November 16, 2009 - A beautiful Fall yard

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I have always admired how beautiful this yard is in the Fall and now I have a great photo to prove it.

I shot this late in the afternoon, about an hour and a half before the sun sets. The angle of the sun gives a great blue sky without a polarizer. The sunlight coming from the right does a great job of striking the brilliant leaves, but it doesn't over-expose the rest of the yard. This allows the house in the shadows of the great pines to still be visible.

I think without the house the photo wouldn't be nearly as good. It clearly shows that this is someone's home, their yard that they have spent countless hours sweating over. And their toils are well worth it.

I shot this RAW, but the sunlight white balance setting in the camera did a great job of getting the colors right and I didn't need to correct them much. I did some selective saturation in Photoshop Elements, but otherwise left the photo alone.

I wasn't sure how the homeowners would react to me taking the photo (even though I was standing on a public sidewalk while shooting), so I preset the camera to what I thought would be a good starting point before walking over. I snapped two photos, checking each on the camera's display, figured I had a good shot, and got the heck out of dodge.

October 15, 2009 - Behind the scenes at a HowStuffWorks podcast

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I lucked out today. For the past several weeks, ever since I made this photo for Chuck and Josh of Stuff You Should Know fame, I have been wanting to get a photo of one of the podcast teams at HowStuffWorks doing their podcast. Well, today it happened.

I happened to pass the recording studio when they were just setting up for a recording of Stuff You Missed inn History Class. I politely asked permission to get some shots, and they agreed as long as it was during their sound check before they started recording. So a hearty thanks to Sarah and Katie for their cooperation, along with Jeri and Elizabeth who are part of the production crew.

For the photo, I got down to the same level as Sarah and Katie and bounced the dedicated flash off of the ceiling. I put the camera into manual mode, dialing in f5.6, 1/60, and ISO 400 for aperture, shutter, and film speed, respectively. I focused about a third into the scene (the microphone by Katie on the right), which helped produce a nice sharp photo from front to back.

I took a bunch of shots and selected this as the best. I felt it showed how much fun these two ladies have when talking about their subjects. Sarah definitely seems to be chucking about what Katie is saying. And if you listen to their podcasts, you know that happens a lot.

Taking a lot of shots also helped me with another problem. When taking photos of people talking it is very easy to catch them in unusual (and sometimes goofy) facial expressions. When you look at someone talk, you don't really notice how many positions the mouth and lips take to form sounds and words. But a photo freezes that motion. So take a lot of shots when you are shooting someone talking. It will give you more of a chance to get a good looking shot that still conveys the idea of talking.

I wish I could have gotten a better angle, however, one that would have shown more of Katie's face. But there was some equipment in the way. Plus, I wanted to isolate the photo on the table where they do their work and leave out the other stuff that is used for the video podcasts. Some of that video equipment is literally a foot behind Katie, but because of how I shot and cropped this picture you wouldn't have any idea if I hadn't told you. This is another good example of how photography can be as much about what you leave out of the shot as what you keep in.

September 29, 2009 - Deliciously disgusting cake

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I'll admit up front, this isn't going to be easy to explain. That thing on the table is a cake. It is also supposed to be meatloaf. But in actuality, it's really supposed to be a monster's foot. Make sense?

Don't worry, it didn't make sense at first to me either.

Here's the explanation. I work as a programmer at HowStuffWorks.com, and we just launched the TLC Cooking portion of our website (which you can find at recipes.howstuffworks.com). Being in a celebratory mood, the folks at TLC headquarters wanted to send us us a large cake for everyone to eat. But they didn't want to send just a plain cake — oh no, that just wouldn't be fun enough. They wanted to send a special cake that would look like one of the dishes from the recipes on the new site. But what recipe did they pick? One from the Halloween section called Feet of Meat!

So in honor of our accomplishment, we got to eat cake that was meant to look like a cooked foot of some Halloween monster. How appetizing.

In today's shot, our editor in chief, Conal Byrne, had just cut off the first piece of cake (for those wondering, it was the big toe), revealing to everyone that the cake was red velvet, creating a great illusion of raw meat inside. Everyone either laughed, gasped, or gagged. But what would you expect? Even those on the other side of the cake (who couldn't see the red inside) still saw the blood red cake stuck to the knife as he pulled it out of the cake. Yum, nothing like simulated red meat!

