So Much to Do, So Little Time

Strobist Style Shooting on New Year's Eve at the Chumash Casino Resort

2011-01-01T15:16:00.000-08:00

Last night I photographed the New Year's Eve Dance Party at the Chumash Casino Resort & Spa in Santa Ynez, California, a free event the casino puts on each year. After some experimentation it seems that they have settled on the Spazmatics and The Boogie Knights, 70's and 80's bands, each of whom does two sets, ending up together on stage at midnight. There is a ton of confetti fired off during the night, hats and noise makers provided, a couple of projection screens of the action and dancing girls provided by Doug Young of Team Dazzle. Here's a view of the Samala Room taken from the back of the room. [Please note: you can click on any image in this blog entry to bring up the full size image that also includes EXIF and IPTC data]:

You can see the two blue people at either end of the stage. They are the dancing girls. And the light they are provided makes getting images tricky, particularly since they are dancing. A couple of years ago I decided to bring strobes and wound up placing them on the corners of the small runway they use, right on the floor. Naturally, the light was shooting straight up their noses and wasn't particularly appealing. So this year I decided to begin experimenting with alternatives. The first thing I wanted to do was get the lights up higher rather than shooting from floor level. And since the base lighting is incandescent I also wanted to warm up the flash temperature a bit.

The first problem, getting the light up higher was complicated by the crowd surrounding the front of the stage and the runways. There was no place to put a light stand where it wouldn't get trashed during the crowd dancing ... and by midnight there's barely room to breath! Fortunately I have some experience with remote shooting and the use of Bogen Variable Friction Arms to mount equipment so that's what I decided to use to hold that flash systems. For each of the two strobes I mounted a Bogen Superclamp on the railing that runs down the side of the the runway. Here's what a Superclamp and Variable Friction Arm look like [please note that this is not a Magic Arm which has a lever rather than the knob of the Variable Friction Arm ... the Variable Friction Arm is much superior to the Magic Arm.] When the knob is released, all the joints of the Variable Friction Arm relax so that the stubs at the ends which are on ball heads can swivel and there is a slot in the side of the casing that allows for 90 degree angles, the ball cases themselves can rotate and the joint where the knobs screws through can swing: this all provides a substantial bit of flexibility.

For strobes, I use Canon 580EX II Speedlites [of which I have three as well as a 270EX.]

Since most use I make of the Speedlites is remote which makes them very awkward to access to replace batteries in mid-shoot, I have a Quantum SC Battery for each strobe.

For the purpose of warming up the light from the flash to approximate tungsten, I have a Lumiquest gel kit that includes CTO filters for this purpose. And since I also mount a FlipIt from time to time I didn't want to permanently attach Velcro to the flash so I also have a Lumiquest Ultrastrap for each strobe.

The big issue at this point is triggering the strobes. I have long used PocketWizards. In my studio I have four Plus II's (I often have other photographers shooting and it is much easier to simply have extras rather than passing one around and taking a chance on missing a shot.) But they don't allow you much control, so for remote triggering of strobes I use a TT1 on camera and a TT5 for each strobe.

The USA version of the Canon flavor TT5's are heavily adversely affected by the radio frequency noise generated by the 580EX II's. This caused significant embarrassment for PocketWizard during the birthing of this product. While their system is conceptually miraculous with all the features it provides, the EMP problem has been huge and they have been slow, first to admit the extent of it, and second to provide solutions. But both issues are now pretty much resolved. The fixes for the problem rely on shielding of the strobe from the TT5. Pocketwizard provided the AC5 soft shield initially and now also provides the AC7 hard shield. While the AC7 provides some nice mounting features, it sadly was subject to significant design errors, particularly if, like me, you normally use the units with exterior power adapters. Without detailing the problems, let me just point out that all three of my AC7's have been modified by Gary McDuffy, Jr., to allow external power and to provide access to the swivel release when the strobe is mounted in the AC7.

On a related note, I experienced a similar problem with the Plus II's and my Bowens QUADX Studio Flash generators. Neither Bowens nor PocketWizard would even respond to my request for assistance with the very frequent firing failures. I was very fortunately to discover online another photographer who had the same problem and did get some help from LPA and the problem is resolved by putting a ferrite choke on the cable from PocketWizard to generator. Since I was also told that Bowens was clearly apprised of the issue and simply said, "Buy our remote triggers!" I am way less than pleased with Bowens. You can read about other major failures by Bowens in my earlier blogs.

The AC7 provides two mounting points as well as an umbrella holder. The Lumiquest Gel system must be attached prior to fitting the strobe into the AC7 due to access restrictions.

Once the strobe with gel kit is mounted in the AC7, a stub is screwed in and tightened. Then a TT5 is attached to the adapter mount as shown in the following image:

And here's an image of the whole setup ready to mount on the rail. The stub (round silver post with inside threading and one flat side) is inserted into the Superclamp at an angle that provides solid support.

Here is an image where you can see the placement of the two strobes, the far strobe mounted out from the top rail and the near strobe mounted on the bottom rail and the handrail:

And finally, the image outcome:

While I thought this experiment was a pretty much a success, I had to dial back the flash exposure compensation over two stops while using E-TTL and expect I would have been much happier if I had used my AC3 Zone Controller and manual flash control, but that was one variable too many for this first field experiment.

All images provided for this blog entry are copyright by me so please don't use them without permission/licensing from me. Please do feel free to ask any questions about anything involved with this entry.

UPS: Updated Enhanced Tracking Information

2010-07-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to advise that UPS tracking information has been enhanced so that when they miss their delivery date rather than have a delivery date days earlier than today without being delivered they now blank out the delivery date so we can't see how many days late they are.

Adorama Fails Again!

2010-04-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I submitted a couple of orders to Adorama on the internet. After they took my money no merchandise showed up in the expected time. When I contacted them I was told the items were backordered so I canceled. After two or three rounds of this I realized that Adorama was neither forthcoming or reliable and I stopped ordering from them and stuck to B&H.

About a month ago they had a good deal on a Hensel MPG 1500 battery pack. I debated. I poked around for recent reviews of Adorama. Most people seemed to like them. So I ordered. Then I found out that the image of the item they were selling was meant for Europe, not the USA. I tried to cancel the order. Not possible. But it also didn't ship as advertised, same day, but rather took several days to 'get it from another store.' Same old story, sigh. Misrepresentations.

So, correct power pack arrives. Turns out one battery is defective out of the box. I contact Adorama expecting an RMA and shipping label. They tell me I'm on my own and give me Hensel's telephone number which appears to be just an answering machine. That's the end of my dealings with Adorama.

I now await word from Hensel.

I have never had any such problems with B&H. Reminds me of all the problems I've had with UPS and never any problems with FedEx. Some companies know what they are doing and some just want to maximize their profit.

Jennifer Wu is Coming Back to LIGHT! Part II

2010-03-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

I just chatted with Victoria, wife of the intrepid Hal, at Light Photographic Workshops in Los Osos, about the upcoming Jennifer Wu macro and field photography and wildflowers: that I will be attending and there are still some seats left. I'm drumming up business for Jennifer because like Kevin Ames at another Light Photographic Workshops seminar I took, Jennifer changed the way I shoot in the field ... and I am very reluctant to change at my age! She turned me into a great believer in using Live View for focusing in the field with the aid of a Hoodloupe for one thing ... I didn't bother with Live View for anything prior to that and now I find myself using it for all sorts of jobs. She also got me much more fluid in my exposure bracketing for outdoor HDR images and panoramas.

Since the last workshop I have acquired a 1DMIV that I will bring along with my 1DsMIII. In preparation for this workshop I bought a 100mm f/2.8L IS macro lens, a 77mm Singh-Ray Vari-ND 2-8 stop filter, a set of Cokin holders and adapters and some graduated ND filters including the infamous Tobacco shade and a Gitzo GT12540EX w/RRS BH-40 Balll Head w/Quick Release to get the camera up close and personal. I'll also bring my 180mm f/3.5L macro to share.

And Jennifer has promised to help me learn to focus my 24mm TS-E lens in the field.

So, if you're an aspiring macro, flower, landscape, outdoor photographer type who loves hands on instruction with the best there is then this is a class for you. And with all the rain we've had there are already tons of wildflowers bursting forth in the central coast. Just hop on out to the LPW Website at http://www.lightworkshops.com/ and sign up or look around.

[Disclaimer: I am not compensated in any way for posts about LPW or Jennifer Wu ... I just like 'em!]

Jennifer Wu is Coming Back to LIGHT!

2010-01-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

I know I have been neglecting my blog again but I have been very busy as well as getting hooked on Facebook, which is a huge time sink. But I have great plans to discuss the tons of new equipment, studio upgrades and projects I'm into, as well as share about experiences.

However, this entry is to make sure you know about Jennifer Wu's upcoming workshop at Light Photographic Workshops in the middle of March. She's coming back, armed for bear, to show us her award winning techniques for doing macros and wildflowers! And in this neck of the woods there are going to be plenty of wildflowers in the Spring given all the rain we're having.

In preparation for this workshop I have acquired a 1DMIV (actually, I got to shoot concerts and boxing, but I'm bringing it), the new Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS macro, Canon MT-24 dual head macro flash, lightweight Gitzo tripod with cross bar (I can't remember the number but I'll post it in another entry), Singh-Ray Vari-ND neutral density filter, Cokin Z-pro filter holder and various size adapters, a Hoodman Hood Loupe (as a result of my last Wu class) and a 24mm f/3.5L TS-E lens (also as a result of my last Wu class.)

If you recall, Jennifer got me into shooting with Live View on a tripod for landscapes, using the Hood Loupe to fine tune focus using the 5x and 10x magnification options. I was really appreciative because I shoot bracketing and mirror lock-up which is a pain unless you do use Live View. So, now I'm ready for her.

"Flowers and Macro Field Photography" will be March 15-19th at the Light Photographic Workshops digital darkroom training facility in Los Osos, California, but I expect we will be off into the field a great deal of that time. I am hoping to remember to take BTS (behind the scenes) photos so you can see more of this superwoman in action.

LIGHT Photographic Workshops: Canon Field Photography with Jennifer Wu: HDR Follow Up

2009-10-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I wrote about the amazing three day weekend with Jennifer Wu in which I suggested that I might have some material for prints, so I thought I should get back over here and show a couple of examples. The two I have in hand are both HDR versions of images, one published previous as non-HDR and one not. They are both photographs taken at Midnight Cellars where Hal is a winemaker up in SLO county. The first is simply the HDR:

The second image I am going to show first the best single of the seven exposures in the series and then the HDR from the seven exposures combined in Photomatix Pro and touch a bit in Lightroom.

I'm impressed! I expect that I'll spend a bit of time determining how to print them when my new Epson 7900 and 4880 printers arrive.

Travel Safe,
Dwight

LIGHT Photographic Workshops: Canon Field Photography with Jennifer Wu

2009-09-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

An amazing three day weekend spent with Jennifer Wu [Canon Explorer of Light], Jim Rose [Canon Pro Rep] and Hal Schmitt [Director, LIGHT Photographic Workshops] in and around Los Osos, California, learning about Field Photography ... you know, like landscapes and stuff where you're out standing in a field. As usual with LPW classes, not only did I learn a huge amount of just what the course description promised, but also all those little tidbits and tips that you can only pickup when actually working with the instructors in classroom and field. But Wait! I'm not done yet! There's more! I also captured some superb images that will likely turn out to be my first fine art landscape style prints.

Rather than regurgitate a chronology of events I'm going to talk about things I learned. Right off the top I got caught up in a discussion of the Really Right Stuff Pano kits. I recently bought the pano head and nodal slide (I know Hal doesn't like this name) but when the kit arrived it was clear that I could pop the nodal slide right into my RRS quick release on my ball head and use the panning feature of the BH-55 and didn't see the use of the panning head. Well, Hal steps right in and says, you need the panning head because the BH-55 panning head is beneath the ball head and you would have to level the panning head with the legset of your tripod. But with the panning head from the kit on top of the ball head it is easy. That's when I learned that there is a separate item dovetail that screws into the bottom of the panning head allowing you to use it with the quick release feature. I have ordered one from RRS and will take a few images and make another blog entry to explain it. None-the-less, it was a small epiphany to understand what is needed. It is another topic all together as to what/why the parallax aperture point is important.

I have had my 1DMIII's and 1DsMIII for quite a while but haven't used the LiveView feature. It just isn't too useful in concerts or boxing or shooting models in the studio. But boy is it a game changer for landscape and product work. In landscape work you can see the whole scene much more intuitively than looking through the eye piece. And since you have the camera on a tripod (don't you?) then when you swing it around it is easier to watch the scene change on the LCD. But better yet, with the 5X and 10X magnification you can do pin point focus adjustment. And, when you see the picture you want, you just punch the shutter release ... and you don't need to do the mirror lockup as a separate step ... the mirror is already up!

Better yet, if you are an HDR shooter, you may already know that you can set the camera to bracket, turn on high speed drive and then press/hold the shutter release and it will shoot one bracket's worth of images. But if you like to use mirror lockup, you can't do this ... ya' gotta' depress the shutter for each image and count them to know when you're done. BUT, if you're using LiveView, the mirror is already up and the multi-exposure trick with holding the release down does work! I love it!

We learned about the wonders of the Canon Tilt-Shift lenses and how combined with LiveView almost any idiot can take advantage of the tilt function to get amazing depth of field images in many common situations. Plus we also learned about the standard perspective correcting functions of the shift feature. And last, but not least, a review of what the newest generation of TS lenses does that is so much better than the originals ... the axis of the tilt and shift can be independently rotated and need not even be perpendicular or aligned. I've just started doing some architectural work using HDR but I'm very enthusiastic about trying out the perspective correction features of the tilt-shift lenses ... when there's finally some of them available. And since I have a winery client, I am also excited about trying the DOF correction while shooting vineyards! So I think these lenses will be a double win for me.

I'm not sure why Jennifer threw it in, but she did a couple of little field portrait things where she showed how to use reflectors to put a bit of light in shadows. Then she showed how to do this with a 580EX flash. Almost in passing she mentioned using gels with the flash as she pulled out her Lumiquest Gel Holder that holds the gel over the flash. I know several guys who use gels with their flash ... always taping the gels over the flash lens ... a messy proposition. But Jennifer had this neat little gadget which holds a few gels and uses velcro to put a gel or set over the lens. $12.50 at B&H! Got one in my wishlist!

We spent a lot of hours in the field shooting with Jennifer, Jim and Hal wandering around offering help and shooting. At one point Hal pulled out a Cokin filter set so I wandered over and chatted him up about it. Turns out that he wanted some really long exposures where the waves from the ocean (we were at a beach in Cayucos one time and at Montano de Oro another) and even with ISO 50 and f/22 the exposure wasn't long enough. So, Hal popped two neutral density filters on to get an additional six stops of slowness. I've Cokin filters on my wishlist now, too. But my use will likely lean more toward graduated filters and polarizers.

So, tons of neat stuff followed by image critiques. Then I had to head off into the sunset before they started printing images.

So, in addition to heartily recommending LIGHT Photographic Workshops in Los Osos, California, I am also recommending the amazing Jennifer Wu ... if you get a chance to work with her you'd better take it! She's like an Andy Katz on steroids!

That's it for now. Travel safe!

Dwight

PocketWizard: Follow Up!

2009-09-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

In the interests of full disclosure I need to confess that there are a lot of good things I could say about PocketWizard, but the best is that they are listening and within unclear constraints on taking full responsibility for their failures they are working on moving forward. I got a very respectful email from David Schmidt of PocketWizard about my recent Facebook posts and blog entry. Let me tell you I have been threatened by large corporations for speaking out in the past and this wasn't that! Interestingly, those large corporations are no longer in business and some of their principals have gone to jail. :-) David offered to let me be minimally involved in some testing. I declined. I have no qualifications. But the effort and offer speak better about PocketWizard than I had given credit for.

So you know, I have had four PocketWizard Plus II's in my studio forever and even when I was shooting in my garage I only used PocketWizards. I did have some radio frequency interference issues with my Bowens QUADX strobes and temporarily abandoned PWs until I learned about ferrite filters and was immediately back. To their discredit, PW knew about the problem but didn't publish the cure on their website. Every professional photographer I know personally uses PocketWizards. I have every intention of being a PocketWizard user until I can't shoot anymore! But I won't be an early adopter as I detect that PW has moved into the realm of Microsoft et alia, feeling the need to make announcements and promises unmindful of any reality to which I am a part. I may never understand why this whole ControlTL business wasn't thoroughly tested by independent photographers with their own equipment before the first PR was sent out.

Also, for the RadioPopper fans, I do have an ST-E2 and did consider RPs, but I need a daylight robust solution to firing cameras where my current Canon LC-5 IR solution isn't working and RP doesn't address that need.

Disclaimer: David Schmidt does not know I am making this post. David Schmidt did not ask me to retract any statements. I am happy with my TT1 and TT5's to the extent that they work within a limited range well below that advertised.

Travel safe!

Dwight

PocketWizard: TT1/TT5/AC7 Behind Schedule and Underperforming!

2009-09-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

After months and months of waiting, the PocketWizard TT1 & TT5's for Canon flashes came out a month or two ago. Immediately it was discovered that PocketWizard's estimates of effective distance were illusory, based on really terrible testing protocols and were probably a bit purposely self-serving. A lot of their advertised features also didn't work. But, with plenty of smoke and mirrors they brushed aside all criticism and patted themselves on the back ... after all, it wasn't their fault, it was the Canon flashes radio frequency interference. They didn't seem to care that distances, rather than being 800' or even 300' feet were actually less than 50'.

But the distance problems, among others, just wouldn't go away. They had sold too many units to too many guys who know how to count and measure. So, to quell the distress they invented the AC7, a radio frequency baffle of sorts. Once it was in the product pipeline, they could just refer to it each time they were criticized, once again deflecting responsibility. The trouble is, after months and months and many promised dates, there are still no AC7s! They were supposed to be here in June, then July, then August, then September, but today they were slipped until October. Not credible.

And if you're a Nikon shooter, it's even worse. They've kept the Nikon guys on the hook for months and now it may be a year!

So, I'm very disgruntled with PocketWizard. I was one of the guys who believed their advertising and promises and bought quite a few hundred dollars worth of their new line: one TT1 and Three TT5's ... I thought the PWs would work as advertised and then I thought the new shield would come on time. I was wrong.

I guess you can get away with this when you're a virtual monopoly. Oh, I know about RadioPoppers, but they can't also trigger cameras, which is one of my needs ... the Canon infra-red trigger I own doesn't work well in bright sunlight, sigh. So, I am screwed. I expect thousands of guys are screwed. I suppose PocketWizard will eventually be willing to take even more of our money to make their equipment barely limp along way under specs with their AC7s, but I don't expect them this calendar year.

Hope this saves some of you a lot of expense and disappointment.

Travel safe!

Dwight

Getting the Horizon Level

2009-09-01T10:33:00.000-07:00

A week ago on Monday Night Lights webinar by Hal Schmitt of LIGHT Photographic Workshops there was a sample image presented during a sharpening talk with a tilted horizon. I made a comment to Hal during the seminar, via the GoToMeeting interface from my computer at home, mentioning it. This week at the start of the Monday Night Lights webinar Hal explained how to correct a tilted horizon ... Hal always takes questions and comments seriously. After a detailed and oft repeated explanation, Hal noted that, "It is always better to get the horizon level in the camera than in post processing." I am a terrible offender with tilted horizons and recently learned that there are bubble levels that slide into the hotshoe. I realized this was a good time to check with Hal for recommendations for such a beast. Without missing a beat, Hal suggested checking with Really Right Stuff, a world famous but local (San Luis Obispo) manufacturer of heads and related devices. Actually, a bubble level won't help me much with my concert photography as I couldn't see it in the dark anyway. But when I'm using a tripod and ballhead I notice I can't always see the little tiny builtin bubble level so this sounds like a good accessory to have in my camera case.

I just went out to RRS, http://reallyrightstuff.com/index.html, and found their RRS-337 Dual Axis level, $33.00. I'll order a couple tonight.

Now I need to recommend MNL with Hal Schmitt at LPW (http://lightworkshops.com/), yet again. That's "Monday Night Lights" at LIGHT Photographic Workshops. Their blog with the links you need to attend the free weekly webinars is http://lightworkshops.blogspot.com/. They use GoToMeeting for their interface which doesn't require you to install horrid software like Silverlight that you just can't get rid of once installed and to which you agree to find no fault! The seminars are approximately one hour although Hal usually runs over five to ten minutes. You can also find short synopsis YouTube videos of the material presented on MNL with the links posted on the blog and/or Facebook and Twitter.

Disclaimer: I am not compensated by LIGHT Photographic Workshops or Really Right Stuff for mentioning or recommending them. I still have to pay for everything. It sucks. But I need to keep them in business because they provide me with two of the few totally reliable resources that I need to keep my own business running.

When the Facts Don't Make Sense, Maybe They're Not the Facts!

2009-08-30T14:17:00.000-07:00

I own a couple of Canon 1D MIII bodies and a couple of Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lenses. Back in May I sent the bodies to Canon for a hardware "fix" for certain autofocus issues. Then, near the end of July I shot Jewel in concert and noticed a definite autofocus issue that couldn't be corrected with microadjustment ... I did several microadjustment tests with both the failing lens and my backup lens on the body that I normally shoot with using that lens. I sent the lens back to Canon for repair. $180. Seems OK now but they made a note about sending the body with it if there were more problems.

