The Shutterzone Photography Blog

BLOG HAS MOVED!

2009-09-15T14:43:00.003-05:00

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See you on the other side!

Where to buy fake ice for photography

2009-09-03T21:57:00.003-05:00

I've often seen photographers ask in forums where to buy fake ice. There are other options of course; but one such place is Trenglove Studios in New York. Larger pieces for closeup shots are $40 for acrylic or $35 for solid glass. Bulk "display ice" can be purchased for $15 for a dozen. If you're in NY, you can rent your fake ice instead of buying it. They also have fake splashes, liquid spills, etc., even fake bubbles for that extra clean shot.

Evostock

2009-09-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

I have recently joined Evostock, a virtual agency on Photoshelter where photographers can come together to present their combined work to art buyers.

From Evostock's homepage:

Evostock is a online community of highly creative professional photographers coming together with their imagery to provide clients one place to search across a large collection of the highest quality images from a wide spectrum of photographers and perspectives.

Evostock is committed to providing fresh, new, and evolved images for this evolving world we live and work in.

I invite other stock photographers on Photoshelter to join Evostock by contacting Tim McGuire at the email address listed on the Evostock homepage.

Hit Man

2009-08-31T12:00:00.001-05:00

Assassin holding a gun

New Orleans French Market Window

2009-08-30T12:00:00.001-05:00

Shop window in the French Market District of New Orleans, Louisiana

Concept Image

2009-08-29T19:19:00.002-05:00

Hand in medical glove holding a wooden cross.

Media Phone Book

2009-08-27T17:10:00.004-05:00

I ran across the Media Phone Book wiki site today which bills itself as "...the best place on the web for photographers to exchange information about media companies. The primary use for this wiki is for Media Companies to tell photographers the best way to contact them and for photographers to exchange contact information.".

The list is very small, but I've verified that the information provided for magazines that I have worked with is accurate. Presumably the rest is as well. The site has a good list of freelance photo editors.

MIRA's August 2009 Lightbox

2009-08-27T13:31:00.002-05:00

MIRA's August 2009 Lightbox sent out to art buyers features this recent image of mine from Hawaii:

Male snorkeling in Hawaii

New Profoto ComPact 300R's

2009-08-25T22:21:00.005-05:00

My new Profoto lights came in today! I got a kit of two 300 ws Profoto monolights with reflectors, tripods, and a case. Best of all, the "R" in the model name means they're radio-enabled with built-in 32-channel PocketWizards.

Here is a play-by-play on the unwrapping ceremony:

I got a great deal on these. Relatively speaking, they were cheap compared to list price. In percentage terms relative to my capital expenditure budget, they definitely were NOT cheap!

I've been shopping all year though for a set of monolights. Profoto has the very best reputation but also the highest prices of anyone. This is a very entry-level set, but I could at least afford them. Bowens is coming out with a new line of monolights that I nearly bought, but they've just been too slow to market. You have to buy add-on cards for them as well for the PocketWizard receivers. Other manufacturer's have similar offerings. While I could have gotten more watt/seconds per dollar with another brand, paying extra on top of that for the PocketWizards made this kit come out to a decent deal. Now I just need to make some pictures to recoup the cost and then start making money with it. (It's good to have goals.)

So far I'm extremely impressed with Profoto except for the tripods that came with the kit. They work, to some degree. That's the only good thing I can say about them. Can you believe they didn't even ship air-cushioned light stands with these heavy monolights? Nope. When the light is raised to 6+ feet it gets very wobbly as well. My Impact light stands are air-cushioned and of much better quality than what Profoto shipped. I'll probably put the Impact stands in the Profoto case and use the others for my Nikon Speedlights.

Lights, camera, action!

Health Care Red Pill

2009-08-20T22:58:00.003-05:00

I'm hoping the brochures issued to every single American on the new health care plans will have this picture on the cover. If you know anyone in D.C., tell them I'll make the government a GREAT deal on the license for a few million copies. Maybe $1 each?

Elderly woman's hand holding a red pill

Bambi

2009-08-19T22:15:00.002-05:00

I recently shot Bambi:

Deer fawn with spots in Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas

His/her mother kept showing her fluffy white tail and saying, "Danger! Danger! Strange man with camera!", but Bambi was very hungry and kept eating and eating and eating. This plant was apparently quite tasty.

