Sharing The Roijoy

Typical main street scene in Bangkok Prior to the shoot in Koh Samui , we were shooting in Bangkok City and at the floating market. As before, while the film crew were creating what went on to be an award winning film, I was capturing stills for the online campaigns. Even though there is an order to things in this city, it screams loudly at you with an inviting confusion. Vibrant colours and contrasts everywhere, and so many photo opportunities that had me out on the streets still shooting even in any free time I had for myself. The first shoot was in an apartment space and the challenge for me was to get my shots in between the film crew getting their footage. And why would that be so challenging? Well they were sunset scenes and we were all working to make the most of the diminishing light. And since we had no control over the sun as a prop, we all only got one go at getting what we needed, and a very limited window of time to do so. The film director was Alma Har'...

Comments about this image have included, "Did the police let you pose on their bike?" "Where did you manage to find the bike?" "You're lucky no one caught you messing with that bike." And leading nicely into this blog entry, "I know it's Photoshopped but how did you do it?" While walking around in the Mission district I saw this police officer signal for the car in front of him to pull over. The officer stopped his bike a little way behind the car that had stopped and put it on it's stand positioned slightly into the path of oncoming traffic.  I'm sure there's some thought or reason/ training for the position of the bike but that's not what this piece is about. The thing was that I could see the bike looking as if it was still traveling along the road in my mind's eye. Very quickly, the complete image formed in my head and I pulled out my camera to get my shots. I stood at the side of the street with my camera ...

Some months ago, I did a shoot for the launch campaign of the Dell Wyse Cloud Connect . The client had a video production team filming for the launch video and my job was to grab stills for static ads to drive campaign traffic. The shoot took place at office spaces in Silicon Valley. The production team were great and managed to successfully create multiple sets around the building that ranged from business corporate, to a scene set in a cosy home at night. Director at work There was various talent coming and going to act in the different scenes, but the main model who you see at the beginning of this blog, worked with us throughout the length of the shoot and worked straight through an 18 hour day of shooting! Yes it was a long day but the client, agency, talent, stylists, MUA's, and production team were all focused on getting the job done well. Everyone was cooperative and collaborated well and so we were all able to get what we needed from the day. Below is a quick ...

I created this image at home one day and have licensed it a couple of times as a stock photo image. I've had people comment that this must have taken ages to produce with all the work involved. The truth is, it took 3 hours from start to finish, including the photography. In some ways this is one of the simpler images I've ever put together. So here's how it's done. First I set up my lighting for the scene, set a camera on a tripod and locked the focus, white balance, and exposure. I would be taking 19 exposures and would not be touching the camera in between shots to avoid any chance of misalignment between one frame to the next. Base image of just the minimal scene The first shot I took was probably the most important of them all and its a shot of the scene minus any models and additional props. After capturing this base exposure I just carried on shooting while holding my floating objects in a different position in the air for each frame. You can see that...

I was briefed to capture images of families interacting with each other but as if they were skypeing with relatives or friends using computers, TV screens, or mobile devices. I needed to capture people with myself taking the place of the 'device' they were supposedly using and get natural looking shots. In addition, I was working with real people and not models in and around their own homes. I really love people so it was fun for me getting them to relax and not be self conscious as I was literally poking a lens into their faces. I must say it was a lot of trust on their part too but I'm pleased with what I managed to get. Also to get the angles I wanted, I got to put some of my contortion skills to the test while covering these two shoots :)

Especially when working close up to subjects there are times when you just can't achieve enough depth of field (DOF). Here I quickly show you how to expand the DOF in your scene using Photoshop and a method known as Stacking. When you're working close in, the DOF can quickly become very narrow. I'm shooting quite wide open here to make it easy to see what we're dealing with here. You can see what happens when I choose a focal point at the front, middle, or back of the scene. So how can I shoot this with more of the scene in focus, and more controlled DOF?  First let's take multiple shots of the scene. I'd highly recommend using a tripod for this to help keep all the images aligned and save on processing time. In the series of shots below I've made 15 exposures focusing first at the front of the rings, and then focusing further back for each exposure until in the last shot you can see focus is at the back point of the last ring. view sequence f...

View from Interstate 120 as you approach Yosemite Valley.                                         70-200mm, f/8.0 @ 1/320. ISO 100 We loaded up the car with our tent and the rest of our camping gear and headed off to another 'must see' USA destination. It's a very scenic drive there from Sonoma County and the weather was truly glorious.                                                                                                                                                          24-70mm, f/...