This photo was taken in early summer. The thing that looks like a railroad track is actually a large wooden flume.

Specs: Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm 2.8, f/4 at ISO 640. 16 frames stacked at 4 mins each = 1 hour total exposure. I lit the “track” from underneath using a gelled flashlight. It was EXTREMELY dark (new moon) hence the wide aperture, long exposures and high ISO.

 
This is a more recent photo, taken during the peak of the the Perceid meteor showers. There are some faint meteors, but disappointingly only one bright one. It’s also noteworthy that this was taken at the same location as this photo.

Specs: Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm 2.8, f/8 at ISO 640. 50 frames stacked at 3.3 mins each = 2.75 hour exposure. I lit the foreground with a green gelled headlamp.

July 2010 Issue of Nevada Magazine – no longer in news stands since the August 2010 issue is now out.

August 2010 (current issue) of Digital Camera World Magazine – an international publication, and in news stands now.

I love photography! I live and breath it and even dream about it (yes, I know I’m a geek). I’m going to make a conservative estimate and say that during the last 3 years, on average,  I spent at least 7 hours a day doing something related to photography. I work at a camera store and talk photography, gear, art, technique and everything else all day. When I’m not working at the store, I’m usually shooting, assisting, planning photo courses, teaching photo courses, learning new techniques, editing, backing up photos, prepping prints, submitting to contests, blogging, flickr-ing (I made up a word!), etc. My basement looks like a camera store, my bathroom looks like the photo magazine section of Barnes & Noble and my living room has enough photos on the wall to start charging admission. Most of my friends and acquaintances are also photographers, so I’m constantly exposed, day and night, pretty much 24/7 to photography.

While “living in your passion” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, every once in a while, I just need a break and an opportunity to focus my attention on other things. I’ve really been trying to do more backpacking, running, whittling down my book list and spending more time with my family.

This isn’t the first time this has happened and I doubt it will be the last. About 4 years ago, I quit photography outright. I sold all of my gear and was done with it.  After about half a year later, I opened my darkroom to find that the projects I had left covered in dust and I started up again. I began shooting 4×5 and then digital and I’ve been and just like that, I was hooked on photography once more.

To my photo buddies whom I’ve definitely been neglecting, I’m especially sorry. I feel like I’ve had a good break, and even with school coming and monopolizing my free time I want to get cracking again. So lets go shoot! ASAP!

Specs: Nikon D3, 35-70mm 2.8. 1/125th at F/13, ISO 200. I stopped down so much to get some nice diffraction spikes from the sun. WB was set to overcast for a bit more warmth. I decided to leave the lens flare to add to the “bright” feel. For the main light, I used an Elinchrom Ranger AS with an A head shooting at full power through a varistar brolly box to camera left. The wind can be thanked for newly dented umbrella in the setup shot

Specs: Nikon D3, 17-35mm 2.8. 1/200th at F/9, ISO 200. For the main light, I used an Elinchrom Ranger AS with an A head shooting through a varistar brolly box to camera right. I also used a couple of gridded Q-flashes (one to light the foreground slightly and one out side of the frame to camera left as a rim). 

These were trigger by Elinchrom skyports. Both photos are 99% processed in Lightroom with minimal Photoshop. See setup shots for more details.

Looking back, I wish that the car was turning to the right so I could see the wheel better, but I’m still experimenting with the car stuff. Thanks to Mike Sweeney (ETN studios) for gripping, Fielding Cathcart for providing the Zeus and Vagabond setup and Bobby M. and her husband for the sweet ride! 

For more details, photos and setup shots, keep reading…

Details:

The shot above was created using a homemade car rig (see setup shots). The car is lit with a single, bare White lightning Zeus, to provide some fill and eliminate reflections. That exposure is combined with the “rolling” exposure for the final image.

Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8. Camera remotely fired using radio triggers

Above is a shot of a friend’s "new" 2007 Audi A4 S-line. I had originally planned on doing some rolling shots with the “rig” but it was far too windy, so I settled for a posed frame.

