The Strip, Las Vegas with Fireworks
You can point your camera at the sky in auto exposure and autofocus modes and fire away whenever you see a burst of fireworks, but for the best quality photos, it helps to know a few tricks of the trade. It’s easy when you know what to do.
17 Year Cicada Closeup
It was my good fortune to be in Iowa for the peak of the 17 Year Cicada “emergence”. It was amazing. It was also unbelievably noisy. If you stood under a cicada filled tree (they prefer some trees to others), you could barely hear well enough to have a conversation with a friend standing two feet away.
Photo Field Trip
Update, June 20, 2014: Complete information on the October 18 workshop.
This photo was taken during a field trip at my recent workshop at OSU Mansfield. Photographers show up with everyting from point and shoot cameras to professional level equipment.
Dandelion photo with an iPhone and an olloclip closeup lens.
I was out testing an olloclip iPhone accessory and using the closeup lens. I am quite pleased with the capabilities of this little accessory.
U.S. Flags at Sunset, Rose Hill Cemetery, Lamoni, Iowa
From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865.
Kristina Jimenez, model, actor, and spokesperson.
I have worked with this model/actress/spokesperson several times and she is a dream to work with. This photo is now on her comp card and she sent me this note:
“Thank you so much for this shot Jim! This photo is now on my comp card for acting/hosting/commercial work! For anyone needing headshots, Jim Doty Photography is a GREAT photographer to work with! Thank you again!!”
Portrait in the Park
After some park bench portraits (see the prior post) we headed for the little stream that flows through the park.
Portrait in the Park
Update July 24: I decided to take a second look at this portrait and I turned it into an article on Simple Steps to Better Portraits.
It all started Saturday when this young lady said to her mother “We have great portrait light today. Is Jim available?” It is interesting to note that she knew from past photo shoots that cloudy bright days made for beautiful portrait light.
Dandelion Puffball
I was walking my dog in a dandelion filled park this week and I saw a few puffballs. My mind jumped immediately to a scene in a movie featuring Dewitt Jones, so I grabbed my iPhone and went to work creating the above image. Who is Dewitt Jones? I am glad you asked.
Landscape, Nature, and Wildlife Images
Now is the time to order one of my fine art landscape and nature prints and get free shipping on your order. Just head on over to my Zenfolio site, choose the image and size you want, and go through the check out process to order your print. The free shipping is automatic, now through Wednesday April 23.
My brother and I on the road to Gothic Colorado. Top: 1950s. Bottom October 2012.
The most important photos won’t win any prizes. Two years ago my brother had a “cardiac event”. His heart stopped, he quit breathing, and he was in a coma for over a week. I looked for and found the top photo to have with me on the 10 hour drive to the hospital.
Natural Light Portrait
You can do a lot in just a few minutes, especially if you and your subject have worked together before.
Bruce Munro: Light. Franklin Park Conservatory
Jewel Box Lighting is the art of combining lights, lighted buildings, or lighted objects with a deep blue evening sky. It is a great way to do photography and the exhibit this week at the Franklin Park Observatory is a wonderful opportunity to practice this technique and come away with some unique and memorable images.
Bruce Munro: Light. Franklin Park Conservatory
This is the last week to see “Bruce Munro: Light” at the Franklin Park Conservatory in Columbus Ohio. The exhibit ends March 30.
Flower Modified with Painteresque
I was walking our dog yesterday and spotted the first flowers to pop up in our neighborhood. It is starting to look like spring! This is an iPhone photo modified by Painteresque, one of my favorite iPhone apps.
Wyoming Ground Squirrel. Moraine Park, Rocky Mountain National Park.
The calendar says today is the first day of spring, but is it really? Depends on where you live. It still looks like a lot like winter in far northern climes and up at high elevations. No matter where you are, Happy First Day of Spring!
Mount Rundle, Two Jack Lake
Today I was asked by a client where I was when I took some photos in Banff National Park. I was able to provide him with the exact locations, complete with marked satellite images. It is a good idea to known where you were when you created your most important images, and the more specific the information the better. It is good info to have for your own use and sometimes it can make the difference between whether or not one of your images is published.
20×30 Inch Cougar Print
One of my 20×30 inch prints before it was matted and framed for my current photo exhibit.
Sarah – Window Blind Shadows Portrait
There are a lot of creative options when creating portraits using sunlight streaming through window blinds.
Kristina – Window Blind Shadows Portrait
One of the things I like about winter is the sunlight streaming through my studio windows at a low enough angle to create portraits using window blind shadows. In the summer the sun is too high for me to do this and get the angles I want.
Vermilion Lakes Sunset, new (top) and old (bottom) ACR “process versions”. Click on the photo to see a larger image.
Adobe has a new “process version” for Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). This means better image processing for your RAW camera files.
Snow Hummocks, Merced River
Just like metering daytime winter scenes, the key to metering evening winter scenes is knowing what to meter and deciding how much exposure compensation to use.
Elk in the Snow, Horseshoe Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Metering dark toned wildlife in the snow is a major exposure challenge. It is usually best to avoid large “burned out” areas (washed out, featureless white) in a nature or landscape photograph, but with properly exposed snow, the wildlife can be so dark as to lose all texture. On other hand, metering for the wildlife can burn out the snow.
Kristina in the Snow
The snow in a winter scene will often fool a camera meter into underexposing a photo, so here are the steps to take to get the right exposure. I throw in a few portrait suggestions too.
Mount Hunter from a Bush Plane. Denali National Park. Alaska.
UPDATE: A revised and expanded version of this article can be found here.
Metering for scenes with a lot of snow can be tricky since the snow fools the camera meter. I see a lot of winter photos online with gray, underexposed snow, which means the camera meter did what it was designed to do and the camera owner didn’t know how to use exposure compensation. The solution is quite simple provided you know what to do.
Moraine Park in Late Evening Light. Click the image to see a larger version.
Rocky Mountain National Park can be beautiful any time of year, including late February when I created this image. It’s not too late to catch the splendor of a RMNP winter, and February is a good month to go.
Cougar
With the wind chill in the minus 30s lately, I asked myself, “Who would be crazy enough to be outside in this weather?” Then I remembered taking this photo.
Kristina
It isn’t just the photo shoot that matters. Some of my favorite images happen before the shoot.
Kristina at Christmas
On Christmas eve I found myself doing Christmas portraits for a friend’s portfolio (she is an agency represented model). There isn’t a lot of space in our living room when the Christmas tree is up so I had to improvise a bit with the lighting and I needed to get the right mix of flash and ambient light for the look I wanted.
Expectations
To my eyes there are very few things on the planet that are as beautiful as a mother looking forward to the birth of her child. I love beautiful “baby bump” photography.