Poinsettia in front of the tree.

What would Christmas be without taking a family portrait?  Who knows how many more Christmas' we will have with all the kids home together?  What better setting than in front of the fireplace with the Christmas stockings all hung and the Christmas tree nearby?  This shot was taken with my Nikon D750 and a 50 mm f1.8 lens attached with an SB900 speed light mounted on camera and bounced off the ceiling.  I thought about going through the trouble of getting studio strobes out and figuring out where to place them but this gave reasonable results and was much simpler.

2014 Crystal Ornament

While setting up for the shot and waiting for everyone to get ready (the picture was taken just before heading off to 7:30 PM mass at St Christopher's), I decided to try and photograph other Christmas related items nearby.  I first moved Amy's large poinsettia plant into the family room and set it up in front of the tree so that I could get a picture of the plant with defocused Christmas lights in the background. The result was pretty nice.
I then moved to the tree and looked around for some interesting ornaments to take pictures of.

2013 Crystal Ornament

Katie's boyfriend, JC, had presented a gift from his mother for the second year in a row.  These are very lovely snowflake crystal ornaments by Swarovski in an ongoing series.  Here are pictures of the 2013 version and this year's 2014 version.  One thing I learned here is that if you plan to take shots of glass or crystal up close make sure you polish off any fingerprints first!  Oh well, live and learn and learning is why I'm doing this blog in the first place.

Pooh and friends enjoy the snow.

Pooh and Piglet off on a grand adventure.

With the Swarovski's photographed, I then turned my attention to a couple of Winnie the Pooh ornaments that belong to Katie (she has a special relationship with Pooh).  I decided to try some experiments with an item I received for Christmas last year.  I used my CamRanger setup for automatic focus stacking shots (I mentioned focus stacking in an earlier blog).  This device connects to the camera via USB and has a small computer in it and a wifi connection for an iPad or iPhone (I suppose Android would work too).  This allows one to take control of the camera remotely and the device has several built in capabilities, one of which is focus stacking.  It doesn't actually process the pictures into a single image, you still need to do that in Photoshop. What it does do for you, however, is make minute adjustments to the focus on the camera between successive shots.  You can configure whether it makes small, medium or large changes (don't know quite what they each are, yet) and how many shots to take before stopping.  With my 105 mm macro lens attached I took a few series of a these two ornaments.  I particularly like the sledding shot because the location of a blue Christmas light off to the right gives the scene an almost moonlit look.
Well that's enough for this week.  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends and I'll be back in the new year with whatever I can come up with for photo ideas.

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Jon Potter.  We see him once a year at this gathering.

Every year since we've been married Amy and I have hosted a Christmas party for our closest friends and their families.  Some have been attending our annual gathering from the very beginning and others are more recent acquaintances but they all have one thing in common.  They are great people and Amy and I are truly blessed to have them in our lives.

Kristy and Jack.  Jack smiling for the picture.

Jane smiles pretty for the camera.

Tarik and Alexa playing.

As the years progressed from that very first Christmas Party 29 years ago we all, hosts and guests alike, began our own families and in order to accommodate all we made it a tradition that our annual party would be a family party where children were welcome.  At some point during the evening Amy would sit at the piano and the guests would all join in for carols.  Now the honor of leading the crowd on the piano falls to our oldest, Katie, and its primarily the young adult friends of our kids that sing the carols.  At least the tradition continues.

Sara enjoying some holiday cheer.

As for young kids at the party, we still get a few as some of our newer friends and co-workers have started their families.

Landon admires the ornaments on the tree.

For the first time ever I asked the guests to gather around for a group shot and I want to thank them all for their ready cooperation.  Some knew that my motivation was a photo for this week's blog and I'm happy to share it with you all here.  I've also included a second shot below taken by my good friend, Rich, so that I could be in the shot as well.  This was quite a task for a Canon owning fellow photography enthusiast given that he had to use my Nikon for the shot.  Missing from the shot because they arrived only moments after it was taken are the Oleans and the Bells.  Dan O. wanted to do it again so he could be in it but once was enough.

Katie and her cousin Julia.

Kris listens intently.

After the guests left and Amy and I were catching our breath, I mentioned that if we can count each of those that attended our party amongst our friends then we are indeed blessed.  For as Clarence  writes to George at the end of that holiday favorite, "Remember, no man is a failure who has friends". Merry Christmas to all our wonderful friends!

