Hot rods and muscles cars and trucks! Oh, my!

Headed up to the Automotion car show in the Wisconsin Dells. It's really too bad I can't put a polarizer on my fisheye to help out with the reflections. Tried some motion pan shots also but wished I had a monopod to steady it a bit. I didn't want to lug my tripod around my shoulder and have to deal with it when I crouch down or lie down for shots all afternoon around the expensive paint jobs. Enjoy! Full slideshow.

Wireless point and shoot trigger?

The most important thing to not getting those flat deer in headlights type of pics with your point and shoot (PS) is to use off-camera lighting. I will not go into all the details as this is not a lighting class, you can find those online anywhere just do a search. I am going to talk about the setup I will be using and explain other setups in other posts. They will all do the same thing, allow your PS to communicate with an off-camera (OCF) or external flash. The setup I will be using is just the most convenient, efficient and failsafe. Since there is no hotshoe on the PS here is my Mod.

A: My modification uses an optical slave and a wireless (radio) trigger. By attaching the two together, it allows my on-camera flash to trigger the optical slave which in turn triggers the radio unit that triggers my off-camera flash (OCF) to go off. The OCF is placed somewhere, usually 45 degrees from the subject, to produce some dimensionality and not flat lighting as seen in the test shot below.

B: By placing the optical trigger as close as possible to the oncamera flash, I increase the reliability of the light trigger signal, which will help out immensely in outdoor day shots.

Normally, the optical slave is attached or built in to the external flash and can just be triggered by the onboard camera flash. So why not just use that? I will explain that in my most basic of setups and it can work in most common situations. However, as I stated earlier, this setup is the most failsafe and also will allow for some shooting that you can't do with the easy set up. This also allows me to dial down the onboard flash to it's lowest setting which will save on batteries and not affect the main picture by adding extra direct light.

Test shot: The image below was shot using the above setup. Tripod mounted Canon A570IS PS, self-portrait, on 10 second timer. Flash on lightstand camera right.

Hey, what kind of camera do you use?

That is the most common question I get. My favorite story involves a photographer sharing some of his pictures at a dinner party. The host says, "you must have such a great camera to get such wonderful pictures." He thanks her, smiles and replies, "you must have such great pots and pans to have made such a lovely dinner." So I'm starting a "look what you can do with a point and shoot" and a mediocre one at that series. The following posts will explain how to achieve pictures like this with a simple point and shoot. The picture above was a test shot self-portrait using a ten second timer. Later I will be using a model to show various lighting techniques to use with your point and shoot camera to get better pictures.

Toy Students ala tilt-shift

With all the buzz that my Miniature Madison Faux Tilt-Shift collection has gotten, naturally the next step is to try it with video as my K-7 has video functionality. Granted it's winter time and things may not be as conducive to the effect (I like the way trees look when miniaturized) and the set up for shooting wasn't what I wanted. I shot this from the upper deck of the Van Hise building on the UW-Madison Campus. When I got there, I had found that the unremoved snow had drifted waist high along the balcony wall I wanted to shoot from. And given the recent below zero temperatures we had, I was no way going to be able to shoot where I wanted. I found a spot by a planter that was knee to thigh-high and set up my tripod there. So here's my first attempt at a tilt-shift video shot during class break.

The Magnificent Trees Of Madison is a GO!

My personal passion project and perhaps the whole reason I got back into photography after a 10 year break from film, was to photograph the amazing landscapes and trees I have discovered after moving to Madison ten years ago. I was working as an arborist for UW-Madison and a conservation ranger for the city prior to that. I've discovered so many amazing settings that hardly anyone knew about. Summer of 2008, I bought a Pentax K200D DSLR. Why? I could use my old glass and it was weather sealed. My photographic journey began. My first collection, Madiscapes, was part of PhotoMidwest and showcased many of my favorite natural areas of Madison. Next, was my tree project. How can I capture the majestic nature of these amazing natural works of art. I shot and shot and well, was never pleased with my results. The green foliage blends into backgrounds so how do I separate my subject. How can you create depth of field shooting something that can be as tall as 100 feet? So I thought about different aspects as I honed my photography skills. What makes this tree interesting besides its massive girth or immense stature? I focused on flowering or branching patterns. Still not happy. As I started learning on the strobist site and working with off-camera flash, I thought why not use these techniques for trees. My first attempt was a large swamp white oak on the UW campus. A beautiful specimen. But attempt after attempt, my pictures failed to do it justice. Due to its location, nothing I did could serve it well. What can I do? Go at night and use lights to separate my subject from the building in the background. But I was just going to focus on the branching pattern so I needed to shoot this tree in its dormant state sans leaves.