Last week I shot Toby Keith with the same body but using the backup lens ... note that the backup lens is actually newer and is not a backup in the sense that it isn't as good ... I normally keep it on my 1Ds MIII body in my studio. The images were very soft even though when I did my tests earlier it was fine! So, I thought maybe it was the body after all, although that seemed odd since it was just at Canon. What to do? A series of tests. I blocked out an Excel spreadsheet where I would shoot both lenses at small and large focal length on both bodies. Coincidentally, I started with the body that I don't usually use this lens on. All tests on both lenses were good. I thought, "Aha, it is a bad body!" So, I mounted up the "bad' body on the tripod with the "bad" lens and started through the microadjustment process. "Oh, Crap!" There was the problem ... I had left the microadjustment set to +20 for that model of lens. Although I had used the body for another project, I had used a different lens, which had not used the MA, so it worked fine!

So, I corrected the microadjustment for the lens, which turned out to be +4 and will try it out on the Reverand Al Green on Thursday night. Next time, when the facts don't fit I will try to think outside the box. So, I am embarrassed and relieved!

Travel Safely,
Dwight

HDR: High Dynamic Range: Architecture

2009-08-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

I am in the middle of my first HDR (High Dynamic Range) project at the Casa Cassara Winery & Vineyard Estate ranch-house located just to the west of Buellton, California, north of the Santa Ynez River and Santa Rosa Road and south of Hwy 246 that runs to Lompoc. I expect that anyone who reads this blog is familiar, at least in concept, with HDR. Quickly, it is a technique in which several (generally three to nine) exposure variations are taken of the same frame and then combined into a pseudo image with a huge dynamic range, as much as 18 stops of luminance. This requires special software as the numeric values required to represent this range exceed the standard fixed point arithmetic of most image editing software. In my case, I am using Photomatix Pro 3.2.1 that assembles the base HDR image using floating point numbers.

What is the goal of all this extra effort and fancy software? To produce an image that has detail in both the very dark and very light portions of a photograph. I find this most easily conceived by thinking of taking a photograph in a room with the lights on but no flash. Under normal circumstances this would result in an image with localized pools of light around the light fixtures and very dark elsewhere and perhaps with pretty harsh shadows along with burned out areas very close to the lights themselves. With HDR, both the dark and light areas are generally preserved and have good detail.

I'm not going into much of any detail with this blog entry beyond posting a couple of images taken at the estate using a Canon 1Ds Mark III 21MP body, Canon 14mm f/2.8L lens on a Gitzo tripod with Really Right Stuff ball head and Canon shutter release. The exposures were ISO 100, Av priority, evaluative metering, five brackets 1-1/3 stops apart and mirror lockup for all images.

The first image was shot just as the sun was about to set behind the far ridge. The sky is actually very smokey as a result of the ongoing Le Brea Fire in northern Santa Barbara County. The direction where the sun is setting is toward Lompoc and the Pacific Ocean, about 20 miles distant. To the right of the house is the estate Pinot Noir vineyard, currently netted to protect the grapes from birds. Click on the image to see a larger version stored at blogspot.com.

The second image is the entryway to the house, showing detail in the bricks, the statue in the fountain, nice lighting on the windows and a pretty sky.

The final image of the Great Room shows detail in the wood of the vaulted ceiling, near the lighting fixtures and outside the windows, which is very blue due to the color dominance of the incandescent lighting inside.

In the next installment on this project I will show some comparison images using the "as metered" frames compared to the HDR assemblies.

In the meantime, travel safe!

Dwight

Software: I Bought a Bunch of Photoshop Plugins

2009-08-03T09:53:00.000-07:00

For those who have followed this blog, off and on, for the last couple of years, it is known that I have had a goal of moving from Corel's PhotoImpact, which I still recommend to amateurs, to Photoshop. I am finally moving right along with the help of LIGHT Photographic Workshops, National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), Photography-on-the.net (POTN), Kelby Online Training and general professional pressure. I thank and recommend each of the above.

While I still use PhotoImpact X3 (the current version) for my extant workflows such as concerts, boxing and poker tournaments, all new areas such as portrait and glamor are carefully guided into Photoshop. As a consequence, given the amount of time it takes to retouch skin, I finally gave in and bought some plugins: Imagenomic bundle that included Portraiture for skin smoothing. While it doesn't do exactly what I'd like all the time and now that I have used it a bit I need to go back and redo the tutorials, it does well that it saves me from getting overwhelmed. Anyway, I can see the value of plugins, both as time savers and to unleash the minuscule amount of talent I have.

So, yesterday I bought HDRSoft's Photomatix Pro, OnOne's suite and TopazLabs bundle. I know what each does. I don't know how to operate them, yet. Fortunately I am not a purist. In fact, I don't mind copying things that I see others do. To me, saying, "I did this without any Photoshop Plugins!" as a matter of pride is pretty silly! If you could say, "This is straight from the camera!" then I might be impressed. But once you're in Photoshop, all is fair and only the end result is of interest, even if it was done by an unlimited number of monkeys sitting in front of an unlimited number of keyboards.

I have an architectural project for which I wanted Photomatix. I am hoping to get into using textures and wanted OnOne Mask Pro to extract some models. And I like the effects I've seen with TopazLabs Adjust. I also like several of NIKs plugins so I'll likely snatch them up, too.

Anyway, my plan is to explore these different plugins with respect to my projects and share the results here. Sharing will help keep me more organized. As Marcie likes others to take point and start off on a project, I need help keeping organized. Besides, if I come up with something good I have place where I can sell prints! :-)

Travel safely,

Dwight

Model Mayhem: Don't Expect Much!

2009-08-02T12:44:00.000-07:00

Based on seeing a few of my fellow photographers use models found on Model Mayhem, I created an account, added a profile and uploaded images. Then I started contacting models and MUAs. I checked their profiles. The number one thing these girls put on their profiles is that they don't do nudity. They really want you to get that. NO NUDITY! They aren't going to take their clothes off. I have never asked a model to take her clothes off. I don't need to be told over and over that a girl won't take her clothes off. But that seems to be their biggest issue and they are going to flog it until all us perverts get it. The only nudes I've ever shot were girlfriends and wives. It is hard. Why would I want to subject myself to that again? But, of course, I have also noticed nudes of these very same models show up. So, I guess they have the Sarah Palin Abstinence program for nudity: deny, deny, deny ... and then do exactly what you say you won't do!

Which leads right into the second Model Mayhem pronouncement: I AM NOT A FLAKE! This comes right after the "I won't take my clothes off. I won't even pretend to take my clothes off!" Yup, and not only are the models flakes, the MUAs are flakes, too. I have had nine Model Mayhem contacts, models and MUAs, in a row cancel or not show up. And that is 100% of my Model Mayhem transactions. I recently arranged for a model to do TFP for a photographic social gathering. She was absolutely committed. Was even going to bring her own MUA. And then she had a friend that was going to come and model also. I arranged this three months in advance. When I didn't hear from her after two months, I messaged her. That's when I found out her sister had to get married and had chosen the same day. Girls used to be able to plan for their weddings a year ahead, but under the Sarah Palin rules of abstinence the pregnancy will dictate the wedding date! But she arranged for another, "I AM NOT A FLAKE" girl to come instead. I exchanged messages with this girl and then didn't hear from her. So, I messaged her and got back, "I got laid off so I will only be doing paying work now!" Like I'm going to pay someone who just in the same breath demonstrated she operates on the Sarah Palin model .... oh, did I mention that she has a daughter but no mention of husband! Is that sexist? I thought it was just practical to have a partner before getting pregnant!

And this hasn't just happened for TFP gigs. Marcie and I had a paid agreement with an MUA who decided at two days before a shoot we put together that she'd make more money if she did a teaching seminar and could we move our shoot to some other time for her? Not a thought about the commitments the other three people had made!

So, I am ranting about it. It is stunning. I would never pay a model that I hadn't worked with or done a test with. And since these Model Mayhem girls don't ever get to me, I will never pay them! I will use an agency model ... which won't be these girls because agencies won't put up with flakes and that's all there is at Model Mayhem. Of course, I'm laughing as I say all this because after all, Model Mayhem is free and we all know what you get for free! NOTHING!

But I guess I am no better. I keep promising to blog something useful and I keep getting overtaken by events, too. But, the blog is free so I guess that's OK! :-)

Travel Safe!

Dwight

Julie Morgan: Makeup for Photographers

2009-07-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy as usual. This week I attended a 1/2 day makeup demonstration, photographed Liza Minnelli at the casino, attended a 3/4 day makeup hands-on workshop and spent ten hours photographing a poker tournament. I have a zillion images in my post processing pipeline. Busy, busy.

Anyway, I thought you all might be interested in makeup adventures! I had a photosession with some of the Team Dazzle promotional models a month or two ago. One of the models had gotten separated from her makeup and I didn't have any. Somewhere on a DVD or tutorial from Jason Cole, the Australian Wedding and Glamor photographer I recalled mention of his BOB ("Bag O' Bras) [Actually a bag of bras, panties, bikinis, etc.] and of having makeup on hand, 'Just in case!' So I decided I needed to get some makeup to have on hand. Well, as a 64 year old male I knew less than nothing about makeup. I asked my wife and she had no idea what I should have in a backup kit. So, I asked my intrepid collaborator, Marcella Kligman, who has since moved off to Sacramento, and she pointed me to Julie Morgan. So, I contacted Julie and asked about one of her makeup kits. She sent me her brochure. There is a lot of stuff, packaged up in two or three graduated kits: basic, advanced and ultimate! I told her to give me everything.

Well, Julie is an amazement. Since it was clear that I had absolutely no clue, Julie said, "How about if I meet you with the stuff and go over everything with you?" So, a couple of weeks later when Julie flew into town for a client she made time to meet with me at Starbucks in Goleta with a box of makeup and tried to go over it. There's no way! We finally sorta laughed it off, I took the box of makeup and we parted.

Then Julie gets back to me and says, "How would you like to come to Brooks and learn how to apply makeup?" It turns out that Julie works with Paul Meyer. Paul Meyer has been teaching a "People" class for advanced students at Brooks since Christ was a corporal. As part of the class, Julie does two sessions: a three hour demo to prep the students for a six hour hands-0n workshop that includes makeup application, photographing their models and doing an analysis. Julie had gotten permission from Paul for me to audit the two sessions for this group.

At the first session, the demonstration, I was a bit overwhelmed ... I had no clue that there was so much "stuff" involved: cleansing, sub-foundation (matting), foundation, concealer, mascara, eye liner, eyebrow powder, contouring, shimmer powder and on and on. I got four pages of notes and was lost, lost, lost. Paul was laughing. He said when he first started teaching at Brooks that there were ten guys to each girl. Now, of 23 students in this People class, there were 16 girls and it made the makeup section much easier.

So, the following Friday, at 9:30 am at the Jefferson Campus of Brooks Institute of Photography I had the opportunity to slather makeup on Carmen Kuchera, local life coach [www.lifenotescoaching.com] and jazz flautist along with twenty or so Brooks students. It was hilarious! On the first pass I applied contouring that was so thick that pale delicate skinned Carmen looked like a Polynesian warrior! Julie brought a mass of makeup wipes and suggested removing it all and starting over. Meanwhile, of course, all the other students were zooming right along as though they did this every day (I guess most of them do), sitting in student desks facing each other in pairs. But, once back on track and with Carmen, Julie and Julie's model (Carmen's sister) telling me continuously how wonderful I was doing (and making me grotesquely aware of how poorly I was doing) I managed, with lots of intercession by Julie, to get a face onto Carmen ... and it actually did look OK.

I learned a huge amount despite being inept. I will certainly never look at makeup the same again. I will have a much better appreciation and ability to judge MUAs. I will never simply ignore the makeup process and leave it entirely to the models and MUAs. I will never be afraid to look at the model after makeup has been applied and say, "I need this fixed!" I will know if there is too much shimmer, too little matting, if the the makeup is caking or the skin too oily! I now know about Lip Tox and Lip Lock and Lip Gloss. I know you don't apply lipstick with a tube of the stuff. Oh, I know so much and so little at the same time. But I know that I don't know and hopefully that will keep me safe. :-)

But now I have one last amazement to share. I had met one of the students previously at a seminar put on by the Gold Coast Professional Photographers Association (of which I am a member) by Jim DiVitale, master product photographer of Atlanta, Georgia and Santa Barbara. She is Courtney Miller and is a rising star. Courtney does underwater glamor (my words, not hers) ... you can see her stuff at CourtneyMillerPhotography.com. So, I decided to see what the other students had come up with. I got to Courtney's model and my jaw dropped. She was certainly a beautiful model. And the makeup was very nice and sultry. But, Courtney, not to simply 'do the work' had added a stunning stripe of black dots running down one side of her face from above the eyebrow to the upper outer cheek. And later, I watched Courtney take this model through some of the light setups in "The Cove" and see how powerful her vision was when put to the test of actual photographs. I have no pictures of Courtney's work. I did tell Courtney I would love to work with her but haven't heard back ... I have a feeling she is even busier than I am! :-)

So, guys, if you get a chance, learn makeup! :-)

Travel Safe!

Dwight

More Monday Night LIGHTS!

2009-06-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I know I keep writing about LIGHT Photography Workshops but I do have some other stuff in the pipeline, honest, and I will get to it. But, yes, once again, I want to spread the word about MNL from LPW. Every Monday at 6:30 pm Pacific for an hour or more. Costs less than $5 per session. Stunning value for the money. Hal Schmitt, fighter pilot turned photography pilot and amazing instructor. But enough of that.

Last night covered two curves topics I have been anxiously awaiting for a while: adjusting color casts separately for highlights and shadows, and ensuring that white seamless backgrounds in studio shots are white and consistent. This was the third or fourth curves adjustment layer evening, and each has been a revelation on my pathway from Corel's PhotoImpact (that I have used for ten years) to Adobe Photoshop.

We all know about the midtone color adjustment eye dropper in curves and what it can do for color casts. But there is also a technique, although a bit more involved and using the separate color channels that allows color cast correction that differs between shadows and highlights. It involves dropping color samplers onto representative areas of the photograph and then adjusting the curves endpoints for the respective color channels to bring the three channels into equality. Hmmm, a little hard to summarize, which is why tuning in is so helpful.

The other technique covered was the white background issue. Same deal, but this time using the builtin layer mask automatically generated on new curves adjustment layers. Makes perfect sense in retrospect! And produces much more pleasing results.

Well, I'm off to a meeting.

Disclaimer: I am not compensated by LPW.

Travel safe!

Dwight

Light Photographic Workshops: Monday Night Lights

2009-06-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

Last night, Monday, was the first of the Monday Night Lights (MNL) webinars that I have attended and it was well worth it ... well, yes, it was a free demo session, but I mean it was worth the effort to download and run the software which can be brutal for some applications and I won't put Silverlight on my system (it is a Microsoft product that apparently doesn't allow removal) which so many doing online classes want to use so I skip them. Anyway, GoToMeeting wasn't onerous at all and the software was flawless although it requires a little getting used to where things are, but no big deal.

The session was an introduction to PS "Curves", targeting mainly CS4 but with legacy discussion for previous versions, taught by Hal Schmitt, the soon to be legendary Digital Photography Instructor. Hal ran through most of the controls on the Curves Adjustment Panel using provided images (in case you wanted to do the exercises along with him.) He missed a couple on the bottom as we sorta ran out of time. But as always with Hal, he revealed two or three little tidbits that just wouldn't have occurred to me ... things as simple as dragging control points off the histogram to get rid of them, using the pencil, using the luminosity blending mode (which I should know but keep forgetting) when there is crossover coloring and a few others that I don't recall at the moment. This, of course, in addition to demonstrating the power of curves for adjusting contrast in images in RGB, explaining how the slope of the curve correlates to that contrast, how to use control points and how to mask when using the adjustments panel.

Normally, this hour long session, as part of a weekly series, would cost a whopping $5 (paid monthly ... ). What is it that you can get for $5/hour these days? And watch in the comfort of your own home while sipping on a gin and tonic and maybe a fancy chip or two? [I know Hal and Victoria would probably sip wine, but my wife hordes Hal's wine.]

So, a couple of other little items: MNL (this series) doesn't have an itinerary ... you can't really know what's coming! I thought this was bad. Now I see the added power ... if something really striking comes along there is no more than a week wait before Hal can share it. I mean there's a ton of stuff in the waiting queue, some of which I have requested, so it's not like there's nothing to talk about, but if there is a new update to Lightroom, new NIK filter, some cleverness with Imagenomic Portraiture or a hot new feature of Photomatix, it doesn't have to wait three months to get onto the end of the schedule!

Also, for those who prefer more structure in their lives, even in the online world, there is a schedule of more conventional webinars at LIGHT here. I'm considering Wednesday's Retouching People if I can get through some paying work tonight to clear the decks. I am hopeful that this schedule will be expanded significantly.

So, if you are feeling like you've lost the muse, are bored with your work, need to find some zippy energy by learning something new but don't have time to take a class or pore over a magazine article, then I'm suggesting MNL.

Usual Disclaimer: I am not compensated by LIGHT for these reviews (except by Victoria's gorgeous smile.)

Travel Safe!

Dwight

Light Photographic Workshops: Online Seminars

2009-06-04T11:28:00.000-07:00

LIGHT Photographic Workshops (formerly Lepp Institute) has started a new service: Online Seminars. They seem to come in two flavors: specific topics with one time subscriptions and Monday Night LIGHTS (MNL) with unannounced topics. The MNL series is amazingly cheap: $5 a shot for once a week paid either monthly or annually. [Please note that you must verify all this information yourself ... I am only reporting what I believe to be the case.]

As an introduction to this service LIGHT occasionally offers "free" seminars and one of those is coming on next Monday night, June 8th. You can sign up at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/208559489 as well as find system requirements and time. My inside tip is that this seminar will be about curves for all you folks fearful of this adjustment.

Their website, after rebranding from Lepp to LIGHT is still available at http://www.leppphoto.com/index.html for more detailed information.

Hope to see you there!

Travel Safe.

Dwight

Los Olivos Dance Gallery Centre Stage 2009: 300 Ballerinas

2009-05-24T09:43:00.000-07:00

Last week I shot 300 ballerinas during the Los Olivos Dance Gallery Centre Stage 2009 annual performance recital in Solvang, California's Festival Theater. This was the third year I have done this as a volunteer in support of Artistic Director Maggie Mesikep. It is an awesome experience to watch these girls (and a few guys) perform ... sometimes I am so moved that I forget to press the shutter release. My daughter, Anna, age seven, just completed her third year as a dancer-in-training. I got involved when Mike Mesikep, husband of Maggie and Chief Photographer and Technical Director for the shows, lost his primary volunteer photographer as the result of a family tragedy and came to me as a possible participant. I agreed to shoot the dress rehearsal. It was a mistake ... but only in the best way: after that first experience I took vacation from my day job and shot for four days straight.

OK, now let me go back and correct a couple of things. First, it isn't just ballet ... I just say that because it appeals to me. There is ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, flamenco and I expect others that I am totally ignorant about. I am not a dance person. As for the shooting, Mike pretty much just says, "Come and do your thing" and I do. Many of you will know that I am the house photographer for the Entertainment Department at the Chumash Casino Resort and have a lot of experience shooting world class performers ... and my boss at the casino, Wayne Hurte, gives the same kind of management ... "Go do what you do!" I am quite comfortable shooting what amounts to a continual stream of "One time only and just for an instant" captures for which my 'Best in the World' Canon cameras work wonders. It is a gift many, many years in the making.

Festival Theater is almost a Theater-in-the-Round ... similar to what I think of as the Shakespearean setup with a stage that projects out into the audience but with a tall facade off one edge where lighting and dressing rooms exist. It is nestled almost in the middle of Solvang, California, which is a pseudo-Danish tourist trap. The images from my 'Eye-in-the-Sky' (this year a Canon 5D Mark II with 24-105mm f/2.8L) are from as high in this facade as they will let me go.

This year I spent my hours sitting on a cold hard concrete step with a wool blanket as padding and no back support. Next year I'm getting a seat! I'm too old for this.

The performances include the dress rehearsal day with both juniors and seniors. The public performances are by juniors on Saturday morning and by seniors on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. It is a huge production involving about half the little girls in the valley and their families ... there is a lot of family participation as Maggie and Mike make everyone feel essential and loved.

I shot using two Canon 1DMIII's bodies and a variety of lenses from 14mm f/2.8L to 70-200mm f/2.8L IS and including 16-35mm f/2.8L and 24-70mm f/2.8L. Selecting some example images to include with this blog entry is almost impossible. I have 1236 "Keepers" that I will provide to Mike on a DVD and from which I must select for here. I hope they are representative! You can click on the images in the blog post to see larger versions. For the technically inclined, the larger versions contain both EXIF and IPTC data for your persual.

I am already planning for next year. Mike and I are going to try to put a second 'Eye-in-the-Sky' camera in one of the very high lighting towers that sit up behind the amphitheater style seating ... the lighting provider says I'll have to wear a harness to climb the pole to the tiny little platform where the ellipticals are positioned, but it'll be worth it to capture images from directly above and from a high angle out front at the same time. I do have to remember to use bigger CF cards. This year I used 8GB and ran out of space. Next year I'll use 16GB or bigger. There's always something new to learn! The following photograph is a three frame panorama stitched together by Photoshop ... there's "errors" near the middle:

Below are Maggie and Mike with their daughter Hannah.

Travel safe!