For more pictures of the party check out this flickr album.

Doug and his friends enjoy the festivities.

Amy and Kristina singing carols.

Replacement group shot where I swap places with Rich.

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While looking for my next indoor photo project (I really need to get back outside!) I found this video on how to photograph a steaming cup of coffee.  I thought this would be a great idea with Christmas themed props to complete the scene.  Above is the results of my efforts.  This particular project turned out to be even more challenging than photographing whiskey bottles.

Setup showing diffuser and back light holder.

Getting the light behind the coffee to be at just the right angle to illuminate the steam and not cause too much glare in the lens or cause too much of a shadow to be cast in front of the mug turned out to be quite difficult.  I needed a way to suspend a light at just the right height and not having a boom arm stand of any kind I had to use my wood working skills to improvise.

Showing the reflector in on the scene.

I used a powerful mag light as my steam back light and a spot light through a (newly) homemade diffuser bouncing off a reflector as my main lighting.  I used my standard 50 mm lens at f/9.0 for 1/20 second exposure and an ISO of 1000.  The excellent performance of my new camera at relatively high ISO settings makes it possible to use continuous lighting like this and still get excellent results.  The noise at ISO 1000 with my previous cameras would have had me think twice about this setup.

Replaced the coffee with hot cocoa and whipped cream. 

The coffee I used in the mug was some old instant we had around the house and I made it relatively strong to get a dark coffee in the mug.  While everything was setup I figured I would dump out the coffee and replace it with a huge serving of hot chocolate with whip cream and cinnamon.  Those of you who aren't coffee drinkers will likely find this version of the shot more appealing.  I did not try and light any steam off this mug because I figured the whipped cream would hold it down and besides, that was what made the shoot so difficult in the first place.  After snapping a couple shots of the mug full of hot cocoa I grabbed the subjects of the shoot and returned to my study for a well deserved snack ;-)

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Pattern 1

Setup for taking the spirograph pictures

In photography you will often hear the terms "drawing with light" or "light painting" and this usually means one of two things.  The first thing some people think of when they hear the phrase "light painting" is the technique where you shoot a dark (usually night) scene and illuminate sections of the scene with a flashlight by sweeping the beam across the object.  This can give some very powerful results and I hope to cover that technique in a future blog.  For this blog I'm demonstrating what would be better described as drawing with light but is also referred to as painting with light, so you can see how the use of these terms can be confusing.

Pattern 2

Drawing with light involves long exposures in the dark with a beam of light (I used a small maglight) pointed at the camera and moving to produce a shape.  All my shots this week were done by hanging the light from the ceiling with a length of string and allowing it to swing like a pendulum over the camera.  The camera was setup directly below the flashlight and set for between 10 and 30 second exposures.  I found through experimentation that the longer exposures worked better because it allowed the light to sweep for a longer time and made a more complete figure.

Pattern 3

After taking several shots I brought the images into photoshop to make sure the black was deep black and the light trail was fully exposed.  I added a gradient adjustment layer with a blending style of multiply to apply the rainbow color to the otherwise white pattern.  Colorizing the pattern in this manner makes for a much more interesting image than the simple white pattern drawn by the swinging flashlight.

Pattern 4

Picking a favorite was not as easy as I thought it would be and is likely a matter of personal taste.  Consider this week's top pick a rather random selection from the others posted here.  I like them all and found the exercise in making them fun and relaxing (lying on the floor looking up at a swinging spot of light can be mesmerizing).  Feel free to leave a comment telling me which is your favorite.
For some really interesting pictures of light patterns check out this recent posting.

Pattern 5

Pattern 6

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Nikon D750 with 105 mm lens f4 @ 1/3200 ISO 800 

Nikon D750 with 105 mm lens f20 @ 1/160 ISO 800

Well, I had grand plans to take awesome food pictures during the Thanksgiving meal preparation and that just did not happen.  I tried. but I think you really need to prepare food with the intent of photographing it and not eating it to get it right.  It may not be as hard as photographing whiskey bottles but you really can't just point your camera at the food on the counter and get that magazine ad look.
As a backup plan, while Amy was preparing the bird for the oven, I took my camera outside to see what interesting shots I could get with our light dusting of snow (about an inch).
As I was finishing up I took a shot of this bush with snow balancing in a nice arch on the top of the

branches and my first shot had a background that was too distracting so I figured I would adjust and use this scene as a brief tutorial for my non-photography buff readers.  In order to achieve the shot at the top over the first one in the body of the blog I need to open the lens up to a smaller f-stop.  The thing to remember about f-stop is large numbers mean small lens openings and greater depth of field (more stuff is in focus).  The smaller numbers mean the lens is open more (letting in more light) and the depth of field is shallower.  The top shot for the

week was photographed at f4.0 with a shutter speed of 1/3200 second (ISO was at 800).  The second shot (which I took first) was at f20 and a shutter speed of 1/160.

