I’m a big fan of black and white photography, in fact it might be my preference. I generally feel a black and white photo is successful based upon the elements of design which doesn’t need color to assist it. I love shooting color too, but there is something so raw about black and white.

There are certain things that can help your photos, whether they are color or black and white, and that is something that I am doing in this photo.

I didn’t just find any tree and take a picture. I carefully composed this photo this way and the reasons why I chose to do it this way are as follows.

I placed the Juniper tree using the rule of thirds. If you don’t know what that is, do a Google search and read up. I’m not endorsing this as a hard and fast rule to follow every single time, but generally this will help boost the composition of a photo and people viewing photos while using this rule will unknowingly find an appeal to this. They will tend to be drawn to a photo with when doing this.

The other element I’ve used here are lines and shapes. The lines are repetitive and create interest, while the direction of the lines lead the viewers eye to the tree.

It’s important to ensure you don’t just convert to Greyscale and call it a day. Explore the curves tool in photoshop and learn about the “S-curve” technique. You don’t want to blow out the whites or crush the blacks, but you do want to make sure you have whites and blacks and not just shades of grey. Contrast in a scene is great to have and adds more interest.

Hone your skill with some dodging and burning and you’ll be well on your way.

This is photo is of a Juniper tree sitting on the side of a ledge in Zion National Park in Utah.

This next post is a little about getting up close and personal. Lately I’ve been seeing some fantastic work online from other photographers that are getting up close and personal with their portrait work. This of course is nothing new, but I seem to be more aware of it. Getting close can have some very interested results and can actually make the viewer understand or relate to the subject matter in an intimate way. Depends of course if it is a good idea or not and the reasons for showing someone so close is a decision you must make. Some things might be left to the imagination, like facial hair on a woman or ear hair on a man. Things not everyone is quite fond of in our culture.

Elderly people with tired skin, wrinkled and loose up can have an impacting effect with the correct lighting. It tells the story of age and all the things this person might have gone through. Weathered and beaten.

The smooth skin of babies creates a delicate and precious feeling in the viewer. All these things much more pronounced when the camera is able to capture them at a close distance.

Or, you could just shoot a close up of someone with food all over the place giving a sense of chaos and mess.

I shot this portrait of a young girl being fed by her mother and wanted to get right in there, fill the entire frame and to be right in that scene. What works really well on this photo is the viewers connection with her eyes. The gateway into the soul.

The processing on this photo and the sharpness of the eye brings the viewer right into the scene and gives them a feeling of belonging.

This past weekend I drove a little further west of the Sooke town core, just tucked inside the Otter Point boundary. This place holds special meaning to me and the reason why I choose to call it Casey Point. I’m not sure what the true name of this place is on a chart, but to me it doesn’t matter, it’s Casey Point and will always be just that. You see, just over a year ago we lost a family member and best friend, Casey, a four legged best friend, a spunky Jack Russell Terrier. She was only 8 years old and was taken from us despite a short but intensive battle at the Victoria Emergency Clinic. She was diagnosed with Auto Immune Hemolytic Anemia and Thrombocytopenia, which came on very fast.

After 5 days of treatment and 3 blood transfusions, we brought her home, stable, but for how long, we didn’t know. It turned out we were only going to have a few more days with her. We ended up taking our special family photos, sharing our stories and good times together and giving our final kisses and hugs, ensuring she knew it was okay to let go and to tell her how much we loved her. The treatment wasn’t going to work and our furry baby would soon be gone.

A day before she passed I bundled her up in her special blanket and drove to this point for the sunrise. I carried her out of the car as she was too weak to walk. We sat down on a rock and watched the sun come up over the Strait as we both took in the fresh salt air. Giving her as many cuddles and kisses as I could and smelling that smooth haired patch, just behind her ear. This was her last sunrise and the last time she smelled the ocean breeze which she so loved to play in.