After setting up one light camera right on the famous lower "U" limb of this tree, I decided I needed another light, camera left behind the limb to get the trunk and maybe some separation. As I've said before, setting up lights while get you noticed. Dozens of people asked what I was doing :) The first problem. Being night time, the building behind it had its lights on and was quite the distraction. By this time, I had purchased a Nikon D40 as a backup camera. Because of its unique electronic shutter, I had to use it and not my Pentax. My Pentax has a lousy 1/160 sync speed but the D40 has a 1/400 when using poverty wizards, which is all I had at the time. I dialed it up to 1/400 to kill the ambient, the opposite effect of my last post where I wanted to keep the background ambient, and was able to blackout most of the distracting lights behind it. The rest was eliminated in post. Not bad, for first time strobing, I'd say :)
The first picture on this post is of a magnolia tree taken springtime at UW-Madison arboretum's Longnecker garden. It's a magical place when the cherry trees, lilacs, and magnolias are blooming. Along with the fragrances, you feel like you are in a fairy tale. If you haven't gone, go this year. By now, I had bought a fisheye zoom for my Pentax. My focus now was on the flowers. I started shooting and of course, washed out skies. So I busted out a light on a stand and put it behind me as I was working in macro mode with my fisheye and max out the shutter speed to get some sky in the background. I had fun experimenting that day as well as many of the other photographers shooting out there which was as far as the eye could see :) Some came up to me and asked about my lighting setup and how they'd never thought to do something like that. I think it created quite the image :)
Today, I got word that my tree project was accepted for 2010 City of Madison ARTspace exhibit. I want this to be more than just a photo exhibit and am going to include stories about each tree whether historic or optimal time to view, location and create a little guide pamphlet so people can see these majestic wonders on their own and maybe even give them a hug as I have.

Shooting we we can and where we can't... Guerilla-style!

Where we can't: I've been dying to shoot at this one particular location. It is usually really crowded so had to do it during a down time. Anyone who has seen the One Light dvd knows that someone (security) is always there to ruin/end your shoot. And of course it happened to me. I was asked to leave. But I managed to get a bunch of shooting before that. I wanted to shoot a short instruction vid for my blog but when I got to the location, it was set up for an event. I had to shoot and I had to shoot fast. Not having a voice-activated lightstand, setting up lights will catch more attention. I needed to have a separation from subject and background as it would wash out the warm ambient background I wanted.
Some shots could work knowing the inverse square law and having distance for fallout but that's not always possible.


Shoot through umbrella, camera left. Not what I wanted.


Gridded snoot, camera right. What I wanted :) But you have to watch the harsh shadow it will leave cast on the wall. So you have to plan for cropping it out or shooting it out of frame.

We went and shot at some other places in the building for variety. Couldn't have lightstands so I used my Cybersync Mod to get some off-camera lighting. Shooting with the right hand and lighting with your left doesn't allow you to have the softest lighting but with my foamie diffuser, allows for some great Guerilla-style shooting.

Where we can:


I had back to back shoots planned at the location above. Since I was asked to leave had to go somewhere that would work with a vintage wedding dress. Being a Sunday afternoon around 3, we dashed off to the Capitol building as they allow shooting. Closing at 4, we had little time to get ready/dressed. And even less time to shoot, under 20 minutes. I was working with a wardrobe/stylist so she had to step in as a voice-activated lightstand. I used a portable 15x15" softbox as I wanted to minimize spill and have controlled lighting as opposed to an umbrella. Is it the ideal choice, no. But most of my shooting is done without assistants and on location so I need portability and ease of use. I can put this on a lightstand, hold it myself, or in this case, have someone else hold it.

Pentax K-7 Video

Got my new Pentax K-7 yesterday. I got the camera since I shoot in manual and need the controls on the exterior. Didn't think much about the video functionality until a friend of mine recently asked me about it and I honestly don't know much about it. He told me it was a huge trend that more filmmakers, assuming amateurs, are making the switch to DSLRs that shoot HD video. After some quick research, I found they are supposed to be great in low light and you can shoot through all sort of great lenses. So I have a fisheye that would be fun to shoot with but what else? It's way to cold out to be screwing around so for my first vid shoot I wanted something I could do around the house. Anyone who knows me knows that sunsets are my thing. Now how to translate that to video and use a unique lens. Lightbulb! Shoot some ice on my window with my macro lens with a sunset in the back. As I experimented for the first time with the camera, I noticed some changes and went in a different direction. As I waited, the ice started to melt from opening the inside window. I then focused on the melting ice and saw this cool close up version of what happens when ice melts. As water droplets formed and separated, the top part of it would refract the sunset light behind it and turn a golden color. It was way cool. So I added some music to accompany it and now there is a story. This is a raw video file, not cgi, of ice melting using my 70-300 macro lens. Time hasn't been changed, colors haven't been added. It has only been rotated since shot in portrait mode. Volume is low so may have to turn it up.


As the winter ice melts the journey to spring commences. Each change of state from ice to water is brought upon from the warming sun. Its energy is captured and transferred. With every melting drop formed, we are one day closer. Sunset after sunset go by, drop after drop until the ice is no more. Like sand falling from an hour glass until it's final destination. The end of winter.