Category: portraits

Utah Holi Festival 2011

Made another trip to the Holi Festival at the Krisha Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah.

There wasn’t a big organized group of photographers, but there were of course plenty there anyway.

This time I also brought along the family. My five year old was especially excited to go. He had a great time, especially when he realized he could throw the colors at anyone he wanted, and that we encouraged it all the more when the person didn’t have any color on them yet (below left) 😉

Overall there were quite a few more families then last year which was awesome to see. It is a great family event. I’d love to see them do a throw dedicated to families to encourage more to come out, where they wouldn’t get run over by all the college guys as much.

Full Holi Festival gallery here

This year was quite a bit colder then last year. It was overcast the whole time. It had rained and snowed the day and night before, and the normally grassy hill turned into a lot of mud. Which of course people took advantage of and it was soon a mud slide that people would go sliding down.

Sometimes people would get colors put on them, and sometimes they’d do it themselves

A few more faves. The first being my son, which of couse is my most favorite of all 🙂

Pretty sure this is the back of Sulley from Monsters Inc

It was an awesome event, and can’t wait to do it again next year!

Full Holi Festival gallery here

Halloween 2010 Trick or Treater Photos

Last year around Halloween I got this idea of setting up my studio lights and take photos of trick or treaters as they came by. So for the past year I have been getting the parts that I needed to make it happen. Technical details down below for those that care.

All in all, it was a great success, with 294 photos of 81 trick or treaters. It almost didn’t happen due to the rain, as I was shooting in my garage and blowing rain and camera gear don’t mix all that well. But luckily the rain died down around 6:30 and I was able to open shop.

The response from people was great. Some weren’t sure what was going on, some asked how much I was charging (it was free, guess I need a sign). One mom walked away saying “that’s the best idea I have ever heard of.” I’ll take that as a complement.

A few photos from the night are here in the post, but you can see the rest in the full gallery. Is this my best work? Nope. The floor got covered with dirt and grass on occasion, sometimes the garage snuck into a shot here or there (went back and tried to fix some of that), people would blink or be looking at the monitor for some shots.  But you get what you pay for. Normally I would say a photographer should only publish their best shots, but this will be a rare exception. So take all the bumps and bruises in the photos with a grain (or bucket) of salt 🙂

All Ages

Baby, Toddler, Teen, Adult

Technical Details

Here’s a photo of the setup. Click through to see notes on the image.

Trick or Treater photos setup

Key Lights – Two alien bees 800 hanging from superclamps that are clamped onto an open garage door. I wanted the lights up off the ground since I knew I would have lots of kids walking around that wouldn’t be watching for stands.

Background Lights – Two speedlights (430 ex and 580 ex II) pointed at the the white seamless.

Light Triggers – All lights triggered by a Radio Poppers JrX Trigger and JrX Studio Receivers (4) with some RP Cubes on the speedlights.

Whiteness – 9 foot white seamless. Two Thrifty White Tileboards from Home Depot, via the Zack Arias tutorial.

Monitor – Old Dell 19″ LCD setup as a second screen pointed at the trick or treaters so they (and parents) could see the shots. This was naturally a big hit to see things on the fly.

Uploading – I had my camera tethered to a laptop with a 15 foot USB cable to give me a little freedom of movement. The laptop is running Lightroom 3.2 grabbing the pics via the camera tether option.  I had a preset applied on import and then it went into a smart gallery that was setup to upload to my SmugMug account via the new publish service in Lightroom 3. Whenever there was a break in the trick or treaters I would go over and tell it to upload any new photos. I think the longest photos set on my compute without being uploaded was 10-15 minutes.

Cards – I ordered some business cards with a URL to where the photos could be found.

New lens – First time I got to give my new 24-105 L lens a work out. It did awesome… of course 🙂

What would I do different if I did it again

  • I would get cards that don’t have the year on them. The order was for 200 cards that I am guessing I used 50 of. But with the brkr.co/halloween2010 URL on it, they are kind of dated. I would do brkr.co/halloweenpics (or something) then I could carry cards over to the next year. I could just change what the shorturl was pointing to each year.
  • I would love to get a wireless system so get the photos off the camera without the wire tether. But I’m guessing that would get spendy fast.
  • Naturally more lights would be great.
  • I may change over to a halloween/fall scene instead of the plain white background. Will have to ask some parents about what they would prefer.
  • Would like to find a way for the upload to happen automatically.

All in all, I had a great time interacting with everyone. Lots of people had lot of fun getting their shots taken. Parents of course love it, getting some great photos of their kids. I will likely do it again next year. Just need to find the happy place between having fun with my own boys and getting all this setup and taking the pics.

Daniel at Discovery Park

Daniel

Canon 40D, EFS 28-135 IS, 1/30, f/5, 65mm, ISO 800

If I posted all the pictures I take of my kids, the blog would be over run with them.  But for some reason this one just grabbed me when I started editing it.

This was taken in a small cubby hole at the Discovery Park in Pleasant Grove, UT.  It was a bit overcast and this was under the main structure so it was quite dark. The 800 ISO gives the photo a great grain but Daniel’s face still looks like a porcelain doll as my wife says.

Somewhere I learned how to use gradient tool to add the nice dark edges which I really think adds to it, and draws the attention in.

I guess I shouldn’t be so afraid to post the pictures of family that I take.  That is a huge part of my photography right now and those photos are definitely worth being shared as well.

Photowalking Utah: Studio Lighting 2009

Canon 40D, EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM, 1/160, f/2.8, 115 mm, ISO 200

This month’s photowalk was a repeat from last year where we had multiple studio lighiting setups in the same room to walk around and try out.  I came out of the event last year excited about studio lighting and promptly dropped several hundred dollars into lights, stands, etc.

Since then, I have basically experimented on my sons and the occasional niece and nephew (I need to put some of these up).  I have been learning through trial and error and so was excited for this weeks events.  I say events because Thursday the incredible Rich Legg gave a mini-clinic on “How to Get Great Studio Lighting Results for Under $250” where I learned quite a lot as well.

These two events have revitalized my desire to shoot (much to my sons’ dismay) and to continue to experiment with new ways of shooting with my lights.  It also revitalized my desire to buy more lighting stuff, but I will have to hold off on that 😉

I am grateful to those who organized the events, and to the models for putting up with over 100+ photographers struggling to learn what to do.  Thanks to Rich for the suggestion of interacting with the models more I feel I had a much better rapport with them this year then last.

Full set of photos