Jim Larson Photography

Cliff Moutner, stated to be “One of the top ten wedding photographers in the world” by American Photo Magazine is a photographer who has impacted my photographic life even though we’ve never met.  I find a lot of similarities in our thought processes from what I’ve read and heard from him over the past few months.  He is very good at walking into any situation and making the best of what is available from a lighting and architectural perspective.

The wedding I captured last week with my cameras had some very interesting lighting which made me think out of the box just a bit so that I could make the best of what I had been given.  It was at a small church and the bride was getting the final touches in one of the sunday school rooms that was designed for what I’m guessing were first and second grade kids.  I gathered that by my shins bumping into the bright green tabletops in the room.  I wanted to get some good photos of the bride’s shoes and thought I would give the green table a try, knowing that I’d need to do something with it after the fact.  Here is what I came up with as shown in the before and after image.

Here are the steps to take it from beginning to end:

• The shoes were photographed from a backlit perspective with natural light coming in through the window.
• I let the camera pick the exposure which left plenty of detail on the dark side of the shoes, but totally blew out a portion of the tabletop.
• In Adobe Lightroom, I first converted the image to black and white since I knew I didn’t want the green in the photo.  I contemplated changing the green tint to blue, but I liked the black and white so much that I stopped there.
• This was followed by brightening up the areas in the image that had the original green tint to make the tabletop a bit more uniform in brightness.  That also lightened up the bottom of the shoes that originally had the green reflection.
• I then brought out the blacks a bit more for added contrast.

That was about it as far as tweaking the image.  Next time you are in a difficult lighting situation, make the best of what you have.  You could end up with something cool.

The wooden boat show in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho gave me many opportunities to photograph some wonderfully restored watercraft.  Here is a fine example showing how the owner not only shows off his nice boat, but puts in an added touch by  fitting it with equipment from that era.

While walking back to my car after shooting a marathon I spotted these interesting looking mushrooms.  Nothing really special about them, other than I don’t remember seeing any with their edges turned up like this before in Boise.

Here is another shot from the cemetery I visited a few weeks ago.  For this particular image,  I put on the wide angle lens (17mm) and composed the photo.

When I shoot with a wide angle lens, I normally will try to get very close to some part of the subject, otherwise everything in the photo would seem like a long way away.  It is a great way to add some depth to the image.

Next time you are out taking photos, try different focal lengths on your lens (zoom in or out) and recompose your shots by using your feet.  That is, walk around to compensate for the change of perspective.  It’s amazing how different the same subject will look.

My wife came into the studio this afternoon and made the comment that I think outside the box.  Hmmm, maybe I do as this is not your typical photo, but one that took a lot of setup, trial and error.

This is the first time I’d ever tried to do anything with smoke and by the end of the shoot, the studio was smelling strongly of incense.

I wanted the shot backlit to really bring out the smoke against the black background. A single softbox was used above the gun and a small white reflector was used to get some reflections on the side of the barrel.

Try thinking of some dramatic effects and create them in real life.

Today as we were taking down our Christmas decorations, I thought it would be a great time to take a couple of photos to show a good example of what is meant by the term “bokeh.” 

Bokeh is derived from the Japanese language and means “blurred or fuzzy.”  In photography it refers to the appearance of out of focus areas of an image caused by using a shallow depth of field.

The two photos at the right were taken with the camera on a tripod as to not change the physical layout of the scene.  What was changed was the aperture of the lens from f16 (shown on the left) and f2.8 (shown on the right).  In order to keep the exposure correct, the shutter speed was changed to compensate for the change in aperture.

The photo on the left with the small aperture (f16) shows a greater depth of field with the tree showing a lot more detail.  The photo on the right with the large aperture (f2.8) really separates the subject from the background.

The Christmas tree lights change from a very sharp point of light to a large disk of color. Bokeh can add a very nice touch to a photograph.  Give it a try.

The photo to the right was captured at a wooden boat show in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The photo has some great contrasts in both color and texture. Another contrast is the difference between old (boat) and new (line).  It is hard to tell that in this photo because the old boat is very well kept.

Also, notice the angles created by the dock line and the edge of the boat’s deck.  Everything brings your eyes back to the center of the photo.  Even when your eyes wander to the edge they follow one of the lines back in again.

When I looked outside this evening I saw the full moon with some very interesting light clouds that were dancing in the moonlight.  I grabbed the camera and 200mm lens and took a few shots.  I tried several exposures because with the very dark sky and the very bright moon the light meter in the camera gets confused.  This one turned out the best of the bunch.

I did have to do some editing in Adobe Lightroom to bring up the clouds and to tone down the brightness of the moon just a bit, but this is about what I saw with my naked eye.  I also cropped the image to about 1/6 of the frame to make the moon larger in the image.

I’ve been gathering “theme” shots for while on “Life Through a Dog’s Eyes.” The photo to the right may not be too exciting to a human (from a human’s perspective), but put yourself down low and that hydrant looks pretty good against the blue sky. Not only that, but it smells…. well, never mind.  I didn’t get that close.  :-)  To do it right (from a dog’s eye), I should have probably converted the photo to black and white.  Maybe if I get around to putting a book together, I’ll do that.

It is amazing how different the world looks from a slightly different point of view.  Do you have a 2 year old running round the house?  Well, maybe you should hold your camera knee high and see what they see.  It would be fun to make a picture book from your child’s perspective at various ages.

Keep on shooting!

While visiting my parents today my dad showed me what he had been up to.  Talk about a lot of work chopping all of this wood, but it will be nice when the cold of Winter hits.  This photo tells a story with the fact that a lot of work was performed and it was performed by hand.

I hope that when I am my dad’s age that I am able to work as hard as he does.