Corey Senior Photos #1

Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking senior photos of Corey Mallia. He was the quarterback for O'Connell High School in Galveston, who I photographed back in October at their homecoming game. Photo above was taken in a favorite alley in Galveston, texture and tone added in post. 85mm, 1/250 sec at f/2, ISO 100, light from an SB900 in a Lastolite EZYbox from camera right.

Floral Series

Continuing to work on the floral macro series. I've been shooting these on and off for about 4 years now -- 50mm lens + 36mm extension tube = virtually no depth of field. I've always enjoyed the look -- creating abstract shapes and colors. This one's about the Red - Green - Blue color model.

White Pelican Preening

I took this photo in January and wanted to take it in a little different direction. I'd seen another nature photographer's work, and he pushed a lot of his photos in a very high contrast look. Thought I'd try it with the photo above of a white pelican taken along the Galveston ship channel. 1/1600 sec at f/5, 200mm.

Brown Pelican Take Off

If you've followed this blog at all, you probably know one of my greatest aspirations is to capture the perfect photo of a brown pelican taking off. Every year I spend about 5-6 afternoons trying to get this shot. This year is no exception. Taken in January -- here's another attempt. Still not quite there. 1/1000 sec at f/5.6, 175mm.

Gull in Flight

The photo above was taken several weeks ago in Galveston. Gulls aren't my favorite bird to shoot, but this one was gliding along so nicely I couldn't resist. 1/1000 sec at f/6.3, 200mm.

Tidal Wave of Light

About a week before Christmas I attended a Joe McNally lighting workshop in Houston. Most of his techniques I had seen before through his blog or other workshops -- pretty simple stuff, light modifiers, crafting light for specific faces that he'd pull out of the audience, and things like that. But one thing he did jumped out at me, and I decided to try it a few weeks later when I was taking Alyssa's photo. He called it a "tidal wave of light." The lighting setup is really interesting.You place your subject opposite a large white backdrop and shoot flashes into V-flats in front -- so that they bounce once into the V-flats and then again off the large white light source, engulfing your subject in soft light. The really interesting part is that you (the photographer) and the V-flats become silhouetted in the wall of light coming forward, which is captured in the subject's catchlight in the eye. Anyway, interesting stuff. I took it a bit further and shot really shallow depth of field for this shot of Alyssa. Finals were: 1/60 sec at f/1.8, 85mm. If you're interested, the lighting diagram is here. And below is a 100% crop of Alyssa's eye -- showing the whole light setup. That's me silhouetted in the pupil.