I looked out the window the other evening and the whole world had a Tang orange glow.  Nothing looked right and as I went outside with my boys to investigate, I walked into another world.  The clouds were thick and full of rain, so very little light came through them, but instead spilled over them from the sunset below.  The dust was so thick that we were not looking at the sunset, we were in the sunset.  It was a magnificent sight.  There was, of course no time to go anywhere other than stay right outside my home and watch this spectacle change as the sun dropped to the unseen horizon.  And when this kind of thing happens, you stay outside with your camera until the sun goes down completely.  I couldn’t have asked for a better evening with my boys, watching such an incredible display of light and clouds.

As I photographed the clouds, I thought of a conversation I had with John Craig from Pittsburgh about photographic composition and the critical nature of the frame.  I asked him, “if you could pass on to your daughter, only one thing about photography, only one quick lesson, what would that be?”  It is an interesting question and one I think everyone should ask themselves.  What would you pass on to the next generation if  you had only one concept to pass along?  Think about it before you answer.  Some will say something like “follow your passion” or some such platitudinous drivel, which has nothing to do with better photography.  What I am asking for is serious conceptual advice on making better photographs, compositional strategies and theories that will, if learned and practices, make any image (no matter the content) into a better photograph.

My answer to my own questions is this: I would teach my child how to see and use the frame well.  There are so many theories and strategies that go into using the frame of the image, which is a lesson for another time, but there is no question in my mind that it is the most important aspect of photographic composition.  Yes, of course there are others, but the frame is where it all starts and ends.  It is the great unifier of photography (we all have four edges to our frame).  And yet there is nothing that damns so many photographers to second rate status because they do not use the frame well (mostly, they don’t pay attention to it).

So I offer the following as a method for training your eye to use the frame wisely:

Alfred Stieglitz made a series of photographs of clouds, which he called “Equivalence“, in which, he was attempting to photograph object, which in and of themselves held no loaded messages, and simply explored controlling random compositions as pure abstraction.  The theory being that without the loaded imagery, one could focus more on communicating the expressions of the inner soul directly to the soul of the viewer.  All a bit too artsy for me, but there was still a brilliance in his selection of clouds as a subject.

The experience of photographing clouds is a fantastic lesson in framing which is the cornerstone of composition.  The organizational structures of the clouds keep changing, morphing into something new every minute, so that there are an infinite number of frames before your camera, with constantly changing elements.  But there are no intellectually loaded symbols to distract the photographer, so the act of including or excluding something is not to avoid a particular statement or to make a point, but rather it is simply to create a stronger composition.

The greatest failure of inexperienced photographers is their inability to emotionally and intellectually distance themselves from the subject matter and watch for composition.  But, with clouds, a photographer has the freedom to practice composition by disregarding the content and dealing only with the composition.

So, with such a perfect opportunity, I took a few moments to practice my framing and enjoy the experience of pure compositional shooting.  Here is my favorite image.

And when I say, Tang Orange, I mean it.  This is perfectly accurate color.  What you see here was exactly what we were seeing.  We were literally inside the sunset.

A little tech talk for all of you photographers and iPad lovers out there:

I taught a Lightroom Workshop in New York yesterday.  It was a fun workshop and we had a great group of people there.  One of the attendees, Carlos Martin, had his iPad with him and I told him that I had heard of an app for the iPad (from an attendee at my lecture at the Boston Pictage User’s Group meeting) which allows the iPad to become a second monitor.

He immediately downloaded the app and started working on connecting it to his laptop.  It didn’t work while we were in the workshop, but once he got it home and connected to his wireless network, it worked.  How cool is that?  The app is called iDisplay, but it gets bad reviews, so beware, but there is another app like it called Air Display which gets great reviews.  Anyway, it looks like a great idea.  I don’t have an iPad, but if I did, I would try one of these apps.  You can even use the touch screen to work on the iPad monitor, so you could conceivably put photoshop brush pallets and tools over on the iPad and just touch them as needed.

In Lightroom, using a second monitor is a real time saver.  Your second monitor can be your constant loop for confirming image quality.

