Fun With 1.2

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 [...]

Imaging USA 2010: Pure Chaos

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 [...]

Step Three: Diving With Sharks

Late Wednesday night of our cruise, we arrived in Nassau, Bahamas – our first shore experience began shortly after. We docked around 9PM and were able to push our way out of the boat a half hour or so later. Everything was closed. Well, not everything. The Atlantis resort was open. We all piled in [...]

New Backdrop

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 [...]

A Day of House Work [In and Out]

Gardening is hard work – especially when you find some kind of rock under the topsoil. Digging around it, we found that it could be broken into pieces. Not easily, but it could be done. So, for the last hour or so, we’ve been digging through it just to get holes deep enough for some [...]

Cherry Blossoms and Other Things

Okay, so I don’t post nearly as regularly as I should, but at least I do post and I try to do it at least once a month. So the AC is now finally fixed and operating as it’s supposed to. And I’m sore like I haven’t been since high-school spring football [and not recovering [...]

Sunrise In DC?

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 [...]

What’s In A Name?

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 [...]

Imaging USA: Days 2 & 3

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 [...]

Imaging USA: Day 1

Wow. Brain melt-down. There was a LOT of good information we gathered today and I’ll be glad if we even retain and use a tenth of that information. I’m having brain overload! In fact, I think I’m going to collapse real soon. We have to do this again tomorrow – back at the show at [...]