TORONTO WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER JUAN ROJO DESIGN

My Adoramapix Photobook Review

2011-11-22T20:48:00.001-05:00

I’ve been through my share of photobook suppliers, but I just hadn’t been able to find that sweet spot between great quality and price. It was either cheap and it showed, or EXTREMELY expensive. I wanted to find a product that could offer with my wedding packages and pass the savings on to my clients.

Did I find the perfect compromise I was looking for?

YES! After what it seemed like an endless Google search, the name Adoramapix kept popping up with excellent reviews on their photobooks. After reading a few of those, I decided to visit their web page and find out what they had to offer. First off, their pages are printed on true archival photo paper, which means that your pictures will look as good as you intended them to look. What I found with the press printed books I had tried in the past was that the colors of my images were rather flat and the contrast was toned down. To counteract that result, I had to do some serious tweaking in Photoshop, to the point that I thought the images were going to look awful when printed but that was just to bring them closer to the original look I had envisioned. Adoramapix even offers color correction with their albums, which was a first for me.

How does the workflow compare to other photobook companies?

While there are some album companies that offer plugins for straight export of your layout from within Apple’s Aperture, those companies offer high-end products at high-end prices. In other words, not exactly what I was looking for. Adoramapix provides a web-based interface to create your book and it even provides some templates that you can use. However, if you want something more customized, you can import your designs and assemble the final product by simply expanding your page/spread onto their blank template. My workflow is very simple and fast; once I’m done with the design of the book in Aperture, I select Print and then Save PDF to Folder as JPEG. After I select the folder where my JPEG (pages) files will reside, the export process begins. Those are the images that I use for the pages of the book after I upload them to an Adoramapix gallery. The cover is done in Photoshop in a 20”x 10” canvas, which is the only element that I’m not able to create in Aperture. A direct to print plugin would be awesome, but the whole process is pretty fast as it is right now.

How does the quality of the product compare to other companies?

Well, let’s just say that I’ve ordered four (4) more books since I got my first sample album just a few weeks ago. The lay-flat, 10”x 10”, 26-page sample album that I got from them lived up to all the hype! Finally my images looked just the way I wanted them to look, as the color reproduction, the contrast and everything else was spot on.

What do the books look like?

What better way to show that with some pictures…

Chasing the Holy Grail of Page Ranking for Toronto Wedding Photographers

2011-02-25T11:37:00.000-05:00

Are you a wedding photographer in Toronto? Welcome to the club! It seems there are more of us than there are brides looking for our services. You can chalk it up to the rise of digital photography, newbies misled into thinking wedding photography is easy and extremely profitable (I get a kick out of that one), weekend warriors, etc., etc. There are several reasons for the current saturation of the market but that's material for an entire blog post by itself.

We all have to struggle for visibility so we can get our work seen by the biggest number of potential clients before they move on to the next website.

From late November of last year (2010) until early January of 2011, I had really dropped the ball on my blogging and social media channels, especially Twitter. This translated into my page ranking dropping from 6th page for "Toronto Wedding Photographers" to Page 19, ouch!!! Needless to say I had to get my act together quickly and got blogging right away. I became far more active on Twitter engaging followers and people I follow, instead of posting random quotes and retweeting someone else's content or even worse, spamming people with my latest workshop (again, topic for another blog post). In addition, I started posting ads on Craisglist and Kijiji. I know, that's the last place you want to be found at, but look at it from a different angle. Those two sites generate a tremendous amount of traffic and both of them allow you to incorporate direct links to your website (Craigslist allows actual HTML code in the body of your ad, while Kijiji charges $4 for allowing you to add a link). In other words, you don't have to post bottom feeder offers or anything like that, you can just use the ads to promote your services.

There's more! Even though there are many of us wedding photographers out there, quite a few of us know or at least have heard of other members of our community. Some of us even network with other photographers and develop working relationships with those photographers. Guess what, we can help each other out by commenting on other photographers blogs. I'm not afraid to admit that I follow and admire a lot of other people's work and I'm sure each and every one of us appreciate a flattering comment on the work we do. How does that help, you may ask. Well, it's simple in most of the current blogsite platforms, the fields required for leaving a comment include your e-mail address and a wesbite so once that comment is approved, it eventually becomes and inlink to yours. Having said that, I try not to be a comment-whore (is that even a term?). I just leave comments on blogs of people whose work I truly admire. I couldn't bring myself to leave a comment on crappy work.

