Happy Halloween Everyone!
Archive for October, 2008
Happy Halloween!
Senior Portraits
I have something to admit. I’d never shot any senior portraits until just the other week. Not because I’m incapable of shooting them; I’ve just never been asked until very recently! I guess the clients I reach aren’t in the market for senior portraits. I certainly don’t advertise my services in this area, but I’m not going to turn anyone down when they ask, either!
This lovely young lady happens to be my niece. Kind of makes sense that she’d ask her photographer uncle to shoot her senior portraits, doesn’t it? I picked her up in the morning and spent the next few hours doing her “black drape” studio portrait, then we headed down to the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond to find interesting backgrounds.
This portrait session also gave me the chance to play with some new lenses I just picked up: the legendary Canon 24mm f/1.4 and 35mm f/1.4 prime lenses. Wonderful glass! Can’t wait for my next wedding to use these hunks of glass during the reception!
The first image above is a simple setup near the Tobacco Row condominiums. The second image is under the railroad trestle near the canal. We had a blast walking through the area, taking pictures as we came across interesting areas. I remember baby sitting her when she was, like, four years old. Now she’s a senior on her way to college. Sheesh, I’m getting old!
A Canyon’s Rim
I’ve been specifically requested by the leader of the workshop I was attending in Arizona to not mention the name of this canyon, as he is trying to keep it from being as overwhelmed with visitors as Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons have become. I will say, however, that this picture was made on the rim of another slot canyon not far from Page and requires a hiking permit from the Navajo Nation to get to.
The rim of this canyon is an interesting study in various shapes and textures of sandstone. This particular image was made with a Canon 5D using a 70-200mm lens at 200mm to utilize the telephoto compression that such a lens produces. This “squishes” the foreground and background together to make it seem as if what is actually in the distance is right up on top of the foreground, thereby giving this image a layered effect of the many different directions of the lines within the sandstone.
This image was taken just after sunset, which brings out the warm colors of the sandstone. Just a few minutes earlier and the texture and colors of these rocks had looked completely different; much whiter with greater contrast.
Shy Kids and the Wedding Photographer
More often than not, 
if there is a small child in the wedding party, they’re going to be rather shy around the photographer. Frequently, I can turn this into a game of hide-and-seek, or a kind of peek-a-boo, but with a camera. I often find that my best shots during these games are taken when shooting from the hip, as it were. I find that the kids respond better over time when I don’t constantly have the camera in front of my face. If they can see my eyes and my smile, they start to realize that that guy in black with all the hair on his face (I have a beard) isn’t so bad after all. I do this by holding the camera out away from me, pulling on the camera strap for tension, and guessing the framing of the image. I’m pretty good at it. After a bit of this, the kids almost universally warm up to me and start seeing me as a friend. By the reception, they are practically hogging the camera, finding ways to position themselves in front of me on the dance floor or tugging on my sleeve to say “Mister! Take my picture!”
Apparently, this only works temporarily as evidenced by my own kids who will do just about anything to vacate the area when they see Daddy coming at them with the camera. Oh well. For them, I’ve found that ice cream is a pretty good bribe.
Upper Antelope Canyon Corkscrew
Antelope Canyon, just outside Page, Arizona on the Navaho Reservation, is one of the most amazing places on the planet. Divided into two sections known as the Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons, it should be on everyone’s “to see before I die” list.
Created by water over centuries, the sandstone of the area has worn away to form what is known as a “slot canyon” with narrow, steep walls. Unfortunately, because everyone who sees it (like me) says it should be on everyone’s “to see before I die” list, it seems like everyone tries to see it. On the same day.
When we were in Upper Antelope Canyon, there must have been well over 100 people trying to walk around each other in spaces barely 5 feet wide in places. Some areas open up to cathedral-like “rooms” (well, they feel “cathedral-like” after squeezing between narrow spaces for a while), but much of the canyon is narrow and really can’t support that many people at one time. At one point I joked that the canyon wasn’t formed by water after all, but by the backs of tourists rubbing against the sandstone. The reason the canyon gets packed is that there are only about 2 hours in any given day when the sun is in just the right position to send light shining down into the canyon. Everyone trying to see the canyon before they die, tries to be there in that same two-hour period of time.
Consequently, the vast majority of the images I made in the canyon were taken with the camera pointing up, over the heads of the horde of people widening the canyon with their backs.
Upper Antelope Canyon is generally shaped like a pyramid in that it is narrow up top and wider at the bottom. This means the light comes through a narrow slot and casts deep shadows throughout the canyon. Consequently, the contrast range is rather high in Upper Antelope Canyon, making the use of a tripod and multiple exposures to capture the full tonal range a must.
And to those tourists who were using a flash from their dinky point-and-shoot cameras, ruining many of my shots 25 seconds into a 30-second exposure: may your memory cards get mysteriously wiped clean before you get home. When you visit, turn off the flash!