I didn’t go back to this special place until this past weekend. I wasn’t sure how my emotions would hold out. I was scared to set foot back there, afraid of how I might feel. But I decided it would be almost a tribute to the amazing times we all had together and I needed to be strong.

As I pulled down the small gravel road, that rock, the one we sat on together quickly came into view. I felt a tingly butterfly sensation in my stomach and I was slightly anxious, but I could do this. I stopped the car, got out and took in the last view we shared, it wasn’t much different than the one we had on her last day together. Memories came flooding back in. I could do this, and I did.

This post wasn’t supposed to be about this story, sorry, I didn’t want to go there, but as I started to type it all came out. Thank you for bearing with me if you are reading this far. I’ll get back on track here.

I decided upon my specific location of choice at this spot and I had a few options with me on how I could present it.

I could just frame my shot and shoot, which would have probably turned out fine as the colour and skies were very nice, or I could try a couple of techniques that I like to use. The long exposure technique.

If you don’t have a tripod, you’ll need a good sturdy one. A shutter release cable is very helpful to keep the camera still and you’ll need patience, something I’m working on.
You’ll also need an ND filter of your own choice and strength, depending on how long of a shutter speed and effect you like in your photos.

The color photo was taken without an ND filter. The light was low, so with a small f-stop, F22, and at 100 ISO, I could squeeze 2 seconds for a shutter speed. This would be long enough to show the movement on the water, creating a dramatic effect. This is a good technique if you’d like to show movement. It gives a very rugged feeling and shows a lot of motion. I like the tones and mood set by doing this. The more water movement and the rate of speed of the water, the more apparent the effect will be. This technique is very good if you can get large waves breaking over a rock face or cliff. Although with that you might want to do 0.5 to 1 second shutter speed. Sometimes 2 seconds will be too long. So you can just open up the lens a little until you get the shutter speed you are after.

The next method which require a lot more patience and a lot more tries to get it right is using an ND filter. I have many of them, but the one I love to use during the daytime is my BW ND 3.0, which is a 10 stop ND filter. At F22, ISO 100, I can get a 3 minute shutter speed under the conditions I was shooting here today. 3 minutes is A LOT!

Since the ND filter is so dark, I cannot compose the shot with it on. I frame the shot, focus, then put the ND filter on. But be sure to switch your auto focus to manual after you do this, because if you don’t, when you push the shutter release button, your camera will try to re-focus and that will mess everything up. It’s happened to me more than I care to mention here.

So why would I want to do that? Well, take a look at the black and white square photo. That is the effect that you will achieve. The effect I get from this is a sense of serenity. Peaceful and calm. Further enhancing those emotions by converting the photo to black and white. Color photos using this technique are nice as well, but I find that black and white gives it that feeling I’m after here.

Why does it look like this? Well, the longer you have the shutter open, the more information that writes to the camera sensor and ultimately the RAW file on the card. Think of the laws of average. After 3 minutes, crashing waves and water movement are rendered to the average. Everything appears milky and flat. We lose most sense of motion. The only thing we can see that had some motion are the small rocks under the water in the foreground. These were moving very slowly with the wave movement as well as the light refraction from being underwater, so they appear slightly blurry.

So while these two photos were shot at the same time of day, the same position, albeit slightly different crop, they give two totally different types of feeling.

It’s all how you want to present the scene. They both work for different reasons.

Just this past weekend I helped take part in a local Sooke Santa Photo Shoot that was put on by Mariner’s Village and DLC- Modern Mortgage Group. We all had met a couple of weeks earlier to brainstorm ideas for what we could do during the Sooke Santa Claus Parade to help raise money for our charity of choice, the Sooke Toy Drive. None of us could recall a place in Sooke that kids could get their photo taken with Santa, so that ignited the task to get Santa out here, hopefully his schedule wasn’t too busy!

Some calls were made and it was arranged. S,o where do I come in? Well, the photography part of course. I haven’t done anything like this before and wasn’t sure what to expect. My biggest concern was the organization to capture everyone’s email address properly so we could actually match up the photo numbers in order and give them to the right people. So far, I think it has worked with no bounced emails.

