Technique Tuesday: “Babyface Kisses”–A Lighting and Lightroom 4 Tutorial

Good Afternoon Everybody,

Can you believe it, a brand new Technique Tuesday today.  I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve posted one. It actually felt kind of good getting the post together today, even with the computer hic-cup during the process. And since I haven't posted a while I thought to make it kind of a long Technique Tuesday too ;~) “Really, he just can’t stop talking” from LaDawn All joking aside, even though the tutorial runs about 33 minutes I think you’ll really enjoy the information. It covers Portrait Lighting and Lightroom 4 techniques.

The Shoot – The Simple Lighting Set Up

As I mention in the tutorial we recently had a portrait session at the studio. The portrait involved us photographing a newborn baby, actually young Jacob was about five or six weeks old. We photographed Jacob’s big sister about three years ago – you’ll also meet her in the lesson today.

I wanted to make the portrait process be a smooth and as comfortable as possible for the client. When working with babies you have to remember that babies just don't have the patience of older children, high school seniors, or brides and grooms. You have only a few minutes to get the photographs.  Babies also have a habit of “messing things up” in a portrait session.  And that “mess” can come from either end of the baby ;~)

We only had to deal with one mess (and upper mess) since the mother had just fed the baby right before the session.  But Jacob was in good spirits throughout the session and we got some great photographs.

The point of this tutorial is to show simplicity and ease of my lighting set up. My lighting set-up allowed me to shoot very quickly and efficiently – a necessity when photographing babies.  And the lighting set-up along with a few Lightroom tweaks allowed us to get some great images for our clients.

Keep Your Post-Production Simple!

The second part of a lesson shows those Lightroom tweaks.  I demonstrate how quickly I can use Lightroom in my postproduction to create a wonderful series of “preview” images for our clients. The techniques I demonstrate in the second part of the tutorial are not rocket science. But, what I do show you is how to work efficiently during the postproduction session so that you can get a series of images that are pretty close to the final result when producing the final images for your clients. 

The process was simple, fast, efficient, and produced results that the clients absolutely loved.  A few comments from Mom and Grandmother:

 “The pictures are amazing!!! All of them. It is going to be hard to choose. And we had so much fun visiting you too!” Jacob’s Mom

“These photographs are so beautiful they make me cry…Lilly and Jake are so precious.”  Grandma

Why not hit the PLAY button below, sit back relax, and enjoy Babyface Kisses.

_________________________________________________________________

Hey gang that's it for me today. I hope you enjoy today's tutorial and guess what, I plan to be back here again this Thursday with a very cool Business Day Thursday.

Hope to see you then.

All the best, David

Related Links:

Westcott Spider Lights and 4x3Ft. Softbox [link]

MORE Photos [link]

"Beauty Among The Ruins"

"Beauty Among The Ruins"
©David A. Ziser

These surrounds aren’t really ruins but the olive press room at the castle. And, I have to say, about the darkest space I’ve ever photographed – just check out the camera specs below.  Nevertheless, I thought this space would be perfect for the portrait of Orchi that I had in mind. 

Look at all the repeat circular elements we have in this scene – the two pressing stones, the arch in the architecture, the pulleys, and even the curve of the chair back. I thought these repeating elements did a great job in framing our subject.  With her positioned near “nodal point #2” we strike a nice visual balance with our subject and all the other visual elements in the scene.

I further wanted to draw viewer attention to our subject with the dramatic use of lighting I chose for this photograph.  Since the light was so low in this space I used a small 5 LED flashlight.  It was the small cone of light from the flashlight that gives this image a “Hollywood/George Hurrell” look to it which I think is quite striking in the context of the overall composition.

The last adjustment to the image was to make it a straight black and white image.  As a B&W image, all distractions of color are dismissed from the scene leaving us a simple, classic, dramatic portrait of this beautiful young lady in this very eclectic location.

Camera specs:  Canon 5D Mark III fitted with 24-105MM IS lens at 28mm, F4.5 @ 1/40 second, ISO 12,800.  Enjoy!  David

"City Sentry"

"City Sentry"
©David A. Ziser

This was the view of the sky shortly after we began our walk along the River Walk in New Orleans a few weeks ago. A chance of rain was predicted but we never expected to see this kind of storm brewing.

