Justin Cary Photography

Tonight Kayla went out with some girl friends, soooo, that left me home alone with Jace and Toe Nug.  Jace was standing against the couch eating a snack so I grabbed the camera to grab some candids.  If you’re unaware the 5D Mark II shoots up to 6400 ISO… and it does it well.  I took a few shots at 3200 ISO with just the light from the lamp on the end table.  The TV was on so that’s the reflection in the window.  Check out the clarity of this image at 3200 ISO…. UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!

My buddy, Matt Zogleman, is attending a photography class at WSU. He rang me up to see if I could give him some pointers on shooting portraits for a project due next week. I love teaching photography… I wish I could do that full time. I was talking to Kayla about what I’d do if I were a photography teacher at a college. I’m pretty sure the first day would be all about the students. I would let them ask 100’s of questions and record the whole session. I would structure the entire semester off of that one class period, while still teaching the basics of the course. There are so many things about photography that are important to know and so many things that are important to inherit, from God, as a talent. Anyway, here’s a portrait of Matt I snapped while we were going through the motions.

I know, contact sheets are “Old School” in the world of photography but I still like the feel of skimming images with a negative magnifying glass.  Lightroom really sets you up well if you want to print contact sheets.

After you’ve edited you’re images and your happy with the lot of them it’s time to print… right?  It depends on what you’re going for but for this particular post, yes, we’re going to print some images.  If you’re like me you take a lot of images!  I can shoot 300 frames without breaking a sweat… that’s one of the great things about digital.  So now that you’ve shot 300 frames at 22MB’s an image you want to view them away from your desktop or laptop.

Click on the “PRINT” link in the upper right-hand corner of Lightroom.  You’ll see many many options here.  Make sure you click the first image in your frames at the bottom of the screen, hold shift and click on the last image to select them all.  Below are the settings I used.  Play around to get the results you like and print away!

Here’s what I get.

As always, Enjoy!!!
Justin

If you can’t tell from my previous posts I’ll let you in on a little secret, I LOVE MY LITTLE BOY!!!  But who doesn’t absolutely love their kids?  He’s so animated and photogenic, it’s hard not to bundle him up, let him release some energy and get some killer pics while we’re at it.  If you’re a parent and an aspiring photographer there is no better way to hone your photography skills than capturing great photos of a kid that won’t sit still.  If you can do that you’re on your way to being a great photographer!  Don’t give up and don’t get frustrated… if you find yourself getting frustrated put the camera down and run around with them :-)  Here are a couple of shots I got of Jace playing outside today.

So, I’ve never done a post concerning my equipment I shoot weddings with.  I really hate to mention my photography equipment for two reasons… 1.) People know what I’m carrying around in my bag  2.) I don’t want to seem braggy.  But, one of the questions I get asked the most is, “What camera and lenses are you using?”.  So here it be:

I have since replaced my 1Ds Mark II with with a 5D Mark II.  I am hoping to upgrade to the 1Ds Mark III after a year or so.  I replaced my 1D with a 5D Mark II because of the low light capabilities of the 5D Mark II.  The 1Ds Mark II is an older camera with older technology.  I was very very sad to see it go as it was the first “Professional” DSLR I’d ever owned.  If you’ve never had the chance to shoot a professional camera you have no idea what you’re missing.  The feel of a professional camera just makes you want to shoot great images, that’s silly but so true!!!

Justin

My wife, Kayla, is the sweetest woman on the planet, aside from my mother… of course!!!!!  Noone is as perfect as your mother.  So, I have an upcoming shoot for a local magazine and I’m doing some indoor lighting tests.  I know nothing about the location.  The only thing I know is the subjects name and that we’ll be shooting after dark.  Anyway, nothing special but she sure is the most beautiful woman I know!

This is one of my all time favorite light settings.  No, it doesn’t work in every situation, but what lighting setup does?  I thought I’d throw this out there for some of you to try out.  Very simple, very effective.  If you have any questions feel free to shoot them my way!

Now, a little background of the location of this photo.  My family owns a building that is 100% empty, except the massive amounts of pigeon poop on the floor.  The particals flying around her head is actually dust kicked up by us moving around, not snow.  Hope you likes!  Enjoy!!!

Just thought I’d share these images. He’s getting so old, dang!  Next thing you know we’ll be sending him off to college!

I’m working on a huge project that is largely based on quality product images.  I’m putting together a 60+ page catalog and now that I have my layout nailed down it’s time to shoot the 150+ photos.  I’m using Adobe Lightroom to make all the adjustments to my raw images, Adobe Photoshop to do any heavy duty photo editing and Adobe InDesign to assemble the catalog.  Ahhhh, Adobe, seamless in every way.

So, I came across an issue while shooting the stock images for the catalog… Consistent DOF across the board is crucial for the continuity of the catalog.  There are two ways I can achieve this.  1.)  Shoot at an f/22 or higher or 2.)  Shoot a series of images with different DOF points and blend them in Photoshop.

A little secret, I’m shooting at an f/22 so I don’t have to bring the images into Photoshop each time to doctor them up, but for the purposes of this entry we are going to open up our images in Photoshop to use their very cool Auto-Blend Layers feature.

OK, so here are my three images:

You will notice that the images all have different focus points.  When shooting product for a catalog you really want to achieve a very large DOF so that every portion of your product is as sharp as it can possibly be.

With that being said.  Let’s open up the three images in Photoshop.  I have opened them up and layered two of the images on top of the third one, your layers should look something like this:

Now select all of the layers by clicking on the top layer, holding down the shift key and clicking on the bottom layer.  Go to Edit > Auto-Align Layer > Auto and click OK.  This will align the three images to make the next step go a little smoother.

Now that your images are aligned, make sure all of the layer are selected and go to Edit > Auto-Blend Layer > Stack Images, make sure Seamless Tones and Colors is checked and click OK.

Your images should look something like this.  You’ll notice that it isn’t perfect but it does a pretty dang good job.