Photographic Trigger

While watching an interview with street photographer Jay Maisel, when ask what makes him take a picture he said his trigger was gesture. He goes on to explain that gesture could be anything but whatever it is motivates him to press the button on his camera. 

This got me thinking about what triggers me to want to take a picture.  

Although I consider myself a portrait photographer but on occasion I do some landscape here and there. What triggers me to do landscapes are clouds.  

Clouds are so random and in my opinion they make landscape pictures one of a kind. It motivates me to get up and capture this single moment in time knowing that the possibility of the exact formation happening again is slim to none. They add a little extra mood to the frame.

Clouds are definetly my landscape photography trigger, what are your triggers that make you photograph? 

Silhouetted Paddle Boarder

Seal Beach - 30 Minutes too Late

I am a huge fan of clouds in my pictures. The last couple of days it has been cloudy skies galore, but I did not find the time to go out and make pictures. Yesterday, I decided I would take the bull by the horns and go out and photography the sunset at Seal Beach. Unfortunately, I made this decision at 7:30 p.m,, and sunset was at 8:03 p.m.

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Seal Beach Pier at night

Knowing that I drive really slow, I enlisted my wife to drive me to the beach to try and catch the sunset. Traffic was not cooperative and we did not arrive until 8:10 p.m., and I miss out on the sunset.

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The blue clouds at Seal Beach

I decided to try and make the best of the situation and capture something. Overall, I am disappointed that I did not get my cloudy sunset that I envision, but I was able to get something because it became completely dark. Lesson learned is don't wait until the last minute to do something.

Robin Thicke Cover

Tuesday is one of my favorite days of the week because it is the day new music albums are released. Today was no different, Robin Thicke new album "Paula" came out and I was looking forward to this release. I have listen to this album multiple times and enjoy it a lot. Another thing that I like about the album is the cover. 

Paula

By Robin Thicke

I really like the expression and body language Robin is giving and the colors used. So in my great wisdom I decided that I wanted to try and recreate this cover. I was not really sure how the cover was made and I really didn't do any research because this ideal came to me in the middle of the night, so I went the route of trying to recreate in camera.  

For this project I used a total of 3 speedlights. My key light had a Rogue Grid attached with a red gel. I placed this 2 feet above my head and feather it slightly so it wouldn't hit the background.  

The next light had a Honl grid attached and it was aim directly at my torso. I placed a green and yellow gel on top of the grid. However, no matter how much I tried I couldn't get the yellow to show, so I just ended up using 2 green gels. 

The last light I used it as a rim light just to get a little separation from the background. This light had a Rogue softbox attached and I gel this light green also. This light was a little tricky because it added too much light to the background. I ended up placing this light almost directly behind my should so the light wouldn't spill on the background. 

The torso and rim light were set one stop under the key light. I had the key light set at a 1/4 power. The picture was shot at f/4 1/250 sec and ISO 200 on my Canon 60D and triggered by a wireless remote. 

I am still not sure how they made the actual cover but I am happy with my results. However, next time I get a bright ideal I am not going to be the model. 

Thanks for reading.  

Collage Play

My brother Marcus

My wife Shawntee

Me

Last week my wife, brother and I got together and had a blast taking pictures of expressions to be placed in a collage. The ideal for the project came from this article I came across while browsing my news feeds.

The setup for the shoot was very simple. It required one flash, 60 inch umbrella, and a reflector.  Everything was shot against white seamless with the camera placed on a tripod.

Once everything was setup it was just a matter of yelling out different things and trying to act them out the best we could.

Afterwards, the images were converted to black and white and cropped in Adobe Lightroom. 

Overall, the shoot went extremely well. However, I did break my umbrella before the shoot started and I forgot to fix my settings on my camera. All the images were shot on ISO 2000, Ooops!

Through the Stained Window

Sometimes inspiration comes at the strangest times. I was on the train on my way home from work and I was just out of it. I was battling a cold and I had so much on my mind and felt exhausted. I just remember staring out of the window and watching everything go by. 

I pulled my camera out and dial in some setting that I thought would work and I just started capturing the world as it went by. To by surprise when I finally made to my stop I felt like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. 

This is one of the images that I really liked from that ride home.