PreBridals... Oh, Yes

When thinking of wedding photography a prebridal session should be a definite yes on your list of must have photos. The images you will receive from this extra session are a great value to you and can never be done on your wedding day. You will get images with better quality lighting and better posing in a more relaxed atmosphere. Your photographer will make you look and feel like a famous model or movie star. This session is beneficial too. It affords you an opportunity to see your hair style and how your dress fits you months before your wedding so changes can be made if necessary. It gives you a chance to interact and relate to your photographer, so you will be more confident and relaxed that he or she will get the pictures you want on your wedding day. And, some of the images will be included in to your storybook wedding book. This is a win, win situation for the bride.

Lighting Lesson

Sometimes less is more. This is my daughter Lisa. She is a wonderful young woman. Works a full time job, goes to college, is independent, vibrant, energetic, and pretty. With her hectic schedule she stopped in for a visit. This image was taken in my office which is a small 8 x 9 room with beige walls. I used one on camera flash bounced to my left onto the wall and back at my subject to light her face. I held the camera in my right hand and with my left I pointed a dual Zenon Brinkman flash light at the wall behind her to give separation and dimension. I removed a partial distracting picture frame from the background with photoshop. One click and it doesn't get any easier that. Learn to see and use the light. That is all there is to it.

Morning dew

I shot this dew drop this morning using extension tube with a nikkor 24-70mm 2.8. This is four images stacked together to achieve maximum depth of field. I can get a good star effect by shooting at f-16 to f- 22 and back lighting with the sun.

Opening Day

May 2nd was opening day of the 2009 race season at Fort Erie Race Track. We had a great time taking photos and broke even at the track. Here is slide show of some of our images of the day.

May Special

Mother's Day is May 10th this year. This month we are celebrating Mothers. So for all the Moms out there, for the entire month of May we are offering a free portrait session that includes a free color 5x7 print. There is no purchase necessary but additional prints and wall portraits will be offered at an additional cost. Her portrait session can be of just her or with anyone she chooses. She may have it taken in our studio with a huge selection of backgrounds or she may choose to have it on location. Please call early for appointments. 716-297-3387

Digital Magic

Our latest project was a little photo maniplulation. Our client wished to make a large wall portrait of the image with her and her new husband standing in front of his race car outside the church. The problem was she wasn't crazy about the pose in that picture and asked if I could take the two of them out of an image we took earlier inside and exchange it with the their pose in the original image. I first cut out the two of them from the alter picture and cleaned up the edges so I had a good clean image to start with. I did run into a few snags with this image. First the groom was holding his grandmother's hand so his entire left arm an hand had to be re done and blended together. Then their heads didn't cover the original heads so I had to rebuild the background bushes behind the bride and groom. The gown needed to be rebuilt because her stance in each image is different and her gown flows in different patterens in both pictures. I didn't have another image in her wedding album to use that showed her complete gown and in that position so I cloned out the original and rebuilt the pavement underneath. I then copied the right half of the gown and reversed it and pasted and blended it to the left side. This action also required the reflection in the car door be addressed to make the the image look believable. Now I color corrected the layers to make the ambient light images from inside look like they were taken outside. I then added a double mat effect to the image to dress it up. Wahh-laaahhh..finished....just like magic. Our client was very pleased with the results. Her exact quote was: "IT IS AWESOME> THANKS SO MUCH> LOVE IT LOTS> GREAT WORK> WONDERFUL> SUPER> TERRIFIC> THANK YOU". When my clients are happy I am happy.

Click on image to enlarge.

Mark & Erika

Nevada Rocks

A slide show of some of my favorite images from our tour of Red Rock, Mt. Charleston and the Valley of Fire. Anyone who did'nt sign up for this workshop missed out big time.

Announcement

We'd like to give Mark & Erika a big congratulations on the announcement of their upcoming wedding this August 22. Mark and Erika stopped in on Monday and we shot some great engagement portraits for them. They are a wonderful couple to work with and we are so looking forward to shooting their wedding. You can see the complete set of images at our client events gallery.