Here is a shot of the iPad in action, courtesy of Carlos Martin.  Thanks Carlos.

I have the greatest respect for multiple birth parents.  One baby is life altering.  Two must rock your world.

Like parenting twins, photographing them is also exponentially challenging.   Fortunately, I think my photographic style gives me an advantage in the challange.  Because I am interested in real life, I love a photograph of a crying baby as much as I do a smiling baby, and I am not consumed with getting a pre-determined shot that may not come, I am liberated to simply create and enjoy the challenge.

Of course, parents, will generaly stress out about the photoshoot because they have paid for my time and have certain pre-conceved notions about what a baby portrait should look like and what kind of shot they want to get.  But, my advice to every parent, weather they are hiring me, or just trying to photograph their own children, is to simply go with the flow.  Never force the photograph, and let it become what it will.

A twins infant portrait is the perfect laboratory to prove this hypothesis.  In this case, I arrived at the home in the late evening and the mother and father know me and trusted what I was doing, so there wasn’t a lot of stress over the photos.  Of course, this is crucial to the success of the shoot.  If mom is stressed, baby will be stressed.

The first thing I tell parents is that we are going to keep shooting and get lots of great images and that babies are cute, no matter what they are doing, so relax and let’s just have fun, even if the children are crying.  The other thing that I do to maintain the relaxed atmosphere is to plan enough time for the photo shoot.  If the baby needs to eat, then we need to take a little break and I can take photos of the babies toys or talk with dad.  Rushing the parents or the baby, will only end in failure.

With plenty of time and a relaxed mom and dad, the stage is set for a successful photo-shoot, but the most important element is the understanding that I am there to photograph children as they really are, smiling or crying, and that gives me the freedom to concentrate on the photographs that I am making.

Some people are not comfortable with this concept and want to control the final outcome, and there are some very good photo factories that are perfect for that.  A parent can go to the mall and choose from the catalog of props and sets and have a photograph of their child in a chefs hat in a cooking pot and they will walk out with the print they saw in the catalog, with their child in the pot rather than the model baby.  It is something akin to keeping buying a frame at the store and pasting your kids faces over the happy people in the stock photo that came with the frame.  It is very predictable and the people who work at these photo factories know the menu and they know the recipe for this shot and that.  It is predicable and safe and there is nothing wrong with that.  But the parents who come to me for portraits are interested in something special and unique to immortalize their child.  They want something real, something that means more than just a cute portrait.

Coming into the home, allows the child to be photographed in a unique environment that is filled with memories and spirit and as I use this natural surrounding, the child is placed at ease and more importantly, nothing is a prop, because everything has meaning.  And by discarding those pre-conceved shots and just taking things as they come, we are all open to letting things happen and enjoying the experience.  And we still end up with some of those cute traditional photographs, but without the stress.  However, I will always maintain that the less planned images are always the best.

It certainly is not a predictable way to photograph a child, but children aren’t predictable anyway and in the end, no one can doubt the outcome.  The images are full of emotion, humor and joy and are extraordinary portraits that will be cherished forever.

Of course, you can judge the results for yourself.

It is that time of year.  I am heading out to cities across the United States to teach my Lightroom Workflow Workshop.  In this workshop I teach professionals and enthusiasts how to take control of their post-production workflow.  I have just released the trailer below.  Take a look at it.  And I will look forward to seeing you out on the road somewhere in my travels.

To book a seat at the workshop, go to www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

The Lightroom Workflow Workshop Tour 2010 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Conquer your workflow demons with Jared Platt as your instructor. The Lightroom Workflow Workshop Tour begins on Saturday July 17, 2010 in Phoenix, Arizona. We will then be off to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Syracuse, Los Angeles, Vegas, Cincinnati, Louisville, Miami, Jacksonville, Orange County, San Diego, Raleigh, Nashville, New Orleans, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle and more.

Come learn how to cut your workflow time in half or more and win some great prizes and get free product and services from our sponsors. And learn Adobe Lightroom 3.0 in the process.

