Tennis shoot from tuesday

1/250th @ f11 ISO 100
4 Flashes at 1/2 power all around
Jpeged from camera/ no post

Will have another shoot of this when some clouds roll in. More here.

Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor speaking at Richland

Über famous photographers, Jerry Uelsmann and Maggie Taylor, will be speaking at Richland College on Oct. 1 at 7 pm (Fannin Hall). Free to attend.

http://www.pegasusnews.com/news/2009/sep/09/richland-college-welcome-photographers-jerry-uelsm/

small shoot Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday meetup

A gathering Tuesday from 2pm to 3pm for a particular project to help Nguyen, one of our photographers, with his concept. Here are the images to go off as preliminary ideas: one and two
Meetup at the UTD Tennis Court. I will be spending that hour to make Nguyen's concept sucessful.
I'm thinking fast-action for this project, and I hope some clouds will cut the ambient lighting.

There will be another meetup Wednesday too. 1 to 2:30PM. Meet up at the art barn/visual arts building first, then we will disperse. Get in our network through facebook, add me if you haven't. 214 718 2387 if can't find us on-location.

Also, if you want lighting demonstrations or want to spend more time familiarizing yourself with flash equipment, let me know. We can meet sometime within 1PM till 4PM Tuesdays and Thursdays. I teach faster with individuals or small groups.

Sept 23 '09

I figured I would put up some of the shots I did of Alex to demonstrate unconventional use of light. Most of it was just Alex grabbing the light and putting it right next to his face. The light had a softbox so Alex didnt burn his face

Two different photos of Alex but same basic light set up. One has less post work done than the other. top photo is f 8.0 and bottom is f 13.0 both are 1/125th second at 200 ISO

Photos of Sirak one of our models for the day. Both are F 9.0, 1/125th second and ISO 200

Wednesday Shoot

First off thank you to all the photographers and models that came out today! I think we had something like 20+ people which was great. Look for more posts to follow in the coming days of from other photographers and their shots. Here are my shots.

Here we all are setting up for our first outdoor location.

First up we have Kelly (top picture) who was gracious enough to model for us. I'm really glad I lugged my 70-200mm F/2.8 around all day, it was well worth it! As you can see with a longer lens and wider aperture, you can achieve some real separation of your subject from the background, especially outdoors. Most of the following were shot with 3 flashes. Two in front and one behind the tree for rim lighting. The flashes varied in power from 1/4 - 1/16 power.

200mm - F/4 - 1/160


130mm - f/5.6 - 1/160


200mm - f/4 - 1/160


Black and white of the top picture.
110mm - f/3.5 - 1/160

Next, we moved out to the large area in between Johnson and Green for our next location, a concrete jungle. Thanks to Hubert, we realized that at this point, we had more than 6 flashes and enough trigger/receivers that we could run two setups at the same time. So Mark, Hubert, Alex, Dan, and I split up for same crazy poverty wizard (ebay triggers) triggering with three flashes. Results are below. Also below are some off the wall, jump shots and some kicks. (I'd love to see what other people got too).

Let's see how close we can get the flash to Alex's face without burning him. Mark has the pictures!

Where's Jessica off to in such a hurry?


Sirak

They look weightless.


Mark, you're in the way! (Happy Birthday Cuong!)


Also look for us on an upcoming UTD TV episode.

I must say, you two (Alex and Jessica) have some crazy moves!

Alex


Jessica, that doesn't even look physically possible.

Please C&C (comment and critique) in the comments below! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Happy shooting, see you all next week, same time same place! Don't forget to bring your friends)!
Ryan

Used photo equipment this weekend

A large supply of used camera equipment for sale here. September 26 and 27.
http://www.donsphotoequipment.com/
Alex and I went to the previous one. I don't have any plans to buy camera gear right now so I probably won't be going this weekend.

Subjects Needed for Our Next Shoot!

Our next shoot will be Wednesday, September 23 at 1:00 PM till about 2:30PM . We will meet in the Visual Arts Building (Art Barn) and will head out to a location from there. After the torrential rains last week, the weather is looking nice!

