A Few from Our First Day

I was going through photographs from Joe's class last Feburary for a project I was working on when I came across a few candid portraits taken on our first day.

I've posted them in a private gallery here. My apologies to those of you who are among the missing.

I hope the pictures bring back good memories of a week full of challenges, discovery, fun and frustration.

Merry Christmas and best wishes for a healthy and productive New Year.

Chicago at night

Hope everyone is well. Just keeping Kabobs alive! These are from my recent trip to Chicago.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.

Fred

Fun with Mushrooms

Well not that kind of fun, just photographing the mushrooms.

While in Sacramento CA, I came across this colony of mushrooms growing at the base of a tree. I thought it was kinda neat looking, so I came back the next morining to catch the warmth of the early light.

The below two images are HDR (High Dynamic Range) compositions, using Photomatix Pro software. I'm really liking the results of this HDR stuff.

The image below is from a "point and shoot" camera, shot in the shade of the tree, still turned out OK.


Wishing you all the best,
David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Fisherman and engine shed

Hi Virginia,

I was trying to implement RSS feed on my own blog, but then "something" happened ...;o) Sorry!

FISHERMAN
Well, here is a picture I made earlier this year of a fisherman on Ringkoebing Fjord a beautyful (and very early!) morning in the summer of 2009.

D2x, ISO 200, 1/1.000 sec., f. 5,6, 17-55 mm. f.2,8 lens at 17 mm., manuel mode. One SB800 + SC-28 cord.
 
MILLE
Here is a picture I made a couple of weeks ago in an old remise (garage for trains). I think it is called engine shed or roundhouse in english. The girl is Mille.
 

D2x, 17-55 mm. f. 2,8 at 28 mm., ISO 200, 1/160 sec., f. 11, manuel mode. One SB800 in Ezybox as main light camera right + one SB800 very high to light the scene up + SU800 commander.

LISBETH

Trying to light the purple shawl from behind and control the ambient too. The girl is Lisbeth.

D2x, 17-55 mm. f. 2,8 at 30 mm., ISO 250, 1/3.200 sec., f. 2,8, manuel mode. Two SB800 in shoot thru umbrella as main light camera left + one SB800 with gobo from behind camera right to light up the shawl camera right + SU800 commander + strong sun from right side to light shawl camera left.

TROTTING TRAINER

Made a testshot of trotting horse trainer Mr. Kaj Jensen, Aalborg. Just for fun.

The shooting resulted in two new customers who accumulated minimum a months pay, so my time was invested good.

D2x, ISO 200, 17-55 mm. f.2,8 at 32 mm., f. 5,6, 1/80 sec., manuel mode, one SB800 in umbrella + SU800 commander.

Carol's project following an artist

HDR using Photomatix Pro 3

It's interesting that Fred Troilo posted his experiments with a HDR (High Dynamic Range) style image, because I have just recently been experimenting with producing HDR images using the Photomatix Pro 3 software.

Below are 3 HDR images of a Monument Valley Sunrise that I just created using multiple camera captured pictures at different exposure levels. {click on the image to see a larger version}


This HDR image used 3 images: nominal/-2/+2 stop images.

This HDR image used 3 images: nominal /-3 /+3 stop images.

This HDR image used 5 images: nominal/-2/+2/-3/+3 stop images.


Here are the +-3 stop images for your reference.
Nominal exposure


+3 exposure



-3 exposure



Of all the images, the HDR images come the closest to portraying the spectacular view I was seeing.


I actually shot 7 images in 1 stop increments from -3 to +3 stops and I was not able to create from any one of them an image that even came close to the results of the HDR images.

In this round of experimenting, the HDR image composed of the +-2 stop images turned out the best in my opinion, but you probably won't be able to tell that from the smaller images I've used for this post (+-2 stops is what the Photomatix folks recommend). The only processing I did to the Photomatix output file (.tif) was some "chromatic aberration" adjustment using Adobe Lightroom.



This was only my second time using the Photomatix Pro software to create an HDR image, so there is definitely a lot more practice needed on my part to processing the image, but Photomatix will become a new tool I will be using to create my pictures where there are a wide range of tone values present that should be portrayed in the final image.




I hope this was useful and interesting.


David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com

Pseudo HDR

Been fooling around in Photoshop playing with HDR and came across a technique to create a pseudo HDR using Lightroom. No photoshop at all! Here is the before image. Took this from my hotel room last month. Early morning outside DC.

I imported the image into Lightroom, and started by setting all the following to 100 Recovery, Fill, Contrast, Clarity & Vibrance. Then just kept tweaking until I got this.

Gel assignment

I wasn't gonna let this month go by without a post from someone. Just had my son try on his costume for tonight and thought, what the hell grab the strobes. Had him stand in the entrance of the laundry room and threw a blue gelled light in there. The main light is a 580ex2 with a Honl grid. Happy Halloween everyone!

Fred

Sorry I am late ...

Is fire in old cars available light? I don't know but here is my pictures for the september assignment. A little late I know that, but I have been busy lately. Obama, Pelé and Oprah dropped by for a cup of coffee after the olympic election in Copenhagen, you know ...

Today on my way home from a shooting for a construction compagny, I noticed smoke on the horison and made a u-turn. Came to this nice fire with lots of burning cars and red firetrucks. Oh boy - I am 12 years old again!

I love the rainbow.

The reflection in left side of frame is from the sunlight.

The worker is watching the fire and the firefighters.

October

What's the assignment for october - gels?

