Photoshoot at a Convention

Ok for this blog post I'm going back into my files and pulling out another old photoshoot. This one was done at a convention in Weslaco at an anime convention. Usually at anime conventions there are quite a few places to shoot and for us we had this beautiful pool area to shoot with.

For this shoot my camera settings stayed pretty much the same the entire time because it was cloudy and the lighting never really changed! Which basically never happens lol! So for my settings I had my shutter at 1/200, my ISO at 200, and my f-stop ranged between f5.6 and f7.1 because of the zoom on the camera.




One of the fun things about this shoot was working with cosplayers, for those who don't know the characters the one with the blue hair is Black Star and the one with the purple hair is Blair. Now Black Star is a friend of mine and we were planning on doing a shoot anyway but Blair we had just met that day and kinda just grabbed her for a video we were shooting and used her in the photoshoot. She was a great sport, and I loved her shoes!

So the big difference working with coplayers is that you or they need to know how the character acts to do the shoot. If you shoot them out of character more than likely you will get a bit of flack from that. So I was lucky enough that both my models knew exactly what they were doing!

So all I had to worry about was setting up the shot like where I wanted them and where I was. For most of the shots I was across the pool from them with one of my zoom lenses on. I believe for most of this shoot I worked with my 55-200 lens. For this shot I went up on the stairs going up to the second floor so I could get a higher angle.

Where you are in a photoshoot I feel is key because you control where you want the viewing to be looking from and what you want the viewer to see. The first picture was also shot from the same area just a little higher on the stairs.

Also play with your angles a bit don't just shoot the same angle every shot, change it up a bit don't be afraid to test things out. Not all of your shots will be useable but thats ok you need to know what works and what doesn't.




The only thing I did in photoshop for this shoot was add a warmer effect because I wanted it to seem more like a sunny day since the sun wasn't out.






I know this post is a bit short but I wanted to share this shoot with you because it was one of my favorites.

Aperture Preferred? Shutter Preferred?

So this post today is to get to know your beautiful DSLR better! This is not about one specific photoshoot so it will have a small mix to get my point across. Now most people who don't know how to shoot manual usually shoot in auto which is the little green camera if you have a newer dial type of camera I believe on older DSLRs it is the P option which stands for program auto which gives you a small range of options that you can change, but that is not why we are here today!

Today I am going to tell you about the Aperture Preferred option and the Shutter Preferred option. In the first image I am showing you the Nikon D700 so for that one to get to either option you have to hold down the mode button and turn the dial that is by your thumb till you hit the A or the S. Can you guess which is which? On the image to the right I am showing you the Nikon D7000 and to change the modes on that one you turn the dial till the white mark on the side is pointing at the option you want.

Now on the the fun stuff! For the Aperture Preferred you will use this option when you know that you want to create a image with a good depth of field but you don't know what to put the other settings at. If you look back to my depth of field post you will know what I'm talking about when I say depth of field. So basically you can create something like this where your subject in the front is in focus and the back is blurred.

Basically for this you are setting your f-stop and the camera changes the shutter/ISO to make the image usable  Using this option help you learn a little more about your camera because it will adjust your other settings  to make the image come out close to what you want. Now while on this setting you are going to want to put your ISO on to auto so it adjusts that you, this isn't exactly necessary but it helps with the quality.



The next one is the Shutter Preferred, and you guessed it, it lets you adjust the shutter and then it takes care of the rest. Now you may wonder when the heck do I want to do that? The answer is simple when you want to capture an image in stopped motion so if you are taking pictures of your child's soccer game or your friends children running around the playground. This way you don't end up with blurred movement. Also this is good if you know that you cant hold a camera steady worth a damn and don't have a tripod handy.You could also use it to help replicate and image like the one from my very first blog post. This way you don't have to worry about the other settings in the camera just the shutter. 

This is also helpful if you want to shoot something where there is movement visible. The best example I can come up with and unfortunately do not have on hand to show is water. If you are photographing some type of waterfall and you put a low shutter the water has a tendency to come out a looking like it was painted. I will hopefully get an image up here for that soon but I don't have any right now.

Now you can go out there and try out different settings and hopefully learn something about what shutters and f-stops do in conjunction with each other. Remember practice practice practice!

I Hear Wedding Bells!

So my cousin got married right before spring break and I figured this is a good opportunity to cover more event type photography.

