Time is the most valuable asset you have.

Slightly shorter post. I was messing around with a polarized lens filter (mainly because I made a mistake and ordered a polarized lens filter as opposed to an ND filter). We were at Kinder Farm Park for these and yes, my youngest niece did do her own lipstick, how could you tell?

Anyway, I wanted to touch on editing in photoshop. It is always an option and is a very versatile tool. For example, I edited out some sun flare on a few of these photos. But there are two catches to this:

1) Photoshop is only as useful as you know how to use it and know how to do so effectively (and there is always more to know about it).

2) It takes time to do photoshop edits.

I think that’s something a lot of photographers or even small businesspeople in general or even just regular people forget: time is the most valuable asset and the easiest squandered asset you will ever have. You can invest money in something and get back more money in return, you can’t invest time in something and get back more time in return. So photoshop edits need to be balanced within reason.

Or better yet, try to get the photo done well enough so you don’t need to do much in photoshop at all.

Dog Birthday Party

I took these photos back in July when I was still relatively early in my recovery from surgery, but it was the dog’s birthday and the photos needed to be made.

When working with dogs for a dog birthday party: you will need help. I had an assistant to help get looks and the toddler on set also unintentionally helped get attention. When working with dogs in this sort of scene try and treat it like a toddler session and just sort of let things happen. However, if the dogs know basic sit and stay commands you can throw in some anticipation shots. Finally, do not forget the treat eating shot. Some dogs eat the cake piece by piece while this birthday boy ate it all in one chunk (followed by confusion of an empty plate).

Two other things – make sure you make a dog friendly cake. No photo session is worth poisoning your dog over. Second, and as always, be nice to your dog and keep the photoshoot friendly and fun. Your dogs are doing their best to make you happy and they have no idea what you are trying to do so do not get frustrated with them.

#petphotography #dogbirthdayparty #annearundelphotographer #marylandphotographer

Toddlers, Cloudy Days, and Flowers.

As always, when working with toddlers, if they aren’t in a smiling mood and all your tricks aren’t working then just go with whatever mood they are in. Besides, toddlers don’t just come in “silly and funny” personality type, they can be moody and they can be serious and other personalities as well – the trick is to not make them cardboard cutouts by forcing a look they just aren’t into at the moment.

Anyway, these photos were taken on a cloudy day and something I will repeat every time I write about cloudy day photography is that the sun acts as a giant softbox and disperses the light evenly. This tends to mute colors and make for great black and white photos, that doesn’t mean you have to write off color photos. Since you know the colors are likely to appear muted, just have your subjects dress in bright solid colors. This will help the eye go straight to the subject you are photographing. If you throw in some leading lines, you can have even more eye direction going on and ensure your subject is the center of attention in your photography work.

Finally, she is holding a flower we found out in the woods – always make sure you look up what plants are out there. Not every flower is safe to touch and some carry toxins that may require handwashing or outright avoidance. You have a phone, look things up. No photograph is worth dying for.

Time to get back to work.

Sorry about that break, I had kidney cancer I had to get sorted out. After getting a kidney removed, it’s all good now and it’s time to get back to work. I plan to make a video talking about that a bit more – just need to find my mic or order a new one.

In the meantime, here we are again at a public park, Fort Smallwood to be exact. I wanted to do a few shots during golden hour on the pier, but it was full of fishermen. Can’t blame them as it was a nice sunny day. As I always say, photography is about being flexible, so we worked around it. The other catch is that half the park, the beach half, is closed for restorations until 2022.

So, we walked around the grassy area and did what we could, which was actually quite a bit. In any given location there is a plenty to work with, you just have to be willing to look around, find it, and be open to it.

Anyway, the great thing about golden hour is that it gives you a lot of options. Just want a background covered with golden light, find some shade with a sunny background. Want a nice glowy haze around your subject? Get that sun in the shot a little. Or you can just have your subject get in the direction of the sun to get a golden glow on them. Just be sure to have them look down or away from the sun a bit to avoid sun squint.