Dwight

Light Photographic Workshops: More on Canon Presentation

2009-05-13T13:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I bashed Canon's presentation last weekend at LIGHT pretty thoroughly: I was not impressed by the Rep's or their seminars. So now I want to offer a few suggestions on what they should have presented.

(1) Flash: most of the attendees were primarily interested in learning to use their Canon flashes better. Rather than demonstrating only with one flash in an expensive softbox ($500) which none of the students owned (to my knowledge), the Reps should have polled the students about what they needed to know. In addition they should have explained in as much detail as possible how E-TTL works (which by my reckoning is, "Not very well!") and worked with students to explain how to overcome the deficiencies. And rather than make disparaging comments about the diffusers students did own, such as Sto-fen, Demb and Fong, they should have done clear demonstrations showing the effects of each and allowing the students to experiment under their tutelage. And how about showing the off-camera-cord and how to use it to the best advantage? And there should have been a fair amount of time devoted to using two flash units in various scenarios. What was needed was an opportunity for the students to learn how to get the most out of the Canon gear they owned and were used to. The way to brand loyalty is through photographers who feel they are getting great value for their money.

One of the more unintuitive flash subjects that deserved much more/better attention (although it was approached by the Rep) was using and controlling ambient versus flash lighting. It was demonstrated. But in order to take something home in this area, each student probably needed ten minutes one-on-one and then group experimentation in the field. As it was, the Rep spent all his time shooting the professional model with his own camera (and the expensive softbox and unused on-camera flash) and telling the students to wait.

(2) Cameras: nothing was said about the various features of the various DSLRs that Canon sells. It would have benefited many there to understand the limits and advantages of several Canon lines: Rebels, x0D line (20D, 30D, 40D, 50D), 5D (original and Mk II) and not least, the 1DMIII and 1DsMIII. About the only comparative remarks made were, "You can't do this with 5D. It's only available on the 5D Mark II."

(3) Printers: most of the second day, until I left at noon being pretty disgusted, was devoted to Photoshop retouching techniques. The morning should have been devoted to printing images, student and instructor, and explaining what makes a good print, what kinds of things go wrong, how to work with the Canon software/drivers to overcome these issues and making the same print on numerous different kinds of media. Before I left the Rep did say he was going to go over the Canon printer driver plugin for Photoshop so I hope that happened in a way to help students use it effectively back home.

(4) Miscellaneous: Most of the prosumer level bodies now support Wifi. I have a WFT-E2A and wanted to learn to connect it to my laptop. I asked about this early the first day. It was never acknowledged after that. I expect this is a feature very few of the other students know about.

Most of the newer prosumer bodies support lens microadjustments. This was a procedure I wanted to see demonstrated. I asked about this early the first day. It was never acknowledged after that. This is a feature that has been known to cure a lot of frustration and a process that used to require a trip of both camera and lens to Canon repair for several hundred dollars. Probably a 30 minute demonstration would have handled it.

Live View is a new and very popular feature. Live View tethered to a laptop would have been interesting. In fact, hands on use and demonstrations of DPP and EOS Utilities would have been excellent rather than just having one of the Reps run it for the other, as they did, and blaming it's failures on Apple. Knowing how to review your images while shooting using a laptop is very useful but few amateurs I've met have a clue how it is done, they just see it in all of the professional lighting tutorials.

Disclaimer: I am obviously not paid by Canon to review their seminar (although it would probably be a good idea!) I am not paid by LIGHT to review or promote their facility nor do I get any special treatment. I simply think that it is the premier facility in the country with the best instructors, particularly including Hal, and it is in my own best interests to promote it.

Second disclaimer: I own LOTS of Canon equipment including 580EX II flashes, 5D Mark II, 1DMIIIs, 1DsMIII and lots of "L" lenses from 400mm f/2.8L IS down to 14mm f/2.8L II and I am fairly familiar with it. I have been photographing for over 40 years.

Travel Safe!

Dwight

LIGHT Photography Workshops: Canon & The New Lepp

2009-05-11T11:45:00.000-07:00

Some of you know that I have been trekking up to Los Osos every couple of months for the last two years to take photography classes at Lepp Institute, owned and operated by Hal & Victoria Schmitt. I go there because I have always gotten great 'Bang for the Buck'. It has been through their classes that I stepped up to shooting RAW and profiling my monitors as well as finally starting to migrate from PhotoImpact to Photoshop. In my mind, Hal Schmitt is the premier photography instructor on the planet.

So, it is a rarity that I have anything less than stellar to say about my attendance there, but this weekend is a bit of an exception. As part of their sponsorship of Hal & Victoria, Canon provides occasional workshops by their representatives. One such presentation was this weekend. From my reading of the flyer, the two Canon reps were going to cover things Canon from cameras and flash, including WiFi through printing. That's not quite what happened. The complete first day was about shooting using a 5D Mark II, two 580EX II strobes and very expensive softbox setup ... oh, but only light from a single flash was used as the other, on camera flash, was only ever used as a Master with flash disabled. Now, I have a lot of equipment. But I don't have a large, $500 BruceDorn softbox with special Wescott shoe for my two 580EX II's and none of the other students did either. So, the extended shooting in the studio with this softbox wasn't useful for anyone. Nor was much of the information useful for those with slightly older bodies/flashes. I guess if the flyer had suggested that only the latest greatest Canon products were being showcased that wouldn't be so bad ... oh, except Canon doesn't make a softbox! That's a Wescott affair. The same thing happened when we went into the field ... softbox! I don't know very many folks who haul a softbox into the field ... literal field with grass and trees. But again, that's all the Canon Rep did. And, while pretty continually saying how much better this was than using true studio strobes, the 580EX II's misfired often and the much vaunted E-TTL system misexposed often. Several times he noted that his flash had not recycled quickly enough but when I offered to loan him a Quantum SC battery (of which I have two for my 580EX IIs) he put them down saying they would burn out the flash ... even though he had just commented about how the flash has circuitry to prevent overheating, etc. There were frequent comments about how much easier this was than having to use a meter as one does with studio strobes, but in almost the same breath the Rep would talk about having to use FEC (flash exposure compensation) to correct the bad E-TTL exposures. And, consider, his entire studio shoot was done tethered to a laptop so he could see and adjust the light. I am one of a very few photographers that I know who always shoot tethered to a computer in the studio. I doubt any other student there has ever done that. I really don't think anyone was favorably impressed by this presentation.

The second day was to be about printing. I left early since the rep spent almost the entire morning demonstrating his favorite Photoshop techniques for retouching women. They never touched on WiFi and although I had explicitly asked, they never reviewed making microadjustments for lenses. In fact, they never seemed to hear any of the questions students asked and anything outside their predefined patter seemed like a big issue for guys who should be experts. And when their vaunted Canon DPP software failed, it was quickly blamed on Apple ... although the computers they used were their own and their own choice. All-in-all, pretty sad from Canon.

But, I gotta' say, Hal & Victoria know full well what they are about. They had a Grand Opening ... although it was really a rebranding of sorts. Huge party! Great turnout! Superb food. Amazing wine. Wonderful guests. Made new friends and ran into old friends not seen for some time. The amazing Kevin Cole was there talking about his pending Canon 800mm f/5.6 purchase and wildlife techniques. There were even some folks who had an interest in my Chumash Casino Resort photography ... a little eqo stroke for me.

My wife, Marna, and daughter, Anna, attended. Anna spent most of the evening playing/dancing with Reagan (I'm not sure of the spelling) who is Hal & Victoria's daughter. And somewhere mixed in was a ribbon cutting for the new LIGHT Photography Workshops! Lepp Institute Gone High Tech!

I will be back up to LIGHT soon. I will not be attending any Canon workshops soon.

Travel Safe!

Dwight

B and H PhotoVideo: The Most Reliable Online Photography Equipment Vendor in the World

2009-04-23T10:13:00.000-07:00

My last post was about my upset with UPS whose business practices surely result in hundreds if not thousands of complaints a day ... they seem to be about minimizing their expenses by minimizing their services and self monitoring in order to maximize profits. At the other end of the spectrum is B&H Photo Video of New York City whose word is their bond. I have been a customer of B&H for over ten years, starting back in the days of Usenet. Even back then they believed in Customer Service, dealing with complaints of customers right out in the open for all the world to see and doing one damn fine job of it. And even back then, it felt as though most of the complaints brought to them were about the poor delivery services of ... wait for it ... UPS, where they explained over and over that they had no control over the abysmal practices of UPS.

But you remember that most recent package of mine that they lost? Well, I did have to initiate the complaint rather than UPS stepping up and owning their failure, but it entailed a simple online query about what to do sent to their customer service department. And I got a reply that said essentially that they would look into it and ship another shutter release when the ten day "waiting period" elapsed. And that's what they did without wasting any more of my time.

Other great things about B&H? They don't sell you something if they don't have it. I won't shop online at Adorama any more because they sell things they don't have and don't tell you about it until you have waited a long time and finally ask! I have the emails to demonstrate this. They are simply not reliable. Another thing is that B&H keeps online records of your purchases if you login before you buy ... which I always do ... and you can look things up online for years after, say for getting tax information about equipment purchases. They will also maintain both public and private Wishlists for you. I use mine to keep track of items that I buy repeatedly such as Epson paper and ink. Also items that I am considering purchasing but haven't decided yet or that I am saving for ... this is a very handy feature. Most places want you to "register" so they can SPAM you but at B&H they only use your information to provide real services! And they'll give you advice either online or over the phone. And finally, since you might want to know when they do get your item in stock, they will let you sign up for a notification of when the item comes in and then you can buy it if you want ... no hassle, no pressure, no SPAM.

They only have a presence in New York so you don't have to pay sales tax if you live elsewhere, although I would urge you to pay it in your home state anyway. But the difference more than makes up for shipping ... and here I urge you to pay a couple of bucks more and step up to FedEx.

And finally, a word about prices. B&H may not always have the lowest price you can find on the 'net! But if you follow the stories associated with many of these other 'discount' vendors, you learn why. There are a bunch of these apparently cheap vendors operating out of New York. They are all the same vendor. They don't have a storefront because they are a scam. They sell you a camera online, but always they must telephone you to 'verify the order'. And when they do, they try to sell you add ons, like the manual, body cover, neck strap, etc. (that all come in the box from the manufacturer but they don't include) and when they can't upsell you such that the total price is actually more than the B&H price, they discover that they are Out of Stock. This is even worse than the Adorama trick of selling you an item, at a good price, that they don't have but eventually hope to have!

I realize that this has been another Rant and I promise to do some useful blogs very soon. But if I can save one person from being ripped off it is worth it.

Travel safe!

Dwight

When Brown, Flush Down III

2009-03-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

If you noticed my last post about UPS you'll know that they have had a package "Out for Delivery" for me for four days. I checked with our regular driver today and he says, "I don't know ... if it isn't on my truck I don't deliver it". So I called the Goleta office (they don't list the address/phone number of these facilities where you can just Google them up and the driver doesn't know the number.) The nice young lady, after looking on two computers, says, "Since there hasn't been movement on it in four days it's probably stolen or on the wrong truck and you will have to contact your shipper." So, they know it hasn't "moved" in four days because it is in their computer but they just ignore it. Then, even though they lost it, I have to report it to the shipper and start a claim. I'm incredulous. It's not like they think they delivered it and didn't ... they know they had it and now they don't and no one signed for it ... so they should contact the shipper and report that they lost it! Now I have to waste my time explaining and explaining when all I ever did was order a remote shutter release from B&H and they took my money. I guess I'll just start paying a couple of bucks more and go with FedEx when I have the option in the future and hope that Brown is overtaken by the recession and incompetent business practices.

Travel Safe!

Dwight

When Brown, Flush Down II

2009-03-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

Well, here we are again! Back in November I blogged about how terrible I thought UPS was and that their tracking information often is misleading. I am waiting today for a package that was indicated as "Out for Delivery" yesterday at 7:00 AM. Well, I guess it's still "Out for Delivery" because we are closed for today and it's still not here! You can check on it yourself: 1ZE6W3110399193577 and see what's happening. Hopefully it won't cause me all the pain that their last four-day late delivery did. And it would sure be nice if they'd say why they failed to deliver it in the tracking information, but that would be too helpful I guess, sigh.

Update:Well, another day has passed without delivery or explanation other than an updated delivery date (for the fourth time) so it will be at least four days late and unlikely to show today, moving us into a three-day weekend, so I expect it to be at least a week late ... although more than likely it's lost. Naturally there's no way to query what the problem is so I just have to sit and wait for another week and then contact the merchandise vendor. What a sad way to run a business. On the up side, maybe they'll be another business to go down in the flames of the recession so my vendors won't be able to use them.

And again, I still have not had a single problem with FedEx! On Time, Every Time! And accurate tracking information.

"Outlet for My Creative Self": Helene Glassman @ Lepp Institute

2009-03-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Another amazing weekend spent up in Los Osos, California, at the Lepp Institute! This time with Helene Glassman, of Santa Barbara, California, and Atlanta, Georgia. Helene is a photographer (as is her husband, Jim Divitale.) She has done PJ. She has done weddings. She has done lots of things and sometimes just needs to "to do her own thing" to let the creative juices flow. And apparently this flow has been into specialized greeting cards and bookmarks. And over this weekend, Helene walked us through both the business and the workflow aspects of this process.

Before I forget, I need to mention that I am always amazed at the quality of people who turn out to be my fellow students. Often doctors and lawyers although no indian chiefs, yet! Susan is just a hobbyist with no intention of selling anything ... turns out she has been a math teacher and computer programmer (and knows several languages that I know, too.) Greg does dogs! Cynde, who has been in two or three other classes with me is a professor and hospital administrator. And Alice has already been doing this for a while. Fascinating high quality people with wonderful personalities and amazing life stories. We all sat around in the break room chatting several times until Victoria herded us up like kittens to get back into the digital lab.

So, Helene showed us her products, both physically and "on the big screen". Then she looked through our stuff making suggestions and offering direction. While most everyone else had animals, landscapes and flowers, I as usual had well known entertainers, sigh ... same old boring stuff!

Next she reviewed many ways to put images onto cards and many types of cards: triptychs, Thank You note, vertical, horizontal, in series with lots of variations. She talked prices. She talked supply vendors. She talked software.

Then she had us shoot a bunch of flowers she had assembled in vases ... plus an old chair that she had found dumpster diving behind the Institute! Out came the cameras. I have just purchased a G10 and that was what I brought! I normally lug a big Pelican Case up with $20K worth of stuff but I needed to expand my horizons! I did discover almost immediately that I needed a tripod (I'm big into tripods!) I borrowed a RRS plate and tripod. I have since ordered (and received) a RRS L-plate for my G10. I also have a cable shutter release coming.

We then took our images and started working our way through her techniques. I, as usual, didn't use my new images but pulled up entertainers and worked with them. Victoria really likes this so I normally use Tom Jones as that's her Mom's favorite ... and when I come back home I leave all my Sir Tom Jones stuff for her to send to her Mom.

As we neared the end, we were printing off cards left and right. Some of the other students were amazingly artistic. Then Helene and Victoria ran down to the pizza place, grabbed an employee, brought her back and made her judge our output and pick a winner! I didn't win which I am sure was a mistake!

And now the usual disclaimer: I am not compensated for reviewing the Lepp classes I take in any way by the Institute, the instructors or the sponsors!

Travel Safe!

Dwight

Big Monitor and Sound in the Studio

2009-03-08T10:34:00.001-07:00

With the two new 20 amp circuits in place I decided to upgrade a bit. First I put my 30" Dell monitor on a pivot arm and added a glass shelf underneath to put my laptop on so that I could tether to it. The monitor swings out so that the model can see it or it can be turned back so that "visitors" can see it. I almost always shoot tethered in the studio using EOS Utilities and pulling the gray card images into Bridge to check exposure. The only down side is that the little jpeg preview the camera embeds in the RAW file starts to pixelate at this size.

I also bolted up three other glass shelves next to the laptop setup, unboxed my old stereo components and bought a couple of JBL wall mount speakers. Now I have SOUND in the studio ... the most requested addition by models. Anybody know if there are adapters for iPods to RCA plugs?

So, I had just shot a few images of my daughter and decided it was a good time to get a couple of shots of the new additions. Starting on the lift is my new big beauty dish turned up toward the ceiling to light the scene. On the floor right next to it is a QUADX 3000 generator. Camera on tripod tethered to laptop is 1DsMIII with Really Right Stuff L-plate & quick release on Gitzo legs. Behind the camera is laptop with Dell monitor overhead. The power strip shown is plugged into one of the new 20 amp circuits. Above the monitor you can see one of the new speakers. To the right of that stuff are new glass shelves: top to bottom is 200 watt per channel amp, 5-CD changer and pre-amp. The copper wire is the test speaker wire that I expect to replace today with Monster Cable, with the cable run being in #6 screw hooks in the ceiling ... since the speakers are mounted in removable lift out adapters I will have at least 25' of cable to each and will be able to move them elsewhere as needed, although they are a bit heavy. For those offended by exposed speakers I will be putting the grills on them ... my wife can't stand to see the speakers, sigh. Underneath the stereo are wire rack shelves.

Kate & Kacey Coppola @ Chumash Casino Resort, February 26, 2009

2009-02-28T10:32:00.000-08:00

Most everyone who reads my blog knows that I am the House Photographer for the Entertainment Department at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California, which is about 30 miles north of Santa Barbara. Last Thursday night there was a small convergence of events for me at a concert at the casino: Big Machine Records recording artists Kate & Kacey Coppola opened for Little Big Town. Below is Kate.
Kate & Kacey are currently managed by Nashville to You. Nashville to You is partnered by Rick Barker and Lex Lipsitz. Rick Barker is my long time friend and cohort and the guy who got me into country music and concert photography and who created my job at the casino. Rick and Lex, currently out of Nashville, do promotion and management of rising country singer/songwriters. Rick managed Taylor Swift to her current national fame and fortune although their paths have separated as both have matured and gone on to bigger things ... that's the way in the entertainment world. Below is Kacey.

So, I happen to be the photographer where Kate & Kacey happen to have a gig. An opportunity to give some payback to the most supportive, dynamic, clever and professional promoter I know. I've sent a bunch of images to Rick & Lex and hope a couple may be useful. This is the sort of networking that far exceeds any other asset in the live entertainment photography business. You want to be successful ... reach out and help everybody, especially those who help you.

Travel Safe!

Dwight

GCPPA: Patricia Mathis on "Ordinary to Extraordinary"

2009-02-23T09:32:00.000-08:00

It may seem like all I do is attend photography workshops, classes and seminars. They are easier to write about than a lot of my projects such as adding sound and a big monitor to my studio, or documenting my photographic work although I promise to do that, too. It is because they are nice and compact with clear beginnings, endings and intent/focus. With that said, here's a little review of my Sunday event with the Gold Coast Professional Photographers' Association: Patricia Mathis' "From Ordinary to Extraordinary" (you can see her work at www.reflectionsbypatricia.com), a $69 9:00am to 5:00pm event in Lompoc, California, which is 16 miles down the road from me.

I was invited to this seminar by Michael Collins, recent ex-president of the Gold Coast Professional Photographers' Association, by way of a standard flyer. I glanced at it, thought, "Not very interesting" and went on my way. But when I heard that my in-laws were visiting for the weekend, I took another look at the flyer and that's when I noticed all the awards that Patricia has garnered and I decided that I would give it a spin. So I spent all day yesterday listening to her and getting better acquainted with the GCPPA and PPC folks.

The seminar was broken into two distinct sections, one morning and one afternoon. In both, Patricia sat up front with the inferior laptop and projector/sound systems that were provided and braved through it like a Pro ... which she is, of course. The morning section was "Elements of Design" and the afternoon was "Photoshop tips and tricks with strong emphasis on NIK filters" ... Patricia appears to be sponsored by NIK, but her presentation was well rounded, didn't dwell on NIK so much as demonstrate what you can do as part of a larger workflow.

The elements of design section sounded dreary to me as a concert photographer who has no control. I mentioned this to Patricia who said, "But you get to compose as well as choose position!" Well, that might be, but since I never know what's coming in the next ten seconds on stage, that isn't very helpful. :-) But as so often happens to me when I've been in a particularly judgmental mode, I was totally disabused of the notion that this part wasn't for me. I was rapt! While not the slickest presentation, Patricia's presentation really hit a chord with me. Since I don't think of myself as artistic and since most of my paying work is concert style where I don't control anything, I have never even thought about the elements of design in my compositions. Now I can't get it out of my mind! I think I will be forever compelled to think about harmony, unity, dominance, complexity, oblique lines, verticals, "getting the milk from the grocery store" and all the other pieces clarified by her hand drawings, the works of Rembrandt and other masters as well as her own. An excellent pry-bar to open at least a tiny corner of the box I think in.

The afternoon section was equally inspiring. She worked through several images showing her skin and eye techniques, comparing lots of skin enhancement techniques both "manual" and using NIK filters, and lots of ways to incorporate the elements of design from the morning session to control and enhance the viewer's eye. She is strong on vignettes (which I generally dislike) and makes a strong case for them ... I guess I will have to change, sigh. She is right!

As she started to wind down it would have been a mistake to look away. Out of nowhere she demonstrated using clipping masks to create design elements and then magically demonstrated how to use them to make templates (I'll have to ask some of the other attendees to send me their notes on the steps, sigh) and even to fill text. While most of her work centers on Senior and Engagement/Wedding material it is easily extrapolated to glamor and fine art work.

