It's going to be one colorful year

The dreary ways of winter have made me appreciate the summer spectrum that much more.

Bring it.




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Zack Arias on CreativeLIVE, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Working with Flash

I've always had a desire to learn how to use flash in my photography. The underexposed, deer-in-the-headlights flashed up group portrait got really old, really fast.

Natural light can be fun (and I prefer it), but when I have to capture the awesomeness of a joyous wedding reception indoors, it's totally worth investing in flashes and off-camera flash systems to take my images to the next level. With the sun down, I'm free to create my own light and place it anywhere I want to.

Learning how to use flash isn't the easiest learning curve. Most of all, I really wanted to know the relationship between ISO and aperture, shutter speed and flash power. When should I use E-TTL, when should I use manual? How does change in aperture affect the exposure? What are the best settings if you need to conserve battery power? All that stuff I couldn't really wrap my head around, until now.

Zack Arias has a quantum grasp on lighting, specifically when used in controlled settings like studios. Even better, he teaches it in such a way that even I can understand in his 3-day Studio Lighting Workshop on CreativeLIVE. I learned so much about flash and light modifiers from these sessions.

CreativeLIVE is based in Seattle, but it flies in top-shelf photographers from all over the country to host a workshop that can be seen all over the world through their website. It's such a great resource for photographers who want to 'attend' a workshop, but either don't have the funds to experience one, or if the workshop isn't headed to their city anytime soon. The workshop sessions are viewable on their website, or you can download them as videos. So easy and accessible! Buy Zack Arias' workshop if you want to take your flash photography to the next level. So worth it.

Saguaro cactus

Cactus fascinates me. All my life I've lived around vegetation that generally gets more than .01 inches of rain per year, and cactus seems to thrive in the driest climates on the planet. Here's the iconic saguaro cactus::


There were so many cactus in the area, they looked like motionless beacons left by an alien civilization:


Some barrel cactus, I believe::




And the prickly pear cactus::




Not sure if this organ-pipe or saguaro cactus, but I do know that city beyond is Tucson, AZ::

Love the one you're with

Veddy fahshionable wahddings

This is probably what my clients are doing this time of year. 20 years old and it's still fa-reaking hiliarious.

How I capture macro images, without a macro lens

Here's how I get that macro look when taking pictures of wedding rings, without actually shooting with a macro lens. I'm saving up for the new-ish Canon 100mm f/2.8 L macro lens (which looks completely awesome), but until then, I use this "faux-macro" technique to capture sweet pictures of the wedding rings, and details that have tons of... detail.

Ingredients:
1) DSLR with interchangeable lens mount (I use a Canon 50D).
2) a zoom lens that goes from wide-angle to telephoto (I use the 17-55mm, or 17-85mm).
3) File size should be set to the max resolution (on the 50D, it's 4700x3300 or thereabouts).
4) Set the focus on the lens to manual.
5) If you have a lens hood attached, take it off (it might actually block the light).

(I'll use the 17-85mm lens here as an example).

Okay.
1) Zoom your lens all the way in (that is, 85mm).
2) Adjust the focus ring all the way to the minimum focusing distance (that is, the opposite of infinity). It might actually say "Macro" on the lens itself here.
3) For your exposure settings, have a high aperture (f/8 or more) and a shutter-speed fast enough to prevent blur (like 1/200sec or faster).
4) Now, see how close you can get to the subject until it's in focus. You'll find that you can get in pretty close. Fill the frame as much as you can without ruining the composition or losing focus on the subject.
5) Take the picture.

Since you're really close, though, and you're not auto-focusing, you might have to take several pictures to get one that's tack-sharp. I use a high aperture because at that proximity, a low aperture will make just the very tip of the ring in focus and the rest way out of focus. With a high aperture, you'll have more in focus.

Now even with these settings, you'll see that the ring still doesn't take up the whole space in the picture. You need an actual macro lens for that. So here's where you crop. Remember, you had your file size set to the max setting, so the pixels are more forgiving when you crop in, even a lot. The image would look more pixellated and un-natural if you had your file size smaller.

I'm sure there are macro options on point-and-shoot cameras, and you can get something similar without pro gear, but if you want control of all your options, then DSLR is the way to go.

Now go get it.


Canon 50D, 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM at 55mm
1/500sec @ f/2.8
ISO 250


Canon 50D, 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM at 55mm
1/90sec @ f/9.5
ISO 500