Details:

Nikon D3, Nikon 80-200mm 2.8 lens, White Lightning Zeus + vagabond (Thanks Fielding)

• There are multiple exposures involved:
• One ambient shot at f/4 for the blurry background and foreground as well as proper exposure of the ground
• One Exposure with the side of the car lit
• An exposure with the front of the car lit
• One for the front rim and quarter panel

All flash lit exposures were shot at 1/250th at f/16 to bring down the ambient as much as possible

A few more bonus shots…..

And some setup shots….

If anyone out there wants some photos of their exotic/sports/classic/unique/nice car, shoot me an email!

I wouldn’t consider myself a landscape photographer,  I don’t have a pano head and the sky wasn’t very spectacular, but I’m fairly happy with the result. The location is Bonsai rock at Lake Tahoe. Being one of my favorite summer swimming spots, I’ve always wanted to do a winter sunset/sunrise shoot there. I plan on going back soon to try again. I like the polarizing effect interesting in this photo (clear foreground water).

Details:

Nikon D3, Nikon 17-35mm 2.8, Rodenstock C-PL filter. The panorama consists of 6 vertical frames.

The shoot was a little disorganized: we showed up in the dark, the batteries were dead on our spotlight, I had never been to the spot before and Paul had only climbed there once. On top of that, it was ridiculously windy and the stands blew over a few times. But it was fun and we’ll hopefully do it again, perhaps earlier than 1am next time.

Details:

The image was captured using a Nikon D3 and a 17-35mm 2.8 lens. Two strobes with red gels were used  to freeze the climber (sort of) and an LED flashlight (also red gelled) was also used to paint in the rock and background. In post-processing, the speedlights were removed and the light painted frames were combined with the strobed frame. There’s a tiny bit of motion blur from his leg moving, but it was necessary to pull in the starry background. The final exposure was 8 seconds, at f/4 and ISO 1000 (to pull in the stars). The strobes were set to rear sync.

By the way, just after this shot, the rock broke and since someone had moved the crash pad out of the shot, Paul hit pretty hard, but still landed on his feet.

Here are a few from a weekend photo excursion with friends to rural towns of Tonopah and Goldfield, Nevada.

Here are the results from a weekend shoot that will hopefully lead to bigger things. Thanks to Jon Loder, Kevin Clifford and Fielding Cathcart. Creative art director and props: Donnie Meyers Studio, New York.

Specs: 9X Nikon Sb-800s triggered by pocketwizards and an audio trigger. Nikon D3 + 105mm 2.8 Micro Nikkor, ISO 400, f/14. Flash duration is calculated at roughly 1/41000 sec.

Some behind the scenes shots:

If there’s anyone in the Reno area with a nice car that wants some free shots, email or call me. I’m looking for more practice and nice subject matter.

See how it was done after the break….

Nikon D3, 17-35mm @ f/22 (for a slow shutter speed), 1/10th sec, ISO: low-1. Next time I’ll use an ND filter or a CPL so I can stay at ISO 200.

Here’s the car rig (and me looking stoned out): 2x #241 Manfrotto Pump Cups, 1″x10′ galvanized steel pipe, Manfrotto Super Clamp and a magic arm. That’s my d3 hanging off with a 17-35mm lens. Overall it was pretty stable considering the bumpy road. We found that the metal on the hood had a little bit of flex therefore I can see the use for a third suction cup to stabilize.

Figured I’d toss in a black and white version too.

Post processing

Here’s the original RAW file

I tossed it through photomatix for fun

Here I got rid of the arm, spotting out the rig’s reflections, fixed the front of the hood and fixed the headlights

The background was a little distracting before so I replaced it with one from a photo I took a few years ago. I also fixed the shadow in the foreground, replaced the driver with a cloud reflection and spotted the image

Finally, I tweaked the colors, desaturated a bit,  fixed the blown out clouds and enhanced the micro contrast a bit.

If you’d like to get into this kind of photography, I’d recommend reading this article. And for some awesome examples check out Jeff Ludes, Dejan Sokolovski, Scott Dukes ,Josh Mackey and Dennis Noten.