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Tag Archives: Venice Beach
Lensbaby Composer Portrait Photography
The next series of images this week are portraits I shot of quintessential Venice Beach characters. The first few are of Harry Perry, a street musician who has played Venice for over 20 years. I connected with him late in the day and he allowed me 20 minutes of shooting (if I purchased a T-shirt/CD package for $20). He was a business man through and through, he knew his crowd and knew exactly how to work them. I photographed using my Canon 580EX II camera flash and Fong Dome Diffuser. I set the camera in aperture priority mode with a -2/3EV adjustment, and the flash was in ETTL with a -1/3 EV adjustment. I was also using the Lensbaby Composer lens and shot two frames, one with his head sharp, one with the guitar sharp (relatively speaking) and brought them together in a “split focus” technique with Photoshop. This Wednesday I will publish a short Image Critique where I discuss using this flash technique. Technical: Canon 5D, Lens Baby Composer, f/4, ISO800, 1/8 second exposure. Here’s a link to a great link to a YouTube video of Harry doing his thing.
Lensbaby Composer: Surfer
From the Venice Beach pier I shot a lot of images. Bright harsh sunlight, tough conditions, but I had two things in my favor. First, in those conditions I’m always thinking and seeing “black and white.” Second, I was using the new Lens Baby Composer, a super fun lens. A brief description for those not familiar with it: A manually-controlled, selective focus lens. There is a small sweet spot of focus and from that point an increasing blur to the edges of the frame. The lens actually pivots in 2 dimensions, allowing you to move the point of focus.
A number of the images to come from Venice are shot using the Lens Baby Composer. This is one of several images I made of surfers. One of the challenges with the Lens Baby is trying to get your subject critically sharp, especially when that subject is moving. Even more so when the subject is moving fast and in an unpredictable manner. I shot over 40 frames this afternoon to get one I liked and could work with.
Technical: Canon 5D, Lens Baby Composer, f/4, ISO100, 1/800 second exposure, strong, direct mid-afternoon light
Photoshop Venice Beach Pier
click image for larger view
This was a fun image to shoot and produce. On Monday I posted an image of the pier which is built on a single row of pilings. Because of its design, the pier’s full design from left to right could not be revealed in a single frame. I was a little frustrated that I couldn’t show both sides in one frame so, hand-holding the camera, I’d shoot a frame from the left-side composition and then step to the right to get a right-side composition. I did this several times to get the two frames as close as possible to symmetric and then brought them into photoshop side by side, blending the center column together. I’m not sure if its an interesting or appealing image, but it was certainly a success from the perspective of accomplishing what I set out to do. It may speak more to how the use of photoshop can positively influence how we shoot, how we see subjects and portray them. Should we let photoshop influence how we shoot?
Technical Info: Canon 5D, 24-70mm @ 50mm, ISO800, f/9, 1/25 second exposure, hand-held
Venice Beach Flash Photography Example
Hi Gang, I recently had a few hours to kill in L.A. so I headed down to Venice Beach. Next week I’ll post and discuss some of the street photography I did and this week I want to post some of the miscellaneous things I shot.
I’m starting with the last photo I took and working backwards. This image is of the Venice pier and I’m using it to set up a discussion on Wednesday about a different shot of the pier. On a technical note, I used my my Canon 580EX camera flash, hand-held and manually fired 4 times, to light the underside of the pier.
Technical: Canon 1Ds II, 24-70mm lens, screw-on Singh Ray Warming Polarizer, f/14, ISO100, 30 second exposure, tripod.
Color is a unique subject in an image. It can enhance or detract from other subjects. I’m curious to know which you prefer, the color or black/white version, and why?
MANY APOLOGIES
click image for larger view
Hi Gang,
Welcome to 2009. I’m so excited about where this site is headed I can hardly stand it. I hope you find it a super great place to learn about and discuss photography. Also, my sincere apologies. We’re in the midst of migration to the new blog, its nearly done, but during the migration over the weekend something happened that spawned a ton of inconsequential RSS feed hits and a few automatic emails (to those set up on that process). There remains the possibility of this occurring again over the next few days as we work out some bugs.
Again, many apologies for any inconvenience. I am VERY VERY excited about the new blog design. If you’re visiting the blog to read this post then you see the new design. But, I’ll announce to everyone when the bugs are fixed and new content arrives.
Until then…click on the image thumbnail to get a feel for how the site will work. This image is a composite of four separate images shot with the lens baby composer.
Alec Johnson
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