LR/Enfuse Thoughts

2009-08-19T21:09:00.003-05:00

Recently I blogged about using the LR/Enfuse plug-in to automatically combine multiple exposures of a scene to create a "realistic HDR" look. It actually seems to be a very hit or miss thing, and I've yet to find any definite pattern as to what works and what doesn't work. Within Lightroom you can group all of your HDR sequences into stacks and then have Enfuse process all of them into 16-bit TIFFs in batch mode. Today I pointed it to 52 such stacks, 265 photos in all, all shot on one day from my D.C. stock photography trip this past spring. Then I went away for awhile... Out of the 52 resulting images, none are worth keeping. They all look hideous. I'll do them manually in Photoshop instead.

Morning coffee with the dog, Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas

2009-08-19T20:54:00.003-05:00

This was undoubtedly the best shot from this past weekend's shoot at Devil's Den State Park. Thanks goes to my wife for helping make this happen.

Young couple sitting on the porch of a rustic cabin in Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas drinking morning coffee with the dog.

For the photographers out there, the warm window light is not actually coming from inside the cabin. An SB600 and SB600 with two shoot-through umbrellas are camera left, both gelled with 1 CTO each to give it that warm tone. A tiny bit of the warm light made it's way to the deck chair and the male model, but not much. I would liked to have lit the couple more, but we were working fast. My wife literally saw them sitting there in this beautiful scene, and they were gracious enough to let us intrude for just 5 minutes into their vacation. We moved the lights from the next door cabin we had been shooting at, setup, shot, and moved out in five minutes.

Devil's Den State Park Photography

2009-08-18T19:01:00.003-05:00

Jennifer took this picture of me last Saturday morning when we were at Devil's Den State Park:

After all the must have shots were in the bag, I spent some time experimenting with my camera on a painter's pole setup which allows me to raise the camera about 5' above my head. I may get a longer painter's pole eventually, but for now this will do. I purchased it at a yard sale several years back for practically nothing. In this shot below I'm configuring the camera, not taking a picture:

I plan to post a video on this soon, but the basic setup is a Bogen Super Clamp with a Manfrotto 056 junior head. B&H sells this combo as a kit for, at the time of this writing, only $66.50. You can clamp your camera into a lot of strange places for $66.50! :-) It's a great deal.

I use the Phottix Plato 2.4GHz wireless set from Hong Kong purchased off of eBay to fire the camera wirelessly while I hold the pole over my head. Just in case, I drilled a hole through the painter's pole and tied on a string with a small metal clamp on the end which I attach to the camera as a safety cable.

The assembled contraption allow me to be downhill from the CCC Scenic Overlook at the park and get a wide-angle shot that wasn't looking up, and thereby distorted. It's not as could as it could be because the brilliantly warm sunrise light had already gone, but I was mainly just testing the setup:

CCC Scenic Overlook overlooking Lee Creek Valley in Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas built with native stones and logs.

A few minutes can make a big difference in light. This was shot just a few minutes earlier (on a tripod, not on the painters pole):

CCC Scenic Overlook overlooking Lee Creek Valley in Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas built with native stones and logs.

CCC Scenic Overlook at Devil's Den State Park

2009-08-17T19:00:00.000-05:00

Over Friday evening and Saturday morning I, together with my art director/stylist/photographer's assistant/wife, shot about a thousand frames in Fayetteville, Arkansas and at Devil's Den State Park. I've been in contact with a major national magazine that needs images of the park, and I needed the same shots for my Arkansas image archive anyway. The park was on my "to do" list since I haven't shot there in a few years. I plan to go back in October when the fal leaves are in peak color was well. It's really an awesome place then.

The overlook shown below at Devil's Den was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the thirties and overlooks the Lee Creek Valley of Devil's Den State Park:

Here I'm going to give an example of blending exposures from multiple shots to achieve the desired final result. It would be impossible in this scenario to capture the exposure properly from the areas inside the structure to the outside landscape and rising sun within a single exposure. Cameras simply don't have that wide of a dynamic range. For the human eye though, it's a piece of cake. Your eye's iris opens and closes and you look from inside to outside and back and forth and you never even notice it.

