First batch of Senior Portaits

Here's the first batch of photos from my Senior Portaits model shoot from the weekend. Although I did some full and half body composted photos, I ended up falling back on my headshots specialty. Working with a fabulous model like Charlotte, the photos simply turned out amazing. As usual, minimal posting processing during my Lightroom editing. Added my frames and logo using Photoshop. I admit I did use my magic brush and clone stamp to touch up some minor blemishes but nothing that diminishes the beautiful face of Charlotte.

Hope y'all enjoy the photos!

Fyi I brought my Nikon D2h with a 50mm f/1.8 lens and my trusty D200 with my Tamron 18-55mm f/2.8 lens. The new "used" D300 I bought a couple weeks ago is currently being repaired at a local San Jose Camera Repair store. For fill flash (especially in the oh so tough afternoon Sunlight), I used my SB600 as a slave flash unit which was set off by the built-in flash commander on my D200. My Nikon D2h did take a dump during the first 5 minutes of the shoot. At this point, I'm going to retire my D2h. I've spent over a thousand dollars in repairs but its a bad camera. 8(

JP

New photos from the weekend

With my renewed interest in photography, I want to get back to portraiture especially senior and family portraits. I hired a beautiful model this past weekend to do some Senior theme portraits. We shot on location at one of my favorite local spots - The Rose Garden in Santa Clara.

Here's one of the first edited photos. The first one is minimal post processing. The other one I used some actions to add a "whimsical" look.

JP

Cool Astronomy event this past week

While I didn't take this picture, I'm uploading it to illustrate this really cool event this past week. A friend of mine at work mentioned this event has happened in 2000 years. I only wish I lived in a rural area without any light pollution to really enjoy seeing this with a pair of decent binoculars or a long 500mm lens.

Can you imagine seeing Jupiter's moons? There's still plenty of interesting things to see in our own solar system much less our Galaxy or the entire universe. It simply makes you stand in awe of our existence!

JP

Happy 4th of July!

In honor of our nation's birthday today, I'm re-posting a fireworks photo I took several years back near the Shoreline Amphitheater.

Hope everyone is having a safe and fun 4th of July weekend!

Cheers,
JP

Interesting thing happened while on my way to work this morning...!

While I always carry a camera in my car (Nikon D2H) for any photo-op opportunity [Peter Parker eat your heart out!], I saw something unusually brief event this morning that I didn't have time to bust out my D2H especially while driving in the morning traffic. As I was going Northbound on 101 to work near Dela Cruz Blvd, I saw what appeared to be a plane landing towards Mineta Airport. While using a plan landing or taking off is not an unusual sight on a typical morning commute, seeing a single prop engine going towards the airport is definitely not a usual sight. I've literally seen hundreds of commercial and private corporate jet planes going to and fro Mineta Airport but never what looked like a Cesna single prop plane before. Point of fact, I've lived near Reid Hillview Airport most of my adult life. I see plenty of single or more prop planes over there. This leads me to conclude that what I saw this morning was likely an emergency landing for that single prop Cesna. It's probably not going to make the evening news but it was still an unusual event to witness on my morning commute. I truly hope that the pilot of that plane made a safe landing.

JP

P.S. Here is a photo that my buddy Ian took a month or so ago when we were commuting home from work one day. Like today's event it was special because what we saw was a WWII era B-17 Flying Fortress flying around the sky that day! Fortunately I did have my D2H in the car and Ian is an excellent photographer who took advantage of being the passenger while I was driving that day. 8)

Part 4 of my photo shoot with Molly at Vasona Park

Here are the remaining photos from the Vasona Park photo shoot with Molly last week. By the time we started shooting these last photos, the sun was pretty bright. Most of these shots had to be taken in the shade but they still turned out nice!

JP

Part 3 of my photoshoot with Molly at Vasona Park

For this next set, Molly was wearing a short blue dress that went well with the natural beauty of the park. We ended up shooting on the bridge and the nearby pier.

I must say it was challenging to be shooting in mid day under very bright sunlight (which translates into high exposure and blown highlights) but it's also a good way to learn how shoot in this extreme environment especially with a subject with fair skin.

JP

Part 2 of my photoshoot with Molly at Vasona Park

This next set I really like the outfit and the hat that Molly wore. This time we shot in the shot of a big tree next to the lake. However you'll notice that the background is really blown out because of the high noon lighting. [If I was more patient and a perfectionist, I'd use layers to clean up the background]. Fortunately the exposure was mostly nailed around my lovely subject, Molly. My impression of these photos is they could be straight out of glamour magazine ad or a Gap advertising!

JP

Molly Photo shoot in Vasona Park (Los Gatos)

Since I had such a fun and productive experience shooting with Molly a few weeks ago, I decided to do another photo shoot with her in Vasona Park in Los Gatos. I've had pretty extensive experience with shooting family portaits and engagement photos in Vasona Park but I can't recall doing a model theme there at all. Today's theme was a simple summer look. Fortunately Molly has a versatile look to her. We ended up shooting for 3 hours because I really wasn't keep up on the time. What I thought was going to be a 2 hour shoot quickly turned into 3 hours. I'm planning on posting a set of each "outfit" every day this week. I think I have enough photos to keep posting until Friday. Today I'm shooting with my Nikon D200 and Tamron 17-55mm f/2.8 lens. The fill flash was from the built-in pop flash. [Fyi I plan on adding a 50mm f/1.8 and 85mm portrait lens and maybe a used D300 to repertoire in the near future since I've re-ignited my passion for photography recently. This gives me the added excuse to do a shoot on my days off which should populate my blog with new content!] Without further ado, here's the first batch.... JP