The high level of detail in this minimalist series is emphasized by the beautiful & thick watercolor surface on which they are printed. Each print is available for sale separately or a special package of three prints is available (contact me for more details).

This was a shoot that almost didn’t happen. I nearly canceled due to the “boring” forecasted weather. The subject: a 1998 Subaru Impreza RS. My plan was to emphasize the rally heritage of the car by doing some off-road rig and posed shots in the snow.  The bumpy, snow-covered road presented some new challenges and the bright, sunny conditions made it difficult to get an exposure long enough to blur the ground, but problems aside, the shoot went very well. Fielding and I scouted, planned out the lighting and angles and shot everything within just a few hours. Thanks to fellow photographer Mark Rauh and his son Austin for providing the car.

The Shooting process (similar to my other rig shots):

1. Scout out a location (or three)
2. Place the sun and figure out shooting angles
3. Set up the rig and camera
4. Light the car in a static position
5. Do plenty of rolling frames
6. Repeat if necessary
7. Later, in post, the rig is removed and the lit frames are blended with the rolling frames

We started with the posed shots as it makes since to shoot the car while it is clean. I’m very happy with a number of the posed frames, but I just picked one of my favorites for this post.

All shots were taken with a Nikon D3 using a Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8 lens. To achieve a longer exposure in the extremely bright conditions, a 10 stop ND filter was used on the moving shots. The lighting consisted of an Elinchrom Ranger RX 1100 w/s and a White Lightning Zeus 1200 w/s to combat the sun.

 
Setup Shots:

Here are a couple of fun winter portraits of the wonderful Val.

The idea behind these portraits was to get a really blurry background while using a single strobe in a bright snowy landscape. There a couple of problems to address when shooting in that situation:

1.) Noon on a clear day is about the worst time of day to shoot. The light is harsh, contrasty and the shadows are unflattering. The solution was to use lighting to fill in the shadows.

2.) With all of the snow on the ground and the intensity of the sun, it was extremely bright. This meant that even at minimal ISO, I was going to have to use either fast shutter speeds or a small aperture. The problem is that most SLRs will not sync much faster than 1/250th of a second with a non-TTL strobe. This meant a small aperture, leading to my next problem…

3.) To achieve a shallow depth of field, one needs to use a large, bright aperture, which, in that light, required a shutter speed faster than 1/250th.

A possible solution would be to use TTL flash (speedlight) capable of syncing faster than 1/250th. However, a speedlight wouldn’t be nearly powerful enough to combat the bright sun and snow, therefore I was forced to use a more powerful, non-TTL strobe (1100w/s Elinchrom Ranger AS).

Wanting a shallow depth of field, the final solution was to use a telephoto lens at a very close distance with a heavy neutral density filter to darken things up. The neutral density filter cut enough light to achieve a larger aperture and combing that, the close focusing distance and the telephoto lens, I was able to open up my aperture and get a blurry background.

The sun was positioned behind Val to provide a nice hair/kicker. I used a 39” octobank placed to camera right in front of and above her, aimed down. The snow on the ground provided a nice under fill.

A few more…

Specs:

Nikon D3, 80-200mm 2.8 @ 200mm and minimum focusing distance(headshots only). ND-8 filter so I could shoot at a larger aperture. The background is not fake. 1/200th @ f/7.1 (it was really bright)

Elinchrom Ranger RX with 39" Rotalux Octobank to camera right, snow and sun for fill and kicker.

This was a super quick rig shot in the same alley as the last post. The car is Fielding’s new 2011 Subaru Impreza WRX sedan. Nikon D3 with 17-35mm lens, 1.6 seconds, f/8, ISO 800. The rig was attached to the rear window with three suction cups. Like the other rig shots, the car was initially lit in a static position. Later I combined that frame with the rolling exposure. After the hours editing involved in removing the rig in my previous rig shot, this was composed in a manner so that no rig removal was required and the editing took no time!

Here are a few single light portraits of my buddy Mike. For the shot above, the strobe was completely bare (no reflector or modifier at all), placed to camera right and slightly behind the subject. There is a large, off white wall directly behind the camera which provided a bit of fill. 

Another from the same alley…

Final specs: Nikon D3, Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8, F/11, ISO 500, 0.8 sec

Keep reading to see how it was shot…

Named after the method in which the camera is attached to a moving vehicle, photographers in automotive advertising call this type of photograph a “rig shot.” As detailed in a previous post, my “rig” consists of a solid steel pipe attached to the car using industry strength suction cups and clamps.

The process for this shot was as follows: We scouted locations for both a posed shot (to be posted soon) as well as the rig shot. It was determined that due to the weather the “feel” of the shot, a parking garage would be ideal. Next the rig was assembled and carefully attached to the car. The camera was then attached to the pipe and positioned as desired using an articulated arm. Next, the car was lit in a stationary position using strobes at the max sync speed to eliminate ambient light (black background with the car lit). Lastly, I shot the car while it was rolling for the motion frame using semi-slow shutter speeds (around 1 second). Later in Photoshop, the strobe lit frame and the motion frame were combined and the rig was tediously removed in Photoshop.

Much thanks to Paul who provided the car and was a big help, as well as fellow photographers Val Lemieux and Anthony Segarra who assisted, lit, scouted, and froze their butts off!  More setup shots below (all setup shots by Val Lemieux).

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.