Testing a new service....

    So apparently while I was down recovering from (successful) wrist surgery, twitterfeed decided not to exist anymore. I was using their service to automatically share my blog posts to my various social media accounts.
    They were polite enough to send a heads up email prior to shutting down with some alternative suggestions, but I wasn't able to deal with setting up a new service until I could type easily with both hands again, so this post is basically to test out the functionality of dlvr.it, the replacement I am trying first.....
    More real posts coming shortly, but I have a lot of catching up to do from a month of being one armed.

Yoga Calendar Shoot BTS and a basic blowout white high key tutorial

Don't worry daddy, I have the instructions.....

    Last year I did a quick shoot for a calendar for a local yoga studio (full disclosure, it just happens to be the studio my wife teaches at). It was a spur of the moment plan, we kept it simple, and it came out good. This year, we planned a little earlier for a little more formal shoot. Last year, although the shots were fine, the designer decided the studio background was too plain to use for every month so she cut the yogis out and put them on different backgrounds for different months. This year, to make her life easier, we decided to shoot blowout white, which is something I knew how to do in theory, but have never had an occasion to try in practice, but I love a challenge so I said, "sure, I can do that." Continuing that spirit, this will be a new frontier for me in blog posts, I am going to try and actually diagram my set up for you and talk you through the process so maybe you can learn from my mistakes and my successes. All the images in this post will be straight out of camera shots, I will link to the final result at the end, but you get to see the process here. 

Like this... see...

    Ok. Guess first thing I will do is list the gear I used:

              Back drop: Ravelli backdrop kit, obviously the white muslin. This is a decent kit, I have had it for three years, but I only use it occasionally. One of the stands has a busted lock knob, so when I have to go full height I need to lock it off with a super clamp. 

              Lighting- to light the backdrop I used two Phottix Mitros Plus speedlights with barn door attachments. 

              Main light was a wescott 43in apollo orb,  powered by my Nikon SB910 and SB700. 

              Lights were all controlled by my Phottix Odin system. 

              Shots were done with my Nikon D800 and 24-70/f2.8. 

    That's the gear, so while my models got ready...

don't mind me, just checking my twitter feed... it's cool....

  I came up with this setup:

 Two Mitros lights with barn doors illuminated the backdrop, if you can't tell from from the diagram, they were focused across each other, so light on camera left hit the camera right side of the backdrop and vice versa. Barn doors were used to keep the background lights from washing out the model since I didn't have a lot of depth to work with before I ran out of backdrop. I only had two more speedlights, and I wanted nice even light on the models, so I put them both in the giant soft box, dead center and pretty much sat/layed on the floor underneath the softbox to shoot. I did climb up on a ladder to shoot down for a few of the final shots but I didn't change anything on the setup other than my position. Thankfully, I had a good model to test light levels with. 

   The backdrop wasn't ironed at all, it was completely wrinkled, can you see the difference between where the lights were hitting and where they weren't? Setting wise, I wanted to keep at base ISO of 100, for best image quality on the D800, wound up with the backdrop lights firing at full power and the main light at around 1/2 -2/3 power, 1/200 shutter speed at f/4. Of course, once I got all the lights set and ready, turned out half the models had to leave early so we needed to shoot a couple of group shots first, so I just carried the soft box into the other room and used it. The group shots were difficult to set up, luckily, everyone helped....

  Then it was back to the main room and time to get serious. Luckily, in addition to the models we had a killer assist team to help get everyone into good positions. 

 Now just try not to land on your face when I let go.....

Don't make me kick harder... I'll do it.... 

No, that's my boob, not my banda.....

 Just breath and relax.....

seriously, relax or I will pull your hair out.....

  Thanks to all the technical advisors and pose adjusters who helped out the already amazing yoga models, we got some awesome shots throughout the day. 

 yeah. straight out of camera, some models make it easy

and my wife, did I mention she is a beautiful and badass yogi? even thought this is her, "this is hard, how long do you need to click a damn button..... you will pay for this...." face. 

   We even decided there was time at the end to get some family yoga shots in, both of our kids wanted to help. Our daughter, as it turns out, is a great coach....

 breathe through your nose mommy... right here....

 Help, I think we broke mommy.....

No, she's ok, if I push here her smile pops up...

  Our son decided to come in for the finale to show off his matching headstand with mommy...

  All in all it was a great day. Lots of awesome shots and some fun family time worked in as well. Over all the blowout white worked. If I would have had more lighting gear, or if I had been willing to up my ISO, I would have been able to blow out the rest of the wall that my backdrop didn't cover, but except for some of the wider stretches (like the hanumanasana with the really looooooong yogi model) I was able to crop down in post so it didn't matter. In a perfect world I would have had time to pick up a while plexi board to put under the mat, which would have blown out and been flat, but it was pretty easy to brush the wrinkles out of the floor in the foreground in post. Overall it was pretty successful and I was very happy with the results, and the models and studio seem to like them as well. 