There were a dozen or more examples of her final print output including books, gallery wraps, other print presentation media, triptychs and award winners. She talked about her prices and marketing experience and brands. All in all, well worth the time and effort!

As part of the GCPPA piece, upcoming events of the GCPPA were announced. They sounded too good to miss, so I joined both PPC and GCPPA and expect that I will be attending a number of events from now on ... it's just too much bang for the buck to miss out on.

Be Safe,

Dwight

PhotoArt: Fay Sirkis at The Institute

2009-02-14T10:01:00.000-08:00

I spent an amazing week at the Lepp Insitute in Los Osos, California, at Fay Sirkis' "Impressions of Art" workshop/seminar. It was total immersion in Photoshop and Painter X in a workflow to convert your photographs into paintings. It was glorious. I have not a single artistic brain cell, but this gorgeous lady from New York seems to have given me a stem cell transplant (now that it's OK to do that again) and I was amazed at what we produced.

So, what happened? Fay walked us through her vision, sharing examples of her work along with their backstories to get our brains atuned. Then we started through the workflow for producing photorealistic images which first entails taking the image into Photoshop, retouching blemishes, treating the skin, a whole special section on working with the eyes (as Fay keeps reminding us, they are the "Gateway to the Soul".) We learned her "sandwich technique" for making adjustments. And once that was all done and we were swimming in layers, we flattened and caught our breath.

While I am familiar with Photoshop and did install Painter X on my workstation along with a Wacom Cintiq 21ux, I had no clue how to use Painter. Not a problem. Fay pulled up Painter and gave us a guided tour through the places we would need to go. But I have made this sound too trivial ... it is not! Fay spent many hours explaining and demonstrating where the various tools hide, what they do, their differences and similarities, how to customize them, arrange workspaces, palettes, panels and save them. And then she pulled her example images in and acquainted us with her workflow for photorealistic painting, step by step, with prepared student notes. And then she set us out to work on our own images all the while moving slowly from student to student giving intense personalized attention to everyone.

It is the way at The Institute to have open lab from 8:00 to 9:00 am each morning, class from 9:00 to 5:00 with breaks and lunch, and open lab again from 7:00 to 9:00 pm with assistants available to untangle our misunderstandings, find the tools we have hidden from ourselves, demonstrate the techniques that we missed because we were overwhelmed with information, and generally make sure that we are in control of the programs at our individual digital workstations which drastically reduces the class time needed to help less adept classmates the following day. It is a marvelous system.

The next major topic revealed a workflow that allows Painter to assist in jump starting our painting exploration. This is a fairly well developed set of ordered tools for enhancing target images, using the painterly tools such as brush styles and adjustments, creating an underpainting and then augmenting our hand painting enhancements.

So, what did I do that so overjoyed me? I took the picture of Anna, my daughter, from my previous blog entry, and turned it into a photorealistic painting which has been printed and my wife will have matted and framed for Anna's Grandmother. It is the image above. I also created a painting of Tom Jones from a concert capture of mine. I'm not sharing that image for now but I have included a detail in which you can see the brush strokes and style below. I have some project plans that I may reveal as I move forward.

Finally, we learned some additional critical printing preparation steps for enhancing the painterliness of our work and made a few prints. And then Fay explained many, many marketing tips and processes from handling the work in the presence of clients to titling, signing and numbering limited editions: the Ka-Ching portion of the program. It was surreal and filled with Fay's personal experiences and emotions.

Now, you may not be able to venture out to the West Coast to attend a Lepp Class with Fay, but there are other options. She has two tutorial DVDs available including the one I bought: produced in conjunction with Kelby Training. She has two more coming, one of which will be of particular interest to animal/pet aficionados. She is also touring with a number of other teaching Pros this year so you might want to check the Kelby Training website for that.

As always, I want to be clear that I am not affiliated with Lepp Institute as other than a normal student. I am also not affiliated in any way with Fay Sirkis or Kelby Training and receive no compensation or gratuity for sharing experiences. I should also disclaim that I have purchased wine made by Hal Schmitt (one half owner of Lepp) for my wife for Christmas but I am not reviewing it here or elsewhere.

Travel safe!

Dwight

Anna & Marna in the Studio

2009-01-19T10:29:00.000-08:00

If you've followed this blog you know that back in November I took a seminar with Kevin Ames at the Lepp Institute in Los Osos, California, entitled "The Art of Photographing Women." I had a particular setup from that workshop that I wanted to emulate and it has taken me a couple of months to get the equipment I wanted into the studio, grab my most used models and shoot it. I've still got a lot to learn but that will come with experience. In the meantime I want to share some of the images.

My most willing and very talented model is Anna Martina, 7 going on 14. She does her own hair and makeup, requires virtually no retouching, takes direction very well and is a prize. (I assure you I have parental approval to use her pictures.)

The setup includes a beauty dish high on the left of camera and white paper on the posing table to act as a reflector. I noticed the I sometimes get the paper in the images but I thought it looked quite good. If you don't think so, please comment and offer suggestions. There is also a hair light directly overhead to help pop her off the black background. This is all pretty standard stuff. What makes it Kevin Ames is having the camera on a tripod, tethered to my laptop and using an X-Rite Gray Scale and Balance card. After metering the exposure I shot an image with the model holding the gray scale and used EOS Utility to upload to the laptop. In the utility I opened the image in Bridge, did white balance on the gray bar of the card and then put droppers on the white and black, mainly to ensure that the white end of the exposure wasn't over about 245. I backed down about 1/2 stop from the meter. This gives a superb exposure and as long as you are using the same lighting and outfits and are using good studio lights, the exposure should be about perfect for a series.

With my second most willing but utterly most difficult and demanding model, Marna, I added a rim light behind her ... it has a reflector with barn doors limiting the light spill. I also tried adding a red gel to a background light but it didn't work and I decided it wasn't the right thing anyway. Marna, like Anna, can pretty much go through a series of poses without much direction. She does, however, insist on a lot of control and has her own thoughts on what she wants. In this shoot she specifically wanted her bangs in her eyes and wanted a tough/powerful look more than soft glamor or sexy.

Did I mention that Marna is very firm about having her own way at the photoshoot?

Finally, here's a BTS (Behind The Scenes) image of the setup. The beauty dish on the upper left is a Bowens QUADX head with a Supersoft 600 Kit which is a deep white reflector with two diffusion panels. The overhead light is a reflector with barn doors as is the rim light which you can't see as it is behind the model. The camera is on a tripod just to the left of Marna and is tethered with a 10' USB cable to the laptop which is on top of a wire drawer stand to the right.

Have any questions? Please ask.

In the meantime, Travel Safely!

Dwight

New Year's Eve Dance Party at the Chumash Casino Resort

2009-01-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

Most of you know that I am the House Photographer for the Entertainment Department at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California. I shoot about 50 events a year at the Samala Room and each year one of those events is the New Year's Eve Dance Party. Most years the bands are The Boogie Knights and The Spazmatics as was the case last night. And most dances also feature several GoGo Dancers normally provided by Dazzle Management. In the past I have been unsuccessful in getting decent pictures of the dancers as the lighting just hasn't been fast enough to freeze them at all. So this year, having had a little experience with my ST-E2 thanks to Scott Sneddon during our Victoria Hansen shoot, I decided to experiment. I took three 580EX flashes plus the ST-E2 to the Dance Party. I started by putting a 580EX at each front corner of the dance platform and one at the read left corner. I tried a variety of settings most all of which seemed to work better than anything I have done before.

When my wife, Marna, showed up to party with me for an hour or so I put her to work ... I attached two Quantum SC batteries to her belt and put a 580EX in each hand and had her hold them up high and pointed down at various party goers around the room. This also got images that I haven't managed previously.

So, this turned out to be an excellent experiment and experience.

Be Safe!

Dwight

UCSB Shoot with Scott Sneddon, Victoria Hansen and Michael McCann

2008-12-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

I've worked at UCSB for over 30 years in IT. It was only a few months ago that I realized what a great location it is for photography, particularly fashion/glamor. So, I've been sneaking up on it since then and finally got the chance to try out some of the great backgrounds and areas. Victoria Hansen (http://www.modelmayhem.com/830819) contacted me and wanted to shoot and my friend Scott Sneddon (http://www.modelmayhem.com/364472) wanted to shoot with me while he is on leave from Korea where he is currently stationed. And my son, Michael, needed some experience shooting glamor. So, we packed up and went down to UCSB for an afternoon of exploring and shooting.

This is the first post i have done where I have tried to use URL's on other websites rather than uploading to Blogspot ... it didn't work as I expected so you will only see part of an image, but you can click on the images to see the whole image. Uploaded images resize. There is no mention that this won't be the case with links. I'll be more careful in the future.

UCSB has a lot of rules. They even have a few about using UCSB as a setting. They don't want people attributing things to UCSB that are not in keeping with the University's mission or using the University's image for commercial purposes. But they do allow Brooks students to shoot assignments. Since we were not commercial and aren't using UCSB for inappropriate purposes I figured we'd be OK ... plus I know a few people!

Scott has a fair amount of experience shooting models with "Strobist" Style equipment which is all he's had in Korea. Since I had no experience but plenty of equipment we decided it would be a good opportunity.

Scott had worked with Victoria before and had a good idea of what she could do. We took my truck and were soon walking around checking for locations. The courtyard of my building is a very concrete/industrial area so that's where we started. We set up two 580EX II's on stands with umbrellas and set them to slave units on channel one, one of each bank, A & B. I put my ST-E2 on a 1DMIII with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. We backed Victoria into a small architectural detail and played with the lights. Not the best but we were warming up.

I love to see behind the scenes shots so I know what was going on with lighting and surroundings so I'm borrowing one that Scott took of me shooting Victoria.

Next we wanted to try to shoot high f-stop to darken the sky but we just didn't have enough power to overwhelm the sky so we moved around and went with the building as background, still using the two lights held by Scott and Michael.

We had Victoria climbing around on everything. And since she climbs well, we next sent her up a tree, which was our most successful spot I think. We did have a bit of trouble getting the lights up high enough ... Michael, who is about 6' had his light on a fully extended lightstand and was on tippy toes.

From there we went to Kerr Hall which has some very unusual concrete texture on its exterior. Scott showed me how he set the lights for his "signature" shot and then put a gel on a 580EX that he held in his hand to give the concrete some color as well as texture. Very nice images.

Here's one with the gel on the wall.

I realize it would be nice to have more behind the scenes shots and I'm waiting for the price of Canon's G10 to come down to a reasonable price point, about $350, but I know everyone is trying their best to hold prices up even though there's no money around to buy stuff at the inflated prices they have gotten used to getting.

Travel Safe!

Dwight

Merry Christmas: Some Notes on Backups

2008-12-25T12:54:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! I hope Santa has been good to everyone. I don't know who delivers presents for the Hanukkah kids or Kwanzaa folks but I hope they also were well blessed or gifted or whatever. I'm actually a Humanist myself so I just think of it all as the Winter Solstice, but it's a great time of year.

A few months ago I thought I'd look into putting my images onto BluRay disks. The burners are pretty reasonable so it seemed like a grand plan since they can hold 50GB per disk. So I started shopping at Newegg. Fortunately, before I bought anything I checked the price for blank disks. $50 EACH! Did you get that? Blank 50GB BluRay disks are FIFTY DOLLARS EACH! I found that quite unbelievable so I went to one of my Gurus at UCSB, Hank Rayner, and asked about it.

Yup, $50 per platter and not worth it. BluRay isn't yet about backup. It is about selling movies/videos for outrageous amounts so as to recover the research costs immediately! Same mentality of greed that wall street has. And it will end the same way, by lots of folks losing everything because they felt that they were entitled to suck huge amounts of money out of the economy for doing next to nothing. These disks couldn't cost more than a nickle to make! But it makes no difference to me since I won't be using them any time soon.

Turns out my DVD burner is double layer. That means I can burn about 8GB to a $2 dual layer DVD and then print it. The cost is about 1/6th of BluRay and DVDs stack up very compactly with numerous options for storage containers. I'm currently backing up 180,000 images, about 700GB, onto DVDs. It's slow. There are going to be quite a few of them. But if I lose one, I won't be losing 50GB of data to a coaster, it will only be 8GB. And I am making two of each, which should way improve my odds.

I am using Verbatim DataLifePlus Inkjet Printable DVD+R DL White, 2.4x P/N: 95123 disks. They got great ratings on Newegg. They work fine. They are slow. My computer doesn't mind slow. I don't mind slow as I can do other stuff while they burn. Where is the advantage to BluRay? As you can see, I'm not one to buy something solely because someone makes it and says it's the latest greatest. I don't have an iPhone either! I don't have a game console. But don't get me wrong, I have been in IT, mostly as a computer programmer, for over 30 years and I love technology. I just don't love it willy nilly and for no purpose. My computers are dual core, not quad core. But I do run RAID0, RAID1 and RAID5 disk arrays.

So, other things about backups: My friend Scott told me this week that he lost 20,000 images because he didn't have backups. He is all about backups now. But those 20,000 are lost forever. I am a bit compulsive about backups. I have not lost any images even though I have had numerous computer failures of different sorts. But backups are kinda like virginity, once you lose it there's no going back. As long as you got it you never really know what it's worth.

So, for Christmas I am giving you all the gift of knowledge. DO BACKUPS! You can do them to DVDs. You can do them to internal disks. You can do them to disks on other computers. You can do them to external USB drives. I am currently using two 1TB SeaGate FreeAgent Pro drives that support USB, SATA and eSATA and firewire. Software to manage the backups in many flavors are very inexpensive. I currently use SyncBackSE by www.2brightsparks.com which has most every option I could ever want for backups and they do continuous process improvement with a new update about every couple of months that covers all the new stuff that is available.

I have some more material in the pipeline and will likely be doing several posts over the holidays.

In the meantime, BE SAFE!

Dwight

"The Art of Photographing Women" with Kevin Ames at Lepp Institute

2008-11-30T13:59:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a fair amount of interest in my workshop experience from two weeks ago, so although I barely have one nostril above the waterline I've decided to review it now. This was "The Art of Photographing Women" with instructor Kevin Ames at the Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California. I've taken several Lepp classes and gotten a huge amount out of each one, certainly my money's worth if not more.

Kevin Ames, instructor, author and world class photographer of the feminine (and some other things, too) is easily likable and very amiable, perhaps too much so, but that's what we're paying him for. :-) During the first day, spent almost exclusively in the Lepp Digital Darkroom, we reviewed Kevin's work and then images each of the eight of us old men had brought with us as one prerequisite. This turned out to be very valuable as we began shooting later on as we could understand where he was going.

Kevin has, and shares, a very disciplined shooting to print workflow. To the suprise of many of us he virtually required us to shoot tethered to our laptops, from a tripod, using a grayscale card, and downloading & checking our images, particularly for exposure, before shooting for effect. While light metering was carefully covered, it is clear that Kevin doesn't rely 100% on metering ... each setup is examined in Bridge for exposure accuracy and studio lights are adjusted to bring the image within one third stop of desired. You can't get under/overexposed images if you follow this process. While I shoot tethered in the studio I have never used my laptop in a disciplined manner to control exposure, I just relied on my meter. But as you hear on TV ads, "Wait, there's more!" Using Kevin's workflow also allows you to adjust all the images from a setup in one Bridge operation by applying the white balance and tweaked exposure to the whole series ... very clever and efficient.

So, I said Kevin was amiable ... well, not so much when various guys wanted to take shortcuts during their shooting. More than once someone wanted to just forge ahead because they didn't really understand what Kevin wanted them to get. We stopped several shoots, boring the models to tears, so Kevin could do "right here, right now" chalk talks about exposure, balancing ambient, foreground, background and understanding when the ambient light would have no effect at all. It was certainly rewarding to learn that you can do the math to figure all this out.

So, with two models in two locations, we lined up with our cameras on tripods tethered to our laptops. Now, I am sure everyone reading this doesn't know how to shoot tethered even if they have equipment ... but Kevin, Hal and Victoria managed to get everyone willing running in this configuration, either helping install and configure the software or using a Lepp machine. In this process I managed to find the "solution" for a long irritating anomaly I've had with rotation ... seems that I had checked "rotate" on some configuration which prevented rotation for some reason I don't understand ... that alone being much worthwhile.

Kevin started us out with a very simple portrait setup using one 5' Profoto Octodome above to our left and a silver reflector covering a posing stand on which the model leaned. I would never had thought to use a reflector in such a simple but amazingly effective way. With the lights setup and metered, we each had to calibrate our images via the grayscale card and Bridge on our laptops. You couldn't fake it with Kevin standing there or insisting someone else do so. He did lighten up a bit once he felt we understood and let us 'man the computer' for each other for later sessions. With two or three guys standing around your laptop you very quickly learn what's going on ... everyone loves to help.

At the end of each shooting session, Kevin assigned homework of selecting the heroines from the shoot and loading onto jump drives that he then presented to the class with his analysis, and ours. He does do an interesting and effective thing in this process: no one is allowed to make comments the first pass through. The author is not allowed to "explain" his thoughts or mistakes and others are not allowed to critique ... we just look and feel. Amazing what you can see when you aren't trying to make excuses, for yourself or others.

In addition to the portrait session, the five models that we used for three days did their thing for us in two setups in the studio and then we went on location using battery generators and reflectors. You very quickly become clear about why it takes two or three assistants to do a location shoot ... particularly where it's windy! The models were dynamite!

So, with a pocketful of our images Kevin then proceeded to walk us through the post processing segment of his workflow. We created an action (something everyone should know how to do ... and I didn't) that setup several layers including a strategy layer where you determine what needs to be done and mark it up as well as the initial adjustment layers. I need to jump in here to say that I am a Photoshop neophyte and still felt very comfortable following and then doing the processes that Kevin shared.

So, here's a process "trick" that blew me away. When I want to "burn" or "dodge" an area, such as eyes, I have always used dodge and burn tools. But those don't retain all the texture, color and contrast of the original. Kevin uses copied layers and then combines them using masks and blending modes: screen for lightening and multiply for darkening. Very effective and retains a very natural look that is undetectable. Kevin also covered detailed eye treatment and a variety of skin enhancement procedures.

This workshop has certainly impacted my workflow. Even before shooting I find myself reviewing the steps I need to do and planning much more completely. Once again I can't recommend strongly enough how valuable I have found the Lepp courses and this Kevin Ames class in particular. I urge you to check out their 2009 Course Schedule ... I know Kevin is coming back ... but if you need an intro to Photoshop, a refresher, intermediate or advanced methods in almost any facet of photography they will have a class for you.

If you have questions please don't hesitate to ask. If you sign up for a Lepp class please mention my name as they'll give me a credit toward my next one, although I have no affiliation beyond what any student has.

You can see some of my images from this workshop at http://dwightmccann.com/Glamor/Leah111808.html.

Be Safe.

Dwight

When Brown, Flush Down

2008-11-30T08:59:00.000-08:00

I've been very busy as usual. Since last I wrote I have photographed the Native American Heritage Celebration at the Chumash Casino Resort, a Veterans' Honorary Dinner, Foreigner, Hall & Oates, Anita Baker, done a weeklong workshop with Kevin Ames and played with my family. I will be writing a review of the Kevin Ames experience next.

But I'm here today with a complaint. As a result of the Andy Katz and Kevin Ames classes at Lepp Institute, I decided to upgrade my medium tripod. I made a trip to Really Right Stuff in San Luis Obispo and picked up a new tripod and ball head. Used 'em once and it is a fantastic setup. Then I realized I needed a new ball head to go on my tabletop tripod since all my bodies now have RRS L-Plates on them. I called and ordered. RRS said it would go out the same day, Tuesday, and arrive Wednesday by UPS.

Sure enough, I got the emailed UPS notification that they had received pickup info and that the ballhead was "In transit and On Time" ... a phrase I now hate! So, wednesday I went to work thinking how nice it would be to have the Gitzo G0012 with the new RRS BH-25 LR head for the Thanksgiving weekend. I got to work and checked the tracking number. Still said "In transit and On Time." Great! But as it got later in the day it hadn't arrived. At 3:00, my manager said that due to traffic concerns we could leave. Since I knew the ballhead was going to arrive I decided to stay. But at 5:00 pm when we close the doors, my "In transit and On Time" delivery hadn't arrived. So I got a two hour late start for nothing. Well, not too big a deal. So, we left the house on our Thanksgiving pilgrimage to the in-laws two hours late. But, on Hwy 46, just East of Paso Robles, the four lane divided highway came to a complete stop due to a fatal traffic collision. After an hour of waiting we got diverted to a detour into the middle of nowhere. After another couple of hours of delays we were on our way once again to Selma, California. But, being several hours later, we managed to hit the Tule Fog that we had planned to avoid since it causes so many accidents over there. We did finally make it without another incident. But I'm very unhappy with UPS. From my perspective, their service consistently stinks. This is hardly the first time that they have failed to properly update their tracking information ... it seems quite common. The last time that really distressed me was when my package from B&H Photovideo in New York City was "In Transit and On Time" but didn't arrive and it turned out it was part of a derailed train well before it was still tracking as "In Transit and On Time." Not only does it seem to me that their tracking information isn't useful, it is misleading which is a lot worse!