Fortunately, we were able to find cover before the clouds unleashed their torrents of rain. As we sat in the cover of the Natchez Riverboat waiting area, I saw this seagull perched on the large pier timber waiting out the downpour.  With the dramatic cloudscape implying impending doom on the city, the title for this image seemed to be a perfect fit.

It was an very unusual cloud formation and a tweak or two in Lightroom helped to add to the very dramatic effect you see.  I have to say, it was quite an experience to see this wonderful and dramatic landscape and enjoy the short storm.

Camera specs:  Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Tamron 28-300 VC lens at 84mm, F16 @ 1/1000 second, ISO 1600.  Enjoy!  -David

"Half Dome From Glacier Point"

"Half Dome From Glacier Point"
© David A. Ziser

I’m channeling Ansel Adams with today’s post. A few years ago we were traveling out West and were weekending in Fresno, CA.  Some folks in California think there are better places to stay (they don’t live in Fresno) but for us and with Yosemite National Park a short one hour drive away, it was the perfect place to spend the weekend.

Our travels had us at Yosemite in mid/late May just as the waterfalls are flowing at their peak and, by luck, the road up to Glacier Point was open. WOW!  What a view! I’m a huge Ansel Adams fan and was in the mood to see if I could pull off a few “Ansel Adams” like images.  I didn’t have my 8x10 view camera with me so I had to settle for the 5D.

The light was looking good considering  that we had made it to the top of Glacier Point about 5:30 p.m. – almost the perfect time of day to get the image I wanted.  The rich blue sky with just a few wispy clouds made a picture perfect background for the view of Half Dome and the Yosemite Valley.

I had originally processed this image in Lightroom 2 but decided to “give it a go” again in Lightroom 4 and got a substantially better result.  Since it’s now so easy to tweak the full range of tones so easily in Lightroom 4, I finessed the image to exactly where I wanted it.  To me, the image seems to pop of the screen.  I’ve got great details in the full range of the image from the darkest darks to the brightest whites which, of course was the intent.

Camera specs:  Canon 5D Mark II fitted with 24-105 mm IS lens at 28mm, F13 @ 1/320 second, ISO 250.  Enjoy!  -David

"Rorschach Bouquet"

"Rorschach Bouquet"
©David A. Ziser

I created this image a few years ago at my studio. Yes, the operative word is created this image. No camera, lenses, or flash was used in creating this image. In Monday's post I mentioned a visit to the Easton Art Fair a few weeks ago.

I commented on Earl English's wonderful images he had on display in his booth. Many of Earl's images were created with a simple digital scanner. I loved the effect it gave to the resulting image. Because of the extremely shallow "depth of light", the light fell off so quickly and gave this images a completely different kind of look than what I had seen before.

I decided to give it a try for myself on Monday. I simply grabbed one of the artificial flowers that we have on display at the studio, laid it on the copier, and "exposed" my image. I then brought the image into Photoshop, cleaned it up slightly, and enhanced it a bit with the "Levels" control till I had a tonalities exactly where I wanted them.

Although I was excited with my image at this point I wanted the final composition to fill a larger space. I have a handy little Photoshop action that, at the press of a button, will give me a mirror image of the original. That is what we have here. I love the final result. To me, it is reminiscent of the old ink blot tests, or more specifically, the Rorschach tests.

Click on the image for larger view and then spend a few minutes just viewing it. I find I quite enjoy the experience. Time to play some more with this technique - thanks Earl.

"Camera specs; Flowers copied with a Xerox C2424 Workcenter and saved in JPEG mode. Image was opened in Photoshop, converted to black and white, and adjusted with the "Levels" control. Image was then flipped and rejoined with first image to create the final result.

Enjoy! -- David

"Beautiful Moments Remembered”

"Beautiful Moments Remembered”
©David A. Ziser

Here is another of one of my favorite photographs from a recent wedding.  Look at the emotions captured in the image.  Sure, I could have framed up just the groom dancing with his mother, but it’s the off-set camera angle that I used to pick up the wonderful expressions of the bride and her mom and dad enjoying the same moment with the groom.

