Commercial Photography

Practise Time

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The weekends in Ohio have been just about raining all the time. With that, it was time for practice time in my make-shift studio in the family room. This time I wanted to have the perfect photo for cutouts to be used in composites using a white background. I wanted the fly-away hairs and no blowout. So with that, I set up my seamless white paper. To keep it white, I used two 200-watt flashes to light it. I set up a chair about 8-10 feet from the white paper. For my key light, I used another flash with a soft box on it and had it about 5 ft away from the chair.

While crowded, the studio was set. Next was a subject. Yep, I could not convince my wife for this assignment, so I used myself. Messing up my hair so that I would have fly-away hair, it was time to practice. Then, it was time to practice using my phone to trigger the camera. I use a light meter when I am in the studio and begin practicing. I did overexpose background, underexpose, and wrote down what happened. I did the same thing with the key light. (main light). In the end, I came up with what I wanted and time for photoshop and tried different backgrounds and see if the cutout worked. It did. Next time, I need to buy a wig and use it on my mannequin head.

The Tall Sails

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Wow, it's been some time since I have done a blog. I have been one busy photographer. Wedding, Commercial work, and having my kids from Wisconsin have kept me a little busy. I know, no excuse.

Last week, I was in Cleveland, Ohio, to see these great Sailboats for the first time. I have always seen them on TV but never live. We were advised to arrive early because parking for this event is very hard. I showed up 2 hours before the ships were to show up and barely found a spot.

The weather was great, and you could finally see these great ships in the distance. I was going to use a tripod, but because it was a very sunny day, I could hand hold my 400mm with a 2.0 extender and keep the speed at 1500. ISO was 200. The challenge I had was not holding the lens, but all boats were blocking our view. Most of these boats felt they needed to be right on their side and follow them for 10 min. But with some patients and help with Photoshop, I could eliminate them. I waited for an opening and then took the pictures. It is defiantly a challenge and very disappointing.

It was great seeing these ships and the work they have to do to improve our look of the past. Here are a few pictures that I came up with that day. I enjoyed looking at the past. Now off to Bermuda this weekend for a week.