Old School or Just Getting Old?

First - sorry for the lag between posts. Many, many things going on and I have been neglecting the blog. I will try to do better!

Second - sorry, and you've probably guessed this, but this post is NOT about Jonah.

Great! For those who have not already closed the page - let's go!

Most of you are aware that I've been working on a year long project to further my photography skill set and to deepen my understanding of the business side of the industry. I'm halfway through and can't even begin to explain how much I've grown in 6 months. It's really been remarkable. One major component that I've been focusing on is finding my style, or my voice, in photography. It's one thing to take a collection of nice shots. It's not enough, though. Someone needs to be able to look at your work and know that you took the photo.

I'll never forget one lesson in an introductory conducting class in undergrad (conducting music, for anyone that may not know that bit of my background). We watched videos of world-famous conductors. We analyzed the visual. Analyzed the sounds. Then we listened to recordings of the same group of conductors. We were instantly able to identify which conductor we were hearing. Same idea with photography.

I'm getting there through a lot of shooting, analyzing and comparison. I'm seeing a style emerge and it's very exciting! It really informs my starting point when I am approaching a new assignment.

In exploring various aspects of my approach to photography, I had an urge to purchase a film camera. Yes, they still make film and yes, there are still many labs that still process film. I decided if I was going to dive into film it needed to be different than my digital cameras in a big way - no 35mm. I bought an old Mamiya medium format camera that shoots to 120 film. I've been learning it. It is 100% manual. No auto anything. I LOVE it. I've blown a lot of shots. I've also come up with a few that I adore.

There's been something in the look of digital photography that just wasn't getting me where I wanted to be. I chalked it up (and still do to some extent) to my photoshop skills - until I got my first roll of 120 back from the lab. A portrait of Kristi that I snapped jumped off the page at me. Bingo. It isn't a perfect photograph, but it was the look that I'd been missing.

I was recently commissioned to create a few portraits of an NYC photographer for a friend's blog. (I'll share the post when it is published) I took both digital and film cameras along and ended up shooting mostly digital because time was short and I know my Canon much better. However, I took some fairly straight forward portraits with both cameras. I edited the digital shots first while I was waiting for the film to come back from the lab. When I scanned the negatives in my jaw hit the table. I really liked the digital files until I saw the film scans. I'm not sure if you'll be able to see it as drastically in this medium due to the compression on the photos, but here are a couple of comparisons of somewhat similar shots.

Digital

Film

Digital

Film

The shots are straight up window light camera left with a white reflector camera right.

So, the question stands - it just something about old school photo making, or am I just getting old and preferring old things? :)

Balloons

My how quickly things change when you're three.

Jonah came home from the store with Kristi yesterday with a pack of balloons. He wanted me to blow up a blue one (blue is a big thing right now). I did and about three minutes later it popped in his hands. Not sure why. It may have been a defective balloon. I may have put too much air in it. No clue. Regardless, Jonah was upset.

I thought he was upset about losing the balloon, so I blew up another blue one. Turns out he was just scared. He insisted that I take the air out of the balloon because that was the last blue one and he wanted to play with it. Have you ever tried to untie an inflated balloon? I don't recommend it. After about 20 minutes of working on it, I succeeded and order was restored.

So, today we went to a friends birthday party. To no one's surprise, there were balloons. We weren't sure  how Jonah would react. He played it cool at first and then the other kids started asking for balloons. He decided he wanted a balloon too. Thankfully, the balloon survived the windy walk home and he loves it! I just knew it was going to pop at any moment and scar him for life, but the balloon hung in there.

When I noticed that it pretty much matched his shirt, I knew it was time for a photo.

Photo - this is three lights. The key is a strobe in a beauty dish aimed at his face from camera right. There is a strobe in a 3x4' softbox camera left for fill and a gridded strobe back camera left on the balloon. 50mm lens at f/11.

Bubble Break

What a tough weekend! It was wet and chilly and very tough to get outside. By Sunday afternoon, Jonah was bouncing off the walls. Thankfully the rain broke for awhile this afternoon and we were able to get him out onto our little patio for a bit. We took some bubbles out and let him play.

Realizing that I haven't been very regular about posting, I decided I would try to get a shot. I knew what I wanted. This was not it. I'm not sure what possessed me to think that I could wrangle a three year old into a specific photo after he had been cooped up for a majority of the weekend, but I thought I could make it work. I was wrong. Anyway, I got a few that I thought were OK, but mostly we were just all out having a little fun in our own ways.

For the longest time I had trouble shooting photos of Jonah with bubbles. The bubbles always disappeared. It finally dawned on me the two things I was missing - depth of field and LIGHT. It seems you pretty much have to light bubbles in order for them to really show up - or find really nice, bright, available light. Moreover though, using a shallow depth of field and focusing on Jonah lets the bubbles evaporate into the out of focus areas. Live and learn, I suppose.

Photo - this is an 85mm lens at f/5.6. There is a strobe in a white beauty dish slightly camera right.

Welcome Spring!

Hi everyone! Sorry that it has been so long between posts. After completing the 52 weeks I decided it was in everyone's best interest to take a few weeks off. I've still been shooting a lot and working on another 52 week project with a group of photographers, but haven't been including Jonah on any of those photos. 

So, here we are - April 22 - and the temperature barely got above 50 degrees here today. Sadly - that was the norm for this spring. Don't get me wrong - I love running in these cool mornings and I will be longing for them when Mother Nature decides to be testy in the other way and make it 80+degrees with 90% humidity at 6 AM. . . I know it's coming. However, all of the rain and cold has made for a dreary, lingering end to a miserable winter. 