On the day of the shoot I came an hour early to set up and the place where Santa was to sit was bathed in sunlight. Sunlight facing directly into the camera of course and it was only going to be worse in a couple of hours time. With the sun being so low in the sky at this time of year, it made things a little more difficult and challenging.

A lot of people think that shooting into the sun is the worst possible thing, but it actually is a preferred choice by many photographers. The colours tend to be warmer and the contrast a little lighter, but you don’t have to deal with harsh shadows across the face and people aren’t squinting. Two worst enemies in outdoor photography. You can get some really fantastic results by practicing this shooting style. Exposure for the face and let the camera handle the rest.

However, I do like my sun a little higher in the sky and not facing directly into the lens for this type of shot, but there is not much I could do about it so let’s make the best out of what we have to work with.

Normally I don’t like to shoot with a flash, but after the first few shots, I realized for the sake of people being able to see the faces of their dear kids nice and bright and avoiding any washed out appearance in a Santa photo, I would opt to put it on and let the power of the flash lighten up the photo from the front while still being able to have that nice warm feel to it.

Everything went really well, pretty much as hoped and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time. We had 50 kids who came to get their photo taken! I’m pleased to announce that with the donation match by Mariner’s Village and DLC – Modern Mortgage Group, we had a total of just over $655 raised for the Sooke Toy Drive. Way to go Sooke!

Aside from sharing with you this little story, the main purpose of this post is to talk about expressions and candid shots. A lot of people when they get together at events, parties and gatherings, make a point of getting people to pose together, smile together and stare directly into the camera. These types of shots can be OK when you need to document the gathering and show everyone at once and I have no problem shooting a few of these during a session, but the best photos in my opinion are the ones where people don’t know they are being photographed, allowing everything to be natural and not forced.

Be stealthy, try different angles. Include objects in the foreground and background that help tell the story of what people are doing and why they are here. Work different idea. Don’t rush anything, let people interact and enjoy. And don’t forget to fill your cards and shoot, shoot, shoot.

This is the type of shooting that I prefer and when I come to your choice of location to shoot your photos, this is how I try to approach it. I might guide you to the best light and place for a shot, but I want you to quickly forget that I’m there and I will start taking photos when that happens.

While Santa stayed in one spot and I stayed in one spot, the best of this series was when the kids either forgot that the camera was there and were too young to even realize they were being photographed and acted naturally. Not to sound sadistic, but who doesn’t want to see their child’s first photo and expression with Santa a squirmy one? Whether they stare with large eyes into his beard, crying or just trying to run away, these are the moments that you’ll remember and generate laughs for many years to come and these are generally the first actions a young child has when placed on this scary strangers knees. Be ready and be there to capture the true moment.

The photo above is of my daughter on this day. This was her first Santa photo and one that I can look back on and laugh for years to come. And there is nothing better than having fuel for her big wedding day, a long 50 years from now, right boys?

I’ve gotten into this habit of immediately post processing my images when I come home from a shoot, whether it’s a moody landscape or an engagement shoot with a couple head over heels in love. I get all giddy like a kid on Christmas morning. To me, it’s like a surprise, unwrapping each individual present and taking a peek inside. Eyes all wide open. And like most Christmas presents you receive, these ones are of no exception, they get re-gifted, but this time to your paying clients. I just hope they enjoy their presents better than that hideous sweater my great aunt made me one year with square wool dogs on the front. You all know what I’m talking about.

This blog post is to remind myself that there is nothing wrong to jump right into the editing process of your files when you get back home or to the studio, but no matter how happy you are with the results, be sure to always sleep on it for a night or two. I don’t think there has every been a time where I haven’t gone back to the folder and slowly took a look through all of the ones I didn’t first flag with an approved check mark. And each and every time I find hidden gems that didn’t pop out at me immediately.