Next look at the lighting.  I mentioned exciting lighting for spontaneous wedding images in a previous post.  Look how the lighting makes this image just sparkle and sing! The richness of the tonalities and depth of the image is the result of my dimensional lighting I use to illuminate the wedding reception.

I have a strobe high on a light stand camera right.  To the left, behind , and out of range is my assistant putting the lighting o the bride and her parents.  My on-camera flash supplied the necessary fill to carry the mid tones perfectly.

The B&W conversion was managed in Lightroom 4.  I’ve been working with the new LR 4.1 version extensively these last few weeks and have discovered a brand new way to really make my B&W images “pop”.  BTW, it’s a different technique that I’ve featured here [link] last week at DPT [link].  Sounds like a future Technique Tuesday to me ;~)  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the image.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with 24-105mm IS lens at 47mm, F6.3 @ 1/100 second, ISO 2000.  Enjoy!  -David

Technique Tuesday: Fabulous B&W Conversions For Wedding Photographers

Good Morning Everybody,

I was playing around with my blog design again this morning adding a widget or two.  I have to say, I’m constantly surprised by the Google Analytics reporting – over 300,000 pageviews in the last 30 days but only 60 comments for the same time period. That’s less than 0.0005% of all DPT readers.  I figure DPT has a very quiet, but loyal readership out there;~)  Anyway, my sincere appreciation for those folks that do take the time to leave a comment.

Hey gang, today I’m closing off comments and suggestions for my new book, Make Your Lighting Exciting: A Practical Approach To Great Lighting For Everybody.  [link]  You can still add your comments and suggestions right here.  On Thursday I’ll announce the winner of the $50 B&H Gift Card. Thanks to all who offered there suggestions, topics, and ideas for the book.  I’m formalizing the chapters over the next few days and I’ll give you a peek next week.  Again, thanks a bunch for your input!

OK, I finished with the housekeeping – time to get on with today’s post.  Here we go…

Fabulous B&W Conversions For Wedding Photographers

I really like the B&W look in my wedding portraits. There’s something about those soft shades of gray that let the viewer forget all about the color and place all their attention directly on the subject.

But converting those portrait images to B&W, although easy, demands a bit more tweaking to get the look I want. The adjustments I make are NOT your normal B&W adjustments either. I use some sliders in Lightroom that you may have never considered using for B&W enhancements.

The finished result is what counts though. Let me walk you through two images that will show you how a beautiful B&W portrait can be produced in Lightroom 4. Hit the PLAY button below and enjoy the show.

________________________________________________________________

Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  We’ve got to wrap up a few chores around the studio today and, with my Master Class right around the corner, we’re throwing in a few new twists for our largest international class ever!  It’s back to work for me ;~)

Have a great rest of the day and I’ll see you soon.

-David

"The Softness Of Your Kiss"

"The Softness Of Your Kiss"
©David A. Ziser

This was an image I made during last week's wedding. What's fascinating about this image is how I created it. I used the HD video features of my Canon 7D.  I set up the location, natural soft lighting, and framing on the couple and asked them to simply interact with each other as I filmed continuously for about 30 seconds.

As I kept the camera focused on them I give them simple directions -to look at each other, snuggle in with each other, give each other a soft kiss, etc. At 30 frames a second that meant I had nearly 900 images to select from.  That made it easy to get the best expressions and the best image.

This frame grab was one of my favorites. We printed out several of the frame grabs from the shoot. Even at the 8x10 size they look fabulous. This topic is going to be the subject of one of my Technique Tuesday's coming up very soon – I promise.

But getting back to this photograph - what I like about it is the soft light on the both of them are and how gently they're interacting with each other.

I tweaked the image just a bit in Lightroom 4 raising the shadow density just a bit and increasing the exposure slightly as well. I preferred the medium to high key effect in my black-and-white images. To finish the image with the soft, ethereal feel I wanted I reduced the clarity to -70. That adjustment gave me the halation around the brighter parts of the image adding to the “dreamy” effect. I think it's an image the bride and groom will really enjoy having in their wedding album.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 100mm, F8.0, ISO 400, 1920x1080 HD video. Enjoy! – David

"Clearing Storm"

"Clearing Storm"
© David A. Ziser

This image was captured last Saturday morning while in Sedona Arizona.  We awaken to the fallen storm over the mountains in the distance.  I grabbed some early morning photographs and decided to grab a cup of coffee.