Amy carefully measures the calories for the pecan pie.

Another thing to notice when intentionally defocusing the background of a picture is how that background looks when out of focus.
In photography speak this is referred to as bokeh.  Some lenses do a better job with this than others and top quality lenses tend to do much better than cheaper off-brand lenses.  These two pictures were shot with my 105 mm Nikkor macro lens.  This is a very good lens and the flat defocused background produced in this week's top photo is one of the many positive attributes of this lens.  The other close up snow scenes in this week's post also came from this lens.

Dan getting ready to eat the pecan pie.

This week's post would not be complete, however, with
out a few shots from the holiday festivities. The crowd at our house was very small and can only be considered a crowd in the old saying of two is company and three is a crowd.  Katie and Kristina both spent their Thanksgiving in California leaving us with just Doug for family.  We had a wonderful time with just the three of us and the best part is we get to split two pies among just three people.

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New York City skyline from Brooklyn Bridge Park

Approaching a tower on the bridge

Doug heads across the Brooklyn Bridge

This past weekend Amy and I went to New York City with Doug so that he could participate in  an undergraduate math symposium at Macaulay Honors College.  This was a very short trip that started with a bus departure at 8:00 AM on Saturday and a return trip that had us back in Rochester at 1:30 AM Monday morning.  We arrived in New York at around 3:00 PM Saturday afternoon and walked from the Port Authority on 42nd Street to our hotel on 63rd Street to check in.  Once checked in we headed back out for some sight seeing.  I have always wanted to take pictures of the NY City skyline with the Brooklyn Bridge as part of the shot.  I convinced Amy and Doug that this would be fun even though it was barely 40 degrees out.

The selection at Maison Keyser bakery

Given the framing I was getting with the 24mm lens (not wide enough for what I was after) I decided to shoot several frames in the portrait orientation with my 50 mm lens and create a panoramic image from the 5 frames taken in this fashion.  For those that are unfamiliar with this process it involves taking several shots of the scene by moving the camera between captures with some amount of overlap.  Software like Adobe Photoshop is then used to analyze the images and automatically determine how to stitch the photos together to give a much wider, panoramic view of the scene.  The above shot is my result.


Once we completed the picture taking experience (I thoroughly enjoyed it while Amy and Doug tried

The ballfields in central park.

Doug takes a break.

to keep warm) we decided to return to Manhattan by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge.  It took us a while to find the pedestrian access point to the bridge but we finally did and now we can all say that we've walked across the Brooklyn Bridge.  Once back in the Times Square area of the city we found a  pub with reasonable prices to enjoy a dinner and a beer or two.  We skipped desert in hopes of finding something more appealing as we completed our walk back to our hotel.  A french bakery near Columbus Circle did the trick.

Art work near Bethesda Terrace

After checking out of our hotel the next morning we took a stroll through Central Park.  The weather was beautiful and we wished we could spend the entire day walking around the park and taking in the sights.
 The symposium was to begin at 1:00 PM so our walk in the park had to be cut short and we headed to the college on 67th Street for the afternoon's festivities.

Details in the walls at Bethesda Terrace 

The talks were all very interesting and Doug did a great job with his presentation and he fielded several questions after his talk and during the intermission that followed.  I will say, however, that theoretical mathematics is out there and those that study the field must have a unique way of looking at the world.  My head is still spinning!

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This week's picture is the result of my first "How do they do that?" project.  We all see advertisements in magazines with similar images to what I've captured for this week's post but what you may not know is that it is a lot harder than it looks.  I first thought of the idea of doing this when I stumbled across someone else's attempt for their 52 week photoblog (he stopped after 12 weeks).  Once I was ready to give it a try I searched for more details on the techniques used to make the shot and came across an amazing tutorial video that you should check out if you're interested in how the pros do it.

Same setup as main shot without reflectors.

