A Child's Gaze....

Here is a natural light portrait of my son Kai. The diffused natural light was coming in from our living room windows and was side lighting Kai. The soft side light really brings out his eyes and wraps around his face opening up the shadows on the right side.

A Childs Gaze

Camera: 5DMk2

Lens: 85 f/1.2

Aperture: f/1.2

Shutter Speed: 1/160

Day 3 of 365 Project

Well today was a cold dreary day, so I decided to head down to the local man made lake here in out neighbourhood and see if there were any geese around. So I packed up my Canon 1DMk3, my 70-200  f/2.8 with the 2 x extender and my trusty tripod and head down to the lake. Well there wasn't very much happening at the lake, the place was barren, just a couple of geese at the far side of the lake and a seagull feeding jut off the shore line.
Well the geese where to far away for a good shot, even with the 70-200 f/2.8 racked out to 400 f/5.6 with the 2x extender so I focused on the feed seagull that was slowly swimming towards me. My shot of the day  shows the seagull diving for lunch and it also show what a fast shutter speed can do for an action shot.

Camera - 1DMk3
Lens - 70-200 f/2.8 IS w/ 2x Extender
Focal Length - 400mm
Aperture - f/5.6
Shutter Speed - 1/800s
ISO - 800

Photo 2 of 365

Evening, todays photo is a studio shot I did for my daughters 6th birthday party. The theme of the party was Barbie Fashion Fantasy.... so we just had to do a fashion shoot with the girls. This photo is from that shoot.

Camera : Canon 5Dmk2

Lens: 85 f/1.2

Focal length: 85mm

Shutter Speed: 1/160s

Aperture: 5.6

ISO: 100

Lighting: Key- Cl- Profoto 600r w/ med soft box w/ 40* grid
                Fill - Cr - Profoto 600r w/ 22" beauty dish
           Kicker - Cl & Cr -2 Elenchrom D-lite 4 w/ 8" reflector w/ 20* grids
  Background - Cl & Cr - 2 Ef 580exII w/ white bounce umbrellas

This shot was taken with 6 different lights, each light adding to the over all essence of the shot. Here are a couple of behind the seen  shots so you can see how the lighting was set up.

So is shot shows the key light ,Med soft box with the grid, the kicker light with grid and the 580exII in the umbrella for the background. As you can see my studio is in my garage so I don't have a lot of room to work with and I really have to control were the light is going, that is why I use grids when ever possible. If I can't use a grid to control light spillage, like in the case of the bounce umbrellas, I set up a flat or bookend to control where the light goes. The big white piece of foam core  is a flat and I'm using it to block the background light from spilling onto my subject.

Here is the same set up, just showing it from the fill side of the shot. The 22" beauty dish was used as a fill light, the 8"gridded reflector is the kicker and last another 580exII in a bounce umbrella for the background that has a flat in front of it to block the light spillage .

I hope you like the shot, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them.
Have a great night.

Photo Number 1 of 365 Project

Well here is the very first photo for my new 365 project. It was my son, Rylan's 15th birthday yesterday so tonight he is having a few friends over to celebrate. They're all downstairs in the theatre room rocking it out on RockBand so I couldn't resist getting a few shots of them.
This first 365 photo is a shot of my son rocking out on the Rockband drum set.

The shot was taken with a Canon 5Dmk2 and the 85 f/1.2.
Lighting - 100% ambiant
Focal Length - 85 mm
ISO - 6400
Shutter Speed - 1/500
Aperture - f/1.2

Now, I'm not much of a tilt shot kinda guy but i think the tilt on this shot does work well with the composition of the shot.

 Happy 15th Birthday Rylan, I Love you.

New 365 Project

Hi there, so I have realy been neglecting my blah and me photography this summer. It's been busy as he'll around the home front, with the kids out of school and trying to finish renovation my basement I just haven't had the time do very much shooting. Well that's going to stop tonight, from this night on I will post a new daily photograph along with a little write on how I took the shot. I welcome all cirques, comments and criticisms, please post anything that comes to mind when you view the photos.