    You can see the final images on my web site here, and let me know what you think. Anyway, having a cyst removed from my right wrist in two days, and I am right handed, so not sure when I will get a camera back in my hand or be able to type easily again, it's at least a two week recovery period, so hope you will miss me while I am gone :)

Naked women, waterfalls and more.... thank god Nikon makes some tough gear.

    So, turns out I am once again very delinquent with my blogging. Silly life, always getting in the way of my internet time. But I finally have a little down time to catch up on things, so here's the cliff notes version of what I have been up to:

    I have done a few yoga shoots on my property,

   getting used to setting up and shooting here at various spots and times of the day.

   It turns out I really prefer to have my wife around for these shoots, since she is really good at adjusting my models and helping them into the poses.

    It doesn't hurt that she's a pretty badass advanced yogi herself.

 She is usually too shy to let me shoot her

 So I have to ask her to "help me check my lights...."

    I have also been doing a lot of traveling for work. When I travel I always try to meet up with someone local and get a shoot in, and use the rest of the time to try and get caught up on editing. When I went through Dallas, Tx a while back now, I actually met up with a model I shot once even farther back in time when I was still in San Diego.

   
    Turns out that in addition to being a model, she's also an amazingly creative photographer with her own studio space. We wound up having so much fun bouncing ideas off of each other that we shot for two nights instead of one, had a blast and got some great images. It's awesome working with someone who can see my ideas and not only make them work, but come up with inspired ways to take the vision further.

    If you ever get a chance to visit the House of Xtine in Dallas, you should do it. She rocks on either side of the camera!

   Next big trip was Miami, where I had the pleasure of doing a sunset shoot on the beach

   
See, I do sometimes take pictures of beautiful models in their clothes.....

  Eh, who am I kidding, I know what you are all here to see.... since you read this far, here you go...

    as well as a classic boudoir shoot indoors.

  Aside here- on any model photography forum there will be discussion about models who bring escorts with them.

    Most photographers seem to hate it, but I prefer it for several reasons. 1- my wife understandably prefers that I not be alone in a room with a beautiful naked woman that isn't her. 2- the model is more comfortable, which means better shots. 3- last but not least in exchange for a beer or glass of wine I get a free assistant. "Hey- can you move that light over there... help me move this furniture out of the way.... help her climb up onto this shelf and stand under her just in case it breaks....."

    Had some fun and got some great shots. I have decided that working with beautiful, talented models is both a blessing and a curse.

    It's awesome because they make it easy to get great images. It's bad because when your model is perfect and the images aren't, you have no one to blame but yourself. Sometimes you look at shots and think, "damn, how did I make sure a pretty woman look so bad." Out of blatant self interest, I refuse to put up any examples of this happening, sorry.

    Thankfully these ladies were able to look amazing despite my best efforts to screw up the shots :)

   Which brings us to my last trip, Hawaii. Back to Oahu. Did some shooting on the beach last time I was there, wanted something different, so found a good waterfall on line and found a model.

    All the web sites mentioned that it was a slick, treacherous and muddy hike under normal conditions and outright dangerous in bad weather, so of course it rained the whole time I was there. It actually was storming the morning before we were supposed to shoot. I was having second thoughts, I tend to avoid putting my models in dangerous scenarios because I like them and would rather not have them get hurt.

    I mentioned my concerns, but she said, "what the hell, it'll be fun, let's do it." Well, the rain stopped as we were pulling into the trailhead and parking. Turns out for once the internet was absolutely, one hundred percent correct, both in the directions to the falls and the muddy "fun" that was the hike there and back.

   I wish I had lots of pictures of the hike in and out, and some behind the scenes shots, but I left my D800 in the bag when I wasn't shooting because I needed my hands free on the trail, and by the time we got there and set up it was getting late, and I really didn't want to try the hike down in the dark, so I concentrated on the important shots. We did stop right at the end of the trailhead on the way back for a last shot by this awesome water tank covered with graffiti. Note to self- always keep a flashlight in your camera bag. This was hard to set up, focus and shoot in pitch dark.
   

   Anyway, first I had a light stand slip and my SB910 took a quick bath, but it recovered nicely and kept shooting. Then, as I moved to get a good angle for a shot, I took a quick bath when a rock shifted under the water and I wound up getting almost completely submerged. I managed to keep my D800 with the 24-70/2.8 attached above the water by slamming it into a rock on the way down and catching myself with the camera. It didn't miss a beat and kept shooting. Actually, in the final analysis, it managed better than me, because a few minutes later I noticed my foot was hurting a bit, so I looked down and found I was leaving a trail of blood in the stream from ripping a toenail off. Nothing I could do about it, and the cold water numbed it up pretty quickly, as long a I don't get leptospirosis from the water no harm no foul. At least I saved the camera, since we had just started shooting. Bottom line is that Nikons, at least their pro gear, can take a beating and keep going. Not sure my old D3200 could have survived as well verses the rock.

