Tahoe Trip: Part 5

I love taking photos, why? Well I could talk for a while, anything from memories to humor to beauty…but mostly for story telling. A great aspect of this trip was that I could always have a subject to photograph; and honestly, as much as I like taking pictures of pretty scenery, I like taking pictures of people having fun in beautiful scenery more. I challenged myself to do that a lot on this trip, take pictures of family, enjoying Tahoe.

This last photo...Sarah took!

Technical: Style and look dictates lens choice. I am most comfortable interacting with my subject and being in conversation next to them as I take pictures, therefore I need a wide lens. A wide lens in close gives the viewer a feel of being apart of the image, but sometimes I wanted to give the viewer a feel of observing from afar, so then I would walk away, use a long telephoto lens and capture things as they happen. More important that lens choice is always being ready and anticipating moments…it also really helps if the subjects allowing you to photograph them and accept you AND your camera into family moments.

Tahoe Trip: Part 4

To make up for my lack of Tahoe postings I will double post in one day. Here is a set of photos I took of Sarah and her sister Amy on the beach…

Tahoe Trip: Part 3

Sorry, I have been a bad blogger, I have been distracted by other posting opportunities and forgotten my Tahoe series. Hopefully you have not blocked my blog in the process.

Anyway, one of my favorite activities we did at Tahoe was to rent bikes, I totally recommend it wherever you go because you see a different side of the area compared to a car. We all had a blast, especially the ride down the hill, which only took 20 minutes…compared to the 2 hour ride up.

Tech: tried it with a slow shutter speed, kinda worked but a little different than I thought. I guess it would have been better if I was in a car and could look through the viewfinder and hold the camera steady instead of also trying to ride a bike.

First ever S’mores

During Finn’s last weekend we also wanted to fulfill his last item on his “to-do List”…makes s’mores. We originally had a picnic spot reserved out on the lake with access to the water for swimming and fishing, but the impending tornadoes were telling us to stay away. (more on that day here) Instead we headed over to Becky’s place for a little inside bar-b-q and decided to make s’mores over a grill outside when the weather braked for an hour.

How to make Norwegian Pancakes

During Finns last weekend in the States, he decided to show us how to make traditional Norwegian Pancakes. It was a lot of fun and naturally I decided to take a few pictures.

Here are the steps we took to make them

1) Go to American store and try and find Norwegian foods
2) prepare ingredients
3) convert Norwegian units of measure to American using your i-phone
4) invite friends to taste
5) try a small pancake to test
6) once taste is good, impress friends with your mad “flipping” skills
7) distribute, load up with plenty of sugar and your choice of jam

8) repeat and enjoy

Light Painting…in a grave yard…at midnight

Fin and I have said that we would try this Light Painting thing out sometime, last night decided to go to a local grave yard and see what we could come out with. After a lot of running around and almost tripping on grave stones, we were pretty happy for a first try. We also decided to head down to a marina near the lake…had a ton of fun at both places and learned a lot. All light, other than the sky (and lake reflecting the sky) is from a flashlight.






Technical: set up my wide angle lens on a tripod with a 30 second exposure (expose for sky, everything else goes black) and then ran around with a Mag Light trying to light up as much of the detail as I could in 30 seconds…plus lots of trial and error.

Back in the game

I thought that I was getting a little burnt out of taking photos…until last night. You have heard me talk about the photo group that I am part of at Black Hawk Church, well this last month we had a workshop that talked about how to use flash, the follow-up challenge was really simple: use your flash. We held it last night at the church parking garage (or “parking ramp” if you are a true Midwesterner). I asked Cerina, a coworker to be our model and she might have had more fun that we did.

The one shot I had planned looked really good in my head: Cerina sitting lazily on a big leather chair with a hole lot-a parking garage in the background, to do so I just had to back up away from the subject and move my lights farther out…but after I did that I saw that all of our shadows were in the shot because of the overhead lights…I never got the shot because I was to lazy and didn’t want to have everyone (several photographers, Cerina, a big leather chair and 2 light stands) move back 10 feet just for me. Another problem was with my lights firing, since they fire based on the signal my on camera strobe sends, the lights have to be able to see that strobe. Sometimes they were to wide or behind me to be triggered, nothing several hundred $ wouldn’t fix though. In all I had a really great time, especially when we went out to the sunset with the chair and then talked Cerina into climbing the front loader (she actually ran over to it very willingly before we could get the idea articulated.) Thanks again Cerina.

More images here

Technical: wide angle zoom with on camera triggering strobe, key light: speedlight with a shoot through umbrella. Hair or background light: bare bulb strobe. All fired manually with the Nikon Creative Lighting System. ¼ power for key light outside, 1/16 power for key light under parking garage and ¼ - 1/8 power for hair light (snooted) and background light (wide throw)