I ship to my customers. I use FedEx. FedEx is very reliable ... well, I haven't had a single delayed delivery since I started with them a few years ago. I check the tracking information on every delivery. Sometimes a package gets to its destination too early and they hold it a day ... which they clearly mark in the tracking information. I know when it's on the truck to be delivered. I know when it is delivered. My customers also know as they also get the updates emailed to them. And there is a convenient pickup box both near my office at the University and just down the street from me in my hometown of Buellton. They are RELIABLE! My guess is that UPS causes countless upsets every day but the companies that use them don't hear about it so they continue on. I certainly sent Really Right Stuff an eamil describing what happened.

So, back to Flush Down ... my ballhead still hasn't arrived, although I expect it will come on Monday, four days late.

Travel Safe

Dwight

Lepp Institute: Available Light with Andy Katz

2008-11-09T12:49:00.000-08:00

Falling ever farther behind elsewhere I thought I would catch up once again on my blog. Actually I'm still working on getting migrated to my new computer ... today I swapped out the old computer for my backup computer and immediately ran into trouble with getting the POST/BIOS screens to write through the KVM to my ACD ... I'll just have to work on it, but once again unexpected hardware issues are sucking away my time.
Last weekend I spent at yet another Lepp Institute weekend class: Available Light Photography: Vineyards and Wineries, with Andy Katz (See above.) Since I have a winery client, Casa Cassara, I thought it would be a wonderful opportunity to learn some tips and tricks among the grapevines and barrels. I'm going to jump right in here and say the class didn't meet my expectations: I had hoped for some one-on-one and group focus on shooting grape clusters, barrels, vineyards, etc., with Andy first showing just what he would shoot, including actually shooting it with his new Sony Alpha DSLR and then discussing his results and work with each in turn to achieve our vision. But several things worked against this: it isn't Andy's style and the weather, both the weekend overcast and the early frosts this season, didn't lend itself to what I was after. To make up for the lack of spectacular vineyards, Andy spent about half the field time working on available light portraiture, both indoors and out, which wasn't all that interesting to me as I have shot portraits for forty years.

Andy showing how to use light working with a model:

So, while I was a bit disappointed in very specific ways, there are always many unexpected benefits popping up at Lepp and I actually felt as though I got my money's worth before we ever left the Digital Darkroom on our first outing. In his "Warm Up" image presentation and discussion, Andy walked us through about thirty of his images, all stunning, and talked about his vision and particulars for many of them. If Andy has anything, it is vision, the very thing I miss the most in my own work. And then, Andy proceeded to thump one of my own big emphases, using a tripod! I am always amazed how few people use a tripod! But to top it off, Andy even espouses the use of "Mirror Lockup" ... a tremendously overlooked feature of most high end DSLRs that can make or break telephoto images. So with Andy's pep talk still ringing in my ears, off we went for some field work.

Off we went to Jada Vineyard and Winery where we walked the vineyards shooting, then tasted their current vintages with matching cheeses. A glorious experience. Then off to Booker Vineyard & Winery for more vineyard and winery shooting and another tasting ... and here I've got to mention Booker Alchemist ... knock your socks off wine! I am buying it for my wife's Christmas present ... seriously! From there to lunch at Midnight Winery, some more shooting, and then off to review at the Digital Darkroom at Lepp.

And this is where Andy Katz really shines! He had each student select 10 to 12 images from the field work, post process them as desired in Lightroom and/or Photoshop, and then we critiqued. Andy's critiques are eye opening. He can find images within images, extraneous material that detracts from the gestalt, power, strength, romance and really sees the light. And he is merciless ... which is a good thing. This was the first time I'd even been exposed to world class image review in person and it is enlightening. It will change the way you see. You will be a better shooter just for being in the room. Geez, I'm a romantic!

So, without flogging you about our dinner Saturday night or the activities on Sunday, rest assured the trip to the Edna Valley was also treat. And while I am hoping that next year we into the fields before the harvest and frost, I expect the wine tasting in San Luis Obispo will always be a superb experience. Here's Hal listening intently to Andy:

Be Safe!

Dwight

EXIF & IPTC: From the Browser

2008-10-29T06:51:00.000-07:00

Having gotten 99.99% moved to my new computer I find that I am now discovering small tweaks that I had come to rely on but didn't really think to recreate during the initial massive migration. One of these little items provided the ability to view the EXIF and IPTC data in an image being browsed via a contextual right-click menu choice from Firefox. I tend to use this dozens of times a day.

If you are a digital photographer and don't know what EXIF and IPTC data are, the very quick answer is that they are metadata (data about data) embedded in most modern image file formats. Your camera embeds EXIF data when you take an exposure which records such things as camera type, ISO, f-stop, date, time, etc. IPTC data describes the image and is embedded by the photographer using a software tool such as PhotoMechanic (my choice) or LightRoom (which I use but not for this purpose.) For specifics of these formats do a Google search.

So, I am out browsing around on my favorite photography forum, POTN, and see an image that I find interesting taken in very low light at a concert (something I do a lot of) and want to know what ISO, f-stop and shutter speed was used. With the Add-On I use in Firefox 3 I can just right click the image and select the EXIF viewer and bam ... there's all the information. And with the viewer I use I can also see the IPTC data and even the GPS data if it is there.

I have used several EXIF viewers, all freeware, and I vastly prefer the IEXIF from Opanda. The nicest thing compared with others is that the popup window with the information is expandable and sometimes that EXIF or particularly IPTC data can get very long. The Opanda presentation is simple, elegant and easy to use.

So, what do you do? I don't know what Mac users do! But if you're a PC person you go to Opanda's website and from their homepage you install IEXIF V2.3 (at the moment.) This needs to be sitting on your computer. You then install the Firefox Add-On in the usual fashion. Restart Firefox as normal for adding an Add-On. Browse to an image and right click and there's a new item from Opanda and you simply click it. When you're done, close the IEXIF window because otherwise it will stick around ... you can have several of these open at once which is handy.

I consider the Opanda an essential piece of software.

Be safe!

Dwight

Computers: A Necessary Evil

2008-10-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I have yet again been missing in action blogwise! For those of you who aren't interested in all things computer, feel free to leave now. For those who would like to benefit from the experience of others, read on!

The last time I built new computers for my photography business was about two years ago as a result of my then current primary workstation going completely dead. It was a case of my PC-DL motherboard dying while under warranty. That was a very painful lesson as I had to finally buy a new PC-DL motherboard and move all the components from the failed motherboard to the new motherboard in order to demonstrate to ASUS that it was the motherboard that was bad ... they finally sent me the replacement but, of course, I already had one. But since I couldn't put my business on hold for a month while screwing with that computer, I built one, and then another for backup, to replace the PC-DL. I used ABIT AN8 and KN8 motherboards.

First I built the ABIT AN8-Ultra. All went well until my first big image download via a USB port. About 6GB in to the transfer the system locked up ... just froze. For two years I simply endured these lockups because I couldn't figure out what was wrong. They finally started getting worse and worse. In the meantime I had built the KN8-Ultra system (as my backup box) and just started downloading there and transferring across my intranet. I'll short circuit this story to say that it turns out that ABIT released this board with a significant design flaw making running USB with dual CPUs very unstable. Never a note on the website. Never an email to registered users. Nothing. Nada. They just let everyone suffer. Of course, this is typical motherboard manufacturer style. I was finally able to get perfect stability by running with only a single CPU enabled ... but it made the box very slow with the Athlon 4400+ CPU only running one core.

The KN8-Ultra box with an Athlon 4800+ processor was my backup box (both backup in the sense of data backup and in the sense of being available if the primary box should die) and will remain so into the near future. It is reliable but doesn't seem to want to take a big video card upgrade to support my Dell 30" monitor.

With those two computers having various issues I decided to build a new machine and optimize it for Photoshop. In my mind that means as much memory as Windows 32 bit XP Pro can take, a powerful CPU and at least three separate RAID arrays. After much research (you cannot do enough research no matter how much time you put into it so just accept that) I decided on an ASUS P5E WS Pro motherboard. This motherboard supports two PCI-E x16 video cards so it should be able to drive the 23" ACD, 30" Dell and the Wacom Cintiq 21ux ... I haven't yet put the second video card in as I am using it in my about to be decommissioned AN8 box. In addition, this motherboard has a PCI-X slot and I happened (due to a total brain fart on my part) to have an LSI MegaRaid SATA 300-8X raid controller card which makes it a great fit ... but, the PCI-X slot turns out to really be just a PCI-E X1 slot with a different adapter so I can't really get full performance out of it, sigh. And, of course, this isn't revealed up front by ASUS!

The big Gotcha's! First, the P5E has two onboard RAID controllers, one of which has e-SATA connectors. That's wonderful except the Marvell driver doesn't seem to support ACHI which is necessary for e-SATA hot swap. And since the 'e' in e-SATA stands for 'external', not having hot swap is rather stupid. Also, the Marvell controller supports IDE and there is an IDE adapter on the motherboard ... but its unadvertised restriction is that if you use it for non-disk use, such as with my IDE CD-ROM, you will be sorely disappointed when after doing a complete install of Windows and try to do the reboot, the BIOS will be unable to find your boot disks! Oh, how easy it would have been if ASUS had noted that you must use a SATA CDROM! What a waste of three days of my life trying countless variations. It was only by virtue of my boss using his Linux Rescue Disk that we discovered this cleverness! I have disabled the Marvell hardware since it is clearly a half-assed and useless addition to this motherboard. And finally, the wonderful RealTek audio chipset and driver won't install under default Windows XP ... it will run the full driver install until the last instant and then fail for no obvious reason. After days of searching via Google I found that there is an incompatible system device, the UAA driver, that must be disabled and then uninstalled before installing the RealTek drivers ... but once you have discovered that "feature" (that ASUS doesn't publish)the sound support appears to work well and the driver is very friendly for those of us who are audio challenged.

Anyway, this new box is finally up and spinning as my primary business computer. I have an E8600 3.33 GHz dual core CPU, 4GB DDR2 memory, three RAID arrays: 2x250GB RAID1 for system disk, 2x250GB (soon to be replaced by 3x320GB) RAID0 scratch disk, and 3x750GB RAID5 work disk. It has two 1G NICs although it would be nicer if it had WiFi instead or even Firewire-800. I migrated the last of the applications and data from the old box to this one over this weekend. And here let me put in a BIG plug for MozBackup ... a shareware utility that will export/import your Firefox and Thunderbird profiles including email, registry settings, add-ons, etc., etc. I had read about several add-ons that supposedly did this in Firefox but none had good ratings and a complex solution for doing it by hand with Thunderbird and even though I am moderately computer literate, no manual system seemed to work properly ... MozBackup did exactly what I wanted, creating my old environment on my new box using the principal of 'least unexpected result' perfectly! I have already PayPal'd them their requested Shareware donation.

Phew, I am now on my new box with Adobe CS3 Web Premium, LR2.1, Corel PIX3 & Painter X, PhotoMechanic 5, and other odds and ends and expect to get back to doing useful Blog entries once again. Certainly one thing you can learn from my blog is that almost nothing goes as expected in small business and most of the unexpected events are not good! :-)

Be Safe!

Dwight

LightRoom 2.0 with Hal Schmitt at The Institute

2008-10-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend with Hal Schmitt learning about LightRoom 2.0 at The [Lepp] Institute in Los Osos and running off to shoot the Santa Barbara County Vintners' Association Harvest Festival at Rancho Sisquoc, California. Both were superb.

But I need to back up just a second to report that I have had two major computer failures that have been taking up my time which is why I haven't been blogging as frequently as intended. I won't dwell on them ... I am a compulsive backer upper and would have lost no data even if I had not been able to recover both machines which I have been able to do. One up side is that I have built and am migrating onto a new machine that I will describe completely with pictures when I'm done and one down side is that the two failures really have complicated the hell out of the process of migrating! But I will fill you all in later when I have a nostril above the waterline.

LightRoom 2.0 is here. Hal says LightRoom 2.1 is close and that it will fix lots of the little bugs that have been revealed, making a much more solid release by Adobe. I have been a LightRoom user since the first public release of 1.0 due to a most fortuitous coincidence of taking a class at The Institute that I thought was going to be Photoshop but which turned out to be LightRoom. It is now an integral part of my workflow where I mainly use it for RAW conversion. I rarely Photoshop any images after the conversion. This is mainly because the things you do with Photoshop are not things that interest my current clientele. But this is changing and as I move into more areas of photography such as fashion, glamor, family and maybe weddings, I will need these skills. To this end, LightRoom 2 looks like another significant increment in the toolkit. I have LR2 installed on my new machine and 1.4.1 on my old machine ... I'm trying to tease myself along!

So, in his usual inimitable instructor fashion, Hal has created a really super LightRoom weekend that combines material for LR newbies and for those of us migrating from 1 to 2. I think our class of about a dozen was a mixed bag of new and continuing users. No one was bored! And there are a lot of little tricks and treats that I can't imagine stumbling upon or even reading about that are part of Hal's show. In fact, I was chatting with Hal and a couple of other students when I heard myself say, "It's not that I get everything that I expect in taking a Hal Schmitt class, it's that I get so much that I didn't expect that makes Hal's classes so exciting!" Hal and Victoria bring a lot of top flight instructors through The Institute, but I don't think any of those I've attended or read do quite the job that Hal does. He's not as cute as Tim Gray. He's not as verbose and chatty as Scott Kelby. He's only been into photography for a short time. But he understands teaching and students so thoroughly that he is seamless and getting better with experience.

Hmmm, I guess I'm impressed ... yet again. Anyway, Hal covered all the significant new stuff, particularly in the develop module, as well as its interface with PS CS3, since that's where the meat of the new release lives. But be clear, you would understand the entire workflow through all modules after attending this weekend seminar.

Enough of that! My next Institute class will be with Andy Katz the first weekend in November doing vineyard and winery photography and I'll give you another report.

I have a lot of topics lined up (my wife is getting tired of all the boxes, lenses, bags, Pelican cases and the like that are cluttering the hallway to and inside my office and studio) to write about. I really want to show the rest of my gear so I can finally talk more about using it and the workflow involved. So stay tuned and we'll get to everything from grapes to girls and concerts, too!

Be Safe!

Dwight

The Institute: Photoshop 2 with Hal Schmitt

2008-09-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

Just got back from my second introductory Photoshop weekend with Hal Schmitt at Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging ... to be known simply as the The Institute at this time ... and I am stoked! It was beyond my greatest expectations. Not only did Hal march us through all the major layer operations but he made them part of a solid digital photography workflow that can be the foundation of whatever additional post processing one might do. After showing us Levels, Hal worked our butts over and over on Curves! Anyone who thought that Curves was just too complicated for the average guy (or gal) just never sat through Hal's workshop. And I don't just mean seeing it in action, but taking advantage of all the more subtle uses including use of the clipping display, white balance, selective curves, the appropriate blending modes and combining with the automatically available mask and on and on. A little overload for some folks but this isn't supposed to be the introductory class ... that was last weekend!

So, I drove up to Los Osos yesterday and today, about 75 miles each way and arrived to excellent coffee and super donuts ... I'm partial to those glazed cake donuts and cinnamon rolls, sigh. The group this week was also much bigger with a wider range of experience and focus. Unfortunately no other concert shooters but mostly landscape and bird shooters, plus Greg who wants to do his own product shooting for his furniture business ... a really nice group augmented by Miss Leah in her "Little Black Dress" who is auditing as a member of The Institute staff.

So, as with each of the previous classes I have taken with The Institute I am overjoyed and feel that I got a lot more than my money's worth and more than I expected ... and I have pretty high expectations of this place. Hal ended the day after I left but the last thing he did while I was there was to run us through one of the new powerful tools in CS3 the Photomerge ... mind numbing but a feature I wouldn't have thought to investigate. The great thing about Hal is he gets his hands dirty ... really dirty actually ... and has personal experience and lots of opinions (but not those ugly religious level ones) that he will debate.

But here's the really impressive thing about Hal from this weekend ... he made a statement based on what he had been taught about a feature that didn't jibe with my experience, so I asked about it ... data saved in jpeg files. Well, we hit a break and Hal went out and tested it and when it turned out to be as I had suggested, he immediately corrected himself. It is very impressive to work with instructors who don't let ego constrict their openness to student knowledge.

Again, my disclaimer from last week: while I am very pleased with my experiences at The Institute and am sharing that with you, I am not in any way associated with them other than as a full paying student and I receive no consideration (other than being the target of extra abuse) for telling you about them. I strongly urge you to consider them if you are in the market for any digital photography education ... sign up for their newsletter as they are adding new classes and other opportunities as they move forward ... I hear they are partnering with some well known field photographers for photo-safaris to amazing locations!

And finally, if you are a NAPP or NANPA member they give a steep discount!

Be Safe!

Dwight

NAPP: A Tip from Hal at Lepp Institute

2008-09-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

In my last post I meant to mention that Hal had suggested that joining NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) was a good idea. I have always ignored it as I'm not a Photoshop Professional and said so to Hal. Well, much to my surprise, you don't have to be a full time Photoshop professional to join. Just slap down your money ... $99/year for one year with deals on multiple years! You can also sign up for Layers magazine for $19/year which Hal calls the best photoshop magazine around. But, the kicker is, you get a 15% discount on Lepp Institute classes if you are a NAPP member ... so you actually turn a profit on almost any one-week class at Lepp. Personally I plan to buy a new lens with the money I save in 2009 by having joined NAPP!

Photoshop 1 at Lepp Institute

2008-09-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

Once again I spent an amazing weekend at Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California. Many of my peers are aware that I am not currently a Photoshop user. While I do use Photo Mechanic to cull, rename and inject IPTC data into my images and LightRoom to do RAW conversion and catalog, I am a fan and user of Ulead's PhotoImpact product. But this must change as I really need to be "Industry Standard" and that is Photoshop. I've known this for a long time and have had installed versions of Adobe Creative Studio since their first version. I just haven't used it, sigh.

So, in my quest forward, I have read several Photoshop CS3 books. I really like Martin Evening's book. I didn't care for Scott Kelby's book. I am currently reading Blatner, Chavez and Fraser and like it so far. And I really like the ever prolific Tim Grey's "Photoshop CS3 Workflow" book. But I was very surprised to discover that Hal Schmitt's Photoshop 1 course really smacks down the books! :-) Really, no kidding. From making great sense about the organization of menus and panels and their flow in your workflow, navigating about the images, how to approach each tool and where to look for options, to the ever popular 'learn those damn keyboard shortcuts' drumbeat [although I must take off one point for Hal's failure to include the shortcuts in his handout!] Hal has good image material on which to demonstrate and practice what is taught. The whole weekend had a super flow and Hal used the inevitable student errors in navigation and option selection to bring home his experiences on these same paths and reinforce his teachings.

A word about Hal: besides photographer/Photoshopper, he is a winemaker. Oh, wait, while that's true it is not where I want to go. Hal is an Instructor. He knows how to instruct people. I am sure he would be great teaching enology. He spent quite a while instructing aircraft fighting for the Navy at Top Gun and while his vast experience in this area goes almost unmentioned (although there are several pertinent photographs that keep popping up), it is clear why the brass would have selected him for such a job ... he really is a "Natural" at instructing. In my 30 plus years as a computer person I have taken many classes. And I have given many seminars, lectures and presentations to both handfuls and auditoriums of people on fairly esoteric computer topics ... my specialty was Operating System modifications in machine language for one of IBM's two mainframe Operating Systems, VM. I understand about teaching arcane and unintuitive topics. So does Hal. Plus he is much more personable than I am. :-)

So, I finished Photoshop 1, a weekend course, this past weekend. I will take Hal's Photoshop 2 next weekend. I won't bore you with how he divides topics or what specific tools/techniques are in each segment. I will mention that I am signed up for Hal's LightRoom 2.0 weekend next month even though I will have to miss a significant portion of it to go shoot at the Santa Barbara County Harvest Festival at Rancho Sisquoc for my both of my corporate clients ... but Hal, the winemaker, will understand. And so you know that it's not just Hal that I like at Lepp, I'm also signed up for Andy Katz's winery and vineyard photography workshop the first weekend in November and Kevin Ames photographing women week long seminar also in November. Lepp really has something for everyone! I am already reviewing their 2009 courses and have found two for which I am budgeting ... but that's another story!

I need to include a couple of other things. First, my wife and I have a truck camper and she likes to come up to Los Osos, well actually Morro Bay, with my daughter and camp out while I go to Lepp. There are numerous RV parks, public and private in the area that make attending classes into a vacation with extensive photo-ops. Second, I am not affiliated with Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging, it's employees or owners or sponsors in any way and am not compensated for sharing my thoughts about them. I have just found that every experience with Hal and Victoria (his much more of an artist wife) has been much more rewarding than I expected and plunged me forward into areas that I have resisted. This is a place you need to check out if you want to be one of those "Advanced Amateurs" who all seem to have the best of all possible worlds in photography. In fact, I think there are still slots open in all the courses for which I am signed up ... although there are some 2008 courses that are full. So, check out the courses as well as this lovely little coastal town.

Be safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1j - Canon TC-80N3

2008-09-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm running late as usual. But I grabbed a minute to mention Canon's TC-80N3, which is a very flexible and handy "cable release". It can do multiple exposures with timing, self-timer, long exposures, plain old "cable release" duty so you don't touch the camera for very sensitive exposures where you need to reduce jiggle, etc. Amazon currently has it for about $139. I use mine when doing table-top tripod long exposures of band equipment, normally with my Canon 5D and 15mm fisheye.

And, if the provided cord length isn't enough for you, there is a 33' extension cord, ET-1000N3, for about $80 at B&H, that let's you get way back far from the camera, either to be in the picture or to be away from the camera so as not to scare wildlife!