We are looking for other students of UTD to be the subjects of our shoot. No experience is needed. Whether you have 15 minutes or 60 minutes, we'd love to photograph you for some outdoor portraits or on-location portraits of you in your element. It would be greatly appreciated if you could post in the comments or email Long (lpn071000@utdallas.edu) if you are coming. This service will also be ongoing, contact us if you need to schedule a particular date.

This would be a perfect chance for you to get some free professional pictures for your personal websites.

Here are some examples of what we do. Check out the rest of the blog for more examples.

Hope to see you there!
We will also have flyers around to promote our service.

edit to add:
Students preparing for their industries will figure out ways to promote themselves and their services to a client/employer. Everyone, particularly ATEC students, will want a photo of themselves for their "about me" or "bio" pages of their personal websites - this gives employers a better understanding of who you are. Utdphoto wants to show the best of you by giving you the look you need to impress those employers and recruiters. ~Long Nguyen

Playing with strobes (Wed 9/16/2009)

Thanks Long, for a great introduction to lighting. Waiting anxiously for our next shoot. Some shots - Cut and paste ?? .....Not really ;)





- Ady

Fun Gear

So rainy season is here and you don't want your camera wet, right? Behold! The Popabrella! It's an umbrella for your camera, haha. You can find the product here at X-tremeGeek.com. Another alternative is to buy a rain jacket.


Have you always wanted to take a candid shot of someone or something without them noticing? Make your candid shots so much more so with the right-angle mirror scope. It mounts to the filter ring of your camera lens using a thread adapter (sold separately) and realigns the view path 90 degrees to the side. Aim your camera innocently in one direction and you'll capture images from your immediate right or left. You can find the product here at X-tremeGeek.com.

There is a problem with opening pictures from blogspot - it will not allow users to go "back", return to the previous page.
I'll look into this. Linking images externally do not have this problem, however.

Group Shot

I thought this was the best shot I took of the day. I learned a lot about lighting. Thanks Long. This is without any work done in PhotoShop.
Some adjustments to the levels and curves in the picture all done in PhotoShop.

-Jessica

New members!

My assignment for after the rain. Close up shot on the flower 1/60s f8






Jessica posing on spirit rock.



extra lighting on her.

so far things turn out well for today, new members came and we learned new things. nothing exciting yet, I'm going to start posting videos of what we do next time. if longs allows it.

Mastering Light

Long, the master of lighting, helps me to adjust the umbrella light

We had a good turn out today, despite the light rain. Some new faces and some old (I guess we can call them regulars now). I think we all learned something new today as well. Hopefully we can all take what we've learned from our shoots and go out and apply the same techniques to improve our photography.

These shots aren't that great, but they show the effects of using multiple light sources and different modifications you can do to them. I was kinda in a hurry, but I see plenty of things that could be corrected. Like flash placement, reflections in the sunglasses, some overexposed areas, and composition. More examples like the above at the end of the post.

In the coming weeks, we will be stepping up our efforts to really put to the test everything we've learned as we reach out to other students and offer up our photography services for some professional portraits. More on that project to follow in the coming days.

Again, thanks to all the new people who showed up. We hope to see you all again next week!

-Ryan

Showing off the range of Pocket Wizards radio flash triggers.

Mark and Alex in the rain doing some macros with raindrops for the rain assignment.

Long

Jessica

Photo Opps!

Looking for an interesting event to take pictures at? Here are a couple events this week:

1) Oktoberfest is an annual fall festival which takes place in Munich, Germany. Dallas has it's own version of Oktoberfest and celebrates it in Addison, TX. It is a large fair with German entertainment, delicious food, carnival rides, and more.

More info: http://www.addisontexas.net/events/oktoberfest/

2) Plano Balloon Festival. See hot air balloons. :)

More info: http://www.planoballoonfest.org/schedule.html

Another festival I often attend is the Dallas Japanese Association's Aki Matsuri, or Fall Festival. It will be from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday at 4100 Alpha Road at Midway Road, 1 mile west of the Galleria mall. There will be food and game booths as well as traditional Japanese martial arts and dance demonstrations.

More Info: http://godja.org/en/images/stories/files/FallFesta09_Poster.pdf

here's a photo I took at the japanese festival one year. If only I had people holding strobes for me. :)

Wednesday meet 1 till 2:30PM

Gather up first at the art barn/ visual arts building. Then, we'll head out on campus for a photo shoot; we'll move inside if it rains. Call if you can't locate us, 214 718 2387.

