Tag: Photography

Composition in the Field with Frank Veronsky

Frank Veronsky is an editorial and commercial photographer who lived in New York City for over 20 years. He recently moved to Belle Meade, NJ and is teaching both beginner and advanced workshops. I found out about the workshop through his photo group on Meetup. The meetup group is sponsored by the Digital Photo Academy. I'm fortunate to live a few miles from Frank's studio and decided to take the Workshop, Composition in the Field.

Frank's studio is a converted barn at the back of his property in the historic Harlingen section of Montgomery Township. Frank and his wife moved here with their kids to be closer to the family. The studio is clean and well lit but Frank's backyard provided the subject matter for the day's workshop.

It rained that morning and the air and soil were still damp and a little cold. The lighting changed constantly as the clouds moved across the sun.

Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8
Workshop - Composition in the Field - Frank Veronsky—Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/5.0
Nikon D40 + 35 mm f/1.8 @ 35 mm, f/1.8

HDR photography with Photomatix and Lightroom 3 Beta

I've been poking around with HDR and Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta. Up until recently my work-flow consisted of importing my photos from an SD card directly into iPhoto in Nikon RAW format. I make some minor changes - contrast, colour, crop - and upload the better ones to flickr and facebook. Once I started using Lightroom I had so much more available to me. I could adjust everything. But that's not what this post is about.

Big Red Barn
Big Red Barn by Khürt, on Flickr
I've fallen in love with the plug-in mechanism. I found one for flickr, for facebook, CVS, email and a host of other things. One of the coolest plug-ins I found was for Photomatix, a piece of software I've used in the past to do some High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography. High-dynamic-range photographs are generally achieved by capturing multiple standard photographs using exposure bracketing, and then merging them into an HDR image. With the Photomatix plug-in for Lightroom this is quite easy to do. Select a set of photos (I usually use 5) in Lightroom and select the export to Photomatix plug-in. Lightroom launches Photomatix where I do a little bit of tone mapping and the results are imported back into Lightroom. Easy peasy.
Blue skies
Blue skies by Khürt, on Flickr

When all else fails...

Last weekend, I attended a photo meetup in the Newport area of Jersey City hosted by John Bodensiek. The weather was cold but dry. We met outside at the Starbucks next to the Newport PATH station. I had everything all set - two SD cards, two tripods, zoom and prime lens, lens cleaner and... I forgot the battery for the Nikon D40 in the charger at home.  Argh! I used the only other camera I had with me - a Sony HDR-CX7.  The Sony is an HD video camera with a 6MP image sensor and VERY limited manual settings. Despite the cold, with John's excellent direction, I was still able to get some decent shots.  At least until the lights went down.

Manhattan
Midtown by Khürt, on Flickr