The point is, during golden hour the sun gives you a lot of options to try for, you just have to take the time to understand how the sun’s location will affect how your subject appears. Experimentation is the best way to get a good grasp on this in my opinion.

More bubbles!

This was going to be a post about practicing running jump photos to prep for a set of dance photo sessions I have coming up, but a certain toddler got in the way – literally. So, we rolled it into another evening photo session with bubbles. When working with toddlers, I suggest giving them something to do. In this case I had a bubble machine. I mean a legit professional grade bubble machine that fires out hundreds of bubbles a minute. They are cheaper than you would think.

Anyway, I got her running and jumping through the bubbles and she was having a blast. It is during this time I got some pretty good candid shots of her. And that’s the same lesson I am going to keep repeating over and over and over again – we humans look great doing things, and we look happy doing fun things so have your subject do both.

Thankfully, events like a party or a wedding there tend to be planned activities so this part is already covered you just have to figure out where you can and can’t be. When I am working with a toddler with bubble machine, I can be pretty much anywhere I want. When I am photographing a birthday party, I will get a lot of frowns if I get right up in the face of the birthday person when they are about to blow out the candles on their cake.

Short quick post.

I am going to keep this post smaller as I have had a surprisingly large amount of work lately, that’s good, but I don’t like neglecting my posts.

A reoccurring theme lately is people asking me for out of focus photos were one subject, be it an item or a person, is in focus and the background is out of focus or blurry. Photographers refer to the quality of that blurriness as “bokeh.” So, you can have good blurriness or good bokeh or bad blurriness or bad bokeh. Generally, you know good bokeh when you see it. The only way you can get bokeh legitimately, be it good or bad, is by using a DSLR or mirrorless camera. Camera phones can fake it by simulating it through software, but they cannot do real bokeh. Honestly, though, unless you are a photographer you probably are not going to notice.

One quick aside, good luck hammering down how to pronounce “bokeh,” as it is Japanese and even the Japanese pronounce it differently depending on what region you are in: but for the record I pronounce it “bo-kaa.”

Anyway, this photo was done outside with just the sunlight. We obviously had the bubble machine going and I was doing something else at the time, but I’ll try and post that on Thursday. However, this moment was candid. My subject was just sitting down to think a second while her little sister was having a blast in the background. Meanwhile the sun was great and the weather perfect.

Know the location, know the location, know the location!

Busy, busy, busy. That’s good but I hate not having time to post to our business blog.

Anyway, here is a quick one we did the other week at Lake Waterford Park. I am just going to keep singing this same tune, but it is worth repeating – if possible then make sure you know the area. I am familiar with Lake Waterford. I’ve walked all the back paths here, so I have a pretty good layout of the area. Knowing where potential photo session areas are and being able to match those areas with your subject saves time and saved time makes for better photos.

In this case, I knew I had to do two things:

1)      Take the toddler over somewhere she would be fascinated by the surroundings. Easy enough since I know about the back path along the lake.

2)      Do this without having the toddler see the giant playground nearby. She’s a toddler, as soon as she sees a big playground, she will want to play on it and if that happens you either have to say “no” and have an angry/crying toddler, or say “yes” and good luck doing a photo session on a crowded playground.

Knowing the area not only helps in identifying good photo spots but also spots you might need to avoid. It also keeps you confident and confidence is important as there is already any number of unknowns that come up in a photo session and knowing the location helps reduce those unknowns.

These photos were done with just a camera and the sun.

Think about what makes you happy.

Oh man, when things pick up, they pick up all the way lately.  Anyway, I spent the weekend photographing some school musicals and I can’t really share those photos here then I followed it up by doing an actress headshot session which aren’t done cooking yet. Here are a few photos I did a while back.