I took this photo just at the height of everyone's reaction. I like the candid emotions and reactions caught on their faces. It was a prime moment, and it can be hard to catch these kind of reactions. If I wasn't ready with the camera when the moment happened, I would have never caught it. Of course, it helped that I knew the cake was red velvet and I was expecting a good reaction. A little planning and anticipation can go a long way in getting great photos.

I used my dedicated flash and bounced it off of the ceiling to get a nice even amount of lighting in the whole room. This technique also eliminates the vast majority of shadows in the room, which helps add to the overall effect of the photo.

I purposely cropped it very wide to eliminate all of the dead space in the upper and lower portion of the photo. This helped draw attention to the most important parts of the photo, the cake and everyone's reaction to it. I just wish it wasn't so dark in the back corner. Maybe I should have had my flash pointing a little more forward instead of just straight up.

September 28, 2009 - Caught red-handed (again!)

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I've been caught red-handed again. Twice in the same week I have missed a day, and I don't have anything to post for today.

(Ugh. I feel so ashamed . . . .)

So, in honor of how I feel, today I have posted a photo taken by my daughter, Leigh Ann, when she caught me red-handed as I was licking the chocolate chip pumpkin muffin dough off of the spatula we used back on September 20th.

She saw me taking photos that night, and after I had put the camera down she asked if she could get some photos herself. I said yes (of course) and away she went snapping photos. Little did I know she would get such a good one!

August 25, 2009 – Candid photo

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One of my good friends, Ramon, was inspired by the August 19 photo of the flowers and the bee, so he asked me to help him do the same thing during lunch yesterday. I tried to get some photos myself, but ultimately decided to snap a truly candid photo of Ramon as he was shooting.

By placing on the side of the photo, it lets you see what he is trying to photograph. The wide aperture (f2.8) blurs out the background, so the construction site in the upper left corner isn't distracting. Finally, the sunlight is striking the side of his body that is facing the camera, which really helps avoid his shirt and face being too dark.

Ramon is also showing good form in how he is holding his camera. He is down on one knee, supporting his upper body and camera by resting his right elbow on his knee.

By the way, I am not sure how my dates were off, but they were. Even though it may look like I have skipped a day, I haven't.

August 20, 2009 – Party on the deck

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Our company (HowStuffWorks.com) just launched the first portion of our social networking platform, so we had a party out on the deck (15 floors up) to celebrate. The weather was nice, but really overcast.

I wanted to get a photo that would capture how beautiful the view of the other buildings can be, but also capture the fun everyone was having. That was hard, and here is what I thought was my bast effort.

I shot this at a small aperture (f11) in order to get the people in front (who were about 18 feet away) in focus along with all of the buildings in the back. I might have been able to use a wider aperture, but they were laughing and I didn't have much time to react. So I went with an aperture I knew would do the job.

I used Photoshop Elements to correct most of the distortion from the wide angle shot. I also cropped the photo in a way to leave out the large trash can that was by the table of food on the right.

There were a couple of things I think that could have made this photo better. First, I should have shot it in RAW mode for more post-processing control over the exposure, contrast, and color. But alas, I had left it in JPEG mode after shooting the bees the day before. Second, I wish there were another couple of people talking in the empty space where you can see the tower crane. Ideally, I would have liked them to have been 15-20 feet from the camera.

Photo Tip: Don't be afraid to take a lot of shots

With today's digital cameras it is easy to take a lot of photos. And I mean a lot of photos! And that is what today's tip is all about.

Don't be afraid to take a lot of shots. Whether you are having some friends pose for a picture, or you are trying to capture a candid moment, take several pictures. In fact, I would say the more candid the situation, the more shots you should get.

When you are done, don't worry about keeping them all. Just choose the best one or two and discard the rest.

Let me show you what I mean. In yesterday's photo tip I showed a photo taken at the park. I love the photo. It really captured my daughter's smile and fun-loving personality. What I didn't show you is how many attempts I took at capturing that one shot. In this instance there were 12:
When I got home I looked through them all, found the one that really stood out from the rest, and moved it into a special folder on my hard drive of the best photos of my daughter. And just because I love her so much, here it is again!