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.