Upon returning to our balcony view, the morning sun had begun to break through the clouds and splash it’s light on the snow covered mountains.  It was amazing to me how much the scene had changed in just a few minutes.  I grabbed the camera again and made this image.  It’s probably my favorite.

I remembered seeing an Ansell Adams image by the same name that he had captured in Yosemite National Park.  I thought, why not give my image the same name. 

The remembrance of Ansell’s image also gave me the idea to work this image as a B&W image and over to ACR and Photoshop I went.  Within a few minutes, I had the image I wanted – sorry Ansell, no darkroom for me on this one ;~)

Camera specs: canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 50mm, F10 @ 1/320 second, ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David

"Breakfast At Tiffany's"

"Breakfast At Tiffany's"
© David A. Ziser

This was just a quick “grab shot” at a beautiful wedding I did a few years ago.  We were returning from Fountain Square, a very popular place for capturing wedding photographs especially for weddings taking place at various downtown Cincinnati hotels. 

As we were walking back to the hotel the bride asked me to grab a quick photograph of her in front of Cincy’s finest jewelry story.  I gladly obliged.  The weather was just a bit gray with offered the soft lighting I wanted.  But, you know me – I always want to add a little dimension to my images and do that with off camera flash.

The problem – look at the curved front door of Tiffany’s.  Everywhere I tried to position the flash gave me a horrendous blasting reflection back into the camera.  I quickly switched to Plan B – shoot it straight available light.

The image was OK but not great in color, but making it B&W and increasing the mid-tone tonalities gave me the image I wanted and a wall portrait the bride loved.

Camera specs: Canon 40D fitted with Sigma 12-24mm lens at 18mm, F5.6 @ 1/400 second, ISO 500.  Enjoy!  -David

"Three Sisters"

"Three Sisters"
© David A. Ziser

I created this image of three sisters during a portrait session a number of years ago. And, it still remains one of my favorites.  Each child had this beautiful "Breck" like hair – shiny, silky smooth, and long. Although, I photographed each of the sisters separately and together as a group, I thought an image of each sister with her other sisters beautiful hair could be quite different and possibly quite interesting.

I chose to photograph each sibling through the hair of the other two sisters. This was one of my favorite images because of the lighter hair of the center sister helps bring attention to her in the image creating a pleasing composition overall.

Lighting was from an old White Lightning flash I’ve had for years – it has since “died”. I was shooting through a Westcott Halo, my favorite studio light modifier.  I used a 36” silver reflector close to the subjects for “fill”.  The use of the convex shaped Westcott Halo pointed directly at the subjects easily through the light into the reflector for just the right amount of “fill” light.  For me, it’s an ideal studio set up.

The parents loved the images!!

Camera specs; Nikon D1x fitted with a Tamron 24-135mm lens at 135mm, F8 @ 1/200second, ISO 100. Enjoy! -David

"Subtleties"

"Subtleties"
©David A. Ziser

I feel this is a very mysterious image.  Part of that mysteriousness is caused by the shadow play and subtle densities within this image.

I’ve been trying to remember the back story on this image. As best as I can piece it together, it was made about 10:15 p.m. as we returned home from dinner at at a local restaurant in San Jose del Cabo a few years ago.  This is an agave plant right outside the entrance of our friends home in Mexico. 

I had just gotten my new Canon 5D Mark II camera and was testing it’s low light capabilities. Check out the camera specs below and you'll have a clearer understanding of what I mean.

As I was reviewing images for another project, I stumbled across this one. I was immediately taken by the subtle dark tones throughout the image. The image looked OK in color but I wasn’t a big fan of the green tones.  A quick switch to B&W and some judicious cropping and I could enjoy those shadows and dark tones even more.

The image just seems to draw you in the more you look at it – an emotional side effect of a good abstract image.  The darkness of the tones almost forces you to look more deeply into the image searching for the “tone boundaries” moving through the image.  Anyway, I like it, I hope you do too.