It was a small civil service with a couple friends and family so it wasn't anything huge and there was so reception to worry about but there was the sun. The sun is your mortal enemy when shooting manual because you cant just keep shooting without looking at your preview screen every now and then. The day started out really cloudy so I figured it should be a little better for the people with no squinting but the weather never does what we want it to it does what it wants to.

The clouds cleared and the sun came out which makes for better background sky than grey. Since the sun came out i had to be a bit more diligent about checking to make sure the sun didn't peak its head out from behind a cloud and make the shot over exposed. For most of my shots my settings were at shutter 1/250, ISO 250 and f-stop at 4.5. This worked for pretty much all of my shots but there were a couple times I had to adjust a little in photoshop. There is no shame in adjusting a couple images in photoshop as long as you are not trying to adjust an image that is really really dark because it will come out grainy and the colors will be off because it wont have all the ranges of color that you would usually have.

Shot wise for weddings you do want to do a wide variety of shots like closeups and further away. Even if they don't want the close up printed you can use it in the back of a collage or in an album if you are photoshoping it. Like the image to the right, I love this image but it doesn't mean I would want an enlarged image of it so you can take it and do something like this:

The only thing you do have to watch out for when doing something like working a wedding is watch your f-stop because lenses will change the f-stop when you zoom in more than likely if you are working with a very low f-stop then your f-stop will go up a bit when you zoom in so just watch that because it will darken your images.

Last but not least I do not recommend shooting manual for a wedding because if you are going from inside to outside with the ceremony or reception you will have to adjust quickly and you might miss something. This wedding was an easy one for me since everything was in the same place but for a regular wedding I would recommend working in shutter preferred or aperture preferred. Which is probably what I will go over in my next post which will be on FRIDAY! 

Yes I am doing a second post this week because last week was spring break and I was busy with work and not being a typical college kid ;p So keep a lookout for the next post on friday :D

Photoshoot with off camera lighting!

Ok so for today's post I will be talking about my shoot with one of my friends last Sunday! This was a fun shoot to do and also very dirty! For most of these images I used off camera lighting and for some I didn't use any at all so everything was natural lighting.

For this shoot I used:
- Nikon D7000
-SB 910
-SB 700
-CowboyStudio NPT-04 (Wireless trigger for my flashes)

On a side note you will now notice a logo on the images, I now have my own facebook like page :D so feel free to go like it: www.facebook.com/sixtysixphotography

For this image my camera settings were at ISO 400, F-stop 5.0 and Shutter 1/250. As for the lighting setup I Put one flash on the ground at about a 30 degree angle shooting at the wall behind her to illuminate that and another flash at the same angle further down to illuminate her and the wall between me and her. Both of the flashes were set at a 1/8 of power so that it didn't overpower the subject. The f-stop is what gives us the depth of field where the wall closest to us is blurry and the subject is in focus.

For this image the camera settings were ISO 320, f-stop 4.5 and the shutter at 1/250. The lighting setup for this was one flash to the left of me on the ground at about a 25-30 degree angle. The flash was on full power and a little further away from the image above so it didn't over power anything. What I was playing with in this image was the shadows so I had the subject step up about 4-5 steps from the wall so that the wall got pretty much all of the subjects shadow on the wall to basically replicate her pose.

This image was fun to shoot because I was on the other side of the building shooting so I couldn't control much. The camera settings were ISO 250, f-stop 5.6 and shutter 1/200. I used a flash on the floor behind her to light up the background, the flash was on full power pointing straight up to the ceiling (it was a pretty tall ceiling).

I honestly had so many from this shoot that I love and all had different setups so i will try to only do 2 more. For this image I used ISO 320, f-stop 5.6 and shutter 1/200, very similar to the last image. For the last image I had some ambient lighting to work with but not too much since the sun was on the other side of the building. For this image I had more ambient light but I didn't have it where I wanted it so i used both my flashes on full power at about a 30 degree angle pointed towards her to light up the room. I used the lower f-stop to create the depth of field where the flowers are in focus and she is blurry in the background.

For the last image I will talk about is this one, i did not use any flash because she was literally 1.5 floors above me on the opposite side of the building so I was working with ambient light the whole way. The camera settings were ISO 250, f-stop 13.0 and shutter 1/250. The sun was coming in straight on her face so I had to adjust for that which is why I make the f-stop higher since I wasn't doing any depth of field work.




So if you liked these images you should check out my facebook page I have more pictures from this shoot!  (dont forget to like the page too!)