Author: travel67

Natsumi & J.P. Engagement Shoot

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The light painting course finished at around 1AM on the Sunday morning. 5 hours later I was back at the beach for an early morning engagement shoot with Natsumi and J.P. Natsumi and I had already chatted about the look she wanted for the photographs. It allowed us to make decisions on what they were going to wear and how I would shoot. I decided on using natural light with reflectors. The final images are all very similar to how they looked in camera. I had originally thought I would give the following images an Abercrombie style sepia tint in Photoshop, but the cool blues of the sky and ocean would have lost their magic. I also consciously kept the images bright, aiming to give them a certain freshness and vitality. Both Natsumi and J.P. were relaxed in front of the camera, and it wasn’t long until they had forgotten about posing and were just enjoying hanging out at the beach. All in all, a great shoot with a lovely couple. Congratulations to you both …

Night Fever – Fantastic Light Painting Workshop

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It’s been a busy few weeks. Last weekend was the Light Painting Workshop with guest instructor Trevor Williams. It was a fantastic course, everyone learned a lot, and each of the students produced some amazing images. Here are just of few of things we created. Thanks to all the participants who made this such a great weekend, and of course to Trevor for flying down from Okayama for the weekend. If you missed this course, Trevor’s next weekend workshop will be in Vancouver this August and then hopefully we can get him back to Okinawa sometime in 2012.

On the bookshelf – Seal Team Six

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Having recently read With the Old Breed by E. B. Sledge, I didn’t expect the next book on my reading list to be another military autobiography. I blogged about With the Old Breed because it is describes Sledge’s experiences fighting and trying to survive through the battle of Okinawa. I heartily recommend it to anyone who has lived in Okinawa, or has any interest in what happens to young men when they are thrown into what Sledge describes as hell on earth. The book I just finished is SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper. I had followed the progress of this book for a while, because one of its co-authors Stephen Templin is a friend of mine.  In fact, he’s the guy in the aikido shoot I did a couple of months ago. Little did we know, that days later the members of Seal Team Six would kill Osama Bin Laden. Suddenly, just a week before it’s release date,  the book got the kind of publicity that normally is reserved for Harry Potter. …

F.A.Q.s – Shutter Release Cables

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I’ve had a couple of questions about shutter release cables for the Light Painting Workshop. You’ll need to get a remote which works with your particular model (not just brand) of camera. Pentax I currently have the Pentax Waterproof Remote Control O-RC1 It does the job when you’d like to reduce camera shake by not having to touch the camera to fire the shutter. In bulb mode you can press it once to open the shutter and once more to close the shutter. Another option for Pentax users would be a Pentax Electronic Cable Switch. For other brands of cameras, Trevor came up with this quick list of possible shutter releases. Canon For 10D,20D,30D,40D,50D,5D,1D. RS-80N3 Remote Control for EOS 1Ds Mark II, EOS 1D Mark II N, EOS 30D, EOS-1v, and EOS-3 For Kiss series and 60D Canon Remote Switch RS60 E3 Trevor wrote a blog about canon remotes here: http://fiz-iks.blogspot.com/2011/05/canon-tc-80n3-mod.html Nikon Nikon MC-30 Remote Release Cord for Nikon D300, D200, D100, D3, NIKON MC30 Remote Cable Release (31.5 in) Nikon MC-DC2 Remote Release Cord for D90, D5000 …

Tilt-Shift on Screen

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Several times over the last few months I’ve seen TV shows, movies and even advertisements that have been shot, at least in part with a tilt-shift lens. I presume this has something to do with the Canon 5D mark II revolution that brought a photographer’s wide range of high quality optics into the cinematographer’s playground. So what is a tilt-shift lens?  A lens that is able to  rotate the optics of the lens relative to the film / sensor plane (tilt) or  move the optics up or down relative to the film / sensor plane (shift). These “movements” are  usually done to control the plane of focus (tilt) or correct converging lines (shift). Landscape photographers might tilt a lens to increase the depth of field in the image ensuring front to back focus. Tilting the lens in the opposite direction creates an unusually narrow field of focus. This gives the effect of miniaturization.  It was used to shrink London for the recent BBC drama Sherlock, and  New York in the opening sequence for Gulliver’s Travels. …