…is the one you have on you. And it does not have to be an SLR with a 70-200 f/2.8 IS Lens, like this one I am carrying here in Sedona:
Even the iPhone takes nice pictures. Even of my morning coffee.
If you use an iPhone, get yourself a great little app called Best Camera, and edit your pics with a few simple filters. That leads to this more punchy image:
Have fun:
And yes, that was also taken on my iPhone, and slightly finished with Best Camera. See – you don’t always need a $10,000 camera.
Actually, it was “Catnip, when do I get thee?”
Two 250 Ws monolights, one each side 45 degrees up, and one 100Ws strobe with grid lighting up the background.
Remember, studio flash shots are sharp shots.
Are always good. And surprises. And reflections. And “filling the frame”.
Or all four, like in this picture from Nov. 2, which although it doesn’t work very well at small size, does illustrate the point. Do you like the CN Tower’s reflection?
Juxtapositions can be opposing colour. Or old/new. Ugly/beautiful.Large/small. Funny/serious. Curved/straight. Liberal/conservative. Traditional/modern. Fast/slow. Soft/hard. You get the picture.
Always carry your camera. This was a snap, taken handheld with the Canon 7D. From the car. Another example, of a similar subject:
Old/new immediately occurred to me.
-13C outside. Not a day for outdoors pictures. Back to watching TV and making an inventory of my memory cards.
It is easy enough to think “there is no interest here”, “I need to be in Tahiti to take nice pictures”.
Not so. You can take nice pictures everywhere, even of boring things around the house.
Think long lens, or think Macro (in Nikon terms, “Micro”) lens, perhaps. But open your eyes, get close and fill the frame, and have fun.
Home is where you live and what you do. Twenty years from now you will look at the pictures and remember with a smile.
As a photographer you should always remember that today is tomorrow’s “those were the days”.
Whatever you are celebrating, do it well and enjoy. And take lots of photos, in which you fill the frame and expose well, perhaps using fast lenses and a mix of flash and available light. And did I mention “fill the frame”?
Oh and who spotted me reflecting in that ball, at the Wyndham hotel in Phoenix (avoid it: “free high-speed Internet” is free LOW speed: high speed is $10 more – and in a city with free parking, the only parking at the Wyndham is compulsory $24 valet parking)?
And that is also a reminder to hold your camera upright for shots that need this (we call that “portrait orientation”, because it is suitable for…..)
Back to today: Merry Christmas!
Here’s the setup I described earlier, that I used to shoot the Santa pics. My tripod-mounted (and cable-fired) Canon 1Ds MkIII and twin Bowens Gemini 400 Ws strobes into umbrellas, fired with Pocketwizards. The camera is powered with the mains adapter so it never turns off.
And here for good measure is pone ore shot I took there, showing Santa and an admirer:
Ho Ho Ho!
Santa shots all day today. I love those shoots.
We had the fortune of having the Real Santa at Hopedale mall (check his beard, that is how you can tell – yes, it’s real, so it’s Santa himself).
I have no idea why some photographers scoff at this type of photography. I love it. And so do the customers, and so does Santa himself.
Just like I recently described how the snowflakes fell here like silent little torturers, in Arizona I was struck by how the cactuses stand and watch you, like silent accusers. Somehow that is the analogy I see. They stand and watch like hundreds of silent accusers. View large by clicking, to see what I mean:
I guess that makes me pretty weird. But at least it is a good thing for a photographer when nature speaks to him. Whatever nature says to you, see if you can capture it in your images.
Wide angles. Have I told you I like those? Here’s a snap taken with 16mm on a full frame camera (equivalent to 10mm on a crop camera):
Downtown Toronto on November 12, 9AM.
Here, it is the otherworldly light reflections plus the Infiniti’s red LED brake lights that do it for me. Do you agree?
Here’s another one, from a wedding earlier this year:
You can see it is wide, partly by looking at the ceiling lights and at the floor. Gives it that “vast” look.
From an event I shot for The Oakville Beaver a few weeks ago:
For something like this I use flash as well as high ISO/wide aperture/slow shutter for the background, and I use a wide, wide angle to introduce depth.
If I can bounce the flash off a wall or ceiling, I will, or else I’ll use a bounce card (in this case a Honl bounce card) or if there is some bounce surface, a Gary Fong lightsphere.
The “slow shutter” thing is called “slow flash” on Nikon. It’s also referred to as “dragging the shutter”. This just means you let the shutter speed get slower than 1/60th second, to allow the background light to do some work too. I do this by shooting manual, but I could also shoot in Av mode (or in Nikon, enable “slow” in A mode).