Shooting in RAW

So getting back up and on my horse and starting to post again. So today I am going to talk at you about shooting in camera RAW. Now usually I am a big believer in shooting and not editing your photos much in Photoshop but I am not dumb and I know that sometimes that just isn't an option. Over the thanksgiving holiday I usually travel up to Dallas with my parents to spend the holiday with my family on my mothers side. My aunt lives hear this beautiful park that has a trail through wooded area. Me and my mother decided to take a walk through the path after thanksgiving dinner. I being me brought my camera along but it was quickly turning into night before we were even close to leaving the house so i still brought my camera but with a different idea in mind.
Shooting in RAW is one of the most amazing things to do because if your image is too dark or too light it can recover more of the image than if you just shot in regular jpeg. Here are some of the pictures I took in a before and after sense.

 Here is probably my favorite image from the holiday. the first is the before picture, the original. Using raw i was able to bump the contrast and up the lightness of the sidewalk without lightening the grass dark. I was going for a more silhouetted look but wanted the sidewalk to stay lit up too.

 Next up is an actual silhouette but the upside for shooting raw with this one was basically bringing back the blue in the sky without compromising it with noise.

 Finally is this little gem, was an amazing shot that I would never have noticed without my mother. She pointed out that the street light was creating the leaf pattern on the sidewalk. I wasn't able to stand super still so I couldn't use a super slow shutter so to get the color that I wanted to achieve I had to rely on the amazingness of RAW.

It isn't really that easy to explain what you can do in RAW and I by no means am an expert. I have only recently started shooting in raw and I do have to say it is a wonderful asset if you are shooting a wedding or an event because just in case you over or under expose a photo you don't have to worry!

I hope this helps a little and like i said i plan on posting more in the future and hopefully with some fun exciting things! Good luck and always have fun shooting!

Water water everywhere but not a drop to drink!

Well at least I would hope you aren't planning on drinking this particular water... So today's post is gonna be about one of my favorite things to photograph, you guessed it! Water! So today we are going to talk about water in relation to your shutter speed and how you can achieve different looks with different shutters! So I don’t have a model for this post because I want you to get the idea of the water first also you would need a model whos also a statue for some of these!

So we are going to start with what you usually see from me that that’s more of a frozen in time water. For this shot my settings my ISO at 250, shutter at 1/250 and f-stop at 9.

Here comes the fun part, if you slow your shutter you can achieve a more painted look from the water with its movement so on the extreme other side you get this:

For this one my shutter was at 1/8 (Which is where the whole model standing still thing comes into play) my f-stop at 32 (remember since the shutter is lower you will have to make the f-stop higher to compensate for the amount of light you are letting in the lens) and my ISO stayed the same at 250.

Now here are some in betweens on how we got to this point:

Shutter 1/10, F-stop 29, ISO 250

Shutter 1/15, F-stop 20, ISO 250

Shutter 1/40, F-stop 14, ISO 250

Shutter 1/100, F-stop 11, ISO 250

So as I've said before water is one of my favorite things to photograph because there are just so many different options you have with photographing it! Until next time!

Glam Maternity

So this past weekend I helped out one of my good friends Everett of Everett Ross Photography. He was doing a glamorous maternity shoot which is a little different form the normal maternity. I did not shot this but I did help with posing and lighting, all of the poses I am posting today are mine so this blog post will mostly be about the posing not the camera settings. For this shoot we only used one flash off camera to create a more dramatic lighting so I was holding the light stand and moving per shot to create the perfect mood for each shot. 

 So the couple wanted these pictures for their announcements and they wanted to do something different than the normal maternity pictures. So they decided on the Omni as the background and formal wear for the attire. We started in the lobby for the beginning of the shoot utilizing the decorative walls and the couches (not pictured). They were looking for some more “candid” type shots for the announcements so this first picture I feel makes it seem like we are looking in on a private moment. For posing we had them turn in towards each other and have him act like he’s whispering something in her ear. To showcase the baby bump especially if they are wearing a dress you want to have them put one hand below the bump making the bump more noticeable than if the hand wasn’t there. Working with them was quite easy seeing as she is actually a model so she knows how to work the camera and he, once he loosened up a bit, was super easy to direct.

 As we were shooting in the lobby one of the employees recommended we go up to the Republic of Texas, which for those who don’t know is the super fancy yet equally expensive restaurant at the top of the Omni. Since the restaurant was not open yet we didn’t have to worry about getting other people in the background which was perfect. For this next pose we had them on the stairs of the restaurant and had him one step above her. They has these cute little presents they brought as props and since the baby is a girl they had them wrapped in pink. The placement of the presents and his bowtie help draw the eye in and around the picture, also notice the hand placement accentuating the belly.

 This next shot was another candid one which we were able to get up higher making it look a little more intimate between them. We had her have a hand at her belly since she cant really put it below the bump but the idea is to draw the eye to the belly making it a noticeable baby bump. Usually you can have the guy kiss the girl on the temple and if she closes her eyes it makes it more intimate. This pose is actually good for any couple esque shoot not just maternity.

This final pose is probably my favorite of the entire set. This pose we had him pretend to serenade her on the piano and she sat there on the little ledge behind the piano. For the lighting for this one it was super special because I had the flash held high above their heads so it was coming from more a top angle than directly from the side. We put the presents on the piano as an added prop which helps the picture from completely dropping off on the left side.

Over all I felt this entire shoot had a 1920’s glam look and feel so in the editing that’s what I did. For all of the pictures I added a vignette, for those who don’t know what that is it is basically when the edges are darker (or lighter) especially in the corners. And as you can tell I turned one of them black and white for that added effect.

I hope you liked this shoot, I have a ton of super fun things I am doing this weekend that will give me blog posts for the next 3 weeks! I super excited to share this will you all! Hope you all have an amazing fourth of July, I will be on the harbor bridge taking pictures of the fireworks! 

