Facello's Fall Photos
Nov. 7, 2016 Taking these photographs for the Facello family last month was my pleasure. We had fun shooting glitter portraits, and the evening sky over Lake Lynn was romantic.
I returned to West Virginia in time to work all weekend, post a few photos of the day, touch up and disperse family and friend portraits from my trip to my hometown, and get caught up with school by completing two weeks worth of homework to SCAD. What I'm working on right now is Advanced Digital Imaging, whereby I'm learning more in-depth about photography software and techniques involved--such as heavy Photoshopping--and also I'm learning much more about Business for Photographers. I'll post a little more on that later but for now I'm studying much on portrait retouching and body sculpting. Once again, more on Kaymoor buildings later. I haven't had a chance to touch them up as much.
To get away from that for the time being, I'll talk about the trip, which was great overall. I was able to make some great contacts at the career fair, and it was even more awesome to actually get a chance to talk with professionals and other colleagues in person from SCAD and from companies SCAD was marketing to us. There was an unexpected death in the family but besides that, I was able to touch base with lots of family, friends, former colleagues, mentors, and professors, some of whom I hadn't seen for about two years, and most of whom I hadn't seen for about eight months. My godchildren are growing, they're two and four, my niece who's two is now walking, and my nephews will be starting preschool soon. I'll provide photographs below so you can gain a little more insight into my life and the loves of my life, as blogs go, and then I'll write a bit about the technical aspects of a few of them. I don't provide locations or names of these children, though, for safety sake.
These are all my little buddies. Without their assistance, I would not be as good as portraits as I am to date. I admit, I'm still learning, but I do owe them credit. I love getting photographs like this of the children as soon as I get there following the initial excitement that I have come to visit after its been so long.
The third image, involving my best friend's daughter, deals with low key portraiture--it was taken under low lighting conditions. The indoor lights were off completely, and while there was darkness to her right side, there was a sliver of light coming in from the left. In order to really bring out the darkness around her, I increased the contrast in the image and made sure that the lights were not brought down with it so that detail in her face would not be lost. Her beautiful blue eyes and golden hair really makes her features stand out against the dark background. It draws attention into her face.
The first image was of one of my nephews who had just made me help him clean out the fireplace and dump the bucket of cinders out into the field behind the house. You can still see the ashes on his face and arm, and I told him that he looked like a little coal miner. After playing a bit, he decided to go in and get himself some water, and while drinking decided he'd strike a pose, as you can see.
The photograph beneath that one is of my other nephew, who had been playing at the swings alone rather than asking me or his mother to help him get on them. Usually he's a bit more camera-shy than my other nephew, so I've learned that it's easier to let him do his own thing while I practice getting environmental portraits of him from afar. Shots like this of him seem to do quite well, as you can see. In one, it seems that he is modeling his CARS shoes, and in another, it seems he is just modeling as a child model would do. You can see that he is too short for the swings, but this doesn't seem to bother him.
The second little girl is playing Pop Goes the Monkey with my brother. Again, this is an environmental shot meant to provide a story while capturing a special, happy moment in time. It does look like she's smiling three times; her face reminds me of a super excited anime face. She's my niece, and she's just begun walking. It's easy to get photographs of her, she never seems to worry about being in front of a camera, and she generally does her own thing regardless while being cheerful and goofy, especially just before nap-time. In the first image of her, she's staring at me in nearly direct sunlight, so the blue of her irises were really standing out even though she may be squinting a bit. In the original, the black part of her bodysuit was lighter than it should have been, so to bring out contrast, I either brought down the shadows or blacks in the image. I had to bring down the highlights of the image in order to provide more detail in her face in this image. I then tinkered with a vignette until the desired effect was reached which still brought more attention to my little niece.
The final image is of Mancub, my awesome little Godson. He's packed with energy at all times, and he's always going. I don't know how he did it in this scenario, but he managed to get on a swing by himself rather than me picking him up to do it. I shot this photograph from across the park with a zoom lens in order to get the best detail of his face with little distortion to his facial features. The sun was blasting in a bit from behind him, which allowed me to capture that sort of crowning effect, and his face is calm and happy as always while it is fairly obvious upon close inspection to see that he has been playing non-stop for the past thirty minutes to an hour. I composed the shot with his little body a little off to the right while he was looking back at me toward the left, then focused at his eyes and captured the image right in time as he was looking toward me. That's my little Man-cub. Can't wait to see them all again. That's it!