Camera specs: Camera 5D Mark II fitted with 24-105mm lens at 102mm, F 4.0 @ 1/30 second, ISI 6400.  Enjoy!  -David

"Ready For The Day"

"Ready For The Day"
© David A. Ziser

Here is a quick photograph I made a few years ago that I still love. The bride had just walked in front of the mirror for one last check before everyone arrived. The dressing room location was very contemporary in it's layout and design.

I wanted to capture that in my image. The very wide angle perspective adds to that interpretation of this moment with the strong convergence of the lines. I even like the little quartz-halogen light making it's appearance known in the shot. It also seems to add to the ethereal feeling.

I pre-focused the shot, clicked on "Live View", held the camera over my head and took the shot. A little tweaking in Lightroom - shadow recovery, negative clarity, and "goosed" oranges in "Grayscale" finished the image.

Camera specs; Canon 40D fitted with 10-22mm lens at 10mm, F5.0 @ 1/60 second, ISO 800. Enjoy! -David

Technique Tuesday: Magical Black & White Conversions – Saving the Under/Over Exposed Image

Good Morning Everybody,

In reading over all the comments that have been posted the last few days, I want to begin today’s post by offering a great big “THANK YOU” to all of you who attended my Texas School class held in Dallas last week.  Thank you for all your kind comments and remarks you’ve been posting here at DPT.

It was a great time with a great group of people, and that includes class members, wranglers, and staff.  I hope our paths cross again in the not too distant future.

After Dark Update:

Yesterday I headed down to the big After Dark event being held at the Netherland Hilton Hotel, in downtown Cincinnati. There were about 300 folks from all over the US enjoying the myriad of educational festivities.

I got a chance to meet Joel Grimes, an amazing photographer and Photoshop artist. If you haven’t seen any of Joel’s work, be prepared to be “blown away” with his outstanding images right here.  He’s been featured over at the Strobist site and is presenting at Photoshop World in September.  We got a chance to visit briefly – he was showing a small group his latest, greatest “pole cam.” Again, be sure to check out his work right here.

I wondered around for a few hours yesterday and also got a chance to meet Dave Junion, the genius behind After Dark.  Dave is an extremely talented photographer hailing from Wisconsin.  I’ll tell ya’, we had a good time just joking around for a bit.  In fact I MAY even be doing a “bridal shoot” Wednesday evening with a boa constrictor – that’s if I can wrestle it away from New York fashion photographer, Lindsay Adler, who’s planning a fashion shoot with the same snake.  Like I said, it’s a little “crazy” at the Netherland Hilton Hotel this week.

Magical Black & White Conversions Part 2: Saving the Under/Over Exposed Image

Hey gang, I’m pretty excited about this week’s Technique Tuesday. Last week I began to get carried away with the length of the tutorial and decided to break it into two parts.  I covered the steps I take to get the B&W images I like for my wedding photography. One of the things I covered was how to stylize your images for maximum viewing impact. You can catch that post right here.

This week we’re gong to spend some time on saving the image. Yep, every now and then we all take an image or two that just misses it in the exposure department – me included.

The thing is that some of these images would still be great additions to the wedding coverage if we could somehow correct the errors of our ways.  That’s the topic for this week’s tutorial – basically, how to save an under exposed or over exposed image and still get a saleable result.  Why not hit the PLAY button and see how I do it.  And, enjoy the show.

_____________________________________________________

Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  I’m heading back down to After Dark this afternoon to see what’s happening and check out a few more of the programs.

Have a great rest of the day and I’ll see you tomorrow for another episode of “The One That Got Away”.

See ya’ then,  David

p.s. Sorry about the late posting today.  Not only did we have connectivity problems at our end today, Vimeo managed a few hiccups in the process too. Don’t you love technology ;~)

"Fashion Forward"

"Fashion Forward"
©David A. Ziser

Here is another image I captured during one of my teaching sessions at Texas School last week.  I was trying to demonstrate to the class how, that while the super wide angle lens could be your friend, it could also come back to “bite” you, compositionally speaking, that is.

I positioned our bride in about the worst part of the frame, the bottom right corner.  I was getting some distortion, but on the other hand, I was loving my composition.  I was able to manage/minimize quite a bit of the subject’s distortion in Lightroom 3.