Take home Photography assignment

We want your photos of the recent weather change, the rain - be it rainy, outdoor portraiture, wet scenic landscape, or beautifully lit puddles or droplets.
Mark will be out photographing this weekend, join him if you could (see previous post). Watch that radar for incoming storms, monitor this webcam for an aerial view. Bring your camera with you because you never know.
This will be your assignment until our next weekly meet but late entries are welcome for critique. Anyone can participate, the best way for us to see your submitted work is to leave a comment with a link to your photo i.e. your website, flickr account, devArt etc. We'll collaborate and share an online discussion about your photo via here or your website.


And a snippet from our last gathering.

Dialogue is mostly from ambient noise, the tv.
Thanks Scott for video assistance.
Links to our videos in the past:
http://utdphoto.blogspot.com/2008/10/shoot-from-oct-17.html
http://utdphoto.blogspot.com/2008/10/photo-shoot-from-oct-10.html

Next meeting

alright guys, so the forecast is showing rain for pretty much the whole week and most of the next. i think this would be a perfect time to experiment with water. now, the rain is pretty unpredictable but im free all day friday and some of saturday. if yall want we can meet in the art barn and experiment with anything from macro water drops to doing speedlite portrait photos in the rain. models in the rain not equipment obviously. i dont have everyones facebook but if yall want to let me know when works for you comment on here or hit me up on facebook at mark lauman. regardless im probably going to be shooting friday so let me know if your interested and want to meet somewhere.

Forgot that my computer at home doesn't have firewire. I'll have to screen the video tomorrow when I import it into the atec lab's computer.

My bag of tricks (mostly) updated

I want to share with you all my lighting techniques. Some I use more than others but these are the ones I can consistently wield on the field with ease. It's important to setup your lighting quickly and nail down the settings before your model loses interest, or gets bored. It's also important to move from one setup to the next so your model stays actively engaged. So I want you readers to learn from my controlled, studio setup and see for yourself how you can use these tricks for your own photography. Some of you will be using my equipment; I want you to take advantage of that. Note the effects of these different lighting schemes and achieve similar results on the field.

Photos taken on tripod. I use flash white balance on all of these. Yes, my room is Fiesta Orange.

Bare/Naked lighting @ 1/8th power. 1/60 and f8.

Flash position raised, pointing down.

Below Camera level, pointing up.

Two point lighting for fill. Flash on camera left @ 1/16th power. 1/60 and f8.
Flash on camera right @ 1/4th power.

Back to one point lighting. Flagged on both sides of the flash head.
It creates a narrow beam of light. Useful for creating patterns.

Flash shooting into a reflective umbrella @ 1/2 power.

Flash firing into a shoot-through umbrella @ 1/2 power. Softer shadows than the reflective.
With light being diffused, compensate by letting more light into your sensor.
Usually, I think to open up the aperture first b/c it is closest to me.

Gridded flash @ 1/4th power. What's a gridspot?

Moved in closer.

Gelled flash to a color of your choice. I have lots...

... Flash @ 1/16th power, at camera left pointing onto a white backdrop ...

... Flash at camera right @ 1/4th power, flagged on its right side to prevent spill on the BG.

Or maybe you'll want a silhouette.
When coloring a backdrop, I usually shoot with a flash there first.
Having the other flashes turned off allows you to focus on the settings for the BG.
Then add on other lights for the subject, etc.

Rim light @ 1/8th power, flagged on both sides of the flash...

... Shoot through @ 1/2 power for fill on subject's left ...

Nude flash @ 1/8th taking a bath on subject's right.
Kevin could have been groomed better, you should groom your model too.
I broke some sweat trying to control the rim lighting on this one.
One of my weaker techniques. Look at the strobist flickr pool for inspiration.

No photoshop.
Hopefully what you get away from this post are the possibilities of using my equipment. There are a lot of other light modifiers out there such as a mini softbox which some of our members own. There are also forbidden jutsu (techniques that go against ethics) that could be performed but I stay away from those. Given what you see here, you can vary it a little: a flash position can be altered slightly for great effect on shadows, play with longer exposure, multiple gelled lighting, etc.