Fun with Adrian

This weekend I was having fun with my 50mm f1.8's shallow depth-of-field, soft diffuse overcast light, and my 1yr. old nephew who has recently learned to walk. This a great age to photograph, where they are interested in you and in the camera so they look at you and make interesting and cute expressions. They are also not quite too mobile yet and therefore easier to focus on without heading for you and grabbing the camera or zipping in and out of the frame like my 2 year old does.
I'm also enjoying the simplicity of the editing tools in Google's free photo editor, Picasa. After learning some of the complex tools and enduring the long start up time of Photoshop CS, Its refreshing to have a light and easy program like Picasa to process family photos. I've been thinking about trying Adobe's Lightroom to help me with workflow, but for now, I'm going to see how far Picasa takes me.

Juan and Sandy

I had the great opportunity to shoot some pre-wedding pictures for my wife's cousin, Juan, and his fiance, Sandy. This was probably my second "official" assignment. What I mean by official is that someone asked me to be a photographer and produce material that they will use. The first assignment I had was to photograph an open house event for my company. (Perhaps I'll post some examples of that assigment in another blog entry.)

Juan and Sandy's assignment was pretty fun. It helped that I knew them well, and they trusted my ability to get decent shots. Right at the start of the shoot, realized that I had no clue on how to pose people or couples. Luckily, they had some ideas of poses they wanted. Throughout the shoot, we tried different things, some that worked and others that didn't.

Since we started mid-afternoon with the sun peeking out of the clouds in the western sky, I used flash throughout the shoot and shot into the sun. I originally wanted to shoot everything with my 50mm lens, but quickly decided to switch to my 18-200mm zoom for maximum flexibility. I also intended to shoot using manual exposure, but the light kept changing with the sun peeking in and out of the clouds. What I found quite effective was to underexpose using exposure compensation of -1 to -1.7 to darken the sky and ocean in the background and illuminate the main subject with off-camera flash triggered by Nikon CLS. I tried practicing this technique with my son at the same beach at sunset with some good results. However, I think I need to understand it and work at it some more.

I hope they like the pictures.

Lavender

I tried out some close-up photography of the flowers that were blooming in our yard this weekend. For this I put a closeup filter (+3, Hoya) onto my 50mm f/1.8 and shot around the yard. I am pleased with the calming semi-abstract images that resulted.

I'll try this screw-on alternative for a while before spending the $$$ on a macro lens (like the 105mm Micro-Nikkor f/2.8G VR).

Perhaps a trip out to the Anza Borrego Desert is in order...The wildflowers are in bloom...or they were a couple of weeks ago...I think the peak is over...perhaps next year.