Rings

A standard wedding photography shot is a close-up of the wedding rings. Usually the rings are placed with the flower bouquet or with some other prop related to the couple or the venue. I've seen this done with wine corks which is a great way to help tell the story with a vineyard as the venue. I decided to try my own version of this shot. Getting the the wedding band on the right to remain propped up in the desired position was difficult. The cork it was resting on wanted to just roll away. I positioned another cork perpendicular to it in order to keep it in position. I think the shot turned out nicely.

 

Pre-Dawn Golden Gate Passage

As I was hunting around for objects to rest my camera on in lieu of the tripod I'd forgotten to pack, (See previous post) I noticed a container ship heading into the bay. I knew that it would be hard to capture in the early morning light. I finally found a wooden recycling box on the edge of the lookout area that had a decent vantage point. Meanwhile, the area was really starting to fill up with photographers eager to catch the sunrise over the bay. Some had vintage cameras or an assortment of fancy gear. All had tripods and I was envious... But, with the camera resting on the box and steadied by my hand, I clicked away several "brackets" of shots to merge using HDR techniques. Here is the final compsition.

 

Golden Rays Through the Gate

We took a trip down to the San Francisco bay area for Christmas this year. We stayed North of the City in the small but charming town of Petaluma. The last full day of the trip, we got up very early and decided to take the 30-45 minute drive down to a lookout area on the Northwest side of the Golden Gate bridge for sunrise. I somehow managed to forget to pack my tripod for this trip which I seriously regret. It didn't stop me from taking photos, but did limit what I was able to do. I had to find solid objects I could rest and stabilize the camera on for longer exposures. Even then, it was a challenge. I did come away with two shots I really like. The first one, posted here, is a little after sunrise. We had started back down the hill after shooting some wider shots from higher up. I noticed the way the sun's rays were shining through the North tower of the bridge and we stopped to snap a few more pictures. I believe I was resting the camera on a park bench for this shot. I'll post the second photo later this week!

Overcast Senior Portrait

I had the pleasure of working with a very nice young lady over the weekend on her senior pictures. We shot at Monteith park and downtown Albany. We managed to avoid the rain. It was very cloudy though, which is great for diffusing light. That helps avoid harsh shadows and lights the subject more evenly. This is my favorite of the shoot. The color version is nice too, but I really like the black and white. It was shot with a very wide aperture for a nice blurred background and a reflector held just off camera to the lower right to fill in some light on her face. 

Selective Color

Last week, I did a senior portrait shoot for a young man. I had shown him the finished color shots as well as several I also picked to create black and white versions of. The client asked if I could do some of the shots with only him in color and the background in black and white. I agreed that would work well for several of the photos. I ended up doing a few of these "selective color" versions. As you can see in the shot below, having a colorful subject while everything else around him is in shades of gray really makes him pop. It can really help with a more distracting background, which wasn't the case here though.