So with my camera on my tripod I took 5 frames at f/22 with my wide-angle zoom lens set at 12mm. The exposures ranged from 1/10 of a second to 1.6 seconds. It makes you appreciate the power of the human eye doesn't it?

Starting with the image thumbnails in Adobe Lightroom, I selected all five images and launched the LR/Enfuse plugin to blend the exposure together. This is not normally the technique called "HDR", or high dynamic range, but it is a version of HDR and method of achieving a higher dynamic range. Enfuse is just blending the exposures, something I could do manually myself in Photoshop with layers. I still do blend exposures manually on occasion, but generally though, Enfuse saves time.

After Enfuse outputs a TIFF with the blended file, it looks kind of bland. I opened the over-exposed frame as a layer within the image and used it to paint in areas that needed more light and brighter highlights. While Enfuse will lighten the dark areas, the light areas will get darker. In some places you don't want that.

The resulting image is below:

CCC Scenic Overlook overlooking Lee Creek Valley in Devil's Den State Park, Arkansas built with native stones and logs.

Hoodman Loupe on Sale

2009-08-14T11:12:00.002-05:00

For a very short time only Adorama has the Hoodman Loupe on sale for $64.95. It's normally $79.95. For me the timing is excellent because I was just about to order one at the full price anyway! Click here

Thalys train at Gare du Nord station, Paris

2009-08-13T21:35:00.003-05:00

I love Paris, and I think I get most excited when one of my pictures from Paris is licensed. The picture below is of the Thalys train at the Gare du Nord station in Paris. It was recently licensed for an advertising piece in the U.K. Is it drop-dead stunning? Admittedly no, but it worked for this client likely because of the combination of the clock, train in clear view (bright red at that), and the two travelers in the distance rolling with their luggage. Plus, it leaves a lot of room for text to be overlaid above and below.

A high speed Thalys train at Gare du Nord station, Paris, France.

I'll soon be returning to Gare du Nord station when my wife and I take the Eurostar from London to Paris on an upcoming trip. It's officially a vacation and not a business-paid-for photo trip, but of course, I'll be taking tons of pictures as always! This will be my second time to London and fourth time to Paris. I've been doing a lot of mental planning on my shooting strategy. I have a set of subject matter I'm going to focus on that are not so much the top tourist locations: local markets and shops, shopping, etc. I've been fortune to have licensed many images from both London and Paris, but I hope to build more depth to my collection.

Choo Choo

Flashing it for $2.00

2009-08-09T22:10:00.003-05:00

I was pretty excited last weekend to pick up this old Yashica Pro-50DX flash at a junk store that I visit frequently for only $2.00. I didn't know at the time if it would work, but it was certainly worth the risk. Luckily, it does!

It will make a great off-camera flash for putting a splash of light in places. I'll put velcro on the sides, so I can attach my flash gels to it (See the Rosco Cinegel post.) and use it on portraits, product shots and still-lifes, etc. It's always nice to have more small lights to add in here or there. This little guy packs a punch too!

The flash doesn't have any power settings, but that is easily controlled with some neutral density gels. It has a sync cable that I could tap into, but first I'm going to try an optical slave off of eBay. There are some that ship out of Hong Kong for $10 including shipping which should fire it whenever my other flashes go off.

This next find is a piece of plastic trash. It's an all-plastic 35mm film camera. My mom actually got one almost just like this free in the mail once when I was kid. I shot a roll or two with it, but it was useless. The film didn't advance correctly.

However, it's actually what I had mind when I went to this junk store recently. I'd seen them there before, and I picked this one up for 50 cents. It's worth less. I offered 25 and they countered at 50. The place actually sells donated items to raise money for charity, so I didn't complain.

So what am I going to do with it? Well, I bought it for this one little piece right on the top, the flash shoe:

Notice that it unscrews. Not immediately, but someday when I need it, I'll take the flash shoe off and mount it on something so I can place a light where I want it. If I pick up another one someday, I might build my own bracket for mounting two flashes within a softbox.

If you have any old flash equipment in your closet that you want to get rid of contact me!

Moonscape Picture - Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada

2009-08-08T14:04:00.002-05:00

Landscapes... seascapes... cityscapes...

Mmmm.... I guess this is a moonscape?