Wedding bells on a cruise!

I know I know, I missed last weeks blog post, I was thrown off my usual schedule since school was over... I promise I will get back on schedule! So I am finally posting pictures from Crystal and TJs wedding! This wedding has got to be one of the funner weddings that I have worked over the years, not just because they are my cousins but because it was on a cruise!


There are many different difficulties of working on a cruise and shooting a wedding, one is people, we amazingly didn't have much of a problem with this a lot of people were nice and realized what was going on and made sure they weren't in the background. The second major issue would be the weather because its not like you can just say oh we will just do it next week when the weather clears up because you wont be there next week! Lighting I honestly just worked with one of my SBs the entire time and the camera I used was my D7000. Outside during the ceremony I didn't use my flash at all the ambient light was enough but not overpowering we got real lucky on that one.

I spent my time before the wedding with the bride Crystal as she got her hair and makeup done. Obviously I have the usual pictures but some of my favorites are these. Unfortunately it started to rain for like 20 min right before we were about to go up so I wasn't able to do much on the balcony area due to it being wet and I really didn't want to mess up the dress up before hand.




Detail shots are one of my favorite things to do at a wedding because I feel that it really does help tell the wedding story and one of my standard shots is always of the rings, whats with the rings usually change from wedding to wedding depending on what is available for this one i used the sash from her wedding dress and the veil. I also used more ambient lighting in this shot which is why it has a more amber hue to it making it seem more summery.

 Outside where the ceremony was held it was a small ceremony so I didn't have to worry about pulling out any of my long lenses and was able to stay fairly close to capture everything. During a ceremony you always want to be on your toes to catch every little thing without taking a million pictures. If you aren't careful you will have a lot of pictures of them looking at each other and you might miss that cute smile or laugh when something happens.


The more you work weddings the better you get at telling when these moments will happen but nothing is exact because it will happen when you miss a shot here or there dont get discouraged we are human and we make mistakes, just learn from them. You can always recreate the first kiss or the ring exchange if you miss it the first time but the spontaneous things that are unscripted are harder to recreate. I got lucky and caught both the ring exchange (not shown) and the kiss (right).


Also be aware of your surroundings because you want to use them to your advantage. For example sunsets, they are probably one of the most romantic things nature can do on its own so utilize that if you are able. You usually will have to up your f-stop if you are wanting to catch the colors of a sunset better because it will make them darker and more rich. Also have fun and be artistic and don't be afraid to try something out we live in a digital age so you really are only wasting space on a memory card not money for film, just remember to learn from your trials, if something works well then use those settings again, or the pose which ever, but remember not all poses work for all people some can pull off a pose better than others.

One of the other reasons I loved working this wedding the pictures were fun to conduct like the one here to the right. This was immediately after the wedding before we had dinner on the main floor of the ship was this cafe and a floor above was this platform and each floor above had a balcony type thing that you could over look the platform so I went up one floor and shot from above to get this great view of the couple and their friends what came on the cruise to come to the wedding.

This one was just up a couple steps on the same level as the couple do it is less of an areal view. I fount this on the first day I was on the ship and immediately knew I wanted to shoot here. The wedding was held the first full day on the boat so the day we got on when we explored the boat I kept an eye out for good spots to shoot. I don't think I ever really stop working I made little mental notes everywhere I went.

Most poses were thought up by Crystal and TJ and I just staged the shot at got into the best position to capture what best represented what she wanted. A main thing about shooting a wedding is knowing what they want out of the pictures, if you know that you should be pretty set in how you can conduct the photoshoots. The last few pictures were taken at the end of the cruise on the last full day at sea we had so much fun because we didn't have to worry about the ceremony and we got lucky and no one was near us so I didn't have to worry about yelling at strangers, only family lol.

These are some of my favorite shots of the wedding but there are so many more I would love to show you all but I don't want to make this post super long and everyone lose interest. I will post more on my Facebook page when I get a chance, now that school is over I should have a little more time on my hands to do these things! I hope you like these pictures as much as I do! Till next time :D

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

Depth of Field

Today is not about a specific shoot it is all about depth of field and how to create it in an image.

 Depth of field often referred to as DOF is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene or image that appear sharp. So think about it as if the camera were actually your eyes, you can't focus on everything at once, you can switch between focusing on the object closest and an object further away. You can do the same with a camera but at varying degrees. 

DOF is changed by the f-stop,You will often hear this referred to as aperture, this also changes the lightness and darkness of am image so if you aren't using the on camera flash then you will have to make other adjustments. 

A lower f-stop like 4.8 will produce a more intense depth of field. If you notice in the image to the left the silver nail polish is in focus and it gradually makes each nail polish go more and more out of focus. 

The next image is taken with a F-stop of 16.0 notice that the gold nail polish is more in focus than it was in the previous image. 

This image is taken with a f-stop of 32.0 which was all my lens would allow me. Each lens has a different range of f-stops.

I prefer shooting with a lower f-stop so that I have a picture with more depth to it, but there are times I prefer to go to a higher f-stop. When you do any kind of landscape photography you will probably want to opt for a higher f-stop.

Like I said before i prefer to use a lower f-stop to create a focal point like the image above. You can choose which you like better but most cameras on auto will use a lower f-stop so if you aren't 100% sure about going full manual most DSLRs have an option that is "A" which stands for aperture preferred. This setting lets you put the f-stop where you want it and the camera will adjust all the rest of the settings to make you picture look more normal instead of blowing out the image or making it darker. 

I hope this has helped some of you in case you were wondering what the heck I was talking about when I was saying f-stop.

If you have anything you were always wondering how to do you can always request it and I will try my hardest to make it!