The Lightroom Workflow Workshop will pay for itself on day one!

www.jaredplattworkshops.com

I have a list of favorite new features in Adobe Lightroom 3.0 but the best feature is the speed.  It is so much faster and more responsive than the prior versions.  They did a great job with it.  I am looking forward to teaching my fall workshops with the new version.  See you all out there on the road.  Check out the tour schedule at www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

Adobe Lightroom 3.0 My Favorite New Features from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

Lightroom 3.0 is faster with lots of new features. This video is a list of my favorite new features in Lightroom 3.0 and how I use them.

I just finished adjusting and editing a new set of infant portraits.  Our little model was a very pleasant baby.  I have had a few very pleasant baby models lately, perhaps it is summer babies?  Anyway, this photo session was a joy.  Enjoy the slide show and the example photos below.

We did some documentary style stuff as well as a few set up shots in around the house.  When I shoot this way, we use little or no flash (preferably no flash if I can get away with it).  In this instance, we are using the window light and the room light, nothing more and shooting at a high ISO with a 2.8 aperture to allow for as much light as possible and as a bonus, we get that shallow depth of field which really puts the focus on those beautiful baby eyes.

I love this next series.  Big brother is trying to get in on the action.  I see this in my kids all the time.  Big brother always wants to give the baby a hug or a kiss.  This set of three images deserves to be seen together.

And now for some portraits.  This one turned out wonderfully.  I was so happy with the lighting on it.  Let me remind you that this is in the client’s home.  You don’t need a studio to shoot this, in fact, everyone is more comfortable in their own home (assuming they like their home).  I love how the baby and dad emerge from the dark background and the baby’s hands are perfectly placed.  Way to go dad!  And then the baby went pee all over him…  But I think he’ll agree, it was worth it… I know mom will.

This is a one week old baby.  She had a lot of strength.  This was all her, with no heroics and quite a developed little grin too.

This is one of my favorite shots from the infant portrait session.  It is so soft and full of brightness and warmth.  Depth is a magnificent thing in a photograph.

The baby cried one time.  I love photographing a crying baby.  A lot of parents worry when their child cries of fusses during a portrait session.  They fuss and stress, which tends to stress the child even more and the apologize profusely to me.  I have to remind people that I am attempting to capture the personality of their child, their expressions and mannerisms.  When they cry, that is a great photograph too.  In fact, I love looking back at the pouty photos of my children.  Those pouts and sour faces are a part of their personality.  Of course with this little baby, I worried she might never realy give me a good cry, but she got one in for me and I was ready to capture it.

There is a lot of warmth in this image which is not from the lighting at the scene, in fact the lighting was very cool.  The daylight outside was very blue as was the flash I was bouncing into the ceiling.  All of the warmth is added in Adobe Lightroom in post production.  Most of these images were not ever brought into Photoshop.  For those of you who are interested in the technical side of this, I do not simply increase the temperature to get warmth in my photos, that does not look real and often times will over saturate the warmer tones in the image.  Instead, we are adding a image toner in the highlights and the shadows.  This creates a more realistic feeling of warmth.  I will be posting a lesson on this technique on my Lightroom Podcast on iTunes next week, so if you are interested, go subscribe.

This was a perfect dresser for a little baby portrait.  I love all of the white in the shot, it helps the little toys and decorations, like that teddy bear.  It is a very geometrical shot.  I am generally much more prone to angling my frames in strange ways, but when geometry gets involved I work very hard to make sure I have the angles very square to the camera.  In a small room, though, this becomes difficult, because wide angle lenses distort the edges of the frame and straight lines become a bit bowed.  There are two solutions to this: 1. buy or rent a very expensive rectilinear lens or 2. fix it in post by negating the warp in Photoshop. — OR — the third option, which does not require Photoshop at all and is almost completely automatic.  I choose the third option.  All of my shots are automatically adjusted for lens distortion based on the camera and lens combination I am using.  I can’t believe it is possible to do it, but it is… look at the results, they are nothing short of miraculous.  Oh, what is the third option?  Ligthroom.  This technology is also available in the latest camera raw Photoshop CS5 as well.  Having this technology available has changed my imagery quite a bit.  I would never have taken the time to go into each image in Photoshop to negate the lens distortion, and now I don’t have to.  Have you figured out that I prefer to stay out of photoshop as much as possible?

