Here are a few images from the wedding on Mt. Hood this past weekend. Things were a bit dicey for this wedding earlier in the week. There is a nasty fire burning on the Northeast face of Mt. Hood that has consumed roughly 4,000 acres and is only 4% contained. Cooper Spur Lodge, which is on the Northwest side of the mountain, had a lot of smoke throughout the week, but the winds shifted this weekend and pushed all of the smoke to the East. There was a constant stream of helicopters and fire truck throughout the day. It was kind of creepy knowing that a large fire was burning only 10 miles away and a change in winds could quickly bring it in the direction of the lodge. When the sun set over the back side of Mt. Hood it illuminated the smoke in the air to a bright red. The sunset shot has no color correction to it, that was the true color of the sky during sunset! The only other unfortunate event, of what turned out to be a great wedding, was that my main camera broke 5 minutes into the day. I had to shoot the entire day with my backup camera. Because I was down to one camera body; I was unable to have two lenses loaded for the ceremony. So, I strategically placed my lenses around the parameter and ran to each one, changed the lens and snapped a few shots. Need-less-to-say, I look forward to getting my other camera fixed, all though I shudder (shutter) to know how much it’s going to cost! (pun intended)

I’ve been using my flashes a lot  lately as a result of cloudy weather and earlier sunsets.  This weekend I wanted to try to stay away from the flashes if possible, so  I scheduled this quick family shoot for 4pm thinking we would have enough light for some outside shots. However, I forgot Daylight Savings ended Sunday morning which pushed the light back to what was the equivalent of 5pm! I thought I was screwed, but in the last few moments of daylight the clouds broke on the horizon and we got about 3 min of soft setting sun. I had to fight the urge to take the easy way out which would have been simply pointing them into the sun and shooting. Instead I used it as a back light and used my flash to fill in on the front side. This is something I probably wouldn’t have thought about doing a year ago…

Sunsets are hit and miss this time of the year in Oregon. If you want to practice with lighting during one. you really cant hesitate or it will be cloudy before you know it. I packed up my gear and sweet talked my wife into being my test subject the other day. This is with a two strobe set up. One strobe is set up to the left of my camera at about 6ft high and the other is set up behind her, and to the left, at around 8ft height. If I didn’t have a second strobe I could have slowed down my shutter to around 1/50th of a sec and used the setting sun  “hair light”. However,  in this case I used  a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second @f4 to darken the background and leave the blue haze of the sunset. The trick is keeping your flashes set on low or they will easily blow out your subject at this low of an aperture. At least she has some new Facebook photos now!

Here are a few images from the wedding last weekend in Phoenix. It was nice to get out of the rain and soak up a few rays. I am really happy with the images. I am starting to learn that every wedding presents a challenge in terms of lighting. This one was no different. As the sun began to set the lighting was changing very rapidly. My white balance was all over the place at times, and what was was a proper exposure at one time, wouldn’t be in 5 minutes! Ryan & Erin were great to work with. We were running a little behind schedule following the ceremony but they made time to take one last shot out in font of the country club with the sun setting. Its on my websites home screen right now. The shot of them dancing was interesting. I set one of my flashes on slave and controlled it with the other that was on my camera. I thought it would look cool to get a shot of them back lit during the first dance.  The tricky part is that to do this I have to stay in one place to have the other flash directly opposite of me. I took several shots and never got the “look” that I wanted. Just as their dance was ending I took one last shot and got the image below. My flash was sitting on the table behind them; it really makes them pop out of the background! I love it when an idea works!

Today was a payoff for the damp weather that we had last week. I think the high today was around 85 with very few clouds. In my opinion it only gets better through the next two months. Late summer and early fall are by far my favorite time in Oregon in terms of weather. I’m not ready to let go of the warm temperatures yet, however the idea of cool mornings and college football are starting to creep into my mind. Speaking of back to school; best wishes to my niece who had her first day of Kindergarten today. I have no doubt she will do great.  I took this from the top of the hill we live on, the view is from the West Hills looking over Hillsboro and Beaverton at the Coastal Range.

It’s been requested that I post a photo of something warm since most of us are experiencing winter in some fashion this week.  Sounds good to me. This is from our recent trip to Mexico. In fact, its the same tree as the sunset shot I posted a few weeks ago. For the most part the grass on the plantation looked like crab crass from a Dr Seuss book. I liked this one palm tree though because for some reason it was surrounded by a patch of  soft green grass. I shot at a low angle to get the horizon in the middle 3rd of the frame as well as to create a siloette of the tree in front of the sun.  The key to the shot though is the meter reading and subsequent exposure. If taken on the grass or tree the sky would have been blown out and if it was taken on the sun the detail of the grass would have been lost. I spot metered the shot just above the sun and brought out just a touch more highlights from the grass in post processing. I like the shot because your eye follows the shadow through the grass, to the tree, and then the palms point you across the fame.    

f22 1/160th sec @ 24mm

Three words that you don’t often see together here in Portland. So far it has been a fairly mild winter. Considering a year ago the town of Vernonia was under water and we were experiencing 100+ mph winds; I’ll stop to enjoy a sunset like this in December any chance I can.