In this photo shoot I decided to practice incorporating surroundings (mostly architecture) into my portraits, as opposed to my usual tendency which was to use limited depth of field to help avoid anything that might distract viewer’s attention from a portrait. Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR used to be my number one choice for portraits on a DX camera simply because it rendered awesome bokeh and blurred everything behind the main subject :)

This time however, I decided to try the exact opposite. Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 was the lens of my choice and all the backgrounds were supposed to be as sharp as they can get, becoming part of every composition. Perhaps I went a bit too far, concentrating on the composition.. because the lighting part of the shoot completely slipped my mind. I found myself shooting with bad light, into the light with the harsh SB-800 blasts trying to overpower the sun and finally, completely missed the fact that we were shooting with the terrible pink color cast of the sun light bouncing off Don Cesar’s walls. What was I thinking? :)

Once again, Nikon D300 + Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 (mostly), 24-70 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8 VR on occasion.

Nikon D90 + Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 = Fun :)

This was the combo I decided to take with me to Orlando. I also had my 24-70 f/2.8 with me, but ended up not using it at all. It’s amazing how versatile this ultra wide (14-24) is… at least on a DX camera.

This was a quick improvisation at a friend’s house in an attempt to mimic a real studio setup. Lera needed some pictures for her upcoming CD single “Imagination”. She wanted few full body shots on a neutral background so that later on, graphics designers could layer her shots onto something creative and use for the CD cover/insert. The real challenge was… that we didn’t have a studio, and finding plain background on the streets was very hard.

So that’s when we decided to improvise. A trip to Home Depot and an hour with scotch tape later we had our setup ready for the big shoot :) We picked up a couple of $25 plastic white window screens and mounted them on the wall of our living room and on the floor in front of it. Taped them both together and there it was - the worlds cheapest and most portable studio backdrop :)

Lighting setup: one SB-800 on a light stand, shot through white umbrella, about 6-8 feet away from the model, at 45 degrees to her, triggered with a $40 cactus radio transmitter. One SB-800 on a camera tripod, 3-4 feet away from the model, usually facing the model directly at very low power, mainly trying to eliminate shadows from the first flash. Finally, third flash was behind the model blasting at the improvised screen/backdrop making it as bright and as white as possible… as well as eliminating any shadows caused by the first two flashes.

Equipment used: D300 + Tamron 17-50 f/2.8. Shot in RAW, converted with Capture NX2. Camera at factory default settings.

Last Friday one of my friends (John Reisinger) invited me to shoot his son’s band (Select Start) performing at the Transitions Art Gallery. Along with Select Start, few other bands were performing that night - Asteria, One For The Team, Inertia and Cassady. Shooting the concert was fun but I quite challenging. Lighting was quite poor and at times non-existant (Select start performed in almost complete darkness) so I ended up using a lot of flash. Bouncing off the walls, pumping into the ceiling and sometimes even shooting straight at. The 14-24 and 70-200 ended up carrying most of the workload.

Equipment used:
Nikon D300, SB-800, Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8, Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8, Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR

As my friend Misha and I continue building our portfolios (mainly concentrating on portraiture), we decided to make use of the few awesome days this fall gave us just before all the cold fronts moved in and headed to USF’s St. Pete campus for more shooting/practicing. Our “guest model” this time was Sofia Sokolenko who did absolutely amazing job with posing (so we can’t take any credit for that) and overall we had tons of fun at this shoot.

I recently have come into possession of the newest Nikon’s gem - the Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Getting ready to go full frame in near future, I decided that I will not be investing into DX lenses anymore. The 24-70 was the number one full frame lens on my list and with the latest MS live cash back offers (on qualified ebay purchases) I couldn’t resist and pulled the trigger on it earlier than initially planned :) Of course I can’t regret my decision because this lens is stunning! This entire photo shoot was done with this lens only.

