Dawn's Early Light

For no particulat reason woke up today at 5am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I unpacked  my camera and jumped in the car with the thought of catching some early morning light photos. With nothing in mind but that stopped by the East Side Club on Lake Monona to catch a view of the Capitol building across the lake.

I blended 3 separate exposures using Photo Matrix to get this shot,  f5.6 at 30th, a 15th, and  1/6th of a sec. The camera was, of course, on a tripod.

I also liked the look of the cabin like poontoon boats parked at the pier behind the East Side Club, so I shot a couple of frames of them with the Capitol in the background. This time I blended 2 exposures to get the result.

Of course I couldn't pass up a chance to shoot my cute little 350Z









Guess I had the Capitol on my mind, so headed a little West to King St and got this view of the it. I stood in the street to get this time exposure and was lucky no crazy drivers were out on the street yet to play dodgeball with my camera clad body. I love King St.

Finaly on the way back home stopped and got this grab shot og Madison Gas & Electric. Electrifying eh!

Best part was, the whole shoot took less than 1/2 hour. Here's your tip; get up early before the sun, grab your camera and tripod, and go looking for some cool photos to put up on your Facebook page. -  Terry
Madison WI photographer Terry Talbot

http://www.talbotphoto.com/

Shooting in the Dark - When You Take Your Camera to the Club

Mostly I shoot weddings and portraits, but as of late have started packing my camera to the clubs and shooting my favorite local musicians. So you walk into this fairly small crowded space with a great band with lousey lighting. The singer is wailing on the guitar and slinking around on the stage.

Whatcha gonna do? For sure you don't want to be blasting your guitar heros with blazes of light from your mega watts on board shoe mounted studio lighting system. Rude boys might; I turn off the flash and go available light. Since most clubs are sinfully dimly lit you're going to need to set your camera to wide open, the largest aperture available. You can do this by setting the camera to aperture mode 'A', and selecting the smallest aperture available (f 3.8 - 5.6 on my Nikon 18-200 zoom). The camera will then set the correct shutter speed for you to get a good exposure. But that guitar playing is slinking around and wailing on the guitar, remember. He's going to be blurred for sure, especially those lightening fast picking and fretting hands, so you need enough speed for the shutter to stop the action. To do that you'll have to pump your camera's iso to it's highest rating (iso 1600 or higher). Wait a minute. Doesn't that creat a lot of noise in the photo? Yes it does. You can reduce it by using a noise reducing program in post production (you know, after you take the picture and it's in your computer and you fix it up)like Noise Ninja, or you can look at it like I do that the noise is just part of the arty look, like my old grainy high speed film b&w photos.

Either way, there are times when the guitar player, or drummer etc, will pause momentarily and offer you a shot at a non moving object. If you practice it a bit you'll start to sense when those moments are about to arrive in fron of your lens. So use a wide open aperture, highest iso, and wait for the right moment. And have a blast without your flash.

Photos are of Pistol Pete. See and hear him at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89oXY8aGM2E/

Terry

Madison WI photographer Terry Talbot

http://www.talbotphoto.com/

The digital photo age - from wedding shoot to wedding show in less than a week!

Rachel & Nolen got married last Saturday at Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison, WI. It was a medium sized ceremony with a reception across the street at The East Side Club. The proximity of the two locations and the fact that the wedding was held at a botanical garden setting made it easy for me to get plenty of great shots without spending a lot of time traveling with the couple. Rachel and Nolen booked me for four hours of photography, so efficiency was called for. It was a nice wedding, and a great party. Rachel and Nolen sure know how to cut a rug. Since the ceremony was inside with strong back lighting I metered for the correct exposure of the subjects (I don't use flash on ceremonies) and set the camera to a manual exposure of F/5.6 at 125th/sec at iso 400, then left it there for the ceremony. Later it was necessary to increase the contrast slightly in Photoshop to overcome the softness caused by the strong backlight coming through the windows.

 

A note: if you put your camera on maual as I did here don't forgot to it back in auto mode when you're done ;-)

We had a nice brief walk throught the gardens and then on to the reception

All in all it was a another beautiful wedding day. And Rachel and Nolen got their photos in less than a week, thanks to the modern age of digital photography.      Terry

Madison WI photographer Terry Talbot

http://www.talbotphoto.com/