Box Fiddle Player

Box Fiddle Player

This image was taken several years ago during a reenactment. I chose it today, because it is part of a 5-Day Split Tone Challenge and it is my Day 5 Post. I thought it would make a great beige and yellow split tone. This image was originally made in color.

Back to the image itself, this guy actually made this fiddle from a box. Most people in the days that this image represents had to make their own instruments. He played it very well, too!

Ally

It's been a long time since I've posted to my blog. I really need to get better about this.

I had a shoot on Monday for this girl. She just wanted some photos for her Facebook. She brought tons of clothes and her stylist with her. Earlier in the day she had her hair and makeup done. She was really serious about this shoot.

For someone who's not a model, she did a fantastic job. She loves the camera and it loves her. I had a hard time choosing only a few for my site use. I like the lighting in this one.

Most of the photos were taken in Phillippe Park in Safety Harbor, FL. It's a beautiful park and offers many different locations for a shoot. We were all over the park, changing clothes before changing sites. Because of the humidity, her hair didn't last as long as she did, but her stylist made the best of it. In every shot, she had to fix her hair. Her stylist (also her sister) did a great job as well.

I'd love to have the chance to work with her some more. I tried to talk her into posing for my club; but she didn't really seem interested in posing for that many photographers. Maybe at a later date.

Igor

It seems I never shoot portraits or people, but here I am with another portrait just two days after my last one. I guess people are part of the natural world, so in a sense, it can qualify as nature--sort of, but not really.

Igor is one of my roommates. He needed a portrait for his sites and had been asking for months. Finally I gave in and made several of him. This is one I like.

He insisted on wearing his sunglasses, and it was a little difficult exposing so I'd show his eye without underexposing all the shadows. I used partial metering on his eye and it worked perfectly! Even I was surprised.

Settings used for this image taken in my backyard were as follows. ISO 400 because he was in the shade, 1/320 at F5.6 for shallow depth of field in aperture priority, (You may notice I use aperture priority mode for 99% of my shots. That's because I like to control the depth of field.) +1/3 exposure compensation, 180mm focal lenth with my 55-250mm lens.

Mayo

This is Mayo, one of the girls in my newbie group. This image was made during a photo walk at Bay Walk in downtown St Petersburg in the late afternoon.

Making this image was very easy since Mayo is not camera shy at all. It's very difficult to get someone who is camera shy to look natural in a photo. This was made for her new profile shot in our group.

I was careful to compose this so her eyes would be at the top third in the frame, following the "Rule of Thirds". It was shot at ISO 400, using Partial Metering off her skin, at 109mm, which provides a perfect focal length for rendering a natural looking portrait. Other settings were 1/250 (because I was handholding the lens), at F7.1. No post-processing was needed other than conversion and resizing for the internet.

Scott

This morning, while Scott was getting ready for a new job interview, he asked me to make a photo of him while he was dressed up. Scott is camera-shy, and not the easiest person to photograph. After several attempts of trying to get him to relax, he started to joke around. It gave me the chance to catch him off-guard and get a more natural image of him.

The sun was overhead, and it wasn't the best time to be shooting a portrait, but I decided to give a try, anyway. I'm also not the best portrait photographer around. I'm a trained photojournalist, so usually my photos of people are unposed and more natural-looking.

I didn't do much editing on this one--not even a crop. The compressed jpg looks like it could use a bit of warming, but the original file doesn't appear like this. We lose so much when we compress files. That's one reason I stress to my students to always begin with the largest photo the camera is capable of producing. If I wanted to take this a step further, I'd probably add a little bit of warmth to it, but it's late, I'm tired, and I already gave him the full resolution file which doesn't quite appear as cool (in temperature).

I placed him in the shade, so he wouldn't squint. Because the sun was overhead (11:41 am), I chose to use a bit of fill flash so he wouldn't have "raccoon eyes". My flash is set on -1 eV and in my camera, I underexposed about -1/3 stop so as to not blow out the whites in the sun. My camera was set at ISO 200 (because I forgot to set it to 100; shame on me), in Aperture Priority mode at F5.6 and my shutter speed set to 1/250. I used my 18-55mm lens at 55mm. If he had looked directly at the camera, as he did in some of the others, he couldn't relax. Sometimes it's better to have them look away from the camera.

He calls this one "looking to the heavens for his next girl friend". I don't know if that tactic will work! :)

Golden Lion Tamarin

Since I haven't been out shooting since my Lowry Zoo trip, I'm posting another photo from there.

This is a Golden Lion Tamarin. It's pretty easy to see how he got his name. I like the way he's laying on this log. It makes a good portrait. Believe it or not, this is not desaturated at all; the colors are just the way they came out of the camera. Behind him is a "rock" background and the perch is actually this color.

I like the way the light was hitting his coat. It really shows off the sheen and the color. His expression is kind of sad, though.

I shot this using fill flash (- 1 stop) because of the back light and I wanted to show some detail in his face. I think this technique worked very well and it helped to put some nice catch lights in his eyes.