Ponte Vedra Beach Buddy

Bryan was a bit frustrated starting and stopping his new bike. I put an old 100-300 Canon lens on the camera because my new Canon 70-200 f.28 lens is sometimes too heavy for my hand held style of shooting.

The good news is that Bryan will grow into his new bicycle. The other good news is that my old lens still does the job...

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Ponte Vedra Photography

I had the opportunity a while back to photograph William Gottlieb, noted photographer who photographed all of the jazz greats in the 40's. Mr. Gottlieb very much enjoyed talking about Mr. Gottlieb and was happy to share his shooting techniques. In today's world, it's pretty easy to set up one light and control the shadows. I copy his style when I'm shooting black and white. I love the drama of the shadowing.

Ponte Vedra Florida Holiday Portrait

Photographing Angela was a lot of fun because she came to the shoot prepared to smile and have fun. I set up very basic lighting and concentrated on making her feel comfortable. I used two Canon 580 EX electronic flash units using them with two 42" umbrellas. I had them set on manual exposure, 1/4 power, one light two feet further back then the other and had my camera set at an iso of 400 with a shutter speed on 1/60 of a second at f.8.

A picture that speaks volumes...

I took this shot using a 35-105mm lens set at 5.6, with an iso of 800. To keep to my rule of simple shooting, I used only one 580ex electronic strobe with a Fong difusser. My shutter speed was 1/60th of a second. No additional work was done to lighten the background.

New Skills

I've been wanting to grow my shooting skills for quite some time now but have not budgeted time to do so. For all my working years, outdoor shooting was done for the cleanliness of the shots with flash fill. Truthfully, I was/am able to shoot outdoors with flash, in my sleep. It's second nature. Now that there's more time in my life, I very much want to master available light exposures so that they too will become second nature.

Living in Ponte Vedra Beach and being so close to St. Augustine will afford me the opportunity to grow and explore as much as I want. I'm looking forward to it.

The first roadblock that I encountered is the balancing of background lighting conditions with the subject back lighting condition. I've very quickly learned that in order to have a great shot, the background has to be at least the same exposure as the foreground. I've found that darker backgrounds work best--although I'm not sure how this will work on the beach--which is my next step. For this shot, I used my new Canon 70-200 f.28. I set my iso at 400, guestimated the exposure to be 125@f.5.6. I got lucky. The shot worked.

Ponte Vedra Beach Based Photographer

Remember Rodney Dangerfield in the movie "Easy Money" Well, he never photographed Buddy!!!

It's great being a Ponte Vedra Beach, Fl phtotographer

Ponte Vedra Beach Energizing the Creative Side

I've been bored to tears over the past two years with the shooting end of my work. My professional growth was tilted toward the production end of assignments.

The idea of keeping the technical side of the work simple, neat and clean is still where I want to be but I wanted that "something else" in my shots. This shot shows that for me, I've found it...

Still preaching and using the most simple lighting, I took the strobe off of my camera and put it on a light stand either to my right or to my left. I triggered the light with a simple electronic radio unit. I'm thrilled with the results! The stationary strobe gave me the freedom to move around while keeping a constant exposure. While still using the indirect lighting techniques that I've loved using for so many years, now seems to look even richer. I'm looking forward to this coming weekend's assignment.

Living in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fl for the past two or so months has not only helped me free up my thinking but it's also helped me lower my blood pressure from 138/80 to an amazing 103/80. Wow, professional growth and more relaxed arteries.

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida

Relocating to Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida is certainly a big change of lifestyle for this born and raised New Yorker. But, it's great! There's been only one commuting to NY issue (so far) which was Hurricane Irene. In addition to my flight (and most others) being canceled, the wedding that I was supposed to shoot also got canceled. The big issue then became getting my gear to Dallas for the following weekend's shoot. UPS got the gear to Dallas right on time, safe and secure. Thank you UPS. I'm looking forward to the next three weekends shooting in NY.

Bryan will have to squeeze Teddy a little tighter...

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