Brent's Planet

Belize it or not

Brent — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 11:01:39 +0000

After three years we were do for a vacation, and boy did we get one! Thanks to friends new and old we had a trip that was "off the hook".

Sprinkle in some Madonna and Israel and there you go...

C-it Pre Patty's Day Party

Brent — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:31:43 +0000

I got to join in on some Irish fun at Sully’s Saloon and help Creative image technology celebrate the 2010 KYSTE Conference Kickoff, and welcomed a partner shooter Chuck Conder. Other than my snipe shooting, the bulk of the (not shown) photos were lit by a pair of speedlite shooting into reflective silver umbrellas. The guests had a blast bumping these very top-heave contraptions, but the night ended for me completely loss-less. I'm pretty sure the party continued after i left, I'm anxious to hearing some stories.

Using the BlackBerry on our Macs

Brent — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:31:25 +0000

This is the Sprint BlackBerry:

What's up with custom white balance

Brent — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:21:15 +0000

You may have seen my picture Floating rose but what you may not know is that it was shot under horrible lighting conditions. I was in a room with a single light source (an old halogen lamp) pointed toward a standard drop ceiling. It was bad. Really bad. But I thought it was an interesting shot so I decided to make some changes to my camera (should be standard practice, by the way). Here is my original shot:

As you can see it's horrible. But was I worried? Nope, not one bit. It's easy to fix, and there are two ways to do it. 1. Change your white balance in your camera 2. Fix it in post I opted for #1 but my best shot happened to be my first one, before a custom WB was set on my camera. No worries. First, I had to take a picture of a neutral density. I carry a set of cards with me so it's usually no problem. Here is my original shot of my neutral card:

Now the best thing to do is to use this shot and set your camera to a custom WB by pointing to it, and I did that. But remember that my best shot happened before this. In Aperture (or Lightroom, PhotoShop, whatever) I set my white point to the gray card, and that gave me this pleasing, corrected colorful shot:

I simply lifted the adjustment on that shot and applied it to my horrific rose shot and look at the magic that happened:

Yay for the custom white balance! This is my most dramatic example to date of what setting a correct white balance can do for you. As I said it's standard practice for me now at all shoots.

Mom and Dad's 40th anniversary video

Brent — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:59:59 +0000

A little video for Mom and Dad on their 40th anniversary.

My Two Wives

Brent — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 14:54:27 +0000

My "alter ego" experiment. I had a lot of fun with this shoot because I could finally include my wife and kids into my photo world.

I'll be doing more and more of these shots soon.

I saw the light

Brent — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:10:11 +0000

Here is a quick shot done in my basement. I used Pocket Wizards to trigger 2 flashes, the one in my hand as key light and another one behind me for back light.

Some cropping was done in post.

Papa John's waterfall

Brent — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:15:22 +0000

While out exploring with my son, looking for waterfalls we happened upon this gem located at Papa John's International HQ. They have a nice walking path there that seems to be open to everyone (that knows about it).

My settings were: Camera: Canon EOS 40D Exposure: 0.1 sec (1/10) Aperture: f/20.0 Focal Length: 51 mm ISO Speed: 100

HDR time!

Brent — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:31:38 +0000

Time for some HDR shots. It's my humble opinion that, like special effects in movies, HDR is best (in general) when use subtly. The dreamy, ghosty pics that are posted quite often cheapen the intent of HDR, and that is to capture more details than a single shot can and come closer to the human eye's capacity. So these pics would probably not even be recognizable as HDR by current standards but I believe that I'm using HDR as it was intended.

These were all made using 3 exposures bracketed at +/- 2 stops. Then combined using the Photomatix Pro plugin for Aperture .

July 4th Fireworks

Brent — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:20:02 +0000

My shots from July 4th fireworks show. Mostly had a 30 second exposure for each shot, and varied my aperture from f/11-f/22.

Now I can't wait for a good lightning storm...