As much as I like the first version, I do enjoy the more simplified version, the close-up.  It has a much more graphic design to it.

On the little shelf above the dresser was a small suitcase, which also made a good little prop for her to sit in.  I always look for things in the house I can use as props and backdrops.  I try not to rely on bringing props with me and although it makes for a more challenging job, the portraits turn out to be far more interesting, because it is the child’s natural surroundings.  Natural props in the photos are things that will mean far more to the parents in years to come than some cute prop in a studio.  In this case, she will probably have this bear for years too come.  I love the way she is holding the bear’s ribbon.  I did need to run this one through Photoshop because mom was holding the baby up, so her arm had to be removed from the shot.

And her comes big brother with an Oreo Cookie.

Little feet, big hands.  Everything about an infant is so perfect.  They are perfect little miracles.

I just posted a new Adobe Lightroom Tutorial Online about Syncing Lightroom Catalogs. If you are using Lightroom professionally or as an amateur, it is worth watching. If you don’t know what Lightroom is and you just like look at my photos, your eyes might gloss over, so just skip this one. If you like falling asleep to the sound of my voice, go ahead and turn it on, it’s 20 minutes, to you should be asleep before it is finished.

Lightroom Catalog Portability and Syncing from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

You may have two or more computers, or be working with a post production company like ShootDotEdit for your post production on your images, but whatever the reason, you will need to know how to synchronize your catalogs from one computer to the next. Adobe Lightroom’s catalog portability will allow you to share your work load between computers, locations and people. In this 20 minute lesson, you will learn how to synchronize your images and catalogs from one computer to the next and even between Lightroom and Camera Raw in Photoshop.

For more Lightroom and Photography lessons and to learn more about my workshops, go to www.jaredplattworkshops.com.

Living in the desert is a unique experience.  Forget about the 120 degree summer days and the horribly unfriendly plant life.  To me, the weather is quite fascinating.  I love the monsoon rainstorms and the lightning is fantastic.  Other places in the world have their own challenging weather situations, many much more dangerous.  There are tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, etc…  and none of these options are very appealing to me, which is why I prefer my native state of Arizona.  But we do have our own unique weather effect: the dust storm.

I was traveling back from a job in Tucson and took a back road route home (rather than the freeway).  I enjoy doing this because everything goes by so quickly on the freeway and there is no inclination to stop and look at anything (and of course, it would be illegal to do so).  So the back roads are much more enjoyable as road trips go.  On my way home, I saw an approaching dust storm and immediately pulled off the road and pulled out the camera and went hiking.  The Arizona dust storm has a beautiful effect on our world.  It creates a ghost of anything in the distance if not, it completely obscures it.  Like a blizzard, it creates a thin sketch of the landscape with little to no contrast.  I am generally haunted by vacancy in an image.  I am not sure why, but of all the photographs I would select to hang in my home, it is those filled with quiet and solitude that appeal most to me.  That doesn’t mean that I choose to photograph this way all the time, but it has the deepest emotional affect on my soul.  I think it is because that is who I am at my core.

If you are drawn to a particular style of photography, or art, and looking at that work brings you home, you can be sure that that attraction says a lot about you as a person.  In fact, weather you like a photograph or don’t, says less about the photographer or the photograph and more about you as a person.  Which is why, I think, that I get along so well with my clients.  They have selected me as their photographer based on their emotional and intellectual response to my work.  Which means that they, in some way, deep down at some root level, are like me.  We agree on what gives us peace and brings us home.

When I got home and started working with this image, I asked my wife about this image.  ”Am I off base, or is this image extremely haunting and beautiful?”

“I can see what you are attracted to in the image,” she replied, “but it’s not all that great!”