Look how the bride is framed up in the right-bottom part of the frame by all the lines in the ceiling. I really liked how the wide angle lens was stretching all the lines in favor of the composition. I guess I could have cropped more of the left side of the image, but I don’t mind that large part of the ceiling offering a counterweight to the visual balance of the frame.

This is definitely an image that may not suit everyone’s aesthetic tastes but I still like the fashion feel of the image.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with Sigma 8-16mm lens at 8mm, F5.6 @ 1/40 second, ISO 1600.  Enjoy!  -David

Technique Tuesday: Magical B&W Image Enhancements

Good Morning Everybody,

We finished our first day at Texas School yesterday and a long day it was.  We began class about 8:30 p.m. and most of us instructors wrapped the teaching day 12 hours later at 8:30 p.m. No, it wasn’t time to turn in just yet – the Mardi Gras parade started at 9:00 p.m. followed by a party till about 1:00 a.m.  I’m kind of curious to see who’s going to be at class on time this morning;~)

I have to tell you – it was a hoot.  All the classes was responsible to build from a small wagon a version of a Mardi Gras floats for the parade thru the hotel lobby.  I thought our class came up with some pretty good ideas.  We draped a wedding gown and tux over a light stand. Then we lit our float from above and below with three gelled Quantum strobes which we fired rapidly with remotes.  The finishing touch was the New Orleans jazz boom box we had playing loudly under the weeding gown as we paraded through the hotel. Mardi Gras beads and feathers completed the look. Hey, I think we had the best of the floats is the parade ;~) Unfortunately this is an instance where a photograph just doesn’t tell the entire story as our float looked much better in real life – too bad I don’t have a video to show you.

Just to add to the fun, many of the instructors and students dressed the Mardi Gras theme for the party too.  That’s me with my buddies King Ralph Romaguera and Hanson Fong. Just all in good fun.

Today it’s back to class with a full day of on location shooting. So let’s get on with today’s Technique Tuesday before I run out of time.

Magical B&W Image Enhancements

There are many ways to convert an image to B&W and there are any number of tutorials on the subject.  Regardless of all the different ways one could use to obtain a good B&W image, my method is super simple and always gave me the exact result I wanted.

With the introduction of Lightroom a few years ago, B&W conversions could be handled even more easily and manipulated to your heart’s content by sliding a few color channel sliders around in the B&W panel in Lightroom.  I even did a cool tutorial on the subject right here in my post “Ansel Adams In A Box” several months ago.  After jumping to this previous link, scroll down a bit to watch the video tutorial.

When it comes to “people photography”  and that includes wedding photography, I rarely use those color sliders in the B&W panel of LR3. Instead, I prefer a different set of slider controls.  I keep it really simple and love the results I achieve.  Sometimes I like a soft ethereal result and other times I like a straight B&W image.  In this tutorial I’ll walk you through my simple steps and show you how to get some great results with your wedding images.

B&W images should be part of every wedding.  A B&W image lets you focus directly on the action and the subjects without being distracted by a multitude of colors in the scene.  With B&W images we get to enjoy the simplicity of the image itself. 

Not all images are enhanced as B&W images.  I like to say, “That when you convert an image to a B&W image, it either “sings” or it doesn’t “sing” at all – there seems to be no in-between.”  Why not hit the PLAY button below and see what I’m talking about. Enjoy!

______________________________________________________

Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  It’s a super busy day with my class on location all day.  I hope to have a few cool images for you from today’s shoot so be sure to check back tomorrow and let’s see what I come up with.

Yes, there is another BIG school wide party again this evening.  It’s a concert in a park with a live band rocking and rolling to after midnight. It should be another great night of fun with over 1000 students and instructors in attendance.  Whew, three more days of this – I hope I survive!! ;~)

See ya’ tomorrow,  -David

"A Room With A View"

"A Room With A View"
©David A. Ziser

The views in Banff from almost any direction are simply spectacular.  This is another image taken from our hotel room.  The time was later in the afternoon and the sun was just kissing the top of the mountains in the distance with the clouds just beginning to move in.  The combination created an “Ansel Adams” moment.