All that said, though, Kristi and Jonah have been trying to get into the spirit by working on some plants. The flower above was purchased from a new local florist and Jonah picked it out all by himself. He was pretty cute as he proudly carried it down the sidewalk on the walk home. He's been watering it and watching it grow.

Photo-wise - here's my original vision for the photo:

After seeing it on the computer, Kristi suggested the crop above. I like both and can't decide which I prefer. Any thoughts?

Looking at the full frame - this is three lights: a strobe in a strip box low on the pots, a strobe in a white beauty dish high and on Jonah and a strobe with a grid pointed at the back wall. There are two white reflectors - one on either side of the pots giving a little more definition to the sides and backs. This is my 135mm lens at f/9.

Thanks for following along and thanks for understanding the break! I hope to make these posts fairly regularly now.

Week 52: I'm Three!

I thought this shot from tonight was the most appropriate - and more than ever, it was tough to choose the one to feature. As I type, "I'm Three!" I have The Who blaring in my head (I'm Free from Tommy), so I thought this was Jonah's rocker pose. He's trying to make a three with his right hand. . .

What an amazing year it has been. What a FAST year it has been. Jonah has changed so much in this past year that I can't even begin to put it into words. We started the year with a toddler and now we have a full blown kid. Jonah has been very verbal for quite awhile, but now he speaks in complete, clear sentences and doesn't stop talking. All things considered, his Terrible Twos weren't so bad. The jury's still out on the threes, though!

We had Jonah's Birthday Party this past weekend, a week early, at the Children's Museum of Art here in Manhattan. What a great spot! We were fortunate that so many of his friends, and our friends, could come join us in celebrating our little boy turning three. There was lots to do including a group mural project in the style of Jackson Pollock. Lots of fun! Photos from that are here.

I'm so glad that I took a leap and dove into this project. I feel I've grown quite a bit as a photographer over this year - more as a dad, though. It was great to force myself to slow down from time to time and take note of things. I needed some details to focus on and bring to life in photos. This helped me gain that focus during an insanely busy part of our lives. Thanks to everyone who has expressed such kind words to me about the blog and about the photos. I truly appreciate them. So many of you have asked if I'm going to continue this - and I will. I may not hit every single week like I have this past year, but I'm going to try. I've got some more leaping to do as a photographer over the next year or two - stay tuned.

So, thanks to everyone who has followed along. I hope you keep reading and keeping up with us.

I'll indulge, since this is the last post of the first 52 weeks and leave you with a few of my other favorites from tonight's shoot:

This was my original concept:

 didn't read as well as I'd imagined.

I ALMOST chose this one for the lead photo:

Couple of others that are cute:

All of the photos are me going Joel Grimes on Jonah - minus the cool HDR backgrounds. So - three light setup. Strobe back camera left in a gridded stripbox; strobe back camera right in a gridded softbox (because I only own one stripbox currently); and the key is a strobe in a 53" octabank high above the lens. The full body shots are 50mm and the closer shots are 135mm - all at f/2.8

Thanks again everyone!

Week 51: Yet Another Portrait

As I mentioned in the last post, I wanted to close out these last few weeks with a few portraits of Jonah to capture him at this point in life. I wanted to capture him as he appears physically - he's just changing so quickly! However, I didn't fully anticipate just how much personality would come through, as well. I'm not sure why I didn't foresee that. . . guess it was the photographer side of me thinking more than the dad. Jonah oozes personality, both for better and for worse, at every moment.

This photo is more or less what I wanted to get this week. . . probably closer to the less, but again, that's the photographer speaking more than the dad. The light is more or less right. The reflection is more or less right. However, the boy and the prop are a bit different. I had a different train in mind. Jonah decided that he wanted a ball. Great! Jonah has been taking a soccer class at school lately and it's all he really talks about at home; a ball was a great prop for this portrait. Then he decided he didn't want the ball. I tried to encourage him to "make a picture" with the ball - bad idea. He eventually chose this train and instantly started driving it in circles around the white plexiglass "table" it's sitting on. The sheet of plexiglass is 2'x4' and the rate at which he was moving covered the two feet window of shot opportunity faster than I could get the camera focused and the shutter depressed.

Kristi was a saint and helped me get him wrangled. He stood and "smiled" for a fleeting moment and I just got the shot in before he was off again. Jonah is where I wanted him - the train, not even close. Oh well, this is a more accurate portrayal of Jonah than what I had envisioned! Jonah is very opinionated anymore and is constantly on the go. Getting him to do what you would like him to do at the time you would like him to do it is becoming increasingly difficult. I have a sneaking suspicion that the terrible twos will much more likely be the terrible threes for Jonah. We'll see.

Photo - this is a piece of white seamless paper as the backdrop and a sheet of white plexiglass set on two footstools as a table. Lighting is pretty simple - there is a gridded strobe camera right and focused on the seamless. It's aimed low to give the gradient as you go up. The key is a strobe in a 53" octabank camera right. 135mm lens at f/8.

Week 50: Another Portrait

It's really hard to believe it's been almost a full year since I started this project, but here we are. Jonah has changed so much in the past year. He's definitely a preschooler now - not even a toddler anymore. He's grown so much physically but even more mentally. So, as we start to wrap up the year I thought I would take a couple of portraits. Not a lot to say - just a testament to how much he has grown and changed in the past year. Here's the first.

I had been wanting to experiment with this lighting for awhile and finally got the shot in. This is three lights. The background is a strobe in a 3x4' softbox firing directly back into the camera. There are two strobes in shoot through umbrellas directly in front of the camera - one low aimed up and one high aimed down. The 135mm lens is directly between the two umbrellas.