Do not be afraid to try and get a range of emotions. Sometimes you will be stuck with serious, and serious is fine if you make that seriousness look sharp. However, a real laugh will always be before a real smile. Toddlers tend to be easier to get to laugh so I tell older subjects to try and think of things that make them happy in preparation for the session. If that falls through, then we go for serious or sad and work from there. Sometimes you just need to let the subject see that yes, they do look awesome, before they can relax and start to get a real smile.

Anyways, I got more processing to do and planning. I may have a major session to share soon but I’m finding it’s a more complicated photo session then I first thought so we will see.

#Marylandphotographer #annearundelphotographer #familyphotographer

Maternity Photos

We did a maternity photo session at Fort Smallwood Park the other day. I am very thankful for all the amazing parks in Anne Arundel county. I could have easily done this photo session at any of the parks in Anne Arundel county and ended up with good scenery. Though I do tend to rely on Fort Smallwood and Quiet Waters because I know with 100% certainty, I can get three of four different backgrounds just a short a bit apart.

The trick to doing any session is to try and understand what positive feelings are going on going into the session. For maternity sessions it is usually joy, pride, and a sense that things are about to change for the mother to be in a big way. So, you just tap into those emotions and the directions tend to be very easy as the poses tend to just bubble up. The only catch is to plan ahead of time as there is a time limit to do these photos. Furthermore, you want to keep the session or sessions short as you subject will likely be just a few weeks away from her due date meaning they tire easily.

As always, take a field trip to your local parks and look around. Parks are great places to do photo sessions and I use them often, but you do not want to find the best spots when you go to do the session. If you can go ahead of time and scout around, you will speed things up, improve your photography since you are familiar with the area, and have back up locations.

One other thing, I get permission before I throw up photos like these and only after the client gets the photos first and has time to take them in. I don’t recommend doing it any other way.  

Water spray fun.

I got an awesome post coming up, but the photos for that update need more processing time and the client’s “okay” (which I am reasonably confident I will get, but I still want to get it first and let the client have the photos first too – there is a process after all).

Anyway, here some photos of a toddler with a water sprayer. If you need to put a smile a kid’s face, give them a water sprayer. Just have a good warranty or insurance on your camera and lenses just in case.  That’s a long boring post for another day.

Getting back to the photos, here the toddler is not only spraying water but also jumping on a trampoline. That means I needed shutter speed to be fast (1/500) which means I needed to adjust in F stop and ISO. It is a giant trade off but if you understand how shutter speed, F stop, and ISO work and how they work together, you can figure out what adjustments you are willing to make in the amounts you are willing to make them. This means you will need to get away from auto settings and work with more manual settings but that will only improve the quality of your work in the long run.

No extra lighting here, just the sun and a lot of worry my camera was going to get water on it.

Tell a story.

Stories can be told with your photos, just understand this is not like writing a book. Most of the time you will have limited control over how the story plays out in front of your camera. At best you might be able to get it started or add some randomness but beyond that what happens is out of your control – you are just along to photograph the ride. Here, I had my subject sit in a chair for about a minute, waiting. I was ready to start as soon as she sat down but I wanted her surprise and then reaction, so I waited about a minute pretending to fiddle with my camera and then when she gave that bored look, I hit the remote button for the bubble machine to start.  At that point, the story played out on its own and I just photographed the result.

Stories do not have to be complicated. They should have feeling though. Emotions are a wonderful thing and sharing them is something we love to do. When people share a photo on social media of themselves at an event or someplace special, they are not just showing you they are there, they are showing how they feel about being there.  That is what I recommend people aim for in the stories they tell with their photos because that is how people will connect with the stories they tell with their photos.

That and, photography aside, if you ever think you are going to deal with toddlers buy a bubble machine that plugs into the wall and has a remote.

What to do with eyes during a group session.

