portrait Archives

Window Light

March 4, 2016
Blog

Another shot from the last portraits. Such a pretty smile and the light coming in from the windows is so flattering. I love doing this kind of portrait - catching the joy in a young person is so amazing. I took this portrait using a bit of bounce flash to fill in her face. The flash was flagged to block direct light and bounced off the wall and ceiling. The walls and ceiling are a nice light brown wood and I think gave off a nice golden light. Focus was on her eyes and I used a very shallow f/2.2…

A Winter Sail

February 29, 2016
Blog

End of February and I am dreaming of Summer! Kind of early this year but there it is... I love early Winter - the snow and the the cold are beautiful! But this time of year I am ready for warm and sun and boating. This portrait was taken last year and I used some magic to move from Neenah to the Florida keys. Looks like so much fun... Canon 7d | Sigma 18-250 | 31mm | 1/30s f/8.0 | Canon 430 Flashes

Saturday Portrait

February 17, 2016
Blog

Just a quick portrait at church on Saturday (for the Crossways camp meeting). Taken at f/2.2. to get a shallow depth of field - the focus was on her eyes. I used a bit of fill flash that I bounced off the walls. The rest of the light was from the stained glass windows on both sides. Canon 5d MkIII | Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 | 1/200s f/2.2

Second Birth

February 8, 2016
Blog

St. Mark's annual meeting was this past Sunday and I once again produced a video of the past year's memories. Here is one of my favorite captures of the year. Baptism is a wonderful birth - a second birth into the world of God's love! So much beauty in this picture, so much symbolism! The photographer in me loves the golden ratio composition and curves that lead your eyes to the baby. The Christian in me loves the awareness of the baby. The water is applied and the baby looks to the camera; what is he thinking? Was this random…

Portrait Retouch – 1917

February 1, 2016
Blog

I found an old portrait on some stock photo sites. All I can find is this was taken around 1917. I used it to practice my photoshop skills. The general procedure I followed was: Import into photoshop and resize to 4500 pixels wide Do a very hard noise reduction in Topaz Denoise to remove the banding and artifacts I then added back some skin texture with an add noise layer I colorized the picture using multiple color layers - one layer for each component I combined all the visible layers into a new layer I used Topaz Clarity to sharpen…

High Key in Sunlight

January 18, 2016
Blog

It may be cold outside but the sun still is warm as it streams through our kitchen. A quick portrait in "high key". High key is when the histogram is skewed to brighter so that there is essentailly no black in the picture and the luminance is very high across all colors. I took this photo in aperture mode and set my camera to overexpose by 1 2/3 stops. This blew out the sunlit kitchen to the right but also allowed for a proper exposure of her face. If I had let the camera meter the scene the background would…

15th Anniversary

January 15, 2016
Blog / Wedding Photography

A special day at St. Mark's because we had a wedding vow renewal. Fifteen years and still so in love! We did this portrait right after church. The light coming into the windows was so nice. I added a flash bounced off the side wall of the church to fill in the shadows. To get the balance between flash and ambient correct I shot in manual mode and set my shutter speed to 1/100 sec and aperture to f/5.6 to get the dept of field. I then metered the scene and set the ISO to 640. Flash was set on…