Happy Saturday.  It’s been a few days since my last post.  I have several challenges at work and some other projects I’m doing, plus I’ve been processing wedding images so there hasn’t been much time for posting or photography.  I spend about 15 – 30 minutes on each wedding image in the post process phase.  That is after all the evaluating and sorting of the images.  So it is a slow process and I told the bride when I agreed to do the wedding that it would be two weeks before the images would be ready and that’s about right.

Shooting in the RAW format is my preferred method and I think I enjoy processing the images almost as much as I do taking them.  The only problem with shooting in RAW is when you have 484 images and you have to post process the bulk of them.  🙂  Of course a lot of those images were simply duplicates to make sure everyone’s eyes were open so there won’t be 484 images to process.

What’s with the water tower?  Well this is located next to the road I travel almost every day.  It has been over a year since they started the project with the drilling phase.  They put this tower together piece by piece.  Welding each small section together in some pretty cold weather to finally get it all assembled.  Then they had some interior work to accomplish.  Finally priming the exterior, painting it and now the lettering.

I shot these two images with the Nikon D600 | Nikon 80 – 400 mm lens.  The first image is at 80 mm (uncropped) and the second image is at 400 mm also uncropped.  I shot at f8.0 and was not paying attention to my shutter speed which dropped to 1/200 sec.  Not fast enough to freeze camera shake at the 400 mm focal length so the image is a little soft if you look at it at 100%.  Not the fault of the lens but my fault.  I should have used a higher ISO or a tripod.

Finally this image of Jeanne from the wedding I shot last Saturday.  She was gracious enough to pose for me while I adjusted my strobe and balanced the colors on the cameras.  That is a “color checker” in her hand and it builds a profile of the camera and lens used for the particular lighting situation.  A handy device to be sure.  I used only one Elinchrome BXRI 500 strobe with a 3′ X 4′ soft-box.  I had the power level set to 6.0, which is close to its highest setting and shot at F8.0 & 1/125 sec.  I raised the soft-box as high as my light stand would go to give me more coverage and prevent reflection in the glasses of my subjects.

I had seen this set up from a couple of wedding photographers I have watched in the past and it seems to provide a good light source.  I would have preferred to use two lights but then it takes twice as much time to set up and tear down and we had a small window of time to shoot the wedding party.

I’m pretty happy with the results.  I also shot with the D800 at ISO 2500 for some natural light images and with a f1.4, 85 mm lens so I was able to capture some candid shots without a flash.  I also used the 70 – 200 f2.8 at ISO 2000 for the ceremony shots, which came out very nice as well.

If the bride gives me permission I’ll post some of the shots of the wedding on this blog at a later time.

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend as the weather is suppose to be very nice.  Pray for our country.  Be careful.