No, I wasn’t devastated by her comment.  I just decided she was wrong.  It is great, but perhaps only to me and people like me.  Remember, her reaction to the photograph says more about her, than it does about the photo.  In contrast, I think my friend Isaac Bailey would like it.  But I think we share a common love for solitude (or perhaps it is a sullen longing for sleep).  My wife grew up in the city with all of its distractions and noise, I grew up on the prairies of Northern Arizona where the only noise is the constant wind.  So, my wife’s take on this photo was an instructive reminder to me.  My wife is a good judge of a photograph, which tells me that this image is different, my attraction to it isn’t just about some other brilliantly employed compositional strategy, I didn’t make this picture to sell something or even to make a statement.  I made it because something inside me wanted to go home for a little while and relax there in the shadow of the Zuni Mountains and look over the endless flat land, smell the dust, swap stories with my brothers and wait until dark for a ride back into town.  This was a free ticket back to Bitter Springs after the long climb through The Gap to witness the brilliant view from the tops of the Vermilion Cliffs.  Sometimes photography isn’t about the subject in front of us at all.  The subject is just a catalyst for memory, a sort of psychiatrist’s couch for introspection and self discovery.  And sometimes, a photography session reminds you of who you are.

These introspective moments almost never happen while the camera is in your hands.  They come in the quiet times in the darkroom, or the Lightroom as you study the results.  And while my mantra is always about efficiency in post production. When I feel that prompting, I do my best to slow down, and examine my work closely without distractions or deadlines and find out what it is, I have been trying to say to myself.

A few more images from the series that I think you might enjoy.

Tech Talk: All of the images in this post were completely processed in Lightroom.  They were never opened in Photoshop.  Tones, grain and vignettes were all added in Lightroom without the use of any additional plugins etc.  Below is a video about creating custom vignettes in Lightroom like those you see above.  This video is also on iTunes and on the Pictage Blog.  Check out more of my podcasts at iTunes and more blog posts at Pictage Blog.

Creating Custom Vignettes in Adobe Lightroom 2.6 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

I have always loved the stage.  Looking out into an audience you know is there, when you can not see them is an exhilarating feeling.  And even though you can not see them, you can feel their energy as they get wrapped up in the performance.  As I posted earlier, I attended Kevin Burdick’s concert in Arizona and took a few photos there.  I didn’t take a lot of them because I was attending the concert with my kids, so I only took a few at the beginning and a few at the end.  It was a great show with great music and a worthwhile message about following our dreams.

Good work Kevin.

Kevin talks about his little girl, Dempsey during the show and shows a slideshow of images from her life when he sings his song “Too Good for this World,” a tribute to his daughter.  It is a powerful thing to watch.  Especially for me, because I was there for those 30 days while she ws in the hospital fighting for her life.  I photographed her and her Father and Mother as they held on to each precious moment.  Every time I hear that song, or see her photos, I am reminded to thank God that I was allowed to keep mine with me.  But in the end, I truly believe (as Kevin sings) that the “fathers welcomed her home” and that she looks down on us all now.  Someday I will share that set of images, but for now, here is one of them as a backdrop to the performance.

Kevin’s drummer, Aaron “Chives” Chavez, who plays the strangest concoctions of drums and boxes, etc.  He is finishing up his masters in World Percussion and quite a talented man.

And finally, my favorite shot of the evening.  Like I said, I am fascinated with the darkness of the theater.   Enough said.

I have had a few questions about how I accomplished some of these photographs, so I will add a few technical notes to the end here.

Tech Talk:

Photo Settings (for the above photo): 1/60 – f 3.5 – ISO 640 – 16mm – No Flash – Canon 5D Mark II – White Balance Full Sun

Color balance:  If you are shooting in a theater you have to turn your camera off of Auto White Balance.  The color jells and temperature of the theatrical lighting will fool your camera every time.  Theatrical lighting is closer to the temperature of the daylight.  First, try to figure out the actual temperature in kelvins of the lights, but if you can’t get it or don’t want to test or get a custom white balance from one of the spotlights with no gels on it, you can always just turn your white balance to the full sunlight setting.  Shooting in the wrong white balance will result in all sorts of bad color shifts, and even in RAW, you will have a hard time getting the color balance back into line.

Exposure:  Your camera will always meter and expose to make everything middle gray.  Which means that if you are in a dark theater, your camera will see all of that darkness and try to over expose the shot.  So instead of having black blacks, you will have grey blacks and as a result of the over exposure, you will also gain additional noise in what would have been the shadows.  So simply turn your camera to manual exposure and make the decisions yourself.  Fortunately, once you have the setting, it won’t change all that much because the lighting is going to remain fairly constant for each given scene, assuming you have professionals managing the lights.

