We [and by “we” I mean Laura] found a guy on Craig’s List who posted a ton of Canon photography equipment, most of which we couldn’t afford, but some of the items have been on our list for quite some time. A new 580EX II flash, complete with stand, mounting bracket and umbrella was a great plus, but the big ticket item that we’ve been wanting for a while is a new 100mm F2.8 L macro lens. It’s awesome! We can get some great up-close and personal pictures that are very hard to do with other lenses. So, I took it upon myself to play around a little. Now, I’ve been getting back into playing guitar, so it’s sitting out for me to take pictures of and a guitar makes for good “macro” shots. Here’s a picture taken just a few inches from the end [and yes, that’s a spot of dust on my camera sensor]:

Not stunning at first glance, but let’s zoom in a bit and you can see more detail [maybe even some you didn’t want to]:

Still not impressed? How about this one:

All of these are sections of the same picture. Look at the amazing detail!

This lens is actually for Laura, but she let me play with it. I suppose I have to give it back now.

Laura and I recently picked up a wonderful portrait lens to add to our collection: the Canon 50mm F1.2 L lens. It can do such a shallow depth of field, that the plane of focus is much less than an inch deep [0.84 inches, to be precise] even over a distance of several feet. To illustrate this, here is a sample picture of the inside of our Media Center PC, which I was repairing the evening the lens arrived:

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the one place I focused is the screw and tab right above it. Everything else in front or in back is out of focus.

Of course, this has some challenges, as well. The lens is great for low-light situations and shooting without artificial light – especially where we can get the shutter speed very high. However, using regular strobes it is a challenge – we can’t set the shutter very fast due to the fact that our strobe setup won’t allow us to fire any faster than 1/160. This means that in the studio, the largest aperture we can use even at ISO100 is f13. Oh, we can probably get away with f9 and push the exposure down in Lightroom, but adjusting exposure is tricky and we’d run the risk of the image not being properly exposed in some places due to some digital compression at the edges of the histogram [at the extreme ends of the dynamic light spectrum, that is either very light or very dark sections of the image] caused by the overexposure and resultant digital manipulation.

In other words, the picture wouldn’t quite be as good as it could be.

Mainly, this is due to the fact that our lights are “budget” lights – fairly inexpensive in the grand scheme of things. They’re not adjustable for output like the more expensive units, but we bought these for the “constant light” capabilities that allow us to plug in some [now] huge 50-watt daylight balanced fluorescent bulbs to replicate window light. The problem with this end, however, is that these are too dim. We have to use ISO400, f4.5 and 1/160 to properly expose. This has the positive effect of completely blurring the background, but the negative one of making the focal plane too narrow for more than one person’s portrait, or more especially a moving child [and they move a lot!]. This is much better than it used to be when we were using the 27-watt bulbs which forced us at ISO400, f4 to use 1/60.

In summary, our constant lights are too dim, but not as bad as they used to be and the strobes are too bright. After a shoot with a mother and child in the constant lights with the baby squinting into the soft box [which I had previously thought might be better for the baby since it wouldn’t “explode” with light when we took a picture], I’m much more inclined to use the strobes on people and the constant light on objects.

Although, the strobes work great on objects, too [ISO100, 50mm f13, 1/160]:

[I guess that dust on the helmet means I need to go for a ride…]

But not as bad as last year!

We spent part of the second week of January this year in Nashville for the annual Imaging USA event for PPA [Professional Photographers of America]. We drove the whole way there from Virginia, and while it’s only one state over, it was about a 10 hour drive.

This year, we opted to go to some pre-convention training and it was very good, except that there seemed to be too many people. Once the main event started, it was clear there were WAY too many people – 3000 or so more than there should have been in fact. Almost 10,000 people attended this year, or so we were told. It was incredibly crowded, but even so, there were some gems to be gathered.

This year, unlike last year, we actually fared fairly well in both the Expo and the sessions – not getting overwhelmed by too much information, or buying too much [well, not TOO too much] stuff we didn’t need.

The most important things we picked up this year were several pieces of advice and new flash units for our lights. Oh – and we got a couple of new backdrops for a great price.

The most important piece of advice was “practice, practice, practice”. And I intend to do so with the new lights. If anyone wants to model, just let me know!

Of course, the best part of the conference for us was the chance to reconnect with someone who not only has very quickly become a dear friend to us, but now a mentor who we hope to learn as much as we can from: Angela Carson. In fact, we spent so much time with her on Wednesday morning, that is wasn’t morning anymore – we were supposed to leave at 10AM, but ended up leaving close to 1PM. It was well worth the time, though.

Yesterday, we received our first photographic backdrop. We’re fleshing out the studio and getting serious about taking more pictures. We’ve already done one shoot this month, but it was outside. Now, we can do good portraits inside. We even have another shoot scheduled for this weekend.

So, without further ado, here is a shot of our new backdrop:

Since we had it set up, we took some sample shots of my friend Raffe:

Now, we’re ready for business!

Tomorrow, we’re going on an outing to hit DC before sunrise and take some pictures of the cherry trees and monuments. This is not a normal “get up” time for us by any means, but we will head out from the house about 4:15AM [ouch!] to get downtown about 5AM.

We’re going to take some low-light pictures first, scout out the area and then take some sunrise pictures of the trees.

So it’s off to bed early so I can get up!

After attending so many sessions at the Imaging USA convention, it has be come clear to us, especially since Laura is so key a part of our photographic endeavor, that the name “Jeff Phillips Photography” is an insufficient and incomplete name and that we should find something more appropriate.

Our dilemma, though, is that we are having trouble putting a label to what we do. We’re having trouble because of several things. First, we are not just “me” now, but “us”. Second, we don’t really have a specific niche, so the name has to be flexible enough to use regardless of the kind of photography we do [for example, to say “Phillips Portraits” may be incomplete if we do more, and we do]. Third, we want the name to be reflective of our style – which we haven’t defined yet. We want our name to be high-end, yet not out of reach; stylish, but not snooty; artistic, but not pretentious [well, not TOO pretentious…] and elegantly simple. We also want it to be something we can grow into. You can see how hard this is. It’s especially hard for us since we are very new to this realm.

If anyone has a suggestion, we’d be glad to hear it.

Okay, so I’m not going to blog about them separately since the days are a week past and they all run together, but I did want to mention some of the great things that I learned.

First of all, we met some great people and learned a lot from them. One of our favorites was actually part of the Microsoft featured speaker booth in the Expo: Angela Carson-Post who owns a studio up near Detroit. Angela was great to listen to and extremely informative on the business of running a studio – which was exactly what we needed to hear. I think I took the most notes of the conference at her sessions. She did three sessions, one each day at the EXPO.

Another favorite, possibly because they were first and from Texas, were the guys of TriCoast Photography. What I came out of that session with was that I needed to learn more about lighting and using the tools that we already have, like both the big lights and the camera strobes. They taught me a few techniques that I’m anxious to try out [I’ll have to wait until the snow stops, though!] for outside lighting. They also raved on the native wireless communications abilities of the Canon flashes and how they use them to create modern lighting for their portraits as well as save lots of room when they travel.

Also on my favorite list is a photographer from Chicago named Bob Davis. Bob was very encouraging, since as a high-end photographer, he has photographed many famous people and has a passion for what he does. He told us to get back to the basics of photography and “practice, practice, practice!” which we certainly need to do.

Overall, there were many sessions which gave us inspiration and motivation and we hope to continue that and bring excellence, consistency, and passion to our work as photographers. It will take time and work, but I feel we can do it.