Days of Night

per·i·gee

–noun Astronomy .

the point in the orbit of a heavenly body, esp. the moon, or of anartificial satellite at which it is nearest to theearth.

The moon never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes its just a sliver, sometimes its not even there, and sometimes its full and casts an amazing amount of light. The best nights are when you can look up and see blue in the sky because the moon is so bright. I love shooting on nights like those, the light is so different from anything you see day to day but at the same time the principles of it are still the same.

The best night of shooting I've ever had was January 29, 2010. It was the perigee of 2010 and the moon was ridiculously bright. Call me crazy but I was squinting it was so bright out. I wasn't prepared at all for that night but I'll be ready for the perigee in 2011. If you've noticed the past few nights the moon has been fairly bright so I've been practicing up. A moonlight landscape series is my goal.

The hardest part of shooting moonlight is color, yes you can just go to black and white but thats not really the point. I've been trying everything I can think of but no matter what I do they just aren't looking right. I'm starting to believe thats its just the way things look under moonlight and I'm just not adjusted to seeing colors that way.

My favorite recent moonlight image:

I could go off about why it's my favorite but instead if you like it drop me a comment with why.

Here's a few practice images so you can see what the moonlight can do(these are shot long after the sun has set):

And finally here's some color to brighten up you day:

And finally let these images change your day. They opened my eyes up to some new views on landscapes .

Analyzing Action: A Closer Look at Wakeskating

Action sports can be ridiculously hard to shoot. You have to keep some main guidelines in play while still being creative enough to get something that didn't pop straight out of the cookie cutter. This is tough enough to do in the snow or on land but when it comes to water and shooting wake sports its a whole new world because you can't simply get up and move. I could really go into depth about why its difficult but I don't want to bore you so I'll just get to wakeskating.

Wakeskating is good because, from a photographers standpoint, you have a whole lot more options to shoot, you don't need a loaded down boat, cable park, or a super gnarly rail to get anything good. All you need is a jet ski and a little creativity and you can get some out of the ordinary shots. I usually don't analyze images on the blog but today we're going to look at some wakeskate shots and find out why one is better than the other.

First off, the barge acid drop:

So looking at the basics first everything looks good. You can see where he started, where he's going, and what trick he's doing. It meets the three most important guidelines so lets take a look at the rest of the photo. The composition... it works but it's definitely not interesting and it doesn't truly show the size of the feature. He's also too lost in the trees and the background is fairly cluttered. Bottom line is that the eye doesn't flow to the rider very well and it doesn't do the feature justice. Trash it, time to move onto a different angle.

Quite a bit different and in my mind a whole lot better. You know where he started, you have a pretty good idea where he's going(he wouldn't be jumping to concrete), and the trick is shown. The composition is much better, way less clutter and the eye moves to the rider almost immediately. The colors are good, the clouds add some depth to the sky, and the boxy type shapes frame the rider into the upper right. Most importantly its not your average wakeskate shot so I'm pretty happy with this photo. If I could have changed anything I would have moved left and shot a hair later so his arm would have been out of his face.

Next we have some strobed night wakeskating shots. I like the lighting in both but neither of them stands out more than the other to me so I'll give the good and the bad on both and let you be the judge of which is best.
Good action, difficult trick, and on point lighting. Thats that good, but thats all thats good with this one. I tend to loose myself in the darkness around him and because of that and the angle from above it gets me a little confused. I can't see his face which is also another big draw back about shooting this angle. It is different but it could be done a lot better.

Less action, similar lighting but better composition. I don't get as confused when I look at this photo, its really easy to see where he's going and where he's been plus the wake in the upper left hand corner lets you know he's getting towed on some type of water craft and that this isn't a winch shot. The downfall is that the action is lacking and once again you can't see his face.

There's the break down on a few wakeskate shots and here's a few more action shots that you can think about yourself:

Been drawing some major inspiration from Dan Carr recently, I love looking at his work but all the other things like his equipment reviews are really well written, he seems to talk about what matters and not much else.

#1

Hello Hello Hello, welcome to the blog of undesirables. Fail blog, B roll, whatever you want to call it this is where the photos that didn't make it are going to go.

Who knows they may have a good idea behind them but terrible execution or it may be perfect execution of a horrible idea. Also look for things like bad edits and other lapses of my better judgement.

I know this sounds bad but it's going to be a good learning experience and I'm actually quite looking forward to it. It will be an anonymous blog and I hope that it will get lost in the interwebs, because the truth is its only here for me myself and I.

That being said here's a great idea with horrible execution. Massive potential but a horrible fail on my part. I love the gradient of the color and how the head of the dandelion is above the horizon and there is still definition in the grass below but... the seeds are blown out and lost in the background, completely ruins the image. I need to go back and work on my macro lighting, definitely needs a rim light but I don't want to lose the twilight feel of the background.

So what do you do if your light sucks and your colors are terrible? Make it black and white! I hate that, don't ever do it then say you changed it to black and white and give a bs artistic reason. If your going shooting and are planning to post process black and white thats cool though. The lighting on this was terrible, I definitely hit the timing too late and therefore those beautiful fall colors were nonexistent to my camera. But composition is okay, most likely will try again and hopefully get something better. But until then here is the black and white(for the record absolutely no artistic motive for the post processing):

Standard landscape, nothing interesting at all, the composition is way too linear/stacked for my liking. Colors do have potential if a different angle/composition is found:

Going for the soft sea of brush in this shot. Give me some more definition, I need shadows and some contrast that somehow lead into a softer background. I feel like I'm looking at a rice krispy treat when I see this photo:

Last and certainly the most least, your leaves water droplets photo. Shot so much and so played, especially an angle like this. Thats okay though because I have an image from this shoot that a really like, it is definitely not your standard. But this is The Bad, The Ugly, and the Horrible so here is an example of what to try and stay away from when shooting that leaf water droplet photo:

It feels good to have posted these, I'm ready to go and shoot these photos right, forget about these images and move on.

As for inspiration this trailer has greatly touched my mind and given me new ideas not only for shooting landscapes and nature but also action sports.

http://vimeo.com/14600175