Focus:  Focusing in the dark is difficult for auto focus.  Don’t even try it.  Instead, look to the rim lights on the body to grab a manual focus.  Remember that auto focus is always looking for contrast to register focus, so if it is dark, you will have a hard time grabbing focus on the subject.

It was a rainy day with strong winds all day and a bit cold for Phoenix, AZ in January, but we altered our planned photo shoot a little in the concept and went out shooting.  Piano rock star, Kevin Burdick, was the subject.  We decided to take the umbrellas, but when we got to our location, we had a break in the clouds, but not the wind.  So we went with the umbrellas anyway.  Kevin get very tired trying to hold the umbrellas up against the wind, it really was quite strong.

The photos were shot with the Canon 1D Mark IV.

Now on to some tips and tricks:

First, the sun is off to the right of the photo and slightly behind Kevin.  Which means that if we took the photo without additional lights, he would be too dark.  Remember, we are competing with some bright clouds in the background, so we have to control the ambient exposure to match.  We could use a big reflector, or we could use a flash.  It was just Kevin and myself, no assistant, so we chose a flash unit.  A Canon 580EX II is mounted on a pole about 12 feet off to my right to avoid the on camera flash flattening effect.  Because it is off camera, I had to connect it via wireless slave.  I am using the pocket wizard TT1 and TT5 system.  This allows the camera to communicate with the flash via radio signal, but unlike typical radio slave systems, that only transmit the fire signal, the TT1 / TT5 system allows the camera to communicate metering solutions etc to the flash for TTL auto exposures.  The TT1/TT5 system also allows me to sync my flash at incredibly high shutter speeds via radio slave, and in order to get the ambient exposure right with the correct depth of field, I need to expose the image at f 5.0 at between 1/1600 and 1/2000 of a second.  A typical flash slave system will only allow syncing with a flash at 1/250 of a second.  So the Pocket Wizard TT1 / TT5 system is critical to the success of this photograph.  When I need the light, but also need the shutter speed, I don’t have to compromise.

The flash is set to provide a bust of light which is about one and a half stops lower than the brightness of the sun.  This allows the sun to remain the dominant light source.  You can see that the sun is still creating its signature crest of light on the far right side of Kevin’s face, but it is not blown out.  The near side of his face, though lit well, is still the shadow side.  This combination of lights provides a good contour to his face.  I am getting a studio lit look out on location with three lights.

“Three lights,” you ask, “but you have just mentioned the two?”

Light One:  The sun.  This is the strongest light on the set.  It is the light coming from the side and slightly behind, giving me that crest of light on his face and hands, and acting as a hair light.  It is also providing the nice bright crests on the clouds and the mountains.

Light Two: The Canon Flash.  This is a direct light on Kevin’s face which is filling in the shadow not to match, but fall short of the power of the sun (light one).  This gives us a great vivid exposure on Kevin’s face, without flattening the contours of the face because it is not on camera, but off camera and coming at the subject from the same side of the frame as the sun, so direction of the shadows still make sense.

Light Three: God’s Soft Box, the Northern Sky.  The northern sky (because in North America, the sun is always in the southern sky) is a giant soft reflector of the sun’s light.  That bounced light from the northern sky is filling in all the deep shadows on my subject and on the mountains and the clouds.  Without the reflection of the norther sky, the shadows in the photo would be very dark.  Now, I cannot position God’s soft box on a moment by moment basis, it is in a fixed position, but there are some things I can do.  I can choose the time of day to shoot, so that either the northwest or the northeast sky is my active soft box and I can position my subject such that he faces the northern sky, and I can choose the proper location for shooting the photograph so that my subject can face away from the sun, toward the northern sky.

I always know where the sun is and is going to be.  My iPhone, though not a good phone, has a great sun position app which tells me the exact position of the sun at any hour of any day well into the future.  So, when I scout a location, I know where the sun will be a 3 PM on Jan 12, 2030 and can plan my photo shoot accordingly.  I need to know this, because I want to get the best shot with the least amount of equipment possible.

