So Shoot Me! » Portraits

The Singer

RickH — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:10:41 +0000

About a year ago, I did a series of assignments for The Fresno Bee. This shot is from an assignment to shoot a night of a choir from one of the Visalia high schools performing what turned out to be a really professional night of beautiful music.

I’ve unfortunately forgotten the name of this singer, but her voice — well, let’s say that this image doesn’t come anywhere near doing her justice, and not just because the acoustics are missing.

I’m posting this older shot because my court schedule (in my “real” job, I’m a criminal defense attorney) has kept me too busy to play with my camera lately. I hope to resolve that soon, as I’ve borrowed a really nice Canon 300 mm f2.8/L series lens and I recently bought the Canon 5D Mark II body to replace my old Canon 5D (which is now for sale, if anyone is looking for one).

No flash, 1/80 sec at f / 5.6, ISO 3200, 400 mm (EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM).

Enjoy.

I did.

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Cutie-Pie

RickH — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 23:55:16 +0000

I haven’t posted in awhile. It’s not that I dropped photography; it’s just business with other things and disappointment at the current WordPress theme. I want a theme that allows me to write a more complete blog post, but doesn’t run all the way down the side, like this one would if it were in landscape mode.

What I really should do is look for a new theme, but I worked hard to modify the one here to get this look.

The cutie-pie is my niece; the daughter of my “little sister.” It was shot at our family’s 2010 Thanksgiving dinner. So you vantz technical detailz?

If I Told You…

RickH — Sun, 10 May 2009 02:15:25 +0000

I’m not going to say much about the gentleman in this image. As the saying goes, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” Or, at the very least, I’d have to waterboard you with several gallons of vodka to make you forget anything important that I might’ve said.

This afternoon, I had the privilege of meeting this officer and of photographing both him and his beautiful wife (expect images of her “coming soon” to this blog near you). They’re from the East Coast of this great nation and happen to be visiting a photographer-friend of mine. But I might be saying too much already.

Suffice it to say that I shot this true patriot and he lived to tell about it, as did I.

You, on the other hand, may not be so lucky. Unless you click the “About” link on this blog and contact me to set up a session.

Erin Before & After

RickH — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:03:30 +0000

Once in awhile, I get a wild hair and want to test what I’m able to do. Erin’s impromptu portrait is an example.

I knew there was no way to get good balanced lighting in this image. Erin likes to sit on the windowsill of my sixth floor office and watch the sun going down while we chat about the day’s happenings. The sun coming in that window is just too strong and the flourescent lighting in my office is unable to balance it out.

A flash — such as the 580 EX II, not yet purchased at the time— or perhaps even a reflector inside combined with a diffuser held in her hand outside could have balanced things out so I could, as one of my photographer friends likes to put it, “get it right in the camera.” But I had a feeling that if I shot it just right I could get it into Photoshop and do something nice with it there.

First stop, however, was Adobe Lightroom 2, where I did as much tweaking as the program would allow before sending it over to Photoshop CS4 for some additional work and finishing touches.

I think you’ll agree it worked out quite nicely. But, then, it’s hard to screw things up when you have one of the world’s more beautiful women perched upon your windowsill.

Comments

May 5, 2009, Photoshop Painting | So Shoot Me! writes: [...] a follow up to yesterday’s post, I thought some folks might like a better look at the finished version of Erin’s image. In [...]