Working With Studio Lights

One of the next major goals I have for Luxe Photography is to incorporate the use of an indoor studio. During the winter months here in St. Louis, the mild days where you can have family pictures done is few and far between. While a studio would definitely supplement the outdoor style I do, it is not my intention to exclusively go indoors. I am, however, always looking for way to expand and improve my skills, either through various photography seminars, or learning from other local professionals. Two of which I get to write about today.

A few weeks ago I got a call from a friend of mine, Jeff Michel, who owns his own t-shirt apparel company, Rina Wear, here in St. Louis. Talk about graphic tees. He definitely pushes the social limits in what are sometimes, crude, but mostly funny quips about our local St. Louis area. You need check out his link... at least for entertainment purposes.

Well, Jeff is wanting to be able to shoot his own models, at times, in an indoor studio, so he set one up at his location. He invited me over, knowing that I'm a photographer, but with very little experience with studio equipment. We were going to just play together and have fun. I have to be honest and say I didn't think it would be that hard. But it was. As shown below as most of my first test pictures of Jeff turned out like this:



Yes, this is how I thought all of my pictures were coming out. I was turning my friend, Jeff, into terror mastermind, Kahlid Sheik Muhammed. No matter what we tried, there just wasn't any luck. Of course, like true guys, we failed to do much research on how to position studio lights properly. We went by trial and error. Mostly error. But it was fun trying.

Luckily, I came across a wonderful photographer at one of the latest photography seminars I attended. Dana Moore, is owner of Moments Photography, located in Warrenton, Missouri. Dana does excellent work, and is one of a dozen photographers I follow to help keep my skills sharp and my inspirational juices flowing.

Dana was gracious enough to have me out to her new studio and show me some tips and tricks into how she is able to capture top notch images. We spent some time in her studio shooting each other and I have to say, I finally started to catch on. Maybe that was the trick with Jeff and I... We needed one of us to know what we were doing.

So here is my contribution to that day. Dana makes a great model to shoot as well. What do you think?



Being able to finally comprehend lighting positioning and keying in of settings really got me interested in the studio idea. I'll continue to do more work in this area and will hopefully have this added as an additional service to the Luxe Photography line. Check out Dana's site, above, to see the picture she got of me that day. Thanks again, Dana and Jeff.

Lone Trees

There's something about viewing a lone tree in the middle of a barren landscape. I've never really taken the initiative to pull over and take a picture when I come across a scene like this, but the other day, I made sure to stop whenever, wherever to get inspired to just shoot some pics. Unfortunately, the few hours I had driving around trying to force myself to find something to take a picture of had the reverse effect. I couldn't get into the mood or find anything. It figures, when you are least expecting things to happen, that's when inspiration strikes. When you go actively looking for it, it never quite happens.

I actually got lost in the back roads where I was driving, about 30 minutes outside of where we live. My wife and I have taken the kids out, about half way to where I ended up, on our bikes, maybe doing 3-6 miles till I completely pass out from being out of shape. I pulled over and walked about 30 feet to try and get a good angle on this tree. I wish I would have been a bit more aware that at the distance and angle I had eventually chosen, I was not getting the full tree in frame...but there was something about where I was that said this was the shot. Sky was blue...air was cold and crisp...it felt good finally finding some time to get out and have some fun with the camera.

Of course, 30 minutes later, I'm calling my wife trying to have her find me on google maps to get me out of the area I had gotten lost in. I do that a lot.

Jaguar

My boys and I took advantage of some warmer weather here in St. Louis earlier in the week, and I brought out the new 70-200 IS lens to the zoo. It's a bit bigger than the old 70-200 non IS that I had, but the built in image stabilization more than compensates.

The jaguar was quite active behind the netting and came within just a few feet of me. I've been using AI Servo mode for my animal shots to help with the moving focus, and I am quite happy how the Canon 40d handles it. There were a few pictures that the focus was thrown off by shooting through the netting, but this one here, the AI Servo pretty much nails it.

Luxe Featured in Regional Eyecare Ad

Luxe Photography was featured recently in a Regional Eyecare ad in the St. Louis area. We spent a couple hours in their Hwy 40 and Winghaven Blvd. office and took photos of the staff and facility. Our thanks to Dr. Matt Wickham, Dr. Lisa Mackey and Dr. Jeff Leipholtz for having us out there.

Making Food Look Good

Food TV network and celebrity chefs are pretty normal nowadays, but who would have thought just a few years ago just how big it would be. I have to give so much credit to those producers and creators that can make food look and sound so good on tv. I've always wanted to try and see what I could do with a camera and some home made food.

I stumbled upon this new Green Channel the other day where Chef Emeril Lagasse was hooking people up with a new and creative way to do a tailgate party. One of the recipes he did was for a tomato and basil sandwich on the grill. It looked awesome so I wanted to do one for my wife for Superbowl. She was a little annoyed that I just didn't get the food going since everyone was hungry and I just kept stopping every so often to take a picture.

Here are the ingredients I grabbed at our local Shop 'n Save that included fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and a focaccia loaf. The jicama was going to be used for a side dish/garnish. The mozzarella slices were backup in case I didn't have enough fresh cheese. At $5 a ball, I didn't want to waste any so I got some of the cheaper cheese in case...we actually didn't even use it.



Here I am trying to make cut up tomatoes look good. A little bit of salt on top of them and they were ready to be used.



Nothing betta than fresh mozzarella! We decided to add some spinach leaves to the sandwich to add to the fullness of the meal. Plus, we just like spinach. Sprinkle some torn basil across and it was ready to be grilled.



Here's the finished product. Actually, I screwed up. I had the grill on too high and when I checked on the sandwiches a couple of minutes after I put them on, both bottoms of the focaccia bread were charred black. I had a hungry family waiting for me just inside our sliding glass door, so I did what most guys would do. I flipped the burned bread far into our backyard for the deer to eat (or our dog next time he went out) and I combined the two sandwiches into one. The sandwich was a bit too big in the middle, throwing off the golden ratio of bread to ingredients, but it was still pretty good...and looked good!

Recommended Firefox Add On

Your web browser is probably the most used application on your desktop with as much time as you spend surfing the internet. Over the years, I have accumulated several websites that I hit on often and I organize them based on themes. For example, I have a few dozen photography websites I use often for tips and inspiration in what I do and it helps to have them all organized with bookmarks. I'm a big Firefox user on all three of my systems, and it's been a pain synchronizing all of the bookmarks. There are several instances when I want to quickly and easily go to a site that I don't remember right off the bat, and unfortunately, I'm on a system I didn't bookmark it on.

The latest issue of Macworld has changed all that for me. They highlighted a fantastic app called Foxmarks that will do it all for you. Just add the program to each of your systems and you'll have the same bookmarks - the same look - on each system. It's awesome. It's easy. It's free!

Download it here at www.foxmarks.com