Here is another instance of using the Nikon 10.5mm fisheye as a close-up lens.  These photos were taken in the local farmer's market.  The lens, which can focus as close as 5.51" (14cm), was placed very close to the fruit.

The fisheye effect can be corrected in varying degrees, from full to partial correction,  in Photoshop.  In this photo there is about 80% correction, whereas the photo below of the tomatoes received much less correction and maintains more of the fisheye "rounding".

A Nikon D7000 was used for all the images.  The lens was so close to the subject that it was sometimes difficult to avoid the shadow of the camera in the shot.

I had been experimenting with on-camera flash for an article I am writing when I decided to take this shot of some models in my studio.  The idea was to make it look like someone snapped the picture in a bar for their Facebook page.  Lighting was a single Nikon SB-900 flash mounted on the camera.  A 650W tungsten light was placed in the background to give a feeling of a the night light in a club.  The tungsten was left  uncorrected so it would produce a warm color.  The front light was over-exposed slightly to emphasize the "flash" look.

The lighting technique for taking this photo was similar to the blog shots from last week of the breaking water balloon.  Shot with the Nikon D3x and 60mm macro lens with four Nikon SB-900 flash units.

Here are two shots of the same object, a computer keyboard, done with two extremely different focal length lenses.  The photo above was taken up close with a 10.5mm Nikon fisheye lens on a D7000. 

This image was taken with a 400mm Nikkor telephoto fit with a long extension tube so it would focus close up.  On the D7000 with its APS sensor 400mm is equivalent to 600mm on a full frame camera.  These two photos illustrate the difference in perspective and depth of field due to the different focal lens.  The wide lens expands space, while the telephoto compresses it.

This background shot of trees with the sun peeking out was done on a walk in Central Park with the Leica M9 and 28mm lens.

The idea here was to create a clandestine atmosphere with the USB thumb drive in the laptop computer.

The laptop was on a desk in a darkened room.  Illumination from the left and on the keyboard was supplied by two small LED flashlights.  Both images taken with a Nikon D3x and 60mm Macro lens.

Silhouette of the Empire State Building done with one of my favorite camera-lens combos, the Leica M9 and 21mm Elmarit.

Whenever I find an old statue of a famous person I capture it for stock.  These two statues of George Washington are part of the arch that is in Washington Square, New York.

Both photos were taken with the Leica M9 and 50mm lens on one of the many walks I take around the city.  I always have a camera with me, and almost always pick up a stock shot or two.

I was experimenting with the Nikon 10.5mm fisheye lens on the D7000.  Because it focuses as close as 5 1/2" I wanted to see what would happen if I used it as a macro lens.  Here is the result.  I took this shot of the number pad of my own computer keyboard, adding the numbered spreadsheet on the screen to suggest the concept of accounting.  A feature of Photoshop Bridge is that it can correct lens distortions in varying degrees from full to partial, and I applied a bit of correction to the fisheye effect in this image.

We did a shoot today with a mother and her real twins.  At the end of the shoot we decided to go for this shot.  The twins were very cooperative.  Shot with the Nikon D3s because its high-speed, 9 frames-per-second motor makes it easier to capture the rapidly changing moments, and the 24-70mm Nikon zoom to give a wide-angle effect that would  emphasize the feeling of over-worked frustration we wanted to create.

A blog shot from last week was a test from a flash setup I was preparing to do some splash shots in the studio.  Here are two samples from the final shoot.  To learn more about how to take photos like these and see more samples, click to visit my DSLR learning blog.

This is the moment of impact of a dart breaking a water balloon.  The only way to freeze action like this is by using a strobe unit with a very short flash duration.  Camera flash units are much faster than regular studio strobes.  I used four Nikon SB-900 flash units -- two on the background, the other two pointing at the balloon.  The Nikon D3x was used because of its very high resolution to allow cropping of the image.  There was no timing device. The shots were timed completely by eye.

For this image an assistant dropped an acrylic ice cube from about a foot above the glass.  Specs are the same as in the shot above.  We actually captured this particular shot in only one exposure.  Sometimes things work out.

I was doing some still life photography in the studio when our stylist, Janet, mentioned that she had been experimenting with a frozen dollar bill.  She took it out of the freezer, let it thaw a bit, and cracked the ice to achieve this image of a thawing, frozen dollar.  Shot with the Nikon D3x and 60mm macro.  We added some fake ice cubes and water drops to enhance the effect.

This photo was inspired by a newspaper article I read this past week showing the war room of Tito's bunker in Bosnia during the 1960's to 70's and the red phones he had for communication.  I did two variations.  One shot was with a world map and its obvious reference to global politics.

Here I used a plain black background with a reflection of the phone in it.  This version treats the red phone alone as more of a universal concept,and the black space can be used by a designer for headline and copy.

The peaches at the farmer's market were also very ripe and beautiful.  I particularly liked finding some with the natural leaves still on them.  I managed to shoot six variations on the peaches.  Same camera info as yesterday's blueberry photos. 

 I love blueberries.  At the local farmer's market the blueberries are at the height of their season.  I visited several farm booths to taste their crop and brought home quite a few planning to use some for a blog photo.  I got a bit carried away and wound up with well over twenty variations of stock shots.  Some are included below.  All photos were taken with the same camera outfit, the Nikon D7000 with Nikon 60mm macro lens, and were back lit with a soft window light augmented by two small, silver, cardboard reflectors from the front.

Here I just wanted a very simple, straight-forward, stark photo of a single blueberry.  The softness was due both to a shallow depth of field and some further processing in Photoshop.

With the preponderance of internet image usage these days, I always try to take a long horizontal for banner placement.

 

 

 

Best of all is when you have a friend like my friend, Marg, who can turn those blueberries into a delicious blueberry tart.  Thanks Marg!

I was out taking sample images for my other blog on learning photography when the sun went behind a cloud momentarily and lit up only part of the Empire State Building making it stand out dramatically against the deep blue sky and interesting clouds.  Nikon D7000 with new Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 lens and polarizer to deepen the sky and enhance the color on the building.

For this shot, I wanted just the lips to be in focus and saturated, while everything else would be soft and bright.

Here is another version where I wanted both the eye and lips in focus -- everything else soft.  I used the 135mm Defocus Nikkor, an f/2 lens, wide open.  This lens has the softest bokeh of any lens I know, plus it is extremely sharp where it is focused.  The depth of field was so shallow that I had to put both the eye and lips on the same plane as the camera sensor to keep them in focus.  Camera was the Nikon D3s at ISO 200 with available window light. 

Another vista of Manhattanhenge -- this one from 42nd Street to include the Chrysler Building.  The photo has the same specs as the one I did for the blog a couple days ago: Nikon D700 with 24-70mm zoom but without the star filter.

Here I wanted to capture more of a panoramic vista by using a 24mm lens and cropping to accentuate the horizontal.

...and here is the same shot with an over-done star filter.

A telephoto shot from the same viewpoint taken with the Nikkor 80-400mm zoom set to a 400mm focal length just as the sun finally went down.

Hundreds of photographers and tourists were out to view the sunset from points along 42nd Street and other major intersections.

A fisheye view of photographers waiting for the sun to appear from behind a distant building.  Makes you wonder how anyone could capture an image at all.

I did this shot while setting up and testing studio lights for a shoot next week of all kinds of splashes.  Four Nikon SB-900 flash units were used -- two lighting the splash and two lighting the background.  The reason I used the Nikon flash units instead of my studio Elinchrome units is flash duration.  Most camera flash units have a much faster duration of flash than studio strobes, and the faster Nikon units were needed to freeze the action.  Using two units instead of one on the background meant that each could be used at lower power where the flash duration is even faster.  I wanted to shoot at f/16 on the Nikon 24-70mm lens for maximum depth of field.

This is a 4.5X high magnification image of a close up of an eye from one of my printed images to show the dot pattern of color printing.  It was taken with a specialty lens, the Canon MP-E 60mm macro.  This lens has a limited focusing range beginning at 1X (1.5X on APS) and continuing to 5X (7X on an APS sensor).  Such high magnification makes its behavior more like that of a low-powered microscope.  I used it on a Canon EOS T2i that I use exclusively with this lens.  The smaller APS sensor of the T2i results in 1.5 times greater magnification than would a camera with a full frame sensor.

Twice a year the setting sun lines up with the street grid of New York City in an event referred to as "Manhattanhenge".  The actual date for this is tomorrow, the 12th of July, but you can photograph for several days prior.  This shot shows the Empire State Building with the setting sun.  A six-sided star filter was used on a 24mm focal length lens to enhance the sun burst effect.  Shot with a Nikon D700, ISO 200, 1/800 second at f/4.

Someone ordered this for lunch, but I wouldn't let them eat it before I took this photo for the daily blog.

When I found this set of dummy security cameras, I thought of doing this funny shot -- and here it is!

This is a super-imposed image using one of the fireworks photos from the blog on July 4th and a flag shot I have in my archives.  I removed the sky background from the original flag image and placed the flag over the fireworks, then massaged the whole thing in Photoshop.  To obtain the bleed-through of the fireworks in some parts of the flag I first made a duplicate layer of the flag.  I changed the bottom flag layer to "screen" mode, which allowed the fireworks to bleed completely through the flag.  Next I put a layer mask on the upper, "normal" flag layer and selectively painted out the areas where I wanted fireworks to show through. 

We had planned a shot comparing old and new light bulb technology when I thought of adding the chalk board with the classic symbol for energy, Einstein's relativity formula, written on it.  Wires were attached to the rear of the bulb to light it.  The wire parts still showing were removed later in Photoshop.  A bracketed shot three stops under-exposed was taken to super-impose detail into the lit bulb during post-processing. 

I grabbed this night shot of a highway while riding as a passenger in a car last night.  The light streaks were caused by shooting through the windshield.  Photographed at ISO 3200 with the Nikon D7000 and 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom.  Normally I do not like to use an ISO this high, but it did clean up very well after using the Neat Image noise reduction program.

Tonight I photographed the fireworks with a silhouette of the rooftops of New York.

The photos were shot on the Nikon D7000.  This one was captured with the 70-200mm lens zoomed to 155mm (232mm equivalent on this camera), and an exposure of 8 seconds and f/10 with ISO 100.

That should be it for photographing fireworks for another year.

Happy 4th of July!

I was fortunate to attend a private fireworks display that allowed me to place my camera very close.  For stock photography, fireworks such as these are a bit smaller than the variety done in larger venue.

Since fireworks images are often used as backgrounds, I try to create a variety of crop formats to fit the various uses.  The top image is a panoramic for banner usage,  The middle image is a standard vertical for full page usage.  And the bottom image is a square with larger black areas around a full display so that it can be cropped to several formats.

For tips on how to shoot fireworks displays, check out my other blog by clicking this link:  PHOTOGRAPHING FIREWORKS.