Bill’s Photography and Lighting Blog

The other day, I went out towards the beach to try and get some nice sunset photos.  Once I got to the beach, I came to realize that the sunset was a going to be a bust.  However, I met Troy, a sponsored skimboarder.  Shooting fast action in low light (most of these were taken after the sun had set) is a bit of a challenge.  I set my camera into aperture priority mode, opened up the aperture as wide as I could get it, then started dialing up the ISO until I got the shutter speed that I wanted.  As time wore on, a higher ISO was needed to keep everything in sharp detail.

Right as I was leaving, the water started to take on an almost surreal color that it only gets when its lit very evenly by a nice warm light (like a setting sun).  I’d love to go back and try these shots again with the light like that.

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On Saturday, Terry had his blackbelt demonstration. Even at 9:30 am, it was sweltering hot out there. I know it was bad for me, I can’t imagine how it must have been up there on that stage going through the various routines.

This was my first foray into high speed/action photography. It took me until about 1/2 way through the demonstration to figure out that a 1/80 sec shutter speed was a bit too slow to catch some of the fast movements. A quick bump up of the ISO and we were off running.

It turned out to be quite a fun day. Be sure to check out the full gallery.

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While last week’s quest for a storm may have been a bust, yesterday turned out to be much better. Early in the day, I noticed a fairly active storm that seemed to have a nice, defined front and was tracking slowly south at about 8 mph. Running the math, I figured that it would get here about the time I got off work.

I packed up and headed over to the beach around 6:30 to find that this was one of the most picturesque storms that I’ve seen this summer. In order to get in front of the storm, I had to run down by Sebastian Inlet, somewhere I’d never been before.

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty nice day. I’m quickly realizing that I need a tablet to do editing with. Time to make another entry to the christmas list.

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Last week my friend Terry Reinert and I went out on a drive hoping to catch some good photos of an impending storm. Unfortunately, the storm never materialized, but there were some nice cumulus clouds to be seen and photos to be had. It had been over a year since I had attempted an HDR photo, but that day seemed to lend itself to one. The major benefit of HDR photography is that everything is exposed perfectly.

One of the large hurdles for landscape photography is getting land and sky to both expose well in a single capture. In the past, I’ve used a combination of 1 and 3 stop split neutral density filters to darken down the sky (as it is typically the brightest part of the frame) to a point where it has about the same light levels as the land (or in the case of winter scenes, to darken down the snow if it is direct sunlight). The downside to this is that it can be cumbersome and time consuming. One alternative method is HDR photography where several images are taken, some under exposed and some over exposed. By finessing these images together, one can get the full dynamic range of the image, so that everything is properly exposed. The end result looks something like this:

The setup for this was very simple, a Nikon D80 on a tripod set low to the ground and 3 exposures at +/- 2 stops. HDR merge was done in Photoshop, tone mapping in Photomatix, and touch ups in Photoshop.

Later that day, I did a very quick photo shoot with a couple of a friend’s chameleons. This photo was lit by sunlight (no flashes were used) and taken over the front lawn. Looking back on it, I really wish I had an off camera flash. Time to start a christmas list…

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This is my first post in what will hopefully become an active blog. Welcome! Please take a moment to check out my website and let me know what you think. Bear in mind that it is still under construction, but it should be polished up within the next week or two. I welcome any feedback that you have to offer!

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