If this is too pricey for you, Canon also has the RS-80N3, which is just a simple cable release which Amazon has for about $48. You really need one of these in your camera bag if you use Canon EOS bodies with the N3 adapter.

Equipment Review: 1i Leatherman Charge Tools

2008-08-08T14:52:00.000-07:00

Slot 16, right next to my trifocals, is my Leatherman Charge Tool in its leather pouch. I don't use this often but when you need it, you need it. You can see the major tools it has or check it out here on the Leatherman website. It does seem that mine doesn't exactly match any of the Charge models shown on the website: it has no scissors or lanyard ring. but as with a fair amount of my equipment, models have changed or been discontinued ... if it is not a camera body then I don't really feel that I need the latest or greatest!

So, while these puppies list at up to $160, the street price is usually around $100, and I paid somewhere in the middle two or three years ago. But you need something like this in your camera bag!

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1i Quantum SC Battery & CZ Cord

2008-08-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

Phew! I just finished my busiest photographic month ever! No time for anything much. But now I'm back and am ready to continue with the equipment review. And as previously promised I will tell about my "replacement" for the Canon CP-E4 reviewed below. Actually, this is a little misleading as I am not getting rid of the CP-E4. It will act as a backup for the Quantum SC battery with CZ cord that is now my default. It is a bit more convenient than the Quantum ... slips into a front pocket.

But, the new boy on the block is the Quantum SC battery: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/467222-REG/Quantum_Instruments_TSC_Turbo_SC_Battery_Pack.html which runs about $430, a few bucks cheaper than when I bought it a couple of months ago. I had a Quantum Turbo battery long ago that I loved. I used it to power both my digital camera and my flash. These batteries have a lot of power, great power level indicators and the battery technology has no "memory" so you can recharge to full without having to drain the battery down for optimum performance.

I also like the clip to the belt gizmo on the back better than slipping it into my pocket ... looks a bit more professional, too! :-)

So, that's it for today. I will be continuing with my equipment review intermixed with other notable items.

BTW, I have now signed up for the Winery/Vineyard workshop at Lepp Institute in November as well as two Photoshop weekends at Lepp Institute in September as noted in an earlier post.

Lepp Institute: Printing & Mounting on Canvas Weekend Seminar

2008-07-27T17:54:00.000-07:00

No equipment review this time as I spent the weekend at Lepp Institute of Digital Imaging in Los Osos, California, which is right next to Morro Bay. Lepp Institute at http://www.leppphoto.com/ was created by George Lepp and is now owned and run by Victoria and Hal Schmitt (yup, two 't's) in concert with George. And this weekend, at my personal request, Hal & Victoria had their first canvas printing & stretching class. They have had several previous canvas classes taught by other instructors but they have done so much canvas work at the Institute for themselves and clients that they have become quite adept ... and for this first class in this new area they have simply outdone themselves. This is an image of the Digital Classroom taken from the instructors podium.

If you are interested in becoming familiar with the mysteries of printing on canvas and subsequent preparation and mounting on stretcher bars, this is a course for you, and they have several of these weekend wonders already on their schedule due to high demand. Hal & Victoria start with image optimization (in Photoshop) and work with you all the way out through gallery wrap expansion of your images including test prints on real canvas. The techniques and insights and experiences they share will save you days and weeks of heartache and problems ... they have had this experience for you! Below is the studio/canvas mounting area.

After test prints, you will make one or more "real" print images on canvas and then learn how to prep your images for stretching ... these images, prepared as "PremeirArt Nouveau Fine Art Prints" are true Giclee (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gicl%C3%A9e) prints and are simply stunning. We did both hand and machine stretching.

Now I've got to put in a word for Victoria ... several of the prints had some serious defects due to scanning ... one was covered in dust and hairs ... others picked up detritus during preparation ... Victoria stepped in with Photoshop and her fine paint brush and showed how to correct errors and problems. She is a real artist but is ever so modest (everyone who deals with Hal is modest, of course!)

So, after hands on learning about PremierArt Eco Print Shield application we all proceeded to prepare an image (or two), hand stretch and complete the process. I did my famous KISS performance collage (see below) and will be giving it to Wayne Hurte, my boss at the Chumash Casino Resort for his Condo renovation. In addition there were beautiful images of stored boats on a lake, a raptor, a gnarly old tree, a mother's portrait, a beach and others printed at this seminar, both color and Black-and-White (you would not believe how amazing B&W canvas prints are.)

If you either want to knock the socks off your photography friends or sell your work as fine art Giclee, you really need to make the time and effort to attend this class. It is under $500 (at this time) and you walk out with at least one canvas image that would retail for $450. There has never been such a bang-for-the-buck class in digital photography! You can read the Lepp Institute blog entry: Welcome to the Lepp Institute Blog: Canvas Printing and Finishing Workshop

I'm going to end this by saying that I am about to register for their weekend November 1-2, 2008, class which will be about shooting wineries and vineyards. And I have promised to attend a set of the weekend seminars for Photoshop so that I will finally get converted from my beloved PhotoImpact, sigh! :-)

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1h - Battery Power for 580EX II

2008-07-15T18:46:00.000-07:00

I learned the hard way that those four AA batteries in a 580EX don't last very long, particularly if you use rechargeable batteries which I do and you are shooting not only maximum power every shot, but using high speed sync as well, on a football field at night in the rain! High speed sync is another discussion, but it involves multiple flashes for each exposure. And running out of battery power for your flash makes you look rather lame, sigh. Fortunately there are a few alternatives. One option is to simply carry extra AA batteries in your pocket (which I was doing the night I discovered how fast they run out.) It can also be a bit of a problem reloading them in the 580EX due to a poor battery door design. I have since bought a 580EX II which makes better use of batteries and has a much improved battery door.

Perhaps a better, though pricey alternative, is a Canon CP-E4 Compact Battery Pack, at about $155. It comes with a nice black canvas case that slips into your pocket or onto your belt or you can use the screw adapter and put it on the bottom of your camera. It is fairly lightweight and professional looking. I used its predecessor, the CP-E3, and now use the CP-E4 which has better weather seals and is designed for use with the 580EX II although it is backward compatible.

I next discovered that even an additional eight AA's, which is what the CP-E4 holds, doesn't always do the trick, especially if you have two events back-to-back or just haven't charged them up since the last gig. Again, this may have a lot to do with using rechargeables, although I really like the 2000 mAh Radio Shack NiMH batteries that I use exclusively these days. Luckily I discovered the Canon CPM-E4, a pricey (again) plastic battery holder for the CP-E4. It is what holds the batteries inside the battery pack and can be purchased separately for around $42 each ... not cheap, but invaluable.

So, until very recently, I carried a CP-E4 with eight batteries and had two CPM-E4's in my case with charged batteries. I marked each CPM-E4 with a number, 1-3 (you can see the "3" in the image above, written with a Sharpy), and traded them into the CP-E4 always in order and charged the last used holder. Never had a problem. But two notes: (1) the 580EX II will use power from all 12 batteries, so the four in the flash itself will be drained as quickly as the others unless you set the option to use only the external battery pack for flash power and the four internal batteries to drive the flash logic [This is C.Fn-12 set to 1], and (2) you need to carry extra batteries for the internal power because if the internal batteries run out, even switching the option to use power from all batteries will not work as the 580EX [II] won't run with its internal batteries discharged ... this was one of the ways I found out how useful the battery tester mentioned below can be ... I thought my 580EX had died because I knew the CP-E3 I was using had good batteries but the unit wasn't working. I just happened to decide to test ALL the batteries and the internal set was totally discharged. I had a spare set in my Pelican case (you cannot have too many spare batteries!), popped them in and all was right with the world.

One more significant lesson: you never know when a battery may go bad ... and one bad battery in the barrel can be a disaster! So, you also need a way to check your batteries ... which will also save you from discarding or recharging batteries that are really OK! I picked up, and love, my Radio Shack battery tester. There have been a number of times that I was sure I had bad batteries when it was something else! And I have been able to locate a bad battery in a set and replace it ... saving a lot of blood pressure. So this is an essential, small, lightweight and soul satisfying item that should be in your bag (or Pelican Case.) It is Radio Shack Model: 22-93 Catalog #: 22-093 and is under $7 ... sweet!

Next time, what I am using now!

Be Safe,

Dwight

I'm Still Here!

2008-07-10T10:14:00.000-07:00

I know it's been several weeks since I posted, but as I say again and again, every time I get started here I am overtaken by events. I will continue my equipment reviews, which will now include new equipment I have purchased such the Bowens Explorer 1500 battery powered generator and various Sun Bounce gear. At the moment I up to my ass in alligators with projects sprouting up everywhere and just not enough time.

I would urge you to go to my website and look at my Glamor Project to see some of the things I am struggling with at the moment.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1g

2008-06-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Well, another short review for today, slot 11, the Giotto Rocket Blower. This is a great device because it is so simple and handy. Don't let the rocket shape fool you, it is nifty. If you change lenses on your DSLR(s) you will get dust on the sensor, even if you have one of those fancy new ones with dust removal vibrating functions! I know because I have three of them and I still need a blower. To use it, you simply remove your lens, invoke the 'sensor cleaning' function of your camera (I hope you aren't so timid that you won't even do this), turn the camera so that the lens opening is facing down, and without touching the sensor with the blower, blow on that puppy!

Some folks aren't sure how to tell if they have dust bunnies on their sensor. Let me first say that if they aren't causing you a problem, ignore them! Really, having some sensor dust is OK if it doesn't cause you problems ... just leave it alone! But if it is an issue but you don't know how to tell if your sensor is clean, here's what to do: take a properly exposed (just let your camera do it as usual) image in Av mode at a small f-stop, like f/22, of a homogeneous subject ... this usual means blue sky which is where most of us have trouble with the dust. Look at the image either via the enlarging function of your body or on your computer. If there are gray spots (or even black) then you have dust. It is OK not to have dust! But if you do, the very first thing to do is use your Rocket Blower. Sometimes it may take three or four iterations to get most of the dust off. I find this usually greatly reduces the dust. You don't have to get it all. It is OK to just reduce it to where it is not a problem. This is not something to have a hemorrhage about!

If you can't get enough of the dust off with the blower, then you need to "wet clean" your sensor. There are dozens of online tutorials about how to do this. DO NOT BE AFRAID TO TRY IT! I have NEVER heard of anyone damaging their sensor if they follow the simple directions in the tutorials. It is not rocket science. It is easy, although the tools are pricey and you may have to do two or three iterations. Do not be distraught if the first pass or two doesn't clean it perfectly! I have had to do four rounds (which cost about $6/round) of wet cleaning sometimes. Just get over it ... that's how it is!

OK, next equipment review will be about batteries for flash. Since starting this tutorial I have upgraded my flash battery setup so I'll go over both AA's and my new Quantum battery!

Be Safe!

Dwight

Back from Club Med, Cancun, Yucatan, Mexico

2008-06-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

I am back from Club Med at Cancun where I went for a week with my family. A grand time was had by all and I highly recommend it ... a bit pricey but well, well worth every dime, er, ah, I mean peso! The first image is the Club Med reception area. When you arrive they have warm towels to wipe off the travel grime and drinks to quench the thirst.

The next two images are of the general look and feel of the campus. The beaches are beautiful white sand, the clouds are amazing and water an amazing blue/green.

The last image is my daughter in a fashion show. Luckily she didn't insist that we buy the outfit. Unluckily that was only because she wanted one with more color that we did have to get her! :-)

Be Safe!

Dwight

Glamor: Janie Arnold

2008-06-07T09:14:00.000-07:00

Every time I start blogging I am overtaken by events, but I am trying to keep posting. And while I will continue with the equipment review I think my Glamor Project is more interesting at the moment. The History: I bought a Bowens QUADX studio strobe system about four years ago as I had always wanted to try out those big fancy lights we always see in the "behind the scenes" photographs of models working. The images can really be stunning, but it takes a bit more care, time and experience than is immediately obvious. I used them a few times on family with some decent results. Then, about two and a half years ago we moved to our present house where there was an office and another room I am using as a studio. The studio is 10' x 17' with 9' ceiling ... way too small to be effective, but large enough to allow me to practice and experiment. It has taken me the last two years to finally get it mostly equipped ... there are still odds and ends like flags and gels that I need.

Back a couple of posts I talked about shooting Amber Rhodes, rising country singer/songwriter. I shot her for my friend Rick Barker. But my real goal is to learn to shoot glamor. And to that end I have joined ModelMayhem.com, an online resource for models, photographers and others in the industry. I also made a couple of contacts through Scott Sneddon, an Air Force sergeant and photographer currently deployed in Korea. Among much else, Scott introduced me to Janie Arnold, a 21 year old aspiring model and fitness student. While I have additional shoots in the pipeline and several more scheduled with various models, I'm going to briefly cover my two experimental shoots with Janie.

For the first shoot I wanted to work with a white seamless background along with my white studio walls and ceiling. I used two medium softboxes and some background lights in a very simple setup. As you will see in the accompanying images they are a bit overexposed, similar to the Amber Rhodes images ... an effect that I generally like. For the second shoot, I used black seamless, draped off the walls, used a beauty light for a main light, a softbox for fill, a gelled snoot for an accent light and low reflector/barn door head for side lighting ... a very different look.

I'm not really facile enough to give instruction in lighting at this point. I have spent countless hours reading forums and tutorials but it just takes a lot of hands on time to get the hang of it and I'm not there yet. So, enjoy the images. I will have additional glamor sessions to post in the future.

You can also see these images and many more from these sessions on my website in the Glamor Project section.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1f

2008-05-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

I am, as always, busy. This afternoon I am shooting a family portrait or two for my good friend, Rick Barker (I can't mention him too much), promoter of rising country talent and after that, of Janie, a glamor model. I am just finishing work on Engelbert Humperdinck photos as well as Jan and Dean. I am awash in talent.

But today I want to acquaint you with my favorite lens from slot #10: a Canon 300mm f/2.8L IS. This is the lens with which I take my signature concert images: crystal clear head/shoulders shots normally taken from fifteen to twenty feet away in front of the stage. Far enough to be unimposing and near enough to count the freckles and see every imperfection. But lest you get the impression that am collecting a vast catalog of unflattering images of aging stars, I want to assure you that I throw all the unflattering images away ... sometimes 98% of these closeups.

The wonderful thing about this lens is that it is the biggest hand holdable lens in Canon's line. How do I know it is hand holdable? Easy, Canon makes the tripod collar removable and I haven't had it on the lens for over a year. Next obvious question is, aren't all the tripod collars removable? Nope! The slightly bigger brother to this lens is the 400mm f/2.8L IS, that I also own, has a permanent tripod collar. That puppy is just too heavy for hand holding, particularly on a 1D body. This is not to say some people don't do it ... but it is usually on a monopod, although I use mine on a big Gitzo legset with leveling head and Wimberley head. I'm including images of the 300mm f/2.8L IS on this big tripod setup, but isn't how I use it.

The Canon 300mm f/2.8L IS as seen on B&H PhotoVideo isn't cheap ... here's the full description link with a price of $4100, slightly MORE than I paid for it over two years ago. This is one of those classic lenses, like the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS that are so popular that they keep their value over long periods of time.

Here's an image of KC, from KC and the Sunshine band.

When shooting concerts at the casino I almost always have this lens on one of the two 1DMIII bodies I use. I carry both bodies with me, setting one or the other on the floor as I shoot, usually filling the buffer and switching to the other body/lens combination at that point. The images are usually superb from both, but there is something just a little sharper, a little contrastier and brighter from the 300mm f/2.8L IS. The only downside is that you can accidentally get too close and get inside the minimum focal distance.

And an image of the saxophonist from B.B. King's band.

This is a great lens. I have loaned mine a couple of times and caused several to be purchased.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Amber Rhodes: Singer/Songwriter and Lovely Model

2008-05-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

I mentioned on Thursday that I was busy and doing all sorts of things that were delaying my Equipment Review. Still promise that it will continue soon. But in the meantime I wanted to share my session with Amber Rhodes (www.AmberRhodes.com) in my studio. I don't know Amber's music, yet, but if she needs a break from the recording studio she can certainly work in the photography studio. Amber is a photographer's delight. Gushing with personality and a natural beauty with perfect skin, she simply took over her own session. She marched in with three outfits and a makeup kit, spent ten minutes getting ready in her first outfit while I did a lighting test with her guitarist, and then marched into the studio already laughing ... a quick wit and ready smile already in high gear.

One of the hallmarks of professional experienced models is that they require very little direction and have a huge range of facial expressions. Amber is every bit of that. She posed. She twirled. She bent, jumped, twisted, turned, plopped down. She gave the 'Girl Next Door' smile, the sultry look, the happy, the pouty, the come-hither. I got to shooting so fast that I popped a circuit breaker twice and got black images where the strobes hadn't recharged.

Amber is an American singer/songwriter out of Lexington, KY. She writes country, rock and pop. She is on the radar, so watch out for her.

Oh, some technical details: all images shot with Canon 1DsMIII and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. Lighting is two Bowens QUADX 3000 generators and five heads. Post processing consisted of LightRoom conversion with some resizing, levels, and color temperature. No retouching ... none ... not a spot removed or skin smoothed. Amber is a natural beauty.

You can see about 60 images in her gallery at my website at http://dwightmccann.com/Glamor/AmberRhodes05222008.html. Let me know what you think.

And once again, I promise to get back to my equipment review project soon.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Lots of Shoots

2008-05-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I got the 400 ballerinas shot: 2055 images. Now delivered to Mike Mesikep. Phew, lots of fun and lotsa work. And I have since shot a 4 year old for a birthday invitation. And last night I shot Amber Rhodes, rising country singer/songwriter in my studio. She was awesome and I will have some shots from the session at some point. Tonight I shoot Englebert Humperdinck at the casino. And Saturday I have a VIP event at the casino with Jan and Dean. Monday I have a model shoot back in my studio. So, I will be picking up on the equipment review sometime in the next few days hopefully but I have been very busy.

400 Ballerinas

2008-05-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

I've been so good about posting that I didn't want anyone to think I'm slacking but I likely won't get the next installment of my equipment review for a few days as I am off photographing 400 little ballerinas (well, not ALL are little) through the weekend. The event is the annual Los Olivos Dance Gallery's Center Stage, being performed at Solvang's Theaterfest theater in the round in Santa Barbara County, California. This event is put on by Maggie and Mike Mesikep as the premier recital of dance of all kinds in our little Santa Ynez Valley. It is a community event with dozens of parent volunteers, support of Arts Outreach and many other organizations, and total exhaustion of Mike and Maggie and their staff. It is a joy to watch as well as photograph. [Disclaimer: My six year old daughter attends Los Olivos Dance Gallery and dances in the Center Stage production.]

I am given full and total access, although I have to stay out of the way of the bizillion dancers and stage personnel. But since I can see over the heads of most participants, who are four to eighteen with a few adults thrown in, that's not too hard. This year the tear jerker dance is "Fathers & Daughters" which includes about eight or ten Dads dancing with their own Jazz Dancers. I know a few of the Dads and it tugs strongly on my heartstrings to see them performing ... these are not your young new Dads, they are 40-60 and loving the opportunity.

I gotta download last night's images, so I'm off.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1e

2008-05-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

Slot #9: I am one of the few photographers I know who carries a tripod in his case all the time: a Gitzo G0012 (discontinued) with a Manfrotto 484 ball head attached. I have at least two other tripods and various other tripod-like gadgets that I will review later on ... one of which is designed to clamp onto your car window ... very neat! And I have a very good monopod that I will also review even though I do think this item is overkill!

But today it's the little Gitzo that could! I did a quick review on the web and couldn't find one, but they ran about $180. Yes, yes, I know that's a lot of money for this tiny little gadget and that doesn't count the Manfrotto 484 ball head which is only $45 at B&H. But this setup is worth the price and trouble to carry it around all the time even when no one else seems to think so, sigh.

The first image is just the tripod and head. The second image is my 5D with 24-105mm f/4L IS lens. Also note that there is a split ring in the strap bracket. I'll talk about that later when I discuss remote shooting with cameras mounted overhead.

I have made two good uses of this puppy, both using my Canon 5D body. First, at concerts where I have access to the stage after sound check with all the instruments sitting there waiting for the show to start, I often pop a fisheye onto the 5D and put it on this little tripod. I then walk around the stage, setting this assembly near instruments and taking time exposures. I have gotten a number of very interesting images that I just couldn't have gotten without a tripod and probably couldn't have gotten with a fullsize one. The Gitzo has both extension legs (just one extension for about six inches) and the center post extends (for about six inches) although I have very rarely used either ... I did once to shoot a CD cover at a concert.

The other frequent use is at the Chumash Casino Resort "Supper Club" VIP events. These are invitation only buffet/sit down dinners with dinner music and entertainment hosted by Linda Nielsen. There are about a dozen tables for seating and each is elaborately decorated for each event by John Blair and his staff with hand made center pieces and lovely settings. While I have to rely on flash to capture these most of the time, I am occasionally able to use the little tripod for stunning ambient light images. I also shoot some of the handsome buffet lines as I did last night as shown in the third image ... no way to get that in ambient light without a tripod.

The last picture today is Ed Zajac with his percussion setup, including timpani, prior to my last Johnny Mathis concert. There would be no way to get this image in the very dim light available prior to the concert, let alone with enough depth of field to catch that harp in the left rear of the image, without a tripod.