Street people and the natural light

Hello everybody! Sorry for being a lurker for so long but finally I'm posting, too :-) This time it's about street people, who are among my favorite subjects...

September Natural Light

Here are my "natural light pictures" for the Kabobs September Photo Assignment.

I've been visiting my family in Sacramento California for the past week, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to catch some natural light images of my 16 month old nephew (Preston). It was fun to kinda follow him around to see what I could catch, he has such an expressive face and a happy personality.

Here are three images that I liked. I used my 70-200mm f2.8 lens wide open to keep a narrow depth of field.
This first picture is indoors next to a large picture window at a restruant, soft morning light.

The second picture is outdoors, with slightly cloudy soft morning light.

This last picture is later morning light, getting to be a bit harder, as the clouds dissipated.


I also took pictures of my mom, 88 years young, whose naturally silver hair works great with any light. In this case it was a huge skylight right above her at our favorite coffee & croissant shop (a regular morning ritual when I visit).

She thought I should try to make this an action shot, so she told me to take this picture and to use it. I'm a good son and do what I'm told.

All inputs and comments welcome.

Once again, this was a fun assignment, looking forward to the October assignment.

My Best to all of you,

David Gralian

david@davidgralian.com

www.davidgralian.com

Natural light portraits

Here are a few natural light portraits... I might still post another if I have time to shoot it.  =0) 

The girl with the gift was shot for our alumni magazine. That was just a matter of finding pretty light! 

The guy with the hat is Darnell, he's our mail guy at the College. I'm not wild about the blown out highlights but I just thought the sun was making an interesting pattern on his face.

The garage belongs to my parents' neighbors. I thought it was cool how Homer was lit and the rest of the garage wasn't.... just kind of hinting at all the crap in there!

Ah light O' Natural

Here is my image. I have spent the majority
of my career looking for nice even, diffused light.
Only in the last year I've been seeking out
intense light sources and trying to make them work.
So this is image, taken last week at my studio, goes in that
direction.

September Assignment

Ahhh natural, available, beautiful sun light. This is a shot of my parents neighbor, as she sat on her covered porch. The interior of the porch is all white - including the ceiling and floor. It was a cloudy day, yet fairly bright. No flash or reflectors, just that giant ball of fire 92,955,820.5 miles away.

OK, so maybe this is just a "proud new aunt" moment for me, but I wanted to praise the good ole-fashioned simplicity of BOUNCED FLASH. Who says you can't have beautiful, soft light with your 580EX mounted right on your camera? I just aimed it at the white wall that was 6 ft. to my right and voila! My nephew becomes the next Baby Gap model (don'tcha think?)

Jungle Boy

My nephew broke his wrist last week and wanted a picture before the cast comes off. He's studying to be an actor so I thought this might make a good character shot. Had my 580 EX2 camera right going through my homemade beauty dish and a Quantum flash with no diffusion on the outer edges of the tree line pointing directly towards the camera. Shot this with my 70-200 f/4 at 1/30sec.

Fred

LINK

Hi everybody,

if you do weddings see this norwegian photographers pics. OK or wot?

Link: http://www.terjeaamodt.com/blog/2009/08/20/bryllup-andalsnes-stavanger/

regards, Bjarne

Capturing Movement

I'm now officially two month's behind in posting to the topic, but I thought I would share this one of my friend, Monica, that was taken with available light in the Boston subway. I used high ISO out of necessity, but really love the graininess and the sense of motion.

I am still planning to do a sheet shot. I'll post when it gets done.

Meanwhile, I have been shooting mostly portraits and am learning about the joys of photographing kids and their families when one or more of the kids do not want to be photographed. I've gotten some pretty amusing pictures, but, unfortunately, not what the parents are looking for.

I'm really enjoying the work that everyone is posting and continue to be inspired by Joe's blog and, of course, his work.

Virginia

August is Jumping Fun

Here's my submission for the August assignment (it is still August).

The setup I used was a full length backdrop, two umbrella's with remote triggered Canon 580EX2 speedlites. Both lights are camera left, the main light is coming in from above and the secondary light is coming in from below at a reduced lighting level. The camera is set to Aperature Priority so the shutter speed was 1/250sec, the lens is a 24-105mm set at about 24mm.

I then asked each young lady (Stacie, Amy) to jump up into the air. The trick was making sure to get all their appendages into the frame and to get a fun looking pose. I have to hand it to Amy who was jumping with heels on, very brave. The camera was tethered to my laptop, so we could see the results quickly and try different things. We certainly had a good time taking these pictures.

My best to everyone,

David Gralian

http://www.davidgralian.com/

david@davidgralian.com

August

Here's my assignment for August - single studio strobe with modeling light on high to capture the blur. Hope everyone is enjoying the end of the summer season. Looking forward to the fall.

Fred

Dignan at the cabin

Hey All--

Here are my shots for the August assignment. My family has a cottage on a little lake in Michigan, and my dog, Dignan, loves to "fetch" off the dock. Obviously I was limited in terms of light position in the shot of him flying through the air (difficult to mount a light stand on water), so the flash is almost direct (it was in the paddleboat with me). In the picture of him shaking off, the strobe is camera right. I wish I would've underexposed the ambient more here and bumped the flash power up, but you have to think & act fast to even catch this shot in the first place... you never know where & when he's going to shake off! The shot of him on the dock is a direct flash from camera left (cross lighting with the sun), and the fun one is just him finally checking out this flash business up close!