Author Archive: ken

I was driving home from work today and it occurred to me how fortunate I am. I have a job that I absolutely love, I have a great wife who is the love of my life, and I have a couple of goofy hound dogs that make me laugh. Life is good!

My studio has been open for over 2 years now and business continues to grow and diversify. It is so amazing that I get to do what I love – create fun and unique images.

Can you tell, I’m a happy guy?

OK, this post is VERY photography related. While I use a bunch of different lighting modifiers in the studio, I’ve never did a head to head comparison between them. Over the years, I have learned how each modifier affects the quality of light and am pretty competant at creating just about any lighting configuration I need. That said, I never set up a direct comparison between modifiers.

To create the comparison, I metered each photo at the edge of the book’s binding. I then adjusted the power output so that I got an aperture of f/5.6 at 250th. There was no ambient light and only one light source was used. Each light was placed 5ft from the edge of the book. Now, these images are not meant to be great photos in terms of composition or subject matter. I tried to use objects that would have diferent reflective qualities so the quality of the light could be examined.

Here are the results:

Let me know if you have questions about this test or the series of photos.

Last week I had a really fun and unusual shoot. I shot some pictures for Amanda (a local model) and we were going for a unique and mysterious look. After describing the look I was wanting to capture to Amanda, I was surprised on how well she created an outfit from scratch. She pulled together bits of fabric and well as other garments to create a dress that was perfect for the shoot.

The photos were shot at in the woods at Franke Park in Fort Wayne. There were only two lights used (AB800s), one with a beauty dish and the other was equipted with barn doors and a blue gel. They were powered with DC/AC pure sine wave inverter.

It’s been almost a year now that I started wearing one contact lens. Over the last couple of years I’ve found that I have a hard time reading or see object up close. I don’t understand why I’m having the problem, it can’t be that crazy “age” thing. 🙂 I tried reading glasses and, while they did help, they were too cumbersome and interfered with shooting. My eye doctor suggested wearing one contact lens for seeing up close. Since I can see distance without any problem, I would not need a lens in the other eye.

I have to admit, it took a while to get used to it, but now it’s second nature. It’s amazing how quickly my brain has adjusted to using one eye for reading and the other for distance vision. While it’s not a perfect solution, it is a great compromise. For a photographer, it’s important to be able to switch my vision range from close up to distance, then back to close up, quickly.

Sometimes it’s fun to go over old photos. I shoot so many photos every week for a wide variety of purposes and clients that it’s easy to forget about some of the photos I shoot. For instance, I’ll do a shoot for a company and provide them with the images they need and will often shoot a variety of pictures so that they have different shots to choose from. The photos they don’t select will just get archived and tend to get forgotten about.

This morning I was looking over some old photos can came upon this one:

It’s one I shot for a company that sells the raw ingredients for soaps and lotions. They didn’t select this photo because it is too cold and clinical looking. They wanted something warm and more homey so they chose a different shot (I won’t post it here because they are using the photo on their website). Anyway, I thought this was still a cool shot.

When I was working on the image above, I had to use food coloring to tint the water in the beakers. So I couldn’t fight the temptation to play with the colors. This photo is really just a couple of drops of food coloring in stirred water.

I thought it looked pretty cool. 🙂

You know what? I haven’t had a chance to post anything of any interest (I’m assuming that someone might find something I write interesting 🙂 ) lately because I’ve just been too busy. Really it’s a good thing. I love my work and apparently other people appreciate it as well.

It is really rewarding to find that my clients are happy with my work and recommend me to others. Maybe I’m doing something right. 🙂

This morning I spent a few minutes playing with my dogs, Kate and Abby. They are two big goofy hound dogs that really love to play, eat, and sleep. They are fun to play with because their zest is infectous. They indulge themselves into everything they do, whether its playing with a tug rope or sleeping in the sunshine. They throw themselves into it 110%.

This morning we were playing with one of their favorite toys, a rope circle that serves as a tug rope.

Getting started:

Tugging:

Grrr:

I guess this post has very little to do with photography.  I am just happy the weather is improving. In Northeastern Indiana it has been a very long winter. We have had a lot of snow, but not all at once. Snow just always seemed to be on the ground. As soon as it warmed up and it began to melt, it snowed again.

While generally I like winter (in fact I like all the seasons), I am ready for warmer weather and sunshine. So here comes the photography part of this post. Last week I stopped by Foster Park and shot a few pictures. I posted these on Indiana New Center’s website under the YouNews section. In fact, the flowers photo was featured on the WPTA (channel 21) News at Noon this past Monday. You can see more of the photos I posted here.

This afternoon I was just playing around in the backyard and wondered about the difference in my widest lens and my longest lens. While I realize the differences between the various focal lengths and lens speeds, I’ve never done a direct comparison between the extremes.

The first photo was taken with my Canon 10-22mm lens at 10mm:

This photo shows a point of reference for the photo taken with the longest lens (the area in yellow):

Here is a photo taken with a Canon 300mm IS + Canon 1.4 teleconverter:

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the field of view between the lenses and a head to head comparison is pretty dramatic. On my Canon 30D, the lenses are comparible to a 16mm and a 672mm. 

A good way to spend a sunny spring Sunday afternoon. 🙂

Last week I had an interesting discussion with a guy about camera sensor resolutions. He was surprised that I currently shoot with an 8 megapixel camera. His point was that point and shoot cameras can be purchased with similar resolution. He was apparently under the impression that sensor resolution was the primary indicator of digital image quality.

With many point and shoot cameras, their manufacturers sell resolution as a means of comparing different models. They basically say that higher resolution is always better. Consumers need to understand that resolution is only one component of image quality. However, there are several other factors that are equally important. For instance, the camera’s lens quality may play larger part in the overall sharpness of an image. If the lens doesn’t project a sharp image to the sensor, then your image quality will suffer regardless of the resolution. So a high megapixel sensor with a poor lens will just get you a larger crappy image. You are usually better off going with a camera that uses a better lens, even if the resolution is less.

There are other more technical factors that also affect image quality. You also have the sensor’s ability to render accurate colors, the size of the pixels, the physical size of the sensor, and many other more complex factors.

For most of my work I use Canon “L” lenses. There are Canon’s highest quality, professional lens and they really produce some amazing images. I have produced composite photos as large as 20×30 inches that look really great. So if you are thinking about buying a new digital camera, be sure to look at all factors that impact image quality, not just resolution.