Valley of Fire

We saved the Valley of Fire for last on our photo safari and I am glad we did. This place is so beautiful. The park is about 50 miles north east of Las Vegas and it is a quick drive up I- 15 to the entrance. The park drive is 15 miles of the most beautiful painted desert scenery ever. Around every curve Wendy and I gasped, " Wow, look at that! " It truly is a photographers paradise. We spent 6 hrs in the park shooting and we still needed more time. Here are a few favorites. The entire gallery of all these parks is at this link:

http://www.pbase.com/g_muth/nevada_rocks

Mt. Charleston, Nevada

Mt. Charleston is approximately 25 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The drive up is breath taking. The mountain has an inn and a ski resort at the top. We dined at the Mt. Charleston Inn for breakfast. We watched hummingbirds feed against the back drop of snow covered mountains from our window seat view along side a toasty fireplace inside the inn. The scenic drives of Nevada are well organized and easy to follow. Here are a few scenes from the mountain. I have a gallery of all our Nevada images at this link: http://www.pbase.com/g_muth/nevada_rocks

Spring Mountain Ranch State Park

Spring Mountain Ranch is about 15 miles out of Las Vegas. A great place for pictures and a picnic. The oasis in the desert was first owned by the Wilson Family and later purchased by a German movie star, Vera Krupp. The property was then bought by Howard Hughes and then made into a state park. The park features 6 natural springs and two lakes. Guides at the park take you on a detailed history of the ranch. Here are a couple of my favorite images from the ranch and surrounding area. Click images to enlarge.

Red Rock Canyon

Red Rock Canyon is approximately 13 miles west of Las Vegas. It is one of my favorite places to go for pictures. This trip we got an extra surprise as the weather was 63 and sunny when we got there. Shortly after entering the park the temperature dropped 25 degrees and the winds gusted up to 50 mph. and it then started snowing. We found ourselves in the middle of a desert snow storm. A bit odd for April in this area. As you can see above there was snow on our rental car. I got plenty of interesting images. The stormy skies provided lots of drama to some colorful images. These are some of my favorites from the trip. You can also click on this link http://www.pbase.com/g_muth/nevada to view our entire trip gallery which will also include images from Spring Mountain Ranch, Mt. Charleston, and the Valley of Fire. Click on images to enlarge.

Las Vegas

We just returned from a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada. What a spectacular time we had. There is something to interest everyone in Vegas. We walked through 22 casinos and probably have 22 more to view. We went to four National Parks, one nature preserve, and one community park. We saw free shows at downtown Las Vegas, Sam's town, Belagio's, Mirage, Venetian, Flamingo, MGM, and Paris Paris. I have posted a few images above of the volcano erupting in front of the Mirage, the Fremont Street Experience light show in the sky, the balloon in front of Paris Paris, and the dancing waters of Belagio's. I will be posting more pictures soon from Red Rock Canyon, Mt. Charleston and the Valley of Fire. Click on images to enlarge.

New Show

New

Today we have started making mini slide shows for our clients. Wendy is creating some beautiful presentations and we think it will give our studio added appeal. Check out the video above and see for yourself.

Holy Macro

I am still working on macro techniques. This image of a fly with its tongue out was quite involved in the making but the end result was worth it. I used Nikon D3 with 24-70mm 2.8 lens racked out to 70mm and focus set to infinity. I added a 36 mm and 12 mm extension tubes and used the raynox 250 on the end of the barrel. This combination gave me a pretty good image but I still needed to crop to get the image I wanted. The full frame sensor of the D3 can withstand considerable cropping before the image starts breaking down. I used one flash off camera attached to a homemade bracket with an old Gary Fong lightshere for diffusion. I had strong window light from behind the fly to give it dimension. The fly is distracted with honey to keep him in the same spot until I could get some shots off. Click on image to enlarge. Oh yes, one last thing. I used a focus stacking image program, CombineZM to stack 3 images to get more depth of field.

Nathan Muth is now One!

My grandson Nathan came over for a couple of pictures. He is now one years old and cute as a button. He didn't get enough nap that day but I did manage to get a couple keepers. Including one of his clowning around at the front window. His parents promised to bring him back for more pictures on Sunday. The top three images were done in studio with four strobes. Nikon D3.