Another busy period for me but I’ll give what I think is a decent tip from group photos:

Don’t worry if every eye is looking at the camera. Sure, it helps but it isn’t always what you want. Sometimes if just one subject is looking at the camera and every other set of eyes is looking wherever it makes for a more intriguing photo. Even then, it is pretty easy to decide what you’d like those other eyes to be doing. If you want one subject to be the focus, have all eyes on that subject. If you want the person viewing your photos to look all around, then have those extra eyes looking wherever they want.

Or, if you have one set of eyes that is on a toddler and those eyes just won’t look at the camera despite all your tricks, then just go with that.  But don’t sit there stressing out that you can’t get every single eye looking at the camera. Photography sessions are about working around your frustrations to make your subjects look awesome, not transferring frustrations to your subjects and making them miserable.

Anyway, these were done without any extra lighting aside from the sun during golden hour. Use golden hour, it is awesome!

More Self-Portraits

I was working on some self-portraits. Well, that is not entirely true, I was working on trying to get some shadows PERFECT and it was going perfectly wrong, so this turned into some self portraits just to see what the light looked like. You tell I was frustrated because I took my hat off. Anyway, I think I got an idea of what I was doing wrong and can’t wait to try the actual project again.

That stated, I’ve come to enjoy working on self-portraits. Aside from all the other stuff I’ve posted about the benefits of doing them such gaining a better empathy with your subjects and getting a better idea as to how to explain things, it also feels good to just put all your photography skill towards yourself. It’s testing what skills you have against yourself and fail or succeed the only person you have to blame is yourself.

Not to mention that most photographers prefer to be behind the camera, and this is also true for myself. However, it is a good confidence booster knowing I can take good photos of myself. Do not get me wrong, I’m no model but I do have some photos of myself that look sharp and that I am happy with.

And if I can get my photos to make me feel happy then I can do that for others.

These photos were done with a single light, no modifier. A black backdrop and a fold up table with a black sheet on it. So Low key lighting. Sitting down changes the way the posing worked some allowing me to get into positions comfortably that might be uncomfortable standing. Plus, I am 6 feet 2 inches tall, so standing poses are a pain to process. I usually have tall people sit down when a backdrop is involved and that is generally why most of my pictures, when I post them, are of me sitting.

Golden hour light is great!

The weather is getting nicer. I’ve been trying to work on something for a while now, but the weather or sudden projects or the pandemic kept messing that up, but I think I can start fitting that special project in now. Stay tuned.  

Anyway, more sunny day photos. If you get out there during golden hour you can exploit that sun any number of ways. You can either use it to get some good lighting, some good highlights, or you can even paint your picture with sun rays. But you have to be out there during golden hour so either in the morning or in the evening.

To find out when golden hour is, just type in golden hour today in your web search bar or get any number of free apps that will tell you.

Rim lighting is awesome.

Not much to say for these except I really enjoy rim lighting. If you position it carefully you can still bounce it and get the bounce effect as well. This can range to doubling it off as fill lighting to lighting another aspect of your photo and everything in between if you are patient enough. Also do not forget about leading lines. I love brick walls, fences, and stairwell rails as all three are easy to find and all three can be used as a leading line in shot composition. But leading lines are not limited to that, of course, trees, vines, and lots of other things can act as a leading line.

That is a naked strobe bulb back there, no modifier or any thing like that. Just a single strobe acting as a rim light and bouncing to act as fill light and to bring out some of the leading lines. Also, I might add that our heads, aside from showing our awesome faces, are great for hiding strobes, yes even toddler heads can do that effectively.

Gel practice.

More light practice, this time with gels.

In a previous post I mentioned that white backgrounds can look grey depending on how much light you hit it with. Well, you can also hit it with a various gel colors to change its hue. Granted, you will need to control the light for spill or add other gels for the light to spill on to. Here I wanted the two different gel colors to spill over. To be clear, even if you do not use gels you need to control the light as it does impact your background.

