Setting Up

The past couple of weeks I have had some pretty cool stuff happen at Kappy's Keepers.

I was contacted to change out the images in the lobby of the MassLive Building in Downtown Springfield a couple of weeks ago. I went to talk to the building manager on a Tuesday afternoon and she asked if it could be up by Friday morning as they had an important guest from Europe coming in. On Wednesday, I put together and delivered 19 matted 8 X 10 prints and 1 24 X 36 canvas for the lobby. This was tough because just about everything I had on hand was earmarked for another project but it worked and the lobby looks awesome!

Yesterday, Monday, I delivered and hung 48 different pieces at the same building for a display on the 3rd floor in a community space. The pieces consisted of 8 X 10 framed and matted prints, a few 8 X 10 prints on canvas, 5 X 7 framed prints, 11 X 14 framed and prints on canvas, a few metal prints, a print on glass, a few prints on Gator Board and a 30 X 40 print on canvas. It was not an easy job laying out, arranging and hanging these pieces but I think I nailed it.

I am hoping to have a reception for the display in the near future for you all to have an up close and in person look at my finished products. I would like to thank all that have supported my efforts to get to where I am at this point.

It feels really good to know that my images may brighten someone's day as they head to or from work. I feel very fulfilled when I see my work somewhere else other than my wall. I hope you all enjoy my images and thanks for the positive vibes. 

Thanks for playing along,

E

Kappy's Keepers

Keep on learning

You are never too old to learn something new and you will never know everything! Especially when it comes to photography.

I still consider myself a novice photographer at best but I have been told I am to hard on myself. I don't claim to know everything or even a quarter of everything. I enjoy learning new techniques and new tricks for creating images. It inspires me to move further.

Lat week I went to a lighting workshop at Hunt's Photography shop in Holyoke Massachusetts. The presenter was Rick Friedman from Boston. What an awesome time. Rick is a well known Photojournalist who has been published in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, USA Today, The Guardian, Discovery and many other publications and has produced over 75 book and magazine cover. He was graceful enough to lets us blind him with light all day as our test subject.

He went through basic on camera flash all the way to studio lighting with multiple light sources. Rick is a very good speaker and has enough energy to go all day. He brought enough gear for us to use that would have filled the store I came away from the workshop feeling confident and ready to try some of the techniques out.

Continually learning is essential in photography as well as many other things in life. Whatever you enjoy, try to learn something new and than put it into use.

I went home after the workshop and immediately took out my camera and flash and began to try different techniques and tricks at home. It makes me smile when I get a different type of shot that I really like.

This shot was taken in a completely dark room. I wanted the glow from the iPad on my Father's face but also some detail from him as well.

Photography is all about light. Creating light, using light, manipulating light and understanding light. Once you understand light you can start to create some pretty cool images.

This shot was in a hotel lobby which was had plenty of ambient light which I did not want. I had to eliminate the ambient light then produce just enough soft light to light up only Rylee.  

This is what they call a hair light. There is a flash behind the subject shooting directly at me to produce the "glow" and another light source which is the black box you can see on the left.

I am thankful I am in a position where I can continue to learn about photography and better my skills as a photographer.

If you ever get a chance to listen to Rick Friedman, do it...he is worth your time and is very inspiring!


Thanks for reading,

See ya next week,

E


Kappy's Keepers

Fireworks

With the Independence Day holiday behind us I am sure many of you saw some fireworks over the long weekend. I have seen some pretty cool shots and some poor shots. This post I will share my settings and technique for getting some good firework shots.

 My first attempt was at the International Festival over the Memorial day weekend at the Eastern States Fairgrounds in West Springfield Massachusetts where they had 5 night of awesome fireworks. I took those shots with both my Nikon D90 with a 24-70mm f2.8 Sigma lens and the Nikon D5300 with a Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens. I pretty much used the spray and pray technique. I shot a ton of rapid fire pictures with a fairly slow shutter speed of anywhere between 1/25th of a second all the way up to around 1/100th of a second. This speed is almost fast enough to stop the action but not quite. They came out cool but look is a little different than I was hoping for. My aperture was set around f11 with an ISO of 200.

I shot at the East Longmeadow fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend and used a different technique than the first time.

I used my Nikon D5300 with the Sigma 24-70 f2.8 lens along with a tripod and a shutter control cord. My camera was set at f10 with an ISO of 200 and my shutter was set on Bulb. For those of you that don't know what the Bulb setting is, it basically holds the shutter open until you close it. You depress the shutter button and hold it down for the desired amount of time than release the button which closes the shutter. This allows the you to capture the entire firework shot or multiple shots in one frame. I held the shutter open anywhere from 3 seconds to 15 seconds depending on how many explosions I wanted to get. My focus was also set on manual. I moved the focus on the lens to infinity and then bumped it back a bit.

I would hear the cannon fire off the firework and depress the shutter control button then wait until the firework bloomed fully to release the button. I held it open for multiple blossoms as well. A tripod and shutter release cord or remote is essential for this type of shot as any movement from the camera will be seen with such a long exposure.

This is the type of look I was looking for.

This shot I held open for 2 firework  blossoms

Firework shots are also fairly easy to create composite images in post processing as well. The following is an example of a composite from the East Longmeadow fireworks;

This was 3 different images combined to make one final image with Photoshop.

Fireworks are fun to shoot and as long as you have the right equipment your shots should be solid. The settings I shared are a good starting point and you can make some small adjustments if needed as you go.

I hope you liked the info and thanks for reading,

E

Kappy's Keepers