few times and we also talked about fitness in general.  He was a natural in front of the camera so it was only a very brief hello, make the headshot, and good-bye, which is my goal to not take up much more than 15 minutes of the client's time.