Also, as a reminder, if you take a photo with gels and turn it to grayscale you defeat the purpose of using the gels in the first place. Sometimes it works, but even then, you are ignoring the time it took you to set that up.

Here I had a three-light set up. Two speed-lights with gels – one for the background and one as a fill light on the face of the subject. The key light was a strobe with a soft-box with a grid attached to control the light. As always, keep it fun when working with toddlers and keep in mind you are dancing to their tune. Learn to guide indirectly and you will get what you need.

More Light Work

Here is some more studio work. I am still testing my new lens and wanted to see how it could work with just one light. I think the results speak for themselves.

I will not bore you with my lens test notes but do note my assistant’s eyes. Namely, the rectangle of light there. That is the shape of the softbox. Just something to consider if you decide to get one as it will impact that light shape in the eyes. The other thing to keep in mind is that most people do not look at their photos that closely but if you have access to various types of light modifiers then it does turn into an artistic choice.

The other thing I would mention is that white backdrops start to look grey the less light reaches them. This is another reason why enjoy using white backdrops because you are getting at least two colors in one with them.

Light Sync

Here are more daytime pictures. I was planning to showcase some studio work we did but at the time of writing this the weather says it supposed to rain the day I post this and I wanted to add a little daylight to a rainy day.

Anyway, these photos were supposed to be in the same vein as the other day’s post – complimenting daylight with artificial light. In this case, it would be with a strobe as opposed to the speedlight I used for the other photos. Except you are not going to see any of the artificial light I added for this set because in a big brain move I forgot about light sync.

You see, if you set your shutter speed lower than about 1/250th (depends on the camera and brand) and use a flash, it will be out of sync with your shutter speed. At around 1/250th of a shutter speed you start to get a black band across your screen in studio. Even lower shutter speeds will just give you a black screen. Now if you take this outside and do this then your artificial light might as well not be there at all. The sun will still do its job, but you are essentially wasting your time carrying around a strobe or speedlight on a tripod.

And yes, that means I was carrying around my strobe with a softbox on a heavy-duty tripod with a portable battery and a sandbag to balance it for no reason whatsoever all because I forgot about light sync and was shooting at around 1/400th for shutter speed.

Now there are two ways to solve this issue. The first is easy, simply shoot at a shutter speed higher than 1/250th. Normally when I use my strobe, I shoot at no higher than 1/200th for shutter speed. Alternatively, you can see if your light can do high-speed sync (Canon or FP for Nikon, every brand has its own name for this) which allows you to shoot at higher shutter speeds. Just keep in mind that not all lights can do this. For example, my strobes cannot but my speedlights can, which is where my confusion came from especially taking a strobe out where I do not normally take it.

A shocking turn of events.

At the time of writing this I have a few other projects that need my attention, so here is a hair adventure we went on the other day. Static is hilariously awesome, and the toddler thought so too.

Treat your assitant well and help them grow.

I let my assistant attempt her idea again. The only things I controlled was the camera and the lighting, but everything else here was her idea. I use assistants for my work when I can, and two things I will say about assistants:

1) Treat them well. You want people to work with you? Then have a reputation as someone who works well with others. That means treating your assistants well. Not to mention that they aren’t just helpers, they are people who allow you to focus on fewer things meaning you will do those things better which in turn improves your end result.

2) Train them. By training the people who work under you not only improve the quality of their work but also their capabilities. Furthermore, by training them you can tailor their abilities to the work you do. Again, this improves the end results of your photo session.

Now the only catch, especially with the second point, is that at some point your assistant will likely move on. Very few people just want to settle for the title of “assistant,” so you have to understand that at some point your assistant will move on and you will likely have to start all over again. This is a headache for sure, but keep in mind that likely means you are on good terms with one more professional in whatever field you are in – you trained them after all. Being on good terms with other photographers is a good thing.

For this session, we used two strobes, each with an octagon softbox. One was back and to the right and the other was forward and to the left.