I've also used it to capture bands in small clubs where I have a table with a clear view but that is infrequent ... although when I do manage it the images are unobtainable any other way. So take a tip from a Pro, get and use a tripod ... or two or three!

Be safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1d

2008-05-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy, busy! Lots of boxing work and family things. But I am back although this will be fairly brief, to do slot #7, which contains one of my Canon 1D Mark III bodies with a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. I have two of both of these items. They are by far the most used combination of body/lens I own. This pair generally sits in their slot as a pair that I rarely take apart.

The Canon 1D Mark III [not to be confused with the 1Ds Mark III which has about twice as many pixels and costs almost twice as much] is a 10.1 MP photojournalism body. It can expose 10 frames per second, has very high speed AutoFocus (recently fixed by firmware update 1.2.3) and a huge number of features that I have barely tapped. I'm not going to go through the feature list as that is on the Canon website as well as many other places on the internet and there are myriad reviews of the body and lens. It is a photojournalism body because of its frame rate and adequate pixel dimensions. I will talk about how I use it for various things after I get through the general equipment review.

The 70-200mm f/2.8L IS [IS stands for Image Stabilization, a very useful feature for us old shaky people] is probably Canon's most often seen lens. When you see the newspaper 'togs lined up to shoot some celebrity, a large percentage will be shooting with the 1D Mark III and a large percent of those will have the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. It is just one fine combination. It comes in a non-IS version but that isn't nearly as useful. It also comes in an f/4 version.

Well, that's it for this entry. I promise things will get more interesting along the way. :-)

Be Safe!

Dwight

A Couple of Days of Boxing

2008-05-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

ShoBox: The New Generation is Showtime's professional boxing entry level boxing production. They showcase young new boxers who have shown great promise. The Chumash Casino Resort will host two of these fight cards this year and one is about to happen. The fights will be tomorrow night, but there is quite a bit of action that will happen today: the Samala Room will be converted into a boxing arena with a boxing ring erected and lighted; the fighters will arrive in Santa Ynez, California; the California Boxing Commission will arrive and check the credentials of all the participants; Gary Shaw Productions staff will arrive and make sure the boxers and their entourages get their work done; weigh-in; and who knows what else. So, I will be at the casino for the action this afternoon.

And, in case I don't get back to this blog by then, I'll be back at the casino tomorrow afternoon and evening for the entire fight card. I'll try to get some pictures up here as things progress but it is a very busy time so no promises.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Just A Quick Update: Frank Doorhof Workshops

2008-04-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

Frank Doorhof, who will be doing a two day workshop in L.A. in early June, just made a post to his blog talking about the many questions he gets about his mind numbing glamor photographs that I wanted to share ... it is HERE.

Equipment Review: 1c - 12 Compact Flash Cards

2008-04-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

Slot #4, which is empty in my original image, sometimes holds these three Compact Flash card cases. Unlike the compact flash card case in slot #5 which I'll talk about next time, these three cases, each with four 1G Sandisk Ultra II CF cards are only used for a couple of special purposes.

So, why do I use Sandisk? I used to use Lexar. Unfortunately, on one of their very expensive cards that I purchased (about $450 if I recall), they had a problem with the embedded driver so that it dropped images, corrupted images and generally wrecked havoc on me. When I finally found out what the problem was, no thanks to Lexar, I also found out they were going to replace them. But, I had to pay to return the card and then wait while they then sent one back. So I was out shipping and without the card for a couple of weeks, without any compensation ... not even a credit toward the next card. So, there will never be another Lexar card in my cameras. I've never had any trouble with any Sandisk card. So, while I am sure there are zillions of folks without problems with Lexar, I think there are many fewer who use them in the very most expensive Pro line of DSLRs and utterly rely on them for their clients ... I simply can't afford that kind of arrogance.

So, what are my "special purposes" for these 12 cards? I have two actually. The first has to do with the Supper Club shots I do at the casino. Normally this is just me wandering around the Samala Room at the Chumash Casino Resort where a dozen round tables with elegant place settings, a four diamond catered buffet for about 130 people and dinner music and then entertainment is served up for invited guests only. I have the marvelous job of asking people who have come to have dinner and enjoy a show if I can take their picture while they are trying to eat! Sounds awful ... but after the first three or four events I got the hang of it and now everyone really enjoys it. Sometimes when I walk into the room with my camera hands go up at tables. In fact, I now stand just ahead of the buffet line and capture the guests while they are waiting in the line ... no food in teeth and something to entertain them. Many couples have albums of my little refrigerator pictures ... they get them in 4x6 prints.

But from time to time, we setup a themed photobooth, bring in studio strobes and then shoot & print immediately, put the pictures in frames and give them back to the guests before they leave. And when we do this, I need to shoot a few, give the printer operator the CF card that they print from, and start a new card. Also, since I need to provide digital images to the casino of all these prints, I can't recycle the cards. Turns out that a dozen 1G cards works out really well. And interestingly, I normally have a 12G Sandisk Extreme III in my primary body, although I expect I will get a couple of Extreme IV's to use in my 1DsMIII which supports DMA, a higher speed transfer protocol.

And the other use ... shooting boxing with an assistant. This allows me to shoot one or two rounds, pass the card to my assistant with a laptop, who can download, cull and edit the RAW images while I am shooting subsequent rounds or bouts. The reason for this fast processing is that Showtime (for whom I do this on rare occasions) or other media want the images as soon after the fights as possible to go with the ringside commentary that their writers turn in. They'd like to have the images before the fights but that isn't yet possible! :-)

Hope this gives some of you some good ideas or a different perspective.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Frank Doorhof Glamor Workshop in L.A. June 7 & 8, 2008

2008-04-23T06:41:00.000-07:00

Many of you know that I am beginning to explore Portrait/Glamor photography. I've spent a bunch of money putting together a small studio in my house with high end equipment. I've spent a lot of time reading and experimenting. But when push comes to shove, the best learning comes from actually seeing what happens on a photo-shoot (as with the Jason Cole DVD I recently reviewed which has just started pressing and will be out in about two weeks) or even better, participating! Last year I attended Frank Doorhof's glamor workshop in Los Angeles and learned a huge amount. I had never used my lightmeter in the studio before the workshop ... I just tethered my camera to my laptop and did a long series of exposure tests until I got where I wanted. After seeing how to do this properly with my meter at Frank's workshop, it now takes maybe three test shots because the exposure is so close when I start. I now always do the first shot in every lighting change having the model hold a gray card to her face ... huge difference in white balance correction, as I saw in Frank's workshop. I also saw how to create subtle but interesting lighting on my background papers and how to use gels.

Since I can't recommend this kind of learning strongly enough and since Frank, from the Netherlands, is coming back to L.A. on June 7 & 8 this year, I wanted to make sure everyone was aware since he doesn't do much in the way of advertising. Frank runs sold out workshops back home every week. You can see a portfolio of his work at http://www.frankdoorhof.com/portfolio/ and his workshop schedule at http://www.fotografie-workshops.nl/ENGELS/overview.html with an email address to request a slot at a workshop.

So, you might ask if I am attending this year? No. I have conflicts with my casino work and will be out of the country immediately afterward ... and I had a free invitation, sigh. But Frank will be visiting with me for a couple of days to go wine tasting in the Sta. Rita Hills appellation where I live, visit a few missions, play at the ocean, and generally relax.

I'll have the next installation of the Equipment Review sometime in the next few days ... I'm very busy, as always.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: 1b

2008-04-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

Some of this review will be kinda trivial for most of you, but there are always a few newbies who, when they don't understand something will either accept that they don't know it and keep quiet, or send me an email asking something they should have asked as a comment so that everyone else who didn't understand it could see the answer, too. Please, if you don't understand something I write about ask on the blog in a comment. Also note that you should be able to click on any of the images inline and get another version that includes EXIF and IPTC data for the equipment images that I take for my blog.

So, on to slot #1: Eclipse fluid is usually used with Sensor Swabs (slot #18) to clean the sensor of your dSLR. It will melt the finish right off your furniture (actually it just makes mine white) so don't treat it like lens cleaning solution (slot #18). On the other hand, it is not dangerous (although I don't think the TSA will let you take it on checked luggage and it cannot be shipped so you have to buy it locally) so don't get freaked out. In fact, don't get freaked out about wet cleaning your sensor ... it is not rocket science ... I know of no one who has done any damage to their camera by wet cleaning the sensor. Just don't use too much solution and do follow the directions that are all over the web with pictures and diagrams that I won't repeat here. Also in slot #1 are two "TC's" (Tele Converters, although Canon calls them Extender EF II), one is 1.4 meaning it will multiply the focal length of a lens by 1.4 times (400mm becomes 540mm) and the other is 2.0 and will double the focal length of the lens. Please note two things: (1) these only work properly when used with the lenses and bodies for which they are designed, and (2) they will also lower the light capturing ability of the lenses on which they are used, so that an f/2.8 lens will become an f/4 lens with the 1.4 TC. They attach as female on one side and male on the other. Most of us attach the TC to the lens first and then attach the lens/TC assembly to the camera. They are not cheap. Also note they have two red dots, one for aligning with the lens and the other for aligning to the body ... it will be pretty obvious which is which when you attach them. And finally in slot #1 I keep at least one quick release plate that attaches to my Bogen 3021 tripod with Manfrotto 3030 head. I like the quick release plates since you attach them to the camera and can leave them on while taking the camera on and off the tripod as they are light weight and don't get in the way when using the camera, although I don't leave them on if I don't expect to be using the body on a tripod. I will show them in use in a later equipment section when I discuss my tripods.

These pictures were all taken with the 1DMIII body shown in slot #2 of my diagram image. I will not be reviewing the 1DMIII bodies as there are many, many excellent reviews on websites such as Rob Galbraith, Photography-on-the.net and many others and you can read their specs at the Canon website (and almost anywhere you would buy one.) If you have specific questions about my usage I'm happy to answer or point you to a good reference. The same goes for the 16-35mm f/2.8L lens although I will talk about how/when I use this lens in a later section after reviewing the equipment.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: Part 1a

2008-04-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

I'm going to back up for a second and talk about Pelican cases. First, they come in a huge variety of sizes and shapes and purposes. They are guaranteed against almost everything almost forever ... see the warranty here. I have five Pelican cases in three sizes. The one shown in my last post is a Pelican 1610 and is my primary case of which I have only one. I will also be showing my two Pelican 1510 cases and two Pelican 1660 cases. I bought all my Pelican cases from B&H in NYC. And I'll stick a quick disclaimer in here: I have no relationship other normal customer with either Pelican or B&H, but I am a customer because they deliver and are totally reliable for me.

I have two bits of information that are the core of today's post: (1) Pelican is very responsive to case failures, which do happen, and (2) the Pelican 1510 is a masterpiece.

First, yes, Pelican cases can fail. But you need to consider that they are designed to be waterproof and to withstand huge pressure changes. [Please note that this is my understanding and I am not guaranteeing anything personally ... you must verify this yourself with Pelican.] They have gaskets that need maintenance and replacement and they have pressure relief valves. Amazing stuff, eh? Yes, I had a failure on my Pelican 1610. This case has four latches. All the Pelican cases have more latches than minimally necessary. The left front latch on my Pelican 1610 broke upon opening one day. The other three latches were easily adequate for continued use. I filled out an online form at Pelican. Next business day I got phone call from a marvelously pleasant young woman. She asked me to describe the latch and it's failure. She assured me that I could easily replace the latch and she was sending me a latch replacement kit. She did. I did. And I have an extra latch, which I think will fit any of my cases as the kit contained two latches. No charge.

Second, and this can be VERY significant these days, the Pelican 1510 is within the size limits for carry-on luggage for continental and intercontinental air travel ... check the Pelican 1510 link above for details. Last summer we vacationed at Club Med in Cancun, Mexico. I wanted to take camera equipment but am unwilling to check it. So I loaded up my Pelican 1510 with my 5D and some lenses and Epson P-2000. In fact, my wife liked the case so much, mostly because of the wheels and handle, that I loaned her my second one for her carry-on. While one of the flight stewardesses thought it was too big for overhead and it did require some wiggling, it comfortable fit into the overhead luggage racks of four different aircraft. And it sure is nice, when your flight connections fail and you have to walk miles and miles in the airport, to simply pop the handle and roll it. There are also handles on two sides so you can carry it in the portrait or landscape mode. :-) And you can sit on them ... the 1510 was perfect for my then 5-year-old daughter to rest her weary bones.

The cases I have all have the option of inserts as shown in my 1610 image, or pick-a-part foam inserts or nothing. I believe they also have lid pocket inserts available but I don't use these so I am not familiar with them.

So that's it for now.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Equipment Review: What I Have & How I Use It: Part 1

2008-04-11T17:15:00.000-07:00

I've been promising for a while in various places to explain what equipment I have and how I use it so I am starting a multipart series on just that. The way I am going to do it is to work my way through the several Pelican cases I use and then go to other equipment. I will do my best to include explanatory photographs.

So, here is my primary Pelican case and it's contents. This is a Pelican 1610 with dividers. I have labeled the compartments with both contents and numbers. I will use the numbers to talk about the contents. You should be able to click on the image here to see a much larger version where you can actually see the equipment and read the labels.

For this post I will just enumerate the equipment and in subsequent posts I'll talk about how I use it and give additional images as needed. #1 in the upper left corner has Eclipse Fluid for cleaning sensors. [Sensor Swabs for use with the Eclipse are in #18.] Under the fluid are a 1.4TC and 2.0TC in their provided cases. Finally there is a quick release clamp for my Bogen 3021 tripod.

#2 Contains a 1D Mark III body.

#3 16-35mm f/2.8L lens. The white booklet to the left is a 1D Mark III manual.

#4 Two slots that used to hold 1D Mark IIN batteries that are currently unused.

#5 CF case. There's CPF in there, too, where I usually have an Epson P-2000.

#6 Filter case.

#7 1D Mark III w/70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens.

#8 Some Ziploc bags. One has Etymotic ear plugs. One has Dynatech Gray Card. One has DEMB flash diffuser.

#9 Gitzo tabletop tripod.

#10 300mm f/2.8L IS lens. This is my very favorite lens although not my most used ... but I'll talk about that later.

#11 Rocket blower to get dust off sensors.

#12 Spare loose rechargeable batteries for my 580EX II and a battery test meter.

#13 Stack of business cards in Ziploc.

#14 580EX II. What you can't see because of the Ziplocs is a Canon Compact Battery Pack CP-E4 and two CPM-E4 battery holder inserts each with 8 rechargeable batteries in it. The holders slip into the Battery Pack. I'll talk about how I utilize these later.

#15 Trifocal glasses. I only use these for shooting and for that they are essential. Oddly I can't seem to get used to using them for anything else.

#16 Leatherman Charge tool in case.

#17 Canon 15mm f/2.8 fisheye lens wrapped in lens cloth on top of Canon 14mm f/2.8L lens wrapped in a lens cloth. I haven't found a better way to keep them both in there.

#18 TC-80N3 remote release. Flashlight. Sensor Swaps and lens fluid ... this lens fluid is not used with the Sensor Swabs.

#19 Several Mark III batteries that can be used in my two 1D Mark III's and my 1Ds Mark III.

#20 24-70mm f/2.8L

So that's it. That stuff goes with me almost anywhere I shoot with a few exceptions that I will discuss in subsequent posts. Please feel free to ask questions. I'll talk about each of the items in here and then move on to my other cases.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Glamor Photography Instructional DVD: Jason Cole

2008-04-07T09:33:00.000-07:00

This is sort of an advert for Jason Cole's soon to be released instructional glamor photography DVD: The Passion of the Art. Jason is a wedding and glamor photographer out of Wollongong, Australia, down the coast a bit from Sydney in NSW. He has shot for FHM and Ralph among other well known glamor slicks. For reasons not clear to me, Jason decided to put his vast experience into a DVD tutorial. I found out about it as he posted for suggestions at Photography-on-the.net, an online, somewhat Canon oriented forum run by a Finn with a very large, world-wide membership in which I have been a very active participant for the last three years. Next thing I knew, Jason (who doesn't know me from Adam) asked if I would be a Beta reviewer for the DVD, getting it a month or so before GA and giving him feedback. I explained to Jason that I didn't know much about glamor photography and he pointed out that this is just what he needed: someone familiar with all the equipment (cameras, studio lighting, experience shooting lots of things) but not experienced in glamor. So, I asked, "What's in it for me?" As he does so frequently, he laughed (well, actually, he put, "lolol" in his email) and said that he'd give me a final copy of the DVD when done. So I agreed. And now, even though it will not benefit me a farthing (or whatever the Aussies use for currency) I want to make you aware of its existence ... well, in a couple of more weeks. This is a really useful reference.

The Passion of the Art contains three basic sections: equipment, models and shooting. Jason explains the equipment he uses (which is Canon and Broncolor), some tidbits about models with help from his MUA, and then four extensive photoshoot sections: one in the studio, one in a mechanic's garage with lots of machinery, and two at the beaches of NSW. This is the meat of the DVD for me. Jason gives one tip after another on dealing with the models and setups and then you get to watch him do the shoots as he again narrates his activities. The videography is first rate rather than just having a friend with a consumer video standing around like the YouTube spots. He explains why he selects his lenses and lighting choices and shows what some lighting options look like and how each addition enhances the overall effect he is after.

What impressed me most about this DVD was getting to see and hear Jason work with the models. How he communicates with them. How he gets them into the right mood. How he gets the right look. And the second, and for many the most important thing is, he explains in depth how to shoot a magazine spread. He explains what is needed and then talks you through the shooting and finally shows how the post processed images to be given to the editor look. Each of the four shoots has a theme and he shows how to tie them together to make a coherent story.

At my latest check Jason was offering the DVD, due out in mid-April, for $69 USD at http://www.jasoncolephotography.com.au/_portal_page/off-pages/dvd-vol1/dvd-vol1.html.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Pepe Marquez - The Latin Soul Review

2008-03-30T09:52:00.001-07:00

Pepe Marquez & The Latin Soul Review is the Phoenix arising from the ashes of Shalonda & A Touch of Soul, two in a series of bands assembled by Eric Cuellar with the most recent being a collaboration with Pepe Marquez. I take photographs and maintain a website for the band in return for a couple of gigs a year. The first gig for me will be a benefit at the University of California at Santa Barbara Orfalea University Children's Center where both of my children have gone to daycare. The band is still coming together around the core group: Eric Cuellar (drums & vocals), Pepe Marquez (lead vocals & hand percussion) and De'Adre Marshall (lead vocals & hand percussion.) Other charter members include Billy Gonzalez (keyboards), Victor Gaza (bass & sound) and Ray Ybarra (Latin percussion).

My wife and I attended a small gig they did at the Creekside at 4444 Hollister in Goleta, California, last night and I shot a few images in a very dark dance room. There were two fill-in musicians due to vacancies (always the way with hobby bands!): Bill Avila (lead guitar) and Dave Tolegian (sax.) I shot images for a set and then my wife and I danced a few numbers ... We had a grand time.

I originally started working with Eric when he formed Shalonda & A Touch of Soul to do gigs at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California, where I am the "House Photographer" for the Entertainment Department. I like Eric. He is an upfront guy with a huge amount of energy and lots of contacts. But, as happens so often, there were issues within the band and some members just couldn't manage to commit ... I've seen this since I used to shoot bands under a single light at the Ghostriders Tavern in Los Alamos, California, about seven years ago. People simply have their lives to lead in addition to their musical careers.

But LSR has a solid core, several occasional musicians such as The Saxman, Jared Yee. They are still trying to replace Ruben Arroyo on lead guitar. Ruben is a stellar player and just needed time for his family. And they'd love to get a permanent sax player and maybe another horn. They are working on CDs and other projects and are starting to get their name around.

You can click on their name at the start of this entry to see their website that includes the images attached here and some others. I will make an occasional entry about them whenever there is a noteworthy event or change.

Be Safe!

Dwight

Ever Noticed that Things Don't Always Go Right?

2008-03-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

I guess this is a rhetorical question because if you do anything (and maybe even if you don't) you know stuff goes wrong much more often than you'd like, right? I do a lot of stuff and have to say the flow of unexpected events is pretty continuous. So I'm making this quick blog entry to give an example ... I wouldn't want anyone to think that everything always goes smoothly even with the best of plans ... see Always Have a Plan B below somewhere.

I shot the ShoXC Elite Challenger Series fights at the Chumash Casino Resort as you know from recent blog posts. As part of that exercise I provide images to Fight Wire Images (FightWireImages.com) by uploading images to their multi-user account at PhotoShelter.com usually via PhotoMechanic ... I'll talk about this another time. I usually do this Saturday or Sunday so the images are there for the Monday crowd looking to buy for their blogs, magazines and forums.

With PhotoMechanic fired up I clicked the upload button but FightWireImages wasn't on the menu as it has been for a year or so. I tried a bunch of things and double checked my upload configuration ... which I haven't touched since I got it working initially. PhotoMechanic has been rock solid for two years that I have used it. Nothing helped. I sent an email to FightWireImages and to PhotoShelter. Since the images are time sensitive I took them with me to my day job at UCSB and tried to logon to my own PhotoShelter account but couldn't seem to get into the photographers area. All very confusing.

Fortunately, my FightWireImages contact decided to send me a new "invitation" to contribute to FightWireImages (this is how you get connected) and that seemed to let me in again. I started uploading with the online uploader that you can just click to invoke, but it was slow. So, I downloaded the Java uploader and sent the images. Unfortunately PhotoShelter is clever enough to know how to handle files with duplicate names so I now have two copies of several images and some images aren't there. You can see the gallery here.

