In love with a lens nearly twice my focal length

With a sightly modified line from that infamous Shabba Ranks song, I introduce you to my new love - the Nikon 50mm prime lens. This lens proves once and for all that the cliche "love is blind" isn't accurate. No, it's not blind, just out of focus.

A maximum aperture of 1.8 gives this lens a crazy awesome depth of field. I'll admit, at first, I was put off by its lilliputian appearance and stubbornness to see outside the 50 mm field of view. Yes, it seemed limiting. But I rather like that now. The large aperture helps me focus on what I really want to capture an brings out the detail in my world.

I <3 you Nikon 50mm. Soon you will be mine!

NOTE: For those curious few, the focal length of the human eye is around 22mm.

Fairchild Food and Garden Festival

When I moved back to Miami about a year ago, one of the first things I did was become a member of Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden. It costs me 80 bucks a year, but for that I get unlimited access to the fields of green and luscious plants 364 days a year (it's closed Christmas). Also included in membership is free admission to events like today's Food and Garden Festival, the scene of this week's photo project. Taking pictures at Fairchild is easy. There's no lack of subjects to photograph. Plants, people, insects, lizards, you name it and it's there. Only 5% of the park was explored today and still I got a bunch of neat shots. Photographing strangers is something I'm not entirely cool with yet. I love candid photos, like the one above, but taking them of people I don't know is tough. I used my monopod, continious shutter release and a spoonful of luck to get that shot. Spontanious photography is something I'd like to get better at. Quick snapshots on the street or something like that. Usually I just take pictures of inanimate objects. That's where I feel most comfortable, but we all need to leave our comfort zone sometime, right?


This week I've been learning the power of RAW images. Before I got the D60, all I shot in was JPEG. I'd heard of the wonder and magnificence of RAW, but not until now do I really understand. There's so much flexibility with it. And it helps a lot more in the post processing side of things. I don't know how I ever took pictures without it. Oh, a quick aside, while shooting today, my photographer friend Rigo and I ran into another pair of photographers who introduced me (Rigo already knew about it) to this thing called the Lensbaby. Check it out. There's some neat things it can do for a photograph. Much like a fisheye, it's a creative lens. Price tag isn't too expensive, so I might pick one up.


Anyway, today yielded many great shots. I'm finding it difficult to post just a few. Why not check them all out here instead? Most of the uploads are strait JPEG conversions from the RAW files, so the colors are off. I'll be fixing those little by little.

Andrew and Tiffany's Engagement

The best thing about having photographers for friends is free photo shoots. I was Facebooking my first weekend photo project when my gal pal Tiffany asked if I’d be interested in taking her engagement pictures. A nice joke, I thought. She wasn’t kidding.

Now, engagement photography scares the film out of some amateur photographers. Capturing the essence of love between two people you don’t know is difficult. My advantage is that I know the subjects, a glimmer of comfort for me, but I was still nervous. I wanted to deliver some spectacular shots for Tiff and Andrew.

Our shooting location was going to be West Palm Beach. I’d only been to their place once before at night, so I was unfamiliar with the area. But the beach was only blocks away. If no adequate outdoor backdrop could be found for their photos, the sand and sea would do nicely.

Google is every photographer’s friend. So I wouldn’t walk into the shoot completely blind, I did some homework. I’ll share what I found.

• Tips from Chris Maxwell
• A conversation on Photo.net
  

A lot of what’s online is the same information repeated over and over again. It seems to me Chris had the bulk of it in his collection of stories. As I’d expected, taking good engagement pictures came down to your rapport with the couple. A relaxed and comfortable couple is best for photographing. Since Tiff, Andrew and I get along great that wasn’t going to be a problem.

My friend Rigo came along for this shoot too. He and I take our weekend photography excursions together. Like going to the gym, it’s a lot easier to get motivated when there’s two instead of one. He shot on a Nikon D300 with a 72-200mm lens. Between his close-ups and my wide-angle shots, we were covered.


Saturday’s overcast skies were a blessing in disguise. I’d thought to head up to West Palm in the early afternoon to scout locations. However, Tiff and Andrew already had an idea of where they wanted to go. Instead of scouting, we had lunch and Rigo got to chat with the couple and get to know them better. After a delicious meal at Too Jays, it was time to get to work.

I know the best lighting for outdoor photos is morning and night, but I never knew why. It turns out that sunlight is hard light. A hard light is one that strikes the subject directly and intensely. Think of a flashlight. The sun’s rays are like that. Diffusing a hard light and spreading it across the area of the subject helps greatly. Cue the clouds from our overcast day. They helped soften the lighting and help us capture some truly great shots.

To learn more about how light influences a photograph (scientifically) Andrew suggested I read this book: Light Science and Magic, An Introduction to Photographic Lighting. It's hysterical how physics finds a way back into everything I do. Music, martial arts and now photography. I wish more attention had been paid in class.

So that's it. First engagement shoot ever - success. Here are all the shots I took.

In the beginning...

It took a transatlantic trip to ignite my passion for the still image. The year was 2002 and I was in college. My destination was Spain. Not knowing when I'd leave the United States again, I made sure to pack a camera. Too nervous to take my brand-new, high-tech, 2.1 megapixel Canon Powershot, I opted for a more replaceable 35mm Cannon point and shoot.

The trip was an incredible experience. I shot 12 rolls of film and there learned my first photographic lesson - take 200 pictures and maybe one will be decent. Above you can see the best photo I took on that trip, a boat fallen victim to Galicia's low tide. It was my first taste of using light and a rectangular frame to capture life. While not a particularly great photo, it still brings me back to the cool morning I took that picture. The smell of saltwater and the day's fresh catch are still vivid in my mind whenever I look at this shot.

Fast-forward to 2009. For the last seven years I've been "the camera guy." At parties, I'm the savior documenting memories for the drunk. At work, I'm the cheap photographer they use for home-grown events.

Since Spain, my photographic skills have improved. Still, I'm not a pro. Not yet. But I've taken the first step by purchasing my first DSLR, the Nikon D60. Before that I operated on a prosumer Sony DSC-H1. And before that I was on a classic Pentax ME Super. For the uninitiated, the ME Super is a metal-clad workhorse from the 1979. It's a 35mm SLR that taught me a lot of things about light.

Over there is one of my more recent photos taken around six in the morning at South Beach in Miami. It's part of a new habit I'm forming that ensures I make the most of my investment in the D60. Every weekend I take one photographic trip. Sometimes it's down the street. Other times it's an hour or two drive. Eventually, I'd like to take day trips to locals around the U.S., but that'll be after I win the lottery. Right now I'm doing anything and everything to get the proper "dirt time" with my camera. That's what this blog's about. In it I will document my trip form amateur to professional and every false step in between.