Picture of dusk from atop Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Saint Louis Cathedral, New Orleans Pictures

2009-08-06T22:01:00.004-05:00

Last December I was in New Orleans for a couple of hours before my cousin's wedding later that day. I didn't have much time to photograph, the weather wasn't great, and my wife and I were giving my family a short tour of New Orleans. Even still, I managed to squeeze in about 15-20 minutes of picture taking around Jackson Square and the Saint Louis Cathedral. It was horrible light really, but every now and then the sun would pop through and light everything up for just a moment.

I've just now gotten around to editing those images, and I came away with several that I'm quite pleased with given the limited time I had. This first one is not a panoramic as far as its dimensions go, but it was actually 7 to 8 different shots that I shot in panorama-like fashion and blended together. This was the best light I had all day, so I shot fast:

Picture of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana

Shortly thereafter you can see that the light is already going away with a little dodging and burning I was able to pull a nice frame out of it:

Picture of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana

Here I was trying to get a different angle:

Picture of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana

I had a number of shots that looked very similar and also very boring and bland. I adjusted these to get them to where I wanted them, something unique and with some variety across the shots:

Picture of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana

There are a lot of crazy people, with very boring shots, who run around screaming "don't fix it in Photoshop". Why not? I'm not a news reporter. I'm an artist. I create images, both at the point of capture and in the computer. Truth, in this circumstance, is boring and irrelevant. Especially in travel photography, which has nothing whatsoever to do with truth.

The RAW files for these next two images were cloudy, dull, and otherwise rejects. I used the clouds to my advantage to add drama. Sorry, that's DRAMA. This doesn't always work. I'm using to my advantage the history of New Orleans itself and its associations with ghosts, Voodoo, scary drunk people, etc.

My hope is that these shots will someday be used in a story or book where some dark, menacing New Orleans artwork is needed.

Picture of Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, Louisiana

Good vs. Evil - Guns, God, and Pictures

2009-08-04T21:35:00.002-05:00

I recently added new material to my Good vs. Evil stock photography gallery, a long-term project of mine with much more coming soon.

Picture of an assailant pointing a gun.

Nikon Announces the Nikon D300s and D3000

2009-07-30T23:08:00.005-05:00

Nikon just announced the pending release of my next camera, the one I've been waiting for. It's the Nikon D300s. The biggest new feature over the D300 is the addition of HD video clips at 720p resolution. They also announced the D3000 and some new lenses included the "VR II" version of the 70-200mm 2.8. I have the, now out-dated and ancient, "VR I". The VR II is supposed to be even heavier than its predecessor. I won't be upgrading it anytime soon.

Nikon Press Releases:

And a pod cast:

Nikon Podcast #23: New Announcements - D300s, D3000 & Two New Lenses

As always, DP Review had the inside track and already has preview reviews posted:

Creative Philosophy

2009-07-28T19:08:00.005-05:00

Many weeks ago, late at night, I scribbled this on a piece of paper next to my bedside:

René Descartes: "I think; therefore, I am."

Terry Smith: "I create; therefore, I LIVE."

I just got around to adding it to a re-worded About Us page.

Tip: ALWAYS keep something by your bedside to write creative ideas on. I never tell myself, "I'll remember it in the morning.", because I know from experience I won't! I just wish I could video record my dreams. I dreamed a whole major motion picture recently but couldn't fit it on a Post-It note. I still remember some of the sound effects though. Quite explosive!

Updated Homepage Slideshow

2009-07-26T19:01:00.003-05:00

My updated homepage slide show includes a picture of a mouse in a tree. His name is Waldo. See if you can find Waldo: http://www.terrysmithimages.com

Police Gear Bags

2009-07-21T22:15:00.003-05:00

I was just looking at some websites that sell police and SWAT gear to scout equipment for a photo shoot. Along the way I noticed that these sites have some awesome gear bags and very cheap prices compared to what the photo bag dealers charge. These are designed for tactical gear and often come with a ton of pockets. I've been wanting a larger bag to get more of my on-location lighting accessories in one place, and I think I may have just found the answer. Maybe one of these could be your next photo bag?

These are the two sites I've looked at so far:

Besides, what photographer doesn't need tear gas compartments in their bag?