Compositionally I wanted the viewer’s eye to be led into the scene with the darker mountain in the foreground on the left.  The two pines on the right offered another compositional focal point against my main point of interest, the brightly lit mountains in the distance.

I took the image into Lightroom 3, changed it to B&W and then tweaked the color channels to adjust the grey tones to my liking.  I darkened the sky by sliding the blue channel to the left and lightened the foliage a bit by dragging the yellow and green sliders to the right. Ansel would have used filters and processing back in his day.  I just used the electronic versions instead. A few more tweaks with clarity and contrast finished the composition.

Camera specs: Canon 18-200mm IS lens at 40mm, F10 @ 1/320 second, ISO 400.  Enjoy!  -David

"Snow Falling On Cedars"

"Snow Falling On Cedars"
©David A. Ziser

I captured this image the first day we arrived in Banff.  The entire area was still covered with snow that should have been long gone weeks ago.  It turns out that the area has experienced the most snow in 50 years.  Even the skiers were saying, “Enough already.” 

Anyway, to this Mid-Westerner, the view was extraordinarily breathtaking.  It was a long trip to Alberta and once here we had a few chores to complete.  It was about 7:00 p.m. Mountain time when we relaxed and took our first break.  We headed for the lounge for an adult beverage and dinner.

As we sat there, the snow began falling, slow at first and continued to pick up with large feather-like snowflakes softly falling. It was a beautiful winter scene and we had seats front and center in the restaurant’s second story.  I grabbed the camera and began shooting away.

I could have photographed the entire valley, but this close view of the evergreens in the foreground with the rhythms and textures of the snow covered evergreens in the  background was my favorite.

The eye seems to dance across the image but is still anchored in the scene by the two evergreens in the foreground.  Black or white or color, the scene still looks beautiful to me.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 180mm, F5.6 @ 1/160 second, ISO 500. Enjoy!  David

"Brothers"

"Brothers"
©David A. Ziser

I’m posting this image today because of a very nice phone call I received this morning. We have a local company coming to do a little Spring carpet cleaning. After I finished my conversation with Greg, the owner, he said that his secretary would like to talk with me.

She introduces herself as Pam and tells me I had photographed her two sons 7 years ago. I recognized her last name and we continued to visit for about five minutes. 

She mostly wanted to tell me how much she has enjoyed the photographs over all these years – one was a 30x40 B&W wall portrait which is the image posted above. She said people still compliment her on the image saying it looks like a painting.  As I recall, we did deliver it on stretched canvas which would have certainly given the image that look and feel.

It was great to visit with her again and hear that the boys are grown and she even has a wedding coming up soon. Congrats Pam!  These kind of phone calls are really the best reward for serving your clients well over the years.

The image was made in my studio with one large light – a studio strobe through a Westcott Halo.  I filled the shadows with a second strobe bounced off the ceiling.  This has been my basic studio set up for years.  The simple classical lighting setup really works well for these types of portraits – classic, elegant, timeless.

Camera specs: Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n 80-200mm lens at 82mm, F6.3 @ 1/90 second, ISO 160.  Enjoy!  -David

”Global Warming Fact or Myth?”

”Global Warming - Fact or Myth?”
©David A. Ziser

I made this image on our return from the Professional Photographers of Indiana this past weekend.  We were just making our approach to the I-275 ramp to cross the bridge into Kentucky.  In the distance I saw the Tanner’s Creek Generating Station doing what it does best – filling the skies with steam and who knows what else.

The water soaked atmosphere kept the plant’s exhaust close to the ground stretching across the landscape.  The backdrop of the thick rain clouds created a quite ominous scene.

I grabbed the camera and LaDawn grabbed the steering wheel, not in that order, and I captured a few shots.  A quick trip into Lightroom and Photoshop to modify the tonalities finished the result.

Want a little back story on the Tanner’s Creek Generating Station? This plant was ranked 67^th on the United States list of dirtiest power plants in terms of sulphur dioxide emissions per megawatt-hour of electrical energy produced in 2006. YUCK.

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm IS lens at 70mm, F11 @ 1/500 second, ISO 800.  Enjoy!  -David

p.s. Since I accidentally deleted the post, the comments unfortunately went with it.  I’ll see what I can do to find them.  -David