Today's the last day of winter quarter at Savannah College of Art and Design and the next quarter doesn't begin until the 24th, so I look forward to more Photo Excursions and additional photo experimentations during the break. For now, I'll show you more of the exposures I got from this past photo excursion and my experience with photographing the sun. I'd not really done as much golden hour photos as many photographers had in the past, so I will highlight the nice golden colors you get from that here: You'll notice that as the sun gets lower in the sky, the more diffuse shadows become in certain areas, but also there is this dramatic glow that becomes more red as the sun goes down. This image isn't one to sell, but it highlights an important lesson in terms of understanding how color changes over time in terms of natural lighting. That plant is a Sumac, by the way. It's a plant found in the Eastern United States. Apparently it is used as a spice in order to deliver a tart flavor to foods but be careful to avoid picking any poisonous Sumac, because that also exists although it's not as common. The leaves are similar. Anyway, toward nightfallthe sky began to look morered as it lowered below horizon, like so:
This is nightfall, dark blue skies, and a nice jeep. Have a great Friday!
Yesterday I and a few buddies took a jeep out to explore some treacherous terrain around the Cool Ridge to Coal City region of West Virginia, starting out around John Lane Road in Cool Ridge.
The four of us started out about 4:30 pm and drove on well until after nightfall, so I got the chance to practice with a bit of starry sky photos. I will say, I did not expect to feel so tired from riding in a vehicle, but all the driving through creeks crossing the road and over so many rocks and up and down steep hills was apparently enough to make my muscles ache. At any rate, here's the starry sky. I'm not sure exactly where we were here. The GPS didn't work for whatever reason--I'm pretty sure I'd absentmindedly unscrewed it while sitting in the backseat, and I think we were in some part of Cool Ridge.
For the photographers out there.... The ISO was at 12800 so you see a decent bit of luminance noise there, also shot at 0.5 seconds at f/2.8 aperture, so that adds up for a more blurred depth of field but the slower shutter speed did allow the light to blast in better. I would like to try this in the future with and without a three-legged tripod to reduce camera shake (causing the blurry outcome) with lower ISO, (to reduce luminance noise), slower shutter speed, and tighter aperture for greater depth of field... and also without a tripod at a similar ISO to reduce camera shake, slower shutter speed for greater light reading, and tighter aperture (higher f/#) for greater depth of field...although I'm not sure if the greater depth of field will be necessary at dark because the only things that will really come through are the two-tones of shadows against night sky color, and the stars peeking out between the sticks.
Alrighty then, that's enough for today. Tomorrow I plan to write on photographing the sun at golden hour because I got some interesting shots that way as well.
Where are some of your favorite places to visit in West Virginia? Feel free to let me know by writing suggestions in the contact form below.
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This week I've been working on photographing landscapes that involve the sun, rays from the sun, or lens aberrations due to harsh sunlight. Early on in my photo excursion yesterday, despite frigid temperatures in Hawk's Nest and Carnifex Ferry Battlefield, both state parks in West Virginia, I realized that the sun was getting in my way of photographing without either harsh shadows, or by creating aberrations in my photographs. You should also know that I keep a steady monologue on my hikes, and during this particular monologue, I cursed the sun, the cold, creaky trees, and geese. Geese always deserve it, and as difficult as it may seem when being chased by one or a gaggle, it is possible to get away from those foul, loud-mouthed beasts. That being said, I could only run away from the sun by being in the shade, so I tried that, and remembered I could create a halo effect that way. I also remembered that I could work with a flare from the sun to my advantage in order to create a more appealing scene by highlighting a main subject, like in the photo below of the house that Henry Patterson built in the 1850s on what would become the battle field of Carnifex Ferry, Summersville, West Virginia.
Not only did I use this method here, but also in more photographs, along with one that I posted to Spotlight West Virginia. I'll show it below and explain the method I used.
In this photograph, I took my inspiration from the shots that Spotlight West Virginia tends to post. These posts seem to generate a decent amount of popularity for this area, and they all have the same type of recurring theme in photographs that the page itself shares--over-saturated/vibrant, sunset, sunrise, landscape; they love the colorful. Sometimes, I like to work with vibrant compositions, drawing from the personal style of one of my favorite photographers, Olivier Laude, esq. I take color theory into account in what I do in order to be sure the color schemes are complementary. So that's what I've tried here, and it's generated more local popularity than usual I think, in a shorter amount of time. The main thing I did for the shot was wait for the right time of evening involving a vibrant & warm sunset over an interesting landscape, frame the composition auspiciously, increase clarity, increase shadows very little to bring out detail, increase whites to bring out the ice, and there it was, an enhanced picturesque photo that is appropriate for popular photography. There's more, but that's all I've posted in photos of the day so far since getting in last night and post-processing. I hope you enjoy my work as much as I do. :) Have a great weekend!!!