Click on the image below to see the entire gallery

Equipment used: Nikon D300, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8, SB-800 triggered via Cactus V2

This video was put together on a Saturday morning… well.. almost afternoon (had a late photo shoot on Friday night, AWESOME pictures are coming soon :). Anyways, inspired by the “Making pizza” D90 movie which has been floating around the internet for quite some time now, I decided to respond with my “Making Coffee” clip :) I filmed it in a series of short clips (may 20 or 25 one minute clips), each clip was 3-4 attempts to do each “action” (waking up, putting coffee, getting water, etc). Cutting it all together was also a relatively quick process - previewing each clip once, and on the second run marking with “in” and “out” for each successful “action” and dragging them onto the timeline. Finally, bought a couple of music tracks on iTunes (both are from Curb Your Enthusiasm series) and tossed them in the project. Exported as QuickTime and uploaded to smugmug….

Here it is, enjoy the “Morning Coffee”, my first D90 movie clip :-)

Lenses used: Tamron 17-50 f/2.8mm (most of the clip), and one or two scenes with Tokina 11-16 f/2.8

Continuing on the subject of portrait photography… A friend of mine, (who shoots Canon, nevertheless we get along quite well :-) recently mentioned how he just doesn’t have any pictures of him. I’m sure many other photographers can relate :-) Yesterday we met a couple hours before the sunset on USF campus and had a little fun… Click on the image below to see the entire gallery.

Equipment used: Nikon D300, SB-800 (on camera), Tamron 17-50 f/2.8, Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR. Processed in Nikon Capture NX 1.3

During labor day weekend I decided to expand my portfolio with some new portraits. One of Nadia’s friends (Natasha Mohr) was kind enough and agreed to model for me. On September 3rd we spent few hours on UT campus and ended up with a series of almost 100 pictures which I plan to narrow down to 10-15 for use in my portfolio. During the shoot I was trying to concentrate on few key aspects of portrait photography:
1) Lighting Lighting Lighting. I was trying to make sure Natasha was facing light at all times. When that could not be achieved, I was using on and off camera flash to fill.
2) No bad shadows on model’s face. Closely tied to item #1 - every time I’d see cross lighting, I’d try to fill with flash. Every time I’d notice “eye sockets” - I’d fill with flash
3) Skin tones. I wanted to make sure to give her skin this soft glamour look and feel. I tried to achieve that by nailing white balance in post processing and exposing for the skin tones to begin with.

Equipment used: Nikon D300, SB-800 (on and off camera), Tamron 17-50 f/2.8, Nikkor 70-200 f/2.8 VR. Processed in Nikon Capture NX 1.3

Click on the image below to see the entire gallery.

I was just setting up “the stage” for photographing my Vostro 1400 (which, by the way, goes on sale tonight :) and fired a couple of test shots to fine-tune the off-camera strobes. My setup was relatively simple - a piece of white paper on the floor, one SB-800 3 feet away from “the stage” on my right hand side, 3 feet tall, pointing down at approx 45 degrees through a white umbrella, set at 1/16 of the power and the other SB-800 4 feet away on my left hand side pointing straight up on manual at 1/4th of its power. D300 with built in flash in commander mode at ISO 200, 1/100, f/5.6-f/7.1 with Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 at approx 40mm, 3 feet away. I tossed an empty Dove candy bag and fired a test shot… this was what came out:

Few days ago I was going through my photo trash bin and stumbled upon this shot:

D300 + Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8, ISO 640, F/8, 1/80

It was taken in the Lettuce Lake park on a dull winder evening, during the season when local nature almost goes “black and white” for a couple of months :) Actually, I sort of trashed the entire series from that night because there was absolutely no mood in any of the photos I brought home that day. Anyways, I was comparing Capture NX2 performance to its older version and this photo was my guinea pig.

Opened it in Capture NX, switched Picture Control to Vivid, bumped up overall Color Saturation, dropped a control point to the green grass, increased brightness and saturation, dropped another one to the yellowish lit trees, increased their brightness and saturation, and finally dropped a control point onto the water, cranked up contrast and brightness (making it look a lot crispier and almost frostier :) Sharpened the entire photo and saved as JPEG. Overall, took me about a minute or two.

The result was impressively unexpected… I think 75 degrees warm florida winter evening turned into a beautiful autumn landscape, depicting early November morning with crispy cold air (40F? :) and almost frozen water (should have tossed some ice in there :)

Here it is:

Click on each image to see x-Large version.