The green toned photo above is what happens when the sun changes brightness on you in the middle of the shoot.  The original shot is a bit off in exposure, but with some fancy photoshop work using two different develops of the same RAW file, I was able to pull of a very cool shot and and control exactly how dark I wanted the background and the subject.  I love the drama of the image.

Note: Although the rest of these photographs have undergone a major amount of burning and dodging they have not been “retouched much at all.  I am not all that interested in major retouching, but burning and dodging, which I did very skillfully in the darkroom, is still a very key part of the beauty of my images.  Although now, I have such precise control offer my burns that almost anything is possible.  I often will slim down a subject or remove a belly with only burning and dodging.  I will post my article on Burning and Dodging here on the blog in the near future.  It ran in Professional Photographer Magazine in January 2010.  If you have a copy, take a look.

_______

This next set of photos, we moved the position of the light from my right side to my left.  Some people on my facebook posts have said it looks almost like he is being photographed against a backdrop, because he is popping out of the photo so much.  This is what happens when you move your second light to a less natural position.  Instead of the light coming from the same side as the sun’s light, it is coming from the other side, which subtly sets Kevin at odds with the shadows in the background.  Ergo, he jumps out of the photo because he is no longer blending in to the light.  Your mind sees him as different than the photo, even if your consciousness can not figure out why.  Study the photo carefully and see the shadows on Kevin, then the shadows on the mountains and clouds.

Anytime you want something to pop out of your photo, you have to make it different than everything else in the photo.  Most of the time, people use a bight color to do this.  More subtle is using a different texture of perhaps a different pattern, etc.  Notice, he is also wearing a tomato shirt.  That helps him stand out in every photo.  But the lighting is the real key to creating that extreme difference that is still subtle enough to make one question their perception.

Now for the rest of the photo shoot.  When he is far away from the camera we obviously can’t light him with a flash, so a little dodging in the post production fixes the shadow of the face.  Fortunately, distant shots like these don’t require as much lighting, because they are more about composition.  Besides, we still have our two lights working for us: light one and three.

Before we went out for our location shoot, we also did a few shots in the studio.  Kevin is great for expression.  I posted a set of these expressions in a previous post, but here are a few larger shots I loved from the session.

You may be wondering what I did to the photos here.  What photoshop action did I use?  The coloring effect is done completely in Adobe Lightroom with the click of a button.  It is one of many presets I have created for toning my images.  This one reminds me of an old 1970s photograph of my mom and dad in horn rimed glasses and a few of the kids  up in the mountains.  The color is faded and the paper is yellowed and some of the silvers are oxidizing.  It is a nice effect, but who wants to wait 30 years for that.  Anyway, most people make these color presets with the color balance changes, but that sometimes messes up the photo itself.  Making presets correctly is important.  I am finishing up a second set of presets, which will be available for purchase by WPPI 2010 in Las Vegas (where I will be teaching a master class on Lightroom and if you are coming, I will teach you how to make this preset).   The first set of presets is called the Essential Lightroom Preset Collection, which is a set of work-flow centered presets to get you through the editing process quickly.  This new set is called the Top Secret Collection, which is a set of effect presets to compliment the Essential Collection.  This effect in particular is mostly based in the split toning panel of the develop section in Lightroom.  There are some other settings in Saturation, Vibrance and Clarity etc that help to make it look just right, but the bulk of the effect is there in the split toning.

By the way, if you are going to be at WPPI and want to take my master class, but can’t get in because it is full, email registration@wppionline.com and ask to be placed on the waiting list.  If there are enough people on the waiting list, they will open another class.  And more importantly, they will book me in a platform class next year, which they should have done this year.  So if you are going to WPPI, email and ask to be placed on the waiting list.

And finally, a nice black and white at 1600 ISO.  This Canon 1D Mark IV is incredible in the higher ISOs.  I can’t say enough good things about that ISO.  I turned off the flash slaves and simply used the modeling lights, raised the ISO with impunity and shot.  With this camera, I will never fear the ISO.  Never.