How I Made This Photo

When we arrived at the plant that manufactures these boats, which was the shoot location, the temperature was soaring towards 90 degrees. My first thought was to find somewhere inside their air conditioned factory to do the shooting. Unfortunately, there was nothing there that appealed to me, so I headed back outside. After exploring their property a bit, I came across a bunch of boat storage racks and immediately saw some interesting possibilities.

We could not move anything around, so I had to locate a rack of boats that would work as is for the photo. Once I found that, I began unpacking my strobes. My assistant started filling a set of specially designed water bags that we use on exterior setups to keep the strobes from blowing over. I directed the subject, who luckily was young and agile, to climb up the rack and pose near the best looking boats.

We began the shoot using only one strobe, cranked up several feet to meet his eye level. After several shots, I realized I was not happy with the results. I wanted a more controlled illumination on the boats. So we grabbed three more strobes, added a grid spot to each one, filled up some more water bags, and aimed a strobe at each boat. The grid spots tightened the light beams so that each boat would have a bright area that gradually faded to dark.

The neat thing about this setup was the composition possibilities. I could twist and tilt and angle my camera wherever I wanted as I shot. There really were no restrictions. Back at my office, I put the selected image through Photoshop to enhance the sky and boat colors a little, tone down his shirt, and remove some razor burn from his face.

I recently purchased a 28 to 105mm zoom lens for my digital camera. Unbeknownst to me, the lens had a built-in macro feature too. For those not familiar with the term, a macro lets you shoot from a very close distance. That means you can photograph something very small and have that object fill the viewfinder. It's great for shooting details of things such as a flower, postage stamp, someone's eyeball, etc. However, because the lens is so close to the subject. there are a couple of things you need to watch out for. First, focus extremely carefully. Second, do not let the camera block the light needed to illuminate the subject. Other than that, a macro is a great tool and should be considered if buying a zoom lens.

A JOKE
A young man from the city went to visit his farmer uncle. For the first few days, the uncle showed him the usual things - chickens, cows, crops, etc. After three days, however, it was obvious that the nephew was getting bored, and the uncle was running out of things with which to amuse him. Finally, the uncle had an idea. "Why don't you grab a gun, take the dogs, and go shooting?" The nephew thought that was a splendid idea. So off he ran with his uncle's gun and the barking dogs in trail. After a few hours, the nephew returned. "How did you enjoy that?" asked the uncle. "It was great!" exclaimed the nephew. "Got any more dogs?"