Dave Wilson Photography » Portraits

Happy New Year!

Dave Wilson — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 06:14:11 +0000

Wishing all my readers (or viewers, really, since words don't often play a significant role in this photoblog!) a Happy New Year! From our family to yours, may you have a safe, healthy and prosperous 2012.

Electric Parade Cast Member, Walt Disney World

Dave Wilson — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:33:29 +0000

One of the Disney cast members on the Honoring America float in the Electric Parade in Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, Florida.

Until a couple of years ago, I would avoid flash like the plague. To me, flash was synonymous with blown out, harshly lit, blue-white soaked images and I used it only in the direst of circumstances. This impression was created back in my film days when using flash meant a fair bit of mental arithmetic (dividing guide numbers by distances) or table lookup (remember those aperture/distance/ISO tables printed on the back of the old flashes). Couple this with the fact that you had to wait a week to see whether you got the settings right or not, and that every wrong attempt cost about 25 cents, and you get a pretty good idea of why using flash was not something I cherished.

Things have, however, become very much easier these days with the advent of advanced flash technology and, probably even more significantly, the general availability of displays on cameras which allow you to see and correct your mistakes immediately. As a result, I now find myself using flash more often than not when shooting people. This may involve light stands and diffusers as in the various family groups I've posted over the last couple of weeks or, as in this case, a single on-camera flash dialed down a couple of stops to provide a bit of fill while the camera is shooting at high ISO.

If you are still scared of your flash, spend some time playing with it and I'm sure you'll be pleasantly surprised. You don't need to spend a fortune and go all Joe "10 SB-900s" McNally to pick up the benefits that can be had by throwing a bit more directed light into your scenes these days. A single flash and a couple of hours reading strobist.com or one of the many other sites dedicated to the use of small flash is all you need to get started.

Christmas Family Portrait 2011

Dave Wilson — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:32:46 +0000

I posted some portraits of the Masters family last week so here's one of us too. This was taken on Thanksgiving morning and will be in our Christmas cards this year (once I get round to addressing all the envelopes).

The setup here was very simple - a single flash in a Westcott Mini-Apollo softbox camera left triggered using Nikon's wonderful CLS system from the D700's onboard speedlight. The 5 second self-timer game me just enough time to dash into the picture and smile before the shutter fired.

From our family to yours, whatever your religion or belief system, have a great festive season!

Two Boys and their Pig

Dave Wilson — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:21:50 +0000

This was too cute to pass up. As I was packing up following taking the Masters family group I posted yesterday, the family's pet pig wandered over so we decided it would be fun to grab some shots of the boys with Piggles. Here's one of my favourites.

The Masters Family

Dave Wilson — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 15:37:21 +0000

As Christmas approaches, people are on the look-out for nice family portraits to put inside the cards. While I don't classify myself as a portrait photographer at all, I occasionally bend to friends' requests and take family snaps for fun and to practice using my strobes. This past Sunday, I spent some time with Adam and Jen Masters and their boys and this is one of the resulting groups that iI rather liked. Followers of the blog may remember the "Feed Station" series I ran a while ago and may recognise Jen's name from those posts - she owns that business.

For this evening shoot on a dull, cloudy day, I used a single SB-600 in a Westcott Mini Apollo softbox situated camera left then a bare SB-600 dialed down a couple of stops for front fill.

LASA Robotics

Dave Wilson — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:42:17 +0000

LASA is the Liberal Arts and Science Academy in Austin and they had a rather nice robot at the BEST competition last weekend.

Along with Westlake High School, these were the people that our team most looked up to in the run-up to the competition since they had seen the robot in action during a couple of earlier test drive sessions.

Resignation

Dave Wilson — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 14:16:58 +0000

Sometimes, things just don't seem to go according to plan.

Concentration

Dave Wilson — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:10:10 +0000

Riley, one of the drivers for our team, deep in concentration during a match at the BEST Robotics Texas/New Mexico Regional in Dallas last weekend. We had mechanical problems with the robot's arm that meant our scores were about half what they should have been but, regardless, we all had a great time.

As I have done at a couple of previous robotics competition, I shot some time-lapse video during this one and spent some time cutting it together last night. Here's the result (and, yes, I know some of the shots are too long).

Success!

Dave Wilson — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:07:22 +0000

This year's BEST robot game involved building a machine to gather escaped "bugs" that could be found in various places around a square playing area. Each team had 1 driver to control the robot and a spotter situated about 15 feet away who could tell the driver what to do when the robot was hidden behind a cabinet in the centre of the playing field.

Emotions run high during the game and typically the spotters, who are not having to hold a controller, provided the best subjects for photographs. I particularly enjoyed watching this kid since he was so happy and enthusiastic during his match. I guess his driver must have been doing a good job.

Rain Stopped Play

Dave Wilson — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:20:44 +0000

In scrambling to find something to post today (I didn't have time to process anything new despite having several thousand new exposures to choose from), I noticed that my Lightroom "not on photoblog" smart collection included this image. It may well be somewhere deep in the archives but I've not posted it since I started using Lightroom, obviously, so here it is.

This image has the distinction of being the oldest picture that I still have hanging in my office. It was shot in 1984 on Ilford FP4 using a Praktica MTL-3 SLR (the cheapest SLR you could buy when I was an impoverished high school student). It was also the very first picture that I ever won a competition with. It took first place in a monthly print competition with the theme "Rain" at Lanark Camera Club.

I still love the textures caused by the water running down the window and the fact that you can, if you move far enough away, recognise my cherubic youngest brother (now around 40 years old).

For the technically inclined, the only post-processing needed on this after scanning the negative was to retouch some nasty scratches on the negative, presumably caused by me not being very careful to clean the squeegee before drying the film.