Be My Guest Monday 1/31/11: David Page


It's "Be My Guest Monday," the day of the week that's turned over to a talented guest blogger for a quick tip.

Today's guest: David Page


It is amazing how you can increase the speed of a race car and improve the composition by just tilting the image. The images above are the same except that the top one was tilted before the cropping step. I prefer to to start with a lot of resolution on an image that is "normal" with plenty of room to crop. I then rotate the image in Photoshop several times till I get my favorite angle. Then I go back to the original image and rotate it only once to that best angle again. The reason for the re-do is that every time you rotate an image there is slight small detail loss and to repeat it many times could take the fuzz right off of a peach.

The same result could be accomplished by just rotating the camera on the original shot. But at over 100 miles per hour you only get one attempt at the best angle for the best composition. Be careful in choosing the background as leaning trees etc. can ruin the effect.

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David Page is the co-author, along with Dr. Richard Zakia, of Photographic Composition - A Visual Guide. These two dudes are also two of my favorite people.


Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach – Final Shoot

Photograph by Rick Sammon
We just finished the final shoot on my Florida Photo Caravan. We had some fantastic models and talked about controlling the light and making pictures.

For the opening image for this post, we bounced the light from our on-camera flashes (set on TTL) into a Westcott reflector – after setting our cameras to Manual and setting the exposure for the light coming through the window behind our model.

For the two pictures below, we bounced the sunlight, which was coming from above and behind the lifeguard stand on which the model was standing, onto her face and body – again using a Westcott reflector.

Photograph by Rick Sammon

Photograph Rick Sammon

Reflectors rock.


I took all of these pictures with my Canon 5D Mark II and Canon 25-105mm IS lens.

We are setting the dates for our 2012 Florida Photo Caravan  - and Delray Goes Digital project. Interested? Shoot me an email at ricksammon@mac.com.

Explore the light,
Rick

Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach Shoot #2

Photograph by Rick Sammon
We're in South Beach. Cools colors for sure! 

We're just back from our second shoot - dusk on Ocean Drive.

Here are two shots - both enhanced with Nik Software's Color Efex Pro/Pastel filter.

For info on Color Efex Pro and other plug-ins, click here.

Photograph by Rick Sammon
Explore the light,
Rick

Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach Shoot #1

Photograph by Rick Sammon
We're on the last stop of my Florida Photo Caravan: South Beach.

We set out this morning to something a bit different from the past week: simply go out and shoot and have fun. We looked for cool colors, patters, reflection and of course subjects. We found 'em all.

I encouraged the students to work with reflections. Here's one of my favorites – enhanced with Topaz Adjust/Spicify.

Photograph by Rick Sammon
I also encouraged the students to use their cameras like a spaceship – tilting them up and down and left and right. Here's my example. Yes, another Topaz/Spicify effect.

More pix to come from our talented and dedicated team.

Oh yeah, after our fun shoot, we spent an hour on a flash class. More good fun.

For street shots like this, I use my Canon 17-40mm lens on my Canon 5D Mark II.

Camera info:
Lens info:

Explore the light,
Rick

P.S. For info on Topaz and the other plug-ins I use, click here.