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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Cannon at Gettysburg

National Cemetery at Gettysburg.

During our return trip from Georgia we stopped in Gettysburg to tour the battlegrounds on a bright sunny autumn day.  This was much more enjoyable than the only other time I had been to Gettysburg when the weather was wet and dreary in the middle of summer.  The only downside to this particular visit in comparison to the last was the size of the crowds.   As one would expect, a warm autumn weekend day with bright sun and fall colors brings a lot of visitors to the famous battlefield.  I like pictures from the vantage point of the artillery that

NY State Monument @ Gettysburg

implies something is being pointed at.  I chose this picture from the many I took because I like the fall colors still on the trees, the ground covered in downed leaves, and the fence along which the cannon is pointing.  The viewer is left with wondering just what might be along that fence line off the right side of the frame.

There are many cannons and monuments in Gettysburg and picking a shot to represent our brief 4 hour visit was not easy.  I've included several other shots here and have also posted these and a bunch more on flickr if you are interested.  One thing my friend, Fred, pointed out in a comment on last weeks' blog is that flickr provides a map view and because I've geotagged these pictures you can see exactly where they were taken when viewed through the map view on flickr.

Monument of General James Longstreet and his horse, Hero.

One monument shot that contended for top honors this week was this shot of the monument of General James Longstreet on his horse, Hero.  The shot was taken in tight to remove the distractions of modern day (cars, roads, etc.).  The detail in the statue and the bright colors of autumn make for an interesting shot and I had pretty much a coin toss between this and the lone cannon as my favorite from the visit.

Row of Cannons

Although we took a self guided tour of the historic site, there were several opportunities to eavesdrop on the talks and descriptions being given by the tour guides for those on guided tours.  The individuals giving these overviews, whether paid or volunteer, were excellent, knowledgable and quite entertaining.  We learned just how early in the battle the Patrick O'Rorke met his end and saw the monument erected in his honor at the place where he met his end.  If you turn around 180 degrees from the monument you see the wide view of the battlefield below.

View from Little Round Top where Patrick O'Rorke met his end.

The view we had from this vantage point on the day of our visit, I'm sure,  was more serene and beautiful than what Col. O'Rorke and his men saw on July 2, 1863.

Another part of the battlefield we wanted to make sure we saw before heading home was Little Round Top where Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine valiantly defended the high ground.  On our first visit on that rainy day in August of 2005 our then 11 year old son Doug picked up the book, "Heart of a Lion: A Biography of General Joshua L. Chamberlain", and was enthralled by it.

Monument for the 20th Maine.

Being a native of Maine, I am also intrigued by the story of this war hero and the brave men under his command.  We found the hill that they defended and the monuments scattered around including the one erected in honor of the 20th Maine.  What was interesting to me was the size of the region being defended by Chamberlain and his men.  It was a lot smaller than I had expected and the value of this relatively small plot of land during the battle must have been due to the views it provided of the battlefields below.

General Meade overlooks the field where Pickett's charge would come from.

Virginia Monument with Robert E. Lee atop Traveller 

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