   I have to give another shout out to a highly underrated piece of gear that really came through and was vital to this shoot, my Manfrotto Super Clamps. You don't hear much about these things, but when you need them, nothing else will do. Even when you have other potential options, these damn things just work. Never realized how handy they would be when I grabbed a couple, now they are almost all I travel with. They are small and easily packable, and let you attach a speed light to damn near anything. For this waterfall shoot, I literally attached my speedlights to tree branches and vines. Yes, I hung speedlights from VINES! The rushing waterfall would have knocked over any light stand I could have carried up the muddy trail to the site, but these just clamped right on and went to work. Couldn't have pulled it off without them. I love these things, if you don't have any yet, get some now!

   So yeah. That's been the short version of what I have been up to lately, not including setting up a flying trapeze rig in my backyard and working on building a local circus community center at my place and realizing how soon I will be retiring from the Navy. That's kinda been freaking me out, I have to put in some serious time updating my portfolio, web site and business plan so I can see how much income I can potentially pull in from photography when I have more time to devote to it. I'd love to be able to get by with my retirement income plus shooting and working trapeze. Not sure if it'll be enough though, but I won't know if I don't go for it. So time to get cracking. If you feel like heading over to my web site, checking it out, and leaving some feedback, all constructive criticism welcomed :)

    Thanks for reading, and with that I leave you with:

 The End!

Gear Review: Olympus Stylus Tough Cameras

    I wasn't going to post a review of my Olympus Stylus Tough TG8000 camera. I figured it was a 7 year old camera and there wasn't much of a point to it. But this past week changed my mind, thanks to a family vacation to Costa Rica.

   Prior to purchasing my X-T1 the 8000 was my daily carry camera. It fit easily and perfectly into a Timbuk2 accessory case that I could attach either to my belt or to the strap of my shoulder bag. I originally purchased it back before my return to the world of DSLRs to use at circus workshops and classes to record moves. I saw several rock climbers and aerialists using different models of the Stylus Tough when I attended the Aerial Dance Festival in Boulder Colorado back in 2009, so I picked one up before I went again in 2010.  I figured if the camera survived rock climbing, it would survive my life. It served me well for several years as my main camera. I went to the ADF, it went with me to capture my first two trips to Burning Man, and was still my walk around camera when I didn't feel like carrying the full size DSLRs around with me. But once I got the fuji it pretty much sat on my desk.

Then I started packing for Costa Rica. I figured I would be spending a good amount of time in the water, since our resort was right on the beach and had a swim up bar and multiple pools. I also figured we'd be doing some zip lining and canopy tours. So I pulled out the 8000. I did notice the original battery wasn't holding a charge so long anymore, probably because it wasn't getting used regularly, so I picked up a couple replacements and a travel charger from Wasabi Power. (on a side note, if you ever need replacement batteries for a digital anything, check with Wasabi Power first. I have used their batteries now for both the 8000 and the fuji, and in both the WP replacements are as good as, if not better than, the OEM at substantially less cost) And off we went.

For the record, all the shots in this post are straight out of camera JPGs, only change I made was downsized them a bit for faster loading. As you can see, even though it's a 7 year old 12mp camera, it can take some darn good shots. All of these were also in full auto on the basic mode. Good little camera to have in your pocket.

 At night, even with the built in flash, there is a lot of visible grain, but heck, this isn't art, it's my kid leaping to attack a turtle with a balloon sword because he is a Ninja Turtle fan. It's not going to wind up in a gallery, but it captured the moment just fine.

  In the daylight it's plenty quick enough to capture action shots. Coming back from my high end nikons and even the fuji, I did have to relearn how to anticipate, because there is a significant shutter lag on this camera. On a moving subject like this, it was sometimes around a half second lag time while focusing, but it did get the shot in focus even if it took forever compared to the big guns. Not sure if many compact P&S cameras would have less lag time or not.

Great color and contrast on daytime landscapes, decent dynamic range for a P&S.

  Finally, did I mention it's waterproof? 10M/30ft for the 8000. This is my favorite feature of this camera. My big bodies are all weather sealed, but this one I can leave in my shorts pocket and just jump into the pool or ocean with no worries. (other than the fact that is does sink like a rock unless you all a floaty strap of some sort)

   So, after getting several hundred great vacation shots with this camera (I won't bore you with any more, if you want more you can find me on FB, where the deluge will come) I decided it was worth a review. Even though this particular model is closing in on a decade, the line has continued on with some major upgrades. I would buy a newer model, but this one won't die so there is no real justification. The current pinnacle of the still line is the Stylus Tough TG4. In addition to extending the waterproof depth to 50ft, this new model ads raw capture, HDR and all sorts of accessories like telephoto and wide angle lens adapters, and even a small ring flash. The newest kid on the block is the Tracker, which is an action video camera version of the Tough series. 

  So, in short, if you are looking for a rugged action camera, you definitely need to check out and consider the Olympus Tough series. If the seven year old model can keep up as well as mine does, pretty sure the new ones will rock your world and serve you well for years to come.

ps- in case anyone is interested, we stayed at the Riu Guanacaste all inclusive resort. It was awesome and also highly recommended.