Ring Flash testing

Take two aspirin and call me in the morning, or in this case two ibuprofen. This image is a not cropped shot of two tablets of ibuprofen. I used a CD disc for the reflection. Nikon D3. Lighting is a nice wrap around effect from a ring flash.

Macro Shot

Another macro attempt at a common house fly this time. I fabricated a flash extender and diffuser to attach to my sb 600 speedlight. I used cardboard and aluminum foil. It isn't pretty but actually works very well. Gives off a soft wrap around light coming from overhead. Nikon D3. Click on image to enlarge.

Sunset on the River

I had a wonderful opportunity shooting a couple of swans on the water yesterday. A few weeks ago I saw these swans in a little bay area on River Rd. in Wheatfield, NY. The sun was setting and what a wonderful picture it was except for one thing I didn't have my camera with me. Since that day I had made several trips back to the same spot with my camera hoping to get a chance to capture an image. The swans never showed up. Finally yesterday my trusty scout Wendy was driving by and she saw the swans dining in the bay. She knew I was trying to catch them so we grabbed my equipment and headed back to the river. The timing was perfect as the sun was setting and created a wonderful golden glow on the water. Sometimes patience in photography is a virtue. I think the images above prove that. Niko D3, Nikkor 70-200mm AF-S VR 2.8.

Focus Stacking

I am continuing my quest to learn macro photography. One of the major stumbling blocks is depth of field. To counter the shallow depth of field on this tulip I downloaded a focus stacking program called Combine ZM. It is free and a great little program with very little learning curve. The image above is a combination of 32 images stacked together to make one image in focus. I give myself an A- for this attempt. I needed about 3-4 more images in the foreground to totally complete this image. This technique has great potential but would be very hard to do with moving subjects. Click on the image to enlarge.

Macro Tests

After much testing I have found the Raynox 250 is a very reasonable approach to macro photography and can compete with most other macro techniques. Like any photo technique it does have limitations. Depth of field is shallow and tricky to handle. Probably its most attractive feature is that it is cheap way to get in close, $43. The most advantageous feature of the Raynox 250 is that it gives you a good 6-7 inches of focus room between your lens and the subject. This is extremely important for lighting issues and being able to get your subject lit properly.The Raynox 250 is 49 mm filter used for video cameras mostly and has an adaptor to fit it up to a 62mm lens. My main lens is 77mm so it became a problem to affix this filter to my 70-200mm. I purchased an additional step down filter ring from Adorama for $2. and this solved the problem.

The bottom image above is shot with this combo while the top image has a 2x converter added. The images did get some vignetting around the edges and are cropped for composition. The cricket used in this demonstration is approximately 13 milometers in length. Click image to enlarge.

Congratulations April & Steve

Congratulations go out to April Martin and Steve Press on their upcoming wedding August 1, 2009. They stopped in this week and we had a great time shooting their engagement photos. What a nice couple they make. We got a wonderful selection of photos from the session and I am sure April and Steve are going to love them all. I will be looking forward to doing their wedding.

Cricket macro

Today's macro shot is of a cricket on a leaf. I used a two light set up to illuminate the subject. Camera settings were 180th sec. at f-22, iso 200. I used a 70-200mm set at 200mm with a 2x converter and a raynox 250. I was quite happy with this image as I got some good detail in the eyes. Depth of field is really shallow with my lens set up (even at f-22) so I will have to evaluate this technique and then decide if maybe another lens combination may work better.

Nature walk...

One of my favorite wildlife photographers is Brad Hill. His work is so inspiring.
http://www.naturalart.ca/voice/blog.html
I have studied his work and tried very hard to duplicate his techniques. Here is a Squirrel image I took today and worked it in post. I don't have any bears to shoot like Brad but I think my technique is getting better on the wildlife I do have to work with. Click on image to enlarge.

February Special

Its February and love is in the air! Valentine's Day is coming quickly and lots of girls will be getting the ultimate proposal of marriage. So our February Special this month is for those lucky girls. Come in and book your wedding in the month of February and mention that you read the " love is in the air" special on our blog and you will receive a $50.00 bonus discount on any wedding package you pick. This offer is good for the entire month of February 2009. Don't hesitate, call now 297-3387 and get your savings now.