The good news was that when I got home to PhotoMechanic again it was working correctly. Today, a little late, I got an inquiry from PhotoShelter to see if my problem was resolved. I think that is a bit slow since I indicated the images were time sensitive but am not going to pursue it as I am the pimple on the ass of progress from their perspective as they have huge clients.

I would recommend PhotoMechanic, PhotoShelter and FightWireImages for anyone shooting boxing or MMA, and the first two for anyone shooting other sports although they are much more generally useful than that. Now I have rambled about all this I feel better.

Be Safe,

Dwight

ShoXC Elite Challenger Series: Fight Night

2008-03-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

It was another wild night of MMA mayhem at the Chumash Casino Resort. I arrived at about 3:00 pm ... I always get to events at least an hour early and for fight nights a couple of hours early. Sometimes there are issues that need resolution or people who need help or opportunities for additional work. On Friday night I wanted to make sure that Tom Casino, one of my boxing mentors and a prize-winning boxing photographer, was ready. He has to travel out from New Jersey for these fights which leaves him open to equipment failures. Since he and I shoot with interchangeable Canon equipment I could loan batteries, lenses or even bodies. But, Tom is an old hand and rarely had problems beyond remembering which pocket has the spare CF cards. I also wanted check on Esther Lin, who also shoots with the same equipment I do, but is also a traveler albeit a bit closer. Everyone seemed to have equipment and the only issue was finding spots on the pad where everyone could shoot. Tom gets to stimulate his acrophobia by standing on a small platform just big enough for his feet so that he can shoot over the cage but the rest of us have to shoot through the chain link. Much of the platform around the cage is taken up by Showtime, the Boxing Commission, EliteXC and various other media and support types: sound & video.

With that done, I put a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS on one 1DMIII and 24-70mm f/2.8L on another 1DMIII and got my place on the cage. I always try to sit next to a judge who always have spots in the middle of three sides of the layout. All the boxing commission guys are very friendly and helpful and the judges are happy to explain what is happening in the cage. Usually the bouts end with two guys on the mat and I have no idea what happened ... it is hard for me to see if there was an arm bar or rear naked choke tapout ... sometimes even the judges can't see exactly what happened ... but, as I say, they love to explain what happened and why and it vastly improves my understanding.

After getting my spot "reserved", Dave Mandel, photographer for Sherdog showed up. Last time he was here we had problems with having room for photographers and he had to sit in the lap of one of the corners ... well, not literally, but it was close. This time we got him a decent spot, comfortable chair just on the other side of the judge I had staked out. He shoots the same lenses on two 1DMIIN bodies. Dave is a very mellow and knowledgeable 'tog who knows just about everyone and points them out. He is a pleasure to work with.

There were ten bouts scheduled. The first five, the undercard, are sent out over Internet TV and the last five are broadcast by Showtime as ShoXC Elite Challenger Series. The fighters collect in two draped off areas setup on the stage at one end of the Samala Room: red corner and blue corner. There they get their hands wrapped and whatever other treatments their trainers/corner men deem necessary. There are lots of boxing commission guys keeping an eye on everything ... mostly to be sure there aren't any drugs or equipment that aren't permitted I think. I always wander up there to see what's going on. It's usually crowded so I don't hang around, although again, everyone is very friendly and when I stop to ask questions or chat with a fighter I have shot before, everyone makes time for me.

Then I attended to my last "To Do" item: check in with Nikki and Nadia, two of the Ring Card Girls this night. I am going to be working with them on their portfolios over the next few months and needed to setup a dinner meeting at my house to map out a plan. I found them in their dressing room getting instructions from Monica Petty who is with Gary Shaw Productions. Once that was done, it was back to the cage.

Unlike boxing where I shoot with my elbows on the mat right under the ropes, the apron around the cage is about three or four feet wide, keeping us away from the chain link and making the autofocus very difficult. Friday it was particularly difficult because the lighting director had put bright lights right onto the cage so each link had a bright reflection that the sensors loved to focus on. Half my images were clear crisp shots of fencing!

Then the first bout started and was over shortly, stopped by the ref "due to unreturned strikes" which basically means one guy is pounding the snot out of the other guy who is simply crumpled on the mat and unable to do anything. If they are both just laying there doing nothing much the ref will separate them, stand them up and restart the action, but when one guy is actively striking the other who just lays there, that pretty much ends it.

The undercard was filled with guys with nicknames like "Tiger", "The Poet", "Vicious", "Fancy Pants" and "The Punk". I have no clue for most of the names but Fancy Pants was pretty obvious. Most of the fighters have tattoos and some have pretty extensive artwork. Some color their hair or have patterns or words shaved into it. Pretty much anything to draw attention to themselves.

The fights, usually three 5-minute rounds, go pretty quickly. A couple of hours of pretty constant shooting and then it's over. The earlier fighters have changed and are milling around with their buddies and folks they haven't seen for a while. Many are off to the bar across the street along with fans. People are pretty happy and glad to put another fight night behind them. I was!

Be Safe!

Dwight

The Day Before: ShoXC Elite Challenge

2008-03-21T06:13:00.000-07:00

This year I will shoot four fight cards: two ShoBox: The New Generation and two ShoXC Elite Challenge MMA. For these events I normally take two afternoons off from my day job at UCSB: Thursday for the weigh-in and miscellaneous shooting, and Friday for the fights. I am still learning how to work the MMA events as the flow is slightly different and the demographic is younger. Both Showtime and Internet TV have a piece with ShoXC being the five main events. This means there are two sets of interviews going on as well as the weigh-ins on Thursday. Yesterday, the interviews were happening while four of us photographers were standing in a lift waiting for the weigh-ins so I missed a chance to shoot the fighters at the Showtime interviews ... the Showtime people are amazingly friendly and cooperative and allow me to photograph any of their activities if I can work it in with whatever I am doing. You will hear me say it again and again, but the Showtime staff are absolutely top notch and work very hard to make sure that everyone involved, from the fighters to the photographers gets maximum opportunity without any sense of proprietary restrictions. They have let me put cameras in the lighting truss, visit the truck, shoot during their interveiws, shoot at their tapings down in the boiler room and this style starts at the top with Gordon Hall and works its way all the way down to the gaffers and sound people. Their style is very affirming ... they will tell you if you are interfering with their work somehow while still trying to make sure you get the best. But I ramble.

Yesterday I arrived about 1:30 pm with the cage under construction in the middle of the floor. I wandered around to see who was there. Generally the groups of folks are: Gary Shaw Productions, the promoter; Showtime; King-of-the-Cage (I think); the California Boxing Commission; and all the fighters and their entourages. Each team has one or two head people and almost everyone knows everyone else from previous events. My first boxing photography mentor, Showtime's Tom Casino (Google that name if you want to be impressed by accomplishments) was there. He's the guy who convinced me to change from Nikon/Fuji to Canon and who put my elbows on the mat at my first card. Jeff, who is one of the production staff from the casino was also shooting the weigh-in. Esther Lin who freelances for an MMA magazine and website and her guy, videographer Casey (hope I got that right.)

As for the fighters, they tend to wander in around 4:00 pm to check in with the boxing commission, file their medicals, get their picture taken, get checked by the doctor and chat with on another. There are lots of big smiles, hugging, fancy handshakes. Guys who are planning on pounding the living daylights out of each other later today are laughing and sitting next to each other like old friends. And they couldn't be any nicer to me, letting me but into their little groups and listen and ask questions.

The weigh-ins started a bit late yesterday. They are scheduled for 5:00 pm. But before they can weigh in they have to have all their paperwork/doctor exam complete which includes lab tests and some of the paperwork didn't arrive on time. So the four of us togs and Casey the video guy stood in the lift in front of the stage for about 30 minutes with nothing happening. Then we decided to deplane and walk around ... and that's when the weigh-ins started, of course.

The weigh-ins themselves are kind of fun. John, a very funny guy who is with Gary Shaw Productions runs the fighters for the boxing commission and the photographers. He lines them up, calls them a pair at a time, gets them on the scale, they weigh, he sends the other of a pair, he weighs, then he poses them with fists up staring at each other, waits for the togs to shoot, then has them look at the cameras in the same pose, waits for the togs to shoot, and then moves them along and starts the next pair, all the while giving everyone a hard time ... only kidding!

Once the weigh-ins are done, things begin to shut down pretty quickly. I was home by 6:30 pm as I live 7.5 miles from the casino. I will be off to my day job in an hour and then back this afternoon and off to the casino for the fights. Oh, and the picture of the two guys at the right is, Malaipet (L) and Thomas Denny (R) ... they are a main event.

In the meantime,
Be Safe

Dwight

Always Have a "Plan B"

2008-03-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

I had expected to receive my 1DsMIII from B&H of NYC yesterday. When it didn't show up I checked the tracking information (always available if you are registered at B&H and place your order online ... in fact, all your orders are available online this way as mine are since about 2002.) Anyway, there was the problem, "Train derailment in Vernon, California" and a notice that delivery has been rescheduled. So, it'll be a day late, not all that unusual for UPS. That's why I am a FedEx shipper.

As it turns out I won't be able to get it today, either, as I have to leave UCSB about noon to cover the weigh-in at the ShoXC Elite Challenge fights on Friday at the Chumash Casino Resort in Santa Ynez, California, and our deliveries are always in the late afternoon. I guess it's OK since I won't have time to try it out for a few days as I have another event at the casino on Saturday.

I ride one of my bicycles almost every day. But I don't ride just anywhere ... I ride along the Pacific Ocean at Coal Oil Point in Goleta, California. As you can see, it's kinda pretty. I've riding it for about six months in a 7-1/2 mile loop and I've been watching it get prettier and prettier as the mustard has been starting to bloom. I finally couldn't resist bringing in a camera and getting a few shots. These pictures were taken with a Canon 5D and 24-105mm f/4L IS with a polarizing filter.

One thing that has become ever so clear to me since becoming a professional photographer ... ya' gotta' have a Plan B because so many people and companies simply aren't reliable. And even if they are only unreliable 1% of the time, if you do a lot of business then you're going to get hit by them. So, my Plan B for getting my 1DsMIII on time as promised right up until the last second by UPS (even though they knew about the derailment) was to go bike riding.

So, I am actually hoping to post again this evening with images from the MMA setup but as I want to post regularly and know I may get overtaken by events, I thought I'd throw this out this morning as a kind of Pre-Plan B.

Be Safe

The Lepp Institute: Tim Grey "Total Control in Photoshop"

2008-03-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend at the Lepp Institute in Los Osos, California, attending a seminar by Tim Grey titled "Total Control in Photoshop". It was $420 and well worth the price for me in my quest to migrate from Ulead's PhotoImpact that I have used for at least seven years and believe is way the best value for the dollar in photo-editing to the more industry standard Adobe Suite and in particular, Photoshop. The Lepp Institute is now owned by Victoria and Hal Schmitt although George Lepp is still strongly coupled. This was the second class for me at Lepp, the earlier one being LightRoom workflow with Jonathan Kingston ... the class that finally lifted me from jpg's to RAW shooting by enabling me with the ability to do decent RAW conversions.

Victoria and Hal were just buying Lepp institute when I attended my first seminar almost exactly a year ago. They had the same space as George although the place looked slightly "torn down" and things didn't flow precisely perfectly ... but it was still excellent. Well, it is now even better. The Epson printers that were a bit of a problem (my two business printers are both Epson and I love them so this isn't meant as a slam on Epson) at each pair of work stations have been replaced by Canon printers that only occasionally wake up and hum for a minute or two. But this is the least of the digital learning center (or whatever they call it) which is a sixteen stations, tiered, roomy mini-amphitheater with two excellent projectors in front for display. I mention roominess because it is really nice to have room for eight or so other students to gather around the dual monitors at each station to view the work of another student or to make a quiet exit to use the indoor plumbing or grab a courtesy snack. I cannot think of a thing that needs improving ... well, maybe bigger monitors for these older eyes, but the dual monitors are generally more than adequate for the Photoshop environment.

And, as Tim said numerous times during his class, "But wait, there's more!" Yes, Hal and Victoria are expanding into the space next door to their's in the shopping mall where Lepp is located. They have all the machinery for printing and mounting canvas prints ... something that I am anxious to try. And there is more space beyond that which may become a studio. Lots and lots of expansion for merely a year!

So, I am herewith recommending Lepp Institute without reservation. I give them a 10 of 10 on all the scales ... and folks who know me know I have NO hesitancy about being critical and sharing it about. In addition, they appear to be folks who listen to their students. Last year there were no weekend classes. This year there are a bunch ... and I am asking for more! And they are bringing in a constantly larger group of instructors ... I can't speak to that area as I'm not a "class hound" as many of my fellow students, several of whom have taken almost every course Lepp Offers and were complaining that they needed something new. If you take a look at the number and range of courses you will wonder how anyone could want much more variety!

Well, this week I expect to receive my Canon 1DsMIII and to photograph my third MMA fights for which my contact with Japanese Martial Arts magazines, Dave, has already sold my images of Malaipet based on my images that he sold of Malaipet at the last fights! :-) I've got a pot full of other projects in the works and will be back here with another entry soon.

Until then, be safe!

Dwight

Every Time I Start to Blog ...

2008-03-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

Every time I start to get this blog going again all my other ongoing projects decide to ramp up! As always, I am upgrading my equipment (which I will blog about another day) and with the little lull I perceived in current work I decided I would take the time to sell my oldest camera body, my Canon 1D Mark II. I ran up a quick post on Photography-on-the.net where I am participant. Since there are thousands of pictures of this body and anyone who would buy should know what it looks like and how it works I didn't post any pictures of it ... I just said it didn't have any dings or dents or imperfections and I wanted $1700 for it. Well, of course, the first response was, "I'd like to see pictures of it!" Well, I figured if I was going to take pictures of it and post them I might as well put it on eBay, too. So, I surveyed the ones for sale on eBay and found they were mostly in the $1300-1400 range. So I got ready to take pictures and reprice it. I went to knock out a note to the initial querier about this but there was another note waiting for me asking some other question so I told this guy I was about to reprice and do pictures ... and he shot back that he'd buy it. So that's done, but it was a bit more effort (I'm skipping A LOT of intervening stuff) than I expected.

Next thing I know there's an email from B&H that they have Canon 1Ds Mark III's in stock after a several month absence due to high demand. That's their $8,000 USD body with 21 megapixels and some other new technologies. I've been waiting for about four months to buy one so I ordered one and it shipped this morning and will be here next week. I am not the kind of guy who lives for his equipment. I plan for equipment months in advance, budget it, order it and move on while it ships. I have never paid for overnight or two day shipping. If I needed it that quick, I would, but I plan and have so far been successful.

But to get back to the topic ... I had promised to talk about starting into glamor shooting beginning with my wife when all this broke loose. So, I have only managed to shoot a few frames as tests. I have also coordinated with the other two neighbor ladies who are going to act as test models for me. This morning they even agreed to model together (it'll be mostly head shots) and Marna may even join. They are my daughter's kindergarten teacher and my daughter's "boyfriend's mother". My daughter is six years old. I guess if it wasn't for my daughter I wouldn't have any models! :-)

Here is one my test images of my wife, Marna. I have always done "business" style portraits with rather flat lighting but now that I am venturing into glamor it is a whole new world. I have read lots of articles and watched lots of videos (and am awaiting Jason Cole's DVD set to come to market in April) and attended on workshop last year and am scheduled for another, with Frank Dorhoof in L.A. this June. But nothing really prepares you for the acid test in the studio. It is suddenly all about dynamic ratios and hair lights and edge lighting and poses and on and on. I've got a lot of work to do. And I know that skin treatment is a big deal in this area and because most of what I do documentary in nature I have no skill or experience in this area yet so please don't judge this image too harshly.

So, while I would normally be expecting to spend a few hours with Marna in the studio this Sunday (I do the Lord's work on Sundays ... shoot pictures!), this week I am off to take an intermediate Photoshop seminar at the Lepp Institute in Los Osos, California, about an hour up the road from me with instructor Tim Grey. My wife and daughter and I will be taking our truck camper and they'll play while I slave away in the seminar! :-)

Just to make my life interesting I will be shooting Don Rickles tonight at the casino.

Be Safe!
Dwight

Finally Firing Up the Studio: Glamor

2008-03-06T09:55:00.000-08:00

Since my concert venue has been in remission for a couple of weeks (although I will be shooting Chris Rock tomorrow night) I have had time to get some final touches completed in my little studio, the most recent being replacing the sagging PVC supports for my drapes with metal pipes. That done, my wife has ever so graciously agreed to act as a temporary model so I can get a feel for going glamor so that's what I'm doing evenings for a few nights. When I have enough images to be interesting I will be doing a post on these sessions. It is surprisingly tricky to get clean, crisp images that are also glamorous and striking, but I think I am getting there.

I am also lining up a few gals from the neighborhood so that I have a few different faces to show. And when I feel I have gained some control over the studio I will be getting some gals in who could, and might become, models. I expect to doing posts of those sessions, too.

So, hang in there with me. Things are taking off.

www.MusicPhotographers.net

2008-02-29T13:09:00.000-08:00

With the expectation that some of my readers are Concert Photographers I want to recommend a moderately recently created website: http://www.musicphotographers.net/ of which I am a member. This really is a website forum for working concert photographers from many parts of the world and contains critique, business, equipment and practical sections. If you are brand new or an old pro concert hound, this is a marvelous place to share images and experience with others and has a distinctly international flare.

So Much Going On ...

2008-02-28T16:23:00.000-08:00

I have a lot of projects underway and there seem to be quite a few people who are interested so I am really, really going to try to post regularly on this blog, sigh. My studio is on the very verge of being ready and I have new things going on at the Chumash Casino Resort and new equipment with more on the way that I will post about, as well as my critiques of some equipment and vendors, good and bad. So, I will try to post a couple of times a week to let you know what I'm doing and even more, I will try to make the posts educational.

So, I'll be back shortly with something interesting!

Getting Back into Blogspace

2007-03-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

Just to let everyone know that I am again going to try the blogging thing. Typepad didn't work out for me as there support couldn't deal with trivial industry standard metadata in images and they were pay for ... so I've decided that I will again go with the winner! I will also be trying, again, to be more consistent in posting and to provide more images and back ground material. This little post is simply to get my toes back in the water.

Busy, busy, busy!

2006-06-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

I took yesterday off from my "day job". I was getting further and further behind with my image processing. Last Friday night I shot a boxing card at the casino. Eight bouts of which two were amateurs, five were non title bouts, and the last was Chad Dawson vs Eric Harding NABF title bout of some sort. I am not a boxing fan so the fine points elude me. My boxing mentor, Ed Mulholland, has Chad as a client so I was sad Ed couldn't attend but glad I got great shots of Chad. I had about 1700 frames. And that was after losing a CF card with about 500 more. The down side is that it was a 4GB Sandisk Extreme III that cost me $450 a year ago. The up side is that I am awaiting from B&H a new Sandisk Extreme III 8GB card that cost a bit less. Since being screwed by Lexar I only use Sandisk cards.

Then Saturday afternoon I shot a VIP BlackJack tournament for five hours. Dumped CF cards to my P-2000. And then shot another 1000+ images of Kool and the Gang! Altogether I have a lot of images in the pipeline (I'll talk about my workflow another day.)

Fortunatley I recently purchased PhotoMechanic 4. It is a download and image management product that handles some issues that had been costing me a lot of time. It manages IPTC data very well which is why I bought it. But it also does great renaming, copying, sorting and uploading to FTP sites and PhotoShelter ... all things I use regularly but have had a whole smattering of ways to do it. And it knows the soft rotation flags and will rotate my images automatically ... something I used to spent an hour or two doing using software that came with my Fuji S2 Pro a few years ago. I expect that PhotoMechanic (from Camerabits.com) is going to save me hours and hours.

So, here I am today, back at work, between tasks. I have caught up on all but the BlackJack Tournament. But, wouldn't you know it ... tonight I shoot Los Tigres del Norte and that'll be another 500-800 images, sigh.

A couple of notes: I know my profile is not up to date ... Blogger seems to be having some issues. I will mention products and services that I use, but please note that I am not affiliated or compensated by them at this point and am not trying to do so.

I'm Baaaaaaccccccckkkkkkkkkk!

2006-06-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Chris Fritchie of Soundhole Photography asked me to do a blog. I have a blog. This one! It was just dead. So I will start it up again. I will share all the things that go on for me "behind the scenes" in my Live Entertainment photography business. Actually, I do Live Entertainment (including some sports) and I have one website client, Casa Cassara Vineyard and Winery ... I was originally going to do websites with high quality images, but the images very quickly overcame the website side since every ten year old can do better websites than me! Anyway, I am at my day job [computer programmer for the University of California at Santa Barbara, for the past 30 years] so I can only stay a minute, but when I come back I'll give the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of how I got into what I am into and then write about what is currently going on ... there is ALWAYS stuff currently going on for me, sigh ... including gigs, computers, software, camera equipment, lighting and studio, workflow (big changes recently) and my slow (some would say 'glacial') migration from Ulead PhotoImpact (which is excellent) to Photoshop and from JPEGS to RAW. Fill your CF cards! -Dwight

Still working on it!

2005-05-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

Well, Art got me to this blog and now he's managed to get me to know how to upload images (or at least link to them) so I guess I'm slowly working into it. I finally got this picture of Willie Nelson to link up from my own website, so I guess I'm gettin' there! :-)