The main challenge with this type of shot is to get the whiskey to look the way you want it to, with that rich amber color that makes you want a drink right now.  This is actually achieved by placing gold reflecting cutouts behind each container to reflect the light back through the bottle to the camera lens.  Here I show what the picture looks like with no such reflective cards in place (rather boring and uninteresting) and I also have a shot where the reflectors are not placed

Reflectors offset to show what they look like.

appropriately so you can get a better idea.  You may notice that I ended up swapping out the tumbler for my final shot so the one in these "how to" pictures is slightly different.
To get the slight semi-circular glow on the background that adds depth to the picture and defines the horizon line of the table I used my SB800 speedlight.  I placed it under the table with a curve of poster board over it to try and produce the desired effect.  Not perfect but it worked.  The main illumination comes from a single flash to the right of the setup.  In order to fill in the left side of the photo, I stood on that side of the table with a gold reflector to bounce the flash back into the scene while I used a remote trigger for the camera.

Main light with black paper curtain to keep light off the background.

This is the first project for my blog that I actually bought props for.  The table is a sheet of 2' x 4' black acrylic to give the glossy reflective look necessary for this kind of shot.  The other props purchased was a bag of fake ice, a trick used often in photography.  The ice in the tumbler is actually cubes of clear acrylic.  Very realistic looking and doesn't melt while you try to get the right shot.
Some of the other challenges I faced was

Speedlight strobe for the background.

dealing with the glare on the glass from the main strobe.  I have a soft box on it with two layers of diffuser but it was still a bit too harsh.  I decided to put a polarizer on my lens to see if I could reduce the vertical line of glare on the tumbler.  It actually helped some so I kept it in place for the final shot.  Another place where glare was a problem was on the corner of the Jack Daniel's bottle. If you're familiar with a bottle like this (you know you are), it has bevelled corners.  When the bottle was square to the camera the beveled corner on the right caught the flash dead on and produced an undesirable flare.  Simply turning the bottle a few degrees took care of the problem.

Cheers!

 The last problem, which was resolved in Photoshop, was dust.  I do this stuff in my basement which, like most basements, is not dust free.  A glossy black surface with a strobe lighting it from the side shows dust very nicely.  Good thing photoshop has a dust removal filter.

So there you have it.  The next time you see an ad in a magazine for whiskey or some other liquid and it has that certain glow you'll know how its done.

Cheers!

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After three straight posts of travel photos it is time to return to more creative photography.  In the spirit of the 52 photos project I challenged myself to arrange and photograph a studio shot for the fall season.  We picked up some interesting pumpkins at Wegmans, gathered some leaves from the yard (there were plenty to choose from) and I added some fall flowers to come up with this week's shot.   I played around with moving things and relocating some lights but I found what worked best was a single strobe and a  reflector.  The shot above did contain a second light off to the left that adds a bit more depth to the picture.  The backdrop is a curtain of black velvet that Amy made for me to use for this sort of thing.  If you want to take studio shots where the background is pure black, then there is no better material to achieve this with than black velvet.  Its an expensive way to go but the results speak for themselves.  This particular shot was taken with my D750 and my Nikkor 70-200 mm zoom at a focal length of 125 mm, f9.0 and ISO 400 (my strobes are not very powerful).

I then switched to my 105 mm macro lens for some alternative shots.  Before going in close I rearranged the pumpkins a bit, got rid of the flowers and took the shot here.   The stem on the one is interesting and the cream colored gourd is set to lean on the bigger pumpkin to try and add some interest to the shot.  Its OK but I still like the larger scene above better.

I next figured out how to suspend a single leaf in such a way so I could photograph it against the stark black background for  dramatic solo leaf picture.  The result was not too bad.  My leaves were in the studio (aka basement) for  few days before I had the time to go down and actually play around and they had dried out quite a bit.  I tried lighting the leaf solely from the back and capturing based on what light was transmitted through the leaf.  I think this would have worked better with a freshly fallen leaf instead of the drier ones I was dealing with.

Last, I wanted to do a close up of one of the flowers in the bouquet in a similar fashion: alone against the blackness.  I reverted back to the technique of focus stacking that I described in a previous posting to get the depth of field needed for this particular flower.  This shot is composed of four separate exposures that were taken with very slight changes in the focus point.  When shooting macro the depth of field is very narrow and this technique is one way to increase the depth of field and get more of the subject to be in focus.  All the frames were shot at ISO 100 and f9.0 using the 105 mm Macro lens.

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