January 28, 2012 – A year of portraits – Lana Kunz

01.28.12 Lana Kunz

Don’t Take My Picture! – Actually, I asked before shooting a picture of my co-worker Lana Kunz this evening and she was gracious enough to say yes.

After about the 8th picture she started doing the don’t take my picture thing, which helped make for this interesting portrait. The whole picture reminds me of a paparazzi type photo.

Lana is The Messenger Newpaper’s crime beat reporter and she says that the reason she is a reporter is because she doesn’t like being in front of the camera, so by reporting on the news and shooting pictures occasionally for the paper she does a pretty good job of keeping behind the scenes.

Everything about this photo was done on the iPhone. The slight blurring was due to the slower shutter speed the camera used to capture the photo and I like the way it adds to the picture. I did a auto levels adjustment in the app called Snapseed and also did just a little sharpening as well. Afterward I opened the app called Photogene to add the old style Polaroid look to the picture.

Technical Details:
Camera: iPhone 4
Lens: Built-In Camera lens
Exposure: The iPhone doesn’t record shutter speed or aperture information
Apps Used: Snapseed and Photogene

January 27, 2012 – A year of portraits – North Pep Club Group Portrait

01.27.12 North Pep Club Group Portrait

Saleste Springfield, center, along with a host of other Madisonville-North Hopkins students cheer on the Maroons to a 82-49 victory over their cross town rival Hopkins County Central Friday night at Madisonville. They are members of the peo club and had these large cutout portraits of coaching and school staff members along with players of the team they were using during the game and I couldn’t resist shooting a group portrait for my year long challenge.

Sometimes you don’t really know what to expect that helps make a picture, for this one it was Saleste. She was standing at the right side of the picture when I stepped over to them to shoot this group portrait. She wasn’t really looking at what was going on at first, as she was talking to a friend. When she looked up and saw I was taking their picture she jumped into the middle and made the picture.

The photo was edited using Photoshop CS5 using levels, standard sharping and the burning tool to darken the edges of the photo to draw the viewers eye into the center of the photo. Most folks don’t realize it, but typically your eye will go to the brightest area of a photograph first and then work its way around from there. So, keep this in mind when shooting your pictures and try not to include bright objects that might detract from your photos subjects.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 26mm
Exposure: Matrix Metering, 1/320, f/2.8 with an ISO of 4,000
File Type: Nikon RAW

 

January 26, 2012 – A year of portraits – David Jackson

01.26.12 David Jackson

David Jackson is the Mayor of Madisonville, Ky and recently celebrated his first year in office as mayor.

He is a graduate from the University of Kentucky and is both a certified public accountant and a certified management accountant. David is also pastors Living Waters Church of God on Dulin Street.

I shot this informal portrait as he was preparing to address an area group known as the ‘Concerned Citizens Society’ and deliver a ‘Minority Report’ at the Larry Carney Neighborhood Center in Madisonville.

The photograph was processed using Photoshop CS5 where some slight cropping was done, burning down of the mid-tones around him a little and some standard sharping of the image was done also. I also used an f/stop of 2.8, for shallow depth-of-field, as I wanted to throw the background out of focus and keep the attention on him.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 @ 56mm
Exposure: Matrix Metering, 1/125sec, f/2.8 with an ISO of 4,000
File Type: Nikon RAW