I always have my speedlights when doing an outdoor portrait session. I know the basics of using natural light with or without reflectors but also know what I want. I don’t always use the speedlights, but I always have them.

When I do use them I try to either use the natural light to compliment the flash or the flash to compliment the natural light.

An example of each:

flash to compliment the natural light

natural light to compliment the flash

Last weekend our DFW Midcities Strobist Meetup Group had a fun and interesting strobist outing shooting a few local WWII re-enactors. Lynn and Dean are long time players while Zack and Zane were a member’s teenage sons were conscripted into the German Army for the event.

As a photographer I thought I had a lot of gear; man these guys had more toys than any man should be allowed to own. A full sized anti-tank canon, land mines, machine guns, pistols , camouflage nets, manikins, road signs, barbed wire and on and on and on.

10 strobists, 4 actors, 5 acres of land and toys! We had a blast.

See more of my photos, including behind the scenes shots, here. To see all the uploaded photos by members of the groups go here.

While in VA on business for 2 days I decided to walk over to the metro station one evening. Boring stuff, but I was bored.

I had always hesitated taking photographs of strangers on the street. I’m not sure what I expected by way of reaction from people but the truth is no one really seemed to notice. People would watch me take pictures of others, but when they thought I might take their photograph, they ignored me.

People are funny.

Response (Kevin J.)

11/15/2008 06:26 PM

Dear Ray,
This does in fact look like a banding issue and unfortunately there is nothing I can do over the phone.
I am sorry to say you will in fact have to send your D700 into our facility for evaluation:
Again, Thank you
The Nikon Team

I FedExed my D700 to California today ($87 overnight); Kevin, the Nikon rep I spoke to, tells me it’ll be 3-4 weeks to get it back. I purchased the camera in Albany, GA on September 26, 2008 while visiting my folks, so the camera is, what, 2 months old.

I first saw some vertical banding a couple of photographs I took at a local airport. The red (pink) vertical lines were in the gray overcast sky of two pictures. The sky was a bit overexposed and I ignored it, thinking it was something I did wrong.

Last Saturday I was asked to take a team photograph of my daughter’s (See “My Daughter the Ax Murder” article) high school girls LaCrosse team for their website. The coach was there with her young daughter and I took the opportunity to grab a couple of pictures of her with her little girl. (See attached photo – full sized). The banding was intense, bright and undeniable.

The banding was intense, bright and undeniable.

I checked the Nikon website, saw the support office was open and called. I spoke to Kevin who actually told me ‘he’ had not seen any red banding from a D700. I pushed and asked was there a known issue with banding; he again said he had not seen any banding or heard of many at all. We discussed the problem, he opened a trouble ticket, I uploaded the Jpeg to him. Well, I wish I had recorded him when he opened my file; “Wow, I’ve never seen red banding before; it’s usually gray.” No, I didn’t go there.

I have got to tell you: my camera bag full of lenses sure looks empty.

Only 3-4 weeks to go.

UPDATE: November 27: After speaking to a Nikon manager on Tuesday about the problem and possible solutions I arrived home yesterday to find a brand new D700. They replaced the camera.

Before and after: Too much?

Sometimes I like to play with a photograph that doesn’t appeal to me in it’s original form. I see other’s work and like the processing or like the concept of it. I tend to get fixated trying new filter effects, crops or plug ins while trying to produce an artistic version that is like a gossamer thread in my mind’s eye.

Sometimes I get to the ‘ah ha’ moment – sometimes I don’t. I do however enjoy the journey to artistic expression.

Want to completely change the mood, refocus attention or perspective within your photograph? Try cropping in tightly. Near 100% crop to highlight the gull here.

Truth be known, although it is the same gull as in the taking flight picture, I did not notice its presence until post processing.

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I was blown away by the creativity.

The girl at the party

I shot a corporate annual conference dinner the other evening, then posted the images on-line for the attendees to download. We used flash at the start of the event. In an attempt to capture the feel of the evening I switched to my Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 IF-D and shot wide open at f/1.4 in the dimly lit rooms.

I love the lens for it’s sharpness and speed. It works amazingly well with the high ISO capabilities of the D700 which I had set to ISO 1000.

Nearly all of the feedback I have received were on the photographs with the heaviest bohek.

“Bokeh (derived from Japanese, a noun boke 暈け, meaning “blurred or fuzzy”) is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field.”

I like the bokeh too but the comments got me to thinking about why. I will hazard a guess that it most closely mimics the human eye’s ability to sharply focus and isolate upon a single subject within a busy field of view.

Pay attention to your vision the next time your gaze is fixed on just about anything. Notice the ‘bokeh’ effect of the background when concentrating on your morning coffee cup; the sharpness of the person across the room while all else seems to disappear.

Let me know.

With every portrait session I use light, shadow and pose to portray a different mood, facet and aspect of the subject. I see it during the session, I count on it to produce the shoe-box photograph – the keeper.

During nearly every post production process I am pleasantly surprised how a single person can look so differently in a photograph. Soft, rough, hard, beautiful, thin, heavy – you name it. The human face holds a true fascination for me, the eyes – the eyes, expressing the wisdom of the ages or the delight of youth.

People are wonderful creatures.