How can I explain this phenomenon? I blame the excitement of first finding those immediate reaction images that move you, the ones you know the clients or viewers will love. The ones where everything is right, just the way you envisioned it when you composed the shot in camera.

But after you relax and take a break, perhaps even sleep on it and come back again to your photos, you’ll most likely find images with subtle differences in poses, lighting and smiles that you never picked up the first time. Something in the background that completes a shot that you never noticed before.

A photographer rarely offers to give a client the CD or DVD of photos that same day. While not totally unheard of, I personally wouldn’t do it.

So go through your old images of landscapes, family vacation and folders you haven’t look at for some time and see how many you can located that never got that loving touch the first time around.

The image above I just found going through our old road trip back in 2009, taken at one of the hundreds of Geyser’s in Yellowstone Nat’l Park. It’s now a part of my collection of memories that I can share with you.

This is about as much time as you get with any kid in any given situation when you pull out your camera. At least I do with my daughter. This morning I walked by her sitting on her mom, eating a bagel smothered in strawberry cream cheese. Actually, I think she and mom had more cream cheese on them then the bagel did, and that is precisely why I brought the camera out. Now, I know that seeing little monsters with food on their face is not an uncommon sight. Just ask anyone who has Facebook friends and I’m sure their feed is stuffed full with shots of their friends kids doing exactly the same thing. But this isn’t about so much what she is doing, eating food, but how every situation changes fast when you pull out the camera and the wide range of emotions you can get in a very small piece of time.

A lot of people make comments about my photos and how they really like this one and that one for various reasons, you’ve captured the moment, but it all boils down to one thing. Shooting, and shooting lots. In this short window I had taken nearly 20 photos of the same thing. Focus, recompose shoot. Focus, recompose, shoot. I usually only look at my LCD screen once in a scenario like this, at the beginning of a shoot and that is just to see what my historgram looks like and if I have to adjust my settings to get better exposure. After that, I just focus, recompose and shoot, over and over again.

And just like clock work, after about 30 seconds, she wanted off moms lap and ran across the room, quickly being chased by a portly little Jack Russell Terrier named Pork Chop who’s hot on her heels for any little morsels of food that doesn’t make it onto her face. Photo shoot over, done.

So what are you left with? Well, in this case about 20 photos in a RAW format. At this point I open up Adobe Bridge and quickly scan over each image. I can very easily tell which ones get marked with an approved label and which ones never see the light of an editing program. A good photograph isn’t hard to spot. There is that little sparkle in someones eye. That action with the hand. The composition. Whatever it is, you just feel it.

So, after I select my choice(s), I always ask mom to look through them and allow her to choose which one(s) I will edit. I find it extremely interesting that she picks up certain things that I don’t and her likes in a photograph can vary greatly from mine. Rarely does she select a photo that I was just about ready to delete, but rather chooses one that I might think is good, but not really something I would spend time on editing. Is someone more right than the other person? Not at all. That is why I always get her to go through the photos of any session I do. I think it creates a great balance between what I like as a guy and what she likes as a girl. She sees things that I might not readily pick up that another mom might. I believe this is a part of why my photography is successful. I think everyone should go through this process before they post their work. Ask others which ones they prefer.

So, these two photos are what was selected from the batch. I like the more sombre pose and mom likes the devilish pose with an evil grin. Okay, I like that one too, but she was immediately drawn to that and I was immediately drawn to the other with her eyes being the focal point. Both would have been processed regardless as moms choice was on my radar too.

The whole point to this post is that in order to capture successful images, you need to shoot a lot. Even in a 30 second window. This will give you options and choice for your final result. You could take 5 images in a 1 second span and there will always be one that is just that much better over the others, one with just that right emotion. Something you might have missed if you were simply waiting for the right pose.

I’ll go over processing images and what I do in a later blog post.

But I am curious though. Which photo do you prefer? Which one do you like better and why? Please leave your comments below.