On Location Portraits and Talent Development

Two things I find challenging are on location portraits and working with new models on a trade basis. This portrait is of Latonya D who is an agency represented model from Calliope Talent. 

I photographed Latonya at the Japanese Tea Gardens around 8:15 AM. Mother Nature's light was flat and not strong enough for me to use reflectors so I mounted two hot shoe flashes off camera on light stands without any modifiers. You can read more about using hot shoe flashes on location at the Strobist Blog . Each light was placed at 45° to Latonya with the intent to wrap Latonya in light so as to pop her from the background. The key light was set for F7 and the fill set to F5.6  as measured by my Sekonic 308S light meter. The image was captured using my faithful Sony A350 with a 50 mm F 1.7 lens set at 1/125 sec and F7.1 which created the bokeh effect of the background. The image was then post processed using Adobe Photoshop with Portrait Professional. And here is the final result.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Black Swallowtail Butterfly Food

Most folks do not know this but those ugly Thistle plants growing in your yard, garden, or pasture are food for the adult Black Swallowtail butterfly when in bloom. No butterfly showed up but I did get this photograph yesterday of the last Thistle in bloom. I also found one remaining bluebonnet. Lastly the red flowering shrub called a Butterfly Bush or so I think.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Full Moon

Didn't quite come out the way I intended. i was hand holding the camera with a 600 mm lens on and had to use a fast shutter speed and at 5.6 to  get anything to work.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Where's the Rain?

Nice clouds today with lower level going one direction and upper level another but not a drop of rain. Sky was that blue and this was taken around 7:00 PM today. Hopefully it rains soon.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, pllease visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

The Digital Darkroom

Post processing is the digital photographers dark room. Some photographers love it and others hate it. The two images here are the same shot that was captured using the RAW format of my Cannon 50D. Mother Nature supplied the yucky sky.

In my "Digital Darkroom" (PC with Adobe PS CS4) I opened the image in Adobe Camera Raw and post processed in camera raw using an "edgy technique". In one image I removed most of the saturation and the other I bumped the saturation way up to obtain the blue sky. Crop is slightly off in the two images but other than that eveything was done in Camera Raw with five mouse clicks resulting in two different images.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Photographing Pets with Flash

Here is one of the herd that shows up to eat at my place. Sorry about the eyes but I was trying to hold a camera in one hand and my cane in the other (silly ankle just had to turn out) and I finally gave up and turned the camera to full auto and let the flash fire which of course gave me some ugly red eyes. This is my first PS fix of pet eyes and obviously I need more practice.

As Shot

The Correction Attempt

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

The Beginning

I came across an interesting concept the other day - take a photograph per day for a year in order to hopefully improve with time. Today is the start so check back often to see what I am photographing. Sometimes the image will be mundane and hopefully other times the image will at least astound me. 

I was driving by and saw our flag still waving proudly in the breeze and things have changed since 9/11 but we are still here. A big thanks to our armed forces and our public servants who put their lives on the line daily and to those who have served in the past. Never Forget!

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred