Happy Halloween, everyone!  I always make it a point to do some stock shots of every holiday as it occurs.  That way props are readily available, and I will have some new images going into the next year.  This one was taken with the Nikon D3s and 70-200mm zoom set to 170mm and f/2.8 with a high ISO of 800 to compensate for the dark, cloudy day.

There was a disc jockey at the party I attended last night.  I grabbed this close-up detail of his record player using the Nikon D3s and 60mm macro.  Shot with available light at ISO 1600.

I took this photo of a baseball to mark the final game of the World Series and the end of the baseball season.  Shot with the Nikon D7000 and 40mm Nikon macro at f/16 in filtered window light.

This photo of an actual pine forest floor was taken with the Nikon D7000 and 16-85mm zoom set to f/5.6 and 50mm.  I sprinkled drops from my water bottle to add moisture to the shot.

This photo is of the phone in my hotel room taken with the Nikon D7000 and 16-85mm zoom at 60mm.  I emphasized the horizontal format by cropping to suggest a banner use for the photo.

I was attracted to the simplicity of this sunrise with the clear blue sky, flat horizon, and the sun cradled off to the side in a few trees.  Using the Nikon 16-85mm zoom on the D7000 I shot it fairly wide with the horizon jammed towards the bottom of the frame to emphasize the empty space.

This shot is of my cell phone sitting on the desk in my hotel room and lit by a sliver of early morning light coming through the window.  Taken with the Nikon D7000 and 16-85mm zoom at ISO 800.

This cannon is on top of Kennesaw Mountain on the site of an important battle in the American Civil War. The autumn colors were just beginning to come to this area in Georgia. 

I photographed the area with the Nikon D7000 primarily using the Sigma 8-16mm zoom at around f/8 to provide good depth of field and plenty of detail in the terain.

Fuji just updated the firmware for the X100 camera. One thing it fixed was the close-up focus. In this image I had a very shallow focus on the bubbles in the coffee cup and they are quite sharp so it seems the firmware fix worked. I am traveling now and this shot was taken of my morning coffee in the hotel where I am staying.

This dusk view of Atlanta was done with the Leica M9 and 50mm lens at f/8 and a long exposure of 3 seconds to blur the traffic lights.



We went to our studio roof top to take this family portrait of models.  I wanted to give the shot a brighter, lively look, something a little less typical than posing them against a blue sky.  So I shot it back lit with the sun just appearing from behind their heads.  Taken with the Nikon D3s and 24-70mm zoom at a 35mm length and aperture of f/5.6.  The day was exceptionally bright so we used two large, white reflectors to provide front fill.

It's that time of hear again -- Halloween.  I wanted to achieve a light, airy look to carving a pumpkin. These were both taken in the studio with bright available daylight.  The image above was also strongly back lit with a 650W tungsten lamp that flared the camera by peaking out from behind the carved head.

This shot was done in a more traditional style and tells more of a story of pumpkin carving.  Both were taken with a Nikon D3s.  The top photo was shot with a Nikon 135mm lens at f/2, and the bottom image with a 50mm Nikon f/1.4 at f/1.8.  By tilting the camera forward to take the photo I was able to keep much of the foreground in the focus plane of the lens and still keep the background very out of focus with the open lens aperture.

This image of chromosomes was put together in Photoshop by combining a monochrome microscope view of chromosomes with a blurred photo of lights.

While on my early morning bike ride, I took this photo of lower Manhattan with the new World Trade Center building under construction.  It is a photomerge composite of four vertical photos taken with the Fuji X100 camera.  The X100 camera has a panorama mode but I don't find that it works very well, particularly on a subject like this with a lot of hard angles. 

I was doing a little touch up work in my apartment today and decided it to use the situation for a blog shot.  This photo of spackle and tools was taken with the Nikon D7000 and 40mm Nikon macro lens at f/8 under soft window light.

This image was created in Photoshop using a real DNA sequence readout as a background.

This large tropical leaf was part of a sidewalk decoration in New York.  I liked the way it looked against with the sun passing through it.  Photographed with the Fuji X100 set to macro mode.

This photo of the Flatiron Building in New York, done with the Nikon D700 and 23-70mm Nikon zoom at 70mm and f/8, was intended more for my art portfolio than my traditional stock collection. 

We had a fun model in the studio today, and photographed him in a variety of conceptual situations.  The hunt through a maze for some cheese provided several different concepts, such as discovery, frustration, and success.

I began photographing with the Nikon D3x and 105mm macro, but the lens kept hunting for focus with the white on white subject so I switched to the Nikon D7000 and 60mm & 40mm macro lenses and had no further focus problems.  The ISO was 100 and the subject lit by studio strobe in a bank.  I also grabbed the video below with the D7000.

In shots like these it's all about the attitude.  The viewer needs to be able to project human emotions into the scene for the image to be successful in stock.

These are the ingredients my wife is using to make a pasta dinner for tonight.  Photographed backlit with softly filtered window light on the Nikon D7000 and 40mm Nikon macro at f/6.3.

On my early morning bike ride I stopped to grab this shot of the sun glinting off the Freedom Tower under construction.  I usually carry the Fuji X100 with me because it is so small and light weight.

It is interesting to me how one photo idea often leads to another.  The credit card photo from few days ago led to the credit card combined with dollar for yesterday, which then suggested this shot of just a dollar and magnifying glass for today.  Taken with the Nikon D7000, 40mm Nikon Macro and available room light.

A credit card close-up combined in Photoshop with a photo of dollar bills addresses a number of financial concepts.  I kept the right side very light and low in contrast so a designer could easily use it to print over with type.

A conceptually simple shot of a red apple with a bite taken out of it was taken in a horizontal format with space included on the left for a designer to put some type.  Done with the Nikon D7000, Nikon 40mm macro lens, and available window light with reflectors.

Around sunset last night I went to Times Square to photograph two models.  A wide open aperture blurred the background packed with tourists and readable signs.  I also used a slow-synch flash to blend the model more naturally into the scene and further soften the background.  There is far more light in Times Square than you would imagine at this time of day, and all I needed was an ISO of 200 on the Nikon D700.  The low ISO also allowed me to add a motion blur to the background by moving the camera rapidly from side to side with a shutter set to 1/40th of a second.  A single Nikon SB-900 was held just above the camera by an assistant to fill the models face and keep her sharp while the background blurred out.

The bottom two images illustrate the difference between two different lenses.  The top image of the couple was done with the wide angle zoom to include more of the shape of Times Square and make the shot site specific.  The bottom image was taken with a long zoom with aperture wide open to completely blur the background and give the photo a more universal use by not being site specific.  Taking both version is an important way of maximizing the sales potential of a stock photo situation.

The Nikon macro lenses deliver a close-up magnification ratio of 1:1.  I wanted to come even closer so you could clearly read the credit card numbers reflected in the tip of the pen.   Adding a 4+ close-up filter onto the front of the Nikon 60mm macro lens did the trick. Photographed by soft filtered window light on a Nikon D3x at f/5 gave just enough focus to keep the card numbers and pen point sharp while everything else was softly blurred.

Another photo addressing the current debt crisis -- shot by scrimmed window light on the Nikon D3x and 60mm macro lens at f/9.

I found this sign while walking around the city, and liked the way the angle of the yellow tape integrated with the sharp angle of the shadow on the street.  Taken with the Fuji X100.

This shot of a model in yoga pose was done in the studio with the intent of adding a background later.  A tungsten light aimed at the model from the front added a warm glow to her hair.  In my files I had a sunrise photo that matched the coloring in the model's hair.  I blended the two images together in Photoshop to portray the girl greeting the dawn.

I purchased this engraving of a compass rose at an antique map auction recently, and decided to combine it with the Euro to convey the concept of finding financial direction.  Photo taken with the Nikon D3x and 105mm Nikon macro lens.