Stephanie came by the studio the other day to get some head shots and a few dance pictures that she needs for an up-coming audition. I love these two dance pictures. Flinging hair and a dancer jumping will never get old. BTW, no trampoline involved on the second picture. She can just jump like that on the spot. Pretty cool.

A tip for you if you are shooting on white seamless like this. The lens you use makes a HUGE difference. My 50mm 1.8 lens is horrible on white seamless. Actually the 50/1.8 or even 50/1.4 does bad things when pointed at a bright light source. That white background is a big bright light source. A wide angle lens, 18mm or 24mm, does okay but I’ve found I usually end up cleaning up the image more in post. I don’t have a technical reason why, but I usually end up having to dodge (lighten) the floor around the area the subject is standing. My favorite lens on white seamless is actually a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. The result is really clean, almost no post processing. A little bit of black point adjustment is all. The only tricky thing with that lens is that you have to have plenty of space between you and the subject. At least a good 15 – 20 feet. That can pose a problem if your studio is small. With this whole setup, it took 12 foot ceilings (backdrop was about 11 feet high), 10 feet between background and subject and then another 15-20 feet from subject to camera.

f/3.2 @ 80 mm, 1/250,ISO 200

f/3.2 @ 70 mm, 1/250,ISO 200

One of the things I love about living in Cedar City is the close proximity to several national parks. I realized that I really don’t take advantage of that. It is too bad. I know of a few groups that host expensive photography workshops and they travel to Bryce Canyon or Zion from far away because of the incredible landscape. It is in my back yard for heck sakes and I don’t even go at least once a year. Shameful really. I’m going to change that. Thinking of buying one of those annual national park passes that lets you go to any of the parks as many times as you want.

I happened to be at Bryce Canyon the other day with our Scouts. I’m in the young men’s presidency in our ward, so I get to go on the Scouting trips. We took them up by Bryce Canyon to go cross country skiing. Very fun, btw. Yet another activity to do around here and it is free (besides the $6 ski rental if you don’t have your own).

As the Scouts slept in until 8am on Saturday morning, I headed into the park to get take some photos. Let’s say that I appreciate mornings, but traditionally I have not been a “morning person.” I had a nephew that learned as a toddler what I said in the morning as a teenager along with other animal sounds. When asked what I would say in the morning, he would reply “ROAR!” I’ve gotten over that, but I’m still more likely to sleep in than wake up early, unless there is something to motivate me. Photography definitely motivates me to get up early. So, I headed out at 6am to catch the 7am sunrise.

Unfortunately, it was overcast. Didn’t see the sun light up those beautiful red formations at Bryce Canyon. It was still worth getting up early for though. I don’t think Bryce has seen this much snow in a long time. Check out all the snow.

Still, no matter what light nature decides to throw at you, there is always a photo that can be made. I may not have taken the photos that I wanted to take, but I still took a few that I like (not love).

f/16 @ 44 mm, 1/25, ISO 200

So when the light sucks, like it did this day, the best option is to try and shoot in close, eliminate the sky. Nothing worse in a landscape shot that has interesting land and a crappy grey sky. Most people immediately choose a wide angle lens for landscape shots. They want to capture the entire scene they see before their eyes. Well, not always the best choice.

For most of these shots I was using a 70-200mm lens. I wanted to zoom in on details, textures, colors, and patterns. I was really drawn to the contrast of the white snow and the red rock and dirt. Some dirt had amazingly rich red hues like the shot below. I really liked the pattern that the snow made. Makes your eyes wander all over the place in the photo.

f/16 @ 200 mm, 1/50,ISO 200

I thought it would be interesting to mess with all those shades of red in a black and white photo. Ended up with this shot.

f/10 @ 90 mm, 1/80, ISO 200

Yeah, it was freezing cold. I stood out in the cold taking pictures for about an hour. By that time my fingers were really starting to hurt, despite wearing gloves. I probably would have stayed a little longer too, but I knew the Scouts were waking up and probably eating breakfast without me. As I drove back to meet them, I couldn’t resist the following scene. My eyes interpreted the scene through a 200mm lens and that is what I shot.

f/10 @ 200 mm, 1/200,ISO 200

Really minimalistic. The strong horizontal tree line against a solid white foreground was very visually appealing to me. I think it would look great as a big print hanging on a wall.

I love living in Cedar City. For being a smaller community, we have a wide variety of arts, sports, entertainment, and outdoor activities available to us. There is always something going on at Southern Utah University, sports, music, art shows, dance, etc. My wife and I have season tickets to all that the College of Performing and Visual Arts has to offer, and we attend most events. Then of course we have the Utah Shakespearean Festival, which is always fantastic. But, in addition to that, we have organizations like the Cedar City Junior Ballet, who annually put on a full-length ballet production. They just finished their production of Cinderella and it was fantastic. If you didn’t see it, you really missed out.

I was able to photograph them during their final dress rehearsal. The full galleries, including studio rehearsals can be found here. I’ve put together a slide show of some of my favorites here on the blog. I have to say the the step sisters are my favorite. Chris and Lise do such a fantastic job, they are a hoot to watch. They cracked me up every time I saw them perform.

(note the slide show requires flash and may not appear in your blog reader, so jump over to my site to see the slide show)

Cinderella wasn’t just a pretty face. She was smart too.

I’ve been shooting photos at the Cedar City Junior Ballet’s rehearsals of Cinderella. The photos were used for promotional material and the program for the ballet. This photo I had to share because it just struck me as funny. In the opening scene, Cinderella starts out sitting on a stool reading a book. The audience just sees the outside cover of the book which appears to be just a pretty book. I was shooting right next to her and glanced over and saw this photo. I chuckled inside. I said to Cinderella, “reading a math book huh?” She replied, “yeah, I opened this book and thought ‘how am I supposed to read this?’”

The Reception

Their reception was held at John’s house. It was a nice intimate reception with lots of really good food. John’s friend made the best carne asada I have ever had. And the array of deserts was awesome. Have you ever had cake balls? A ball of cake dipped in chocolate, yum.

Dang, I’m really hungry now, and those are just a few of the items that were available. How about that wedding cake? It was delicious.

And finally, some good advice. “Don’t Panic!”

These are from January. My oldest is four. It is a fun age. He is definitely testing his boundaries and starting to look more like a little boy. He has grown almost 3 inches in the last few months. Still he is a lot of fun. It always takes some coaxing to get him to cooperate for photos. We usually come to a compromise of no more than 2 pictures that I can take at a time. I usually sneak in a few more than that:)

My youngest is almost 18 months old now. He is the cutest kid ever. We are going to have a struggle on our hands when it comes time to dump the binkies. Notice in this first shot he has two, one in the hand and one in the mouth. That is not uncommon for him. He’ll walk around like that and just keep switching every couple of minutes.

I tell people all the time that smiling pictures are over rated. I hear people say things like “oh I wish he was smiling.” Why? Don’t get me wrong. Smiling photos are great and it is always nice to capture kids when they are happy. However, the reality of life is that sometimes kids cry. It doesn’t make them any less cute though.

Now I feel obligated to show you that he does smile.