I like to think that I'm a simple guy. Happily married. Worship leader. Professional photographer. Things aren't so simple sometimes, so here is where I share them. (Kyle Ellman took this picture. There is a link to his blog below.)



 

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Entries in strobist (2)

Thursday
07Jan2010

Brittany & Smitty

DateThursday, January 7, 2010 at 11:53AM

Man, it's been a cold one here in Springfield, MO, right? I think the low for today is 0 degrees F, and it's supposed to be -6 tomorrow. It's just nuts! And what's even more nuts is that I did a shoot outside in this weather just a couple days ago. Yeah, two hours of shooting and the majority of it was spent braving the bitter snow and wind. I guess it really wasn't that bad, but it sure was cold. I'm not finished up with all of them, but here is a little teaser from the session that will go down in history as one of the most miserable and yet most fun shoots that I've ever done. I used to play with Brittany in the youth praise band at Second Baptist when I was in High School. She is super talented, and from what I've been told so is her soon to be, Smitty. He kept up with all the nerdy tech stuff that I was doing with my camera gear, and apparently he is one of those musicians who can pick up any instrument and be playing shows with it in a month. Makes me sick. Anyway, here you go. And! I can't forget to thank Corey Martin for being a clutch assistant for the day. Thanks, pal!

Strobist Info: Canon 580EX II left of camera zoomed to 70mm with a full cut of CTO and shot through a translucent umbrella. Fired by a PW MiniTT1 in the hot-shoe of my 7D with a PW FlexTT5 mounting my 580EX II in HyperSync mode, allowing me to shoot way faster than my sync speed of 1/250. I dialed in -1 EV in the camera to dim and saturate the background a bit, and then I think I had my flash +1/3 EV. Gotta love off camera TTL!

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Thursday
24Dec2009

Dennis Nowak

DateThursday, December 24, 2009 at 10:53AM

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Before I get into this post, I wanted to mention a new page that I added yesterday that I'm pretty excited about. If you click on "LIVE" in the navigation at the top you'll go to a page where I have embedded a feed from my page on USTREAM, a new service where you can stream live from anywhere as long as you have internet access. The best part is that you can broadcast right from your iPhone, so every now and then I will broadcast interesting things that are happening. Sometimes even photoshoots or my workflow for editing pictures or something along those lines. You never know when or what I might be streaming live, so check back often to see what's happening. If you are following me on Twitter then you'll see a tweet every time I start broadcasting, so you can always be informed. Technology! Now! Onto a new post!

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I'm gonna tell you about a little trick I learned from Joe McNally that I used for this last shot. When you first look at this picture it looks like I used the warm light coming from the sun as it sets, but the truth is that the sun was actually stuck behind some clouds as it was setting and there was no hope of it poking back out. But I wanted the nostalgic, fuzzy-feeling light that comes with the setting sun, so I took matters into my own hands. Above and to my left is a "bare-bulb" 580EX II with one full and one half CTO gels on the front of it. When we refer to a flash as being bare-bulb, that just means there are no light modifiers for the flash to go through to soften or shape the light. This mimicked a sunset because it was warm and harsh. Like my previous post, I had my 580EX II mounted on a PocketWizard FlexTT5 and was triggering it with a MiniTT1 in the hotshoe of my 7D, so I didn't have to worry about the power setting. Within a few clicks of the shutter button I had the exact exposure I wanted. So when available light just isn't doing it for ya, you gotta take the reigns and get you some good light!

If a lot of this just seems like a bunch of words that make no sense in your brain, check strobist.com. Start from the beginning and you'll learn everything you need to know. David Hobby is the guy who writes the blog, and he's pretty dog-gone smart. It's a fascinating thing to get into!

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