Anyway, to recap that whole bunch of babbling above, here are the steps to follow in order to increase your page rank organically:

1. Comments: Be kind and leave comments on other people's blogs whose work you follow and truly admire.

2. Twitter: Use Twitter to engage your followers and also provide useful information, like a link to this blog post for example.

3. Craigslist and Kijiji: Let go of your fears and use these two sites as promotion tools.

4. Blogging: Posting beautiful weddings is all nice and cool but it also helps if you have a secondary blog (which links back to your photography site), where you post actual content, as opposed to just images. Remember, useful content.

Now, has the strategy worked for me? Well, I'm no longer on page 19 but in the last two weeks I've moved to the bottom of page 11.

The amazing thing is that in doing so, my rankings for other keywords increased dramatically. Here's my page rank for the keywords "Toronto Portrait Photographer"

If I were to charge for Landscape Photography commissions, then I'd be pretty happy with myself, as I'm the second listing on page 1 of Google for the keywords "Toronto Landscape Photographer", right above the Luminous Landscape Gallery.

Feel free to leave some feedback on what other kind of information you'd like to see on this blog. Thanks for reading this far.

How to Find Out Where Your Website Visitors Are Coming From Using Google Analytics

2011-02-24T12:10:00.000-05:00

So you've done the social media thing, you spend more time on Twitter and Facebook than you actually should, you try to stay on top of your blogging on a semi-regular basis, you advertise and on top of all that you also have to find time to meet with clients, shoot, edit entire weddings or portrait sessions, you know that actual work-related stuff.

At the end of the day, you are wondering: " Is it all paying off or am I just spinning my wheels?" One easy way to check if your efforts are translating into increased traffic to your website is to use Google Analytics's Custom Reports. If you don't know what Custom Reports are, or worse yet, don't even know what Analytics is then you truly are spinning your wheels.

Watch this video for a quick tutorial on how to create a custom report in Analytics to pinpoint exactly where your visitors are coming from and what pages they are looking at.

Toronto Portrait Photographer: Post Processing or Bringing Images to Life

2011-02-18T16:01:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since the last time I posted here, so I figured a comprehensive post was in order to make up for the last few months I've been absent from this blog. A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of photographing John Shillingberg and Yun He Lee of the Toronto Music Academy of Canada. Like any other portrait photographer out there, most of the time I don't know what to expect in terms of lighting, space and any other variables that make our job so exciting :-)

For this particular shot, the room was big enough to fit two pianos, but the ceiling was fairly low and I just couldn't raise my umbrella high enough to the where I needed it to be. The other challenge was getting enough light to cover both subjects, since I had to place the umbrella out of the frame and even at +2.0 EV this is what I was getting:

Now, you might say: "That's not so bad!" Well, this is the RAW file after tweaking the shadows in the lower portion of the frame. The setup for this shot was very simple, one (1) SB-900 with a translucent umbrella to camera right, just slightly out of frame and one (1) SB-800 fitted with a 1/4 HONL Speed Grid to create a concentrated spotlight behind the subjects. Now, this is the first version of the file that I presented to the client, a BW conversion using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro with high contrast to add a bit of drama:

I thought the picture frames behind the subjects added to the composition of the image, but the client felt otherwise and asked me to remove the images. Initially, I thought it was going to be easy but I had completely forgotten that I had used the HONL Speed Grid for this shot, which created different gradations of light throughout the back wall. Needless to say, cloning out the frames (specially the one on the right) was an exercise in patience and precision. For the final image, the client also requested to have the background darkened a bit more. In this case, I think the client was dead on. Once again, I used Nik Software's filters, but this time I applied the Pro Contrast and Midnight filters from the Color Efex Pro 3.0 arsenal to further shape the light to my liking and Viveza 2 to darken the background. Removing the picture frames from the image was done in Photoshop CS 4 using good old cloning.

The same lighting setup was applied to the following image:

In this case, I boosted the contrast using Color Efex Pro 3.0 Pro Contrast filter and then applied selective lighting using the Midnight filter. The result was the following cropped image:

Once again, the client wanted the picture frames removed from the image and the background darkened a bit more, for which I used Viveza 2 and Photoshop CS 4 once more:

I must say, I'm very pleased with the final results and so was the client. However, as you have seen in this blog post, getting from capture to final image is not always a smooth process and most of the time it takes lots of patience and hard work.

Toronto Wedding Photographer: Nikon D3s vs Nikon D3 for Low Light Weddings

2010-08-14T10:21:00.005-04:00

We've all seen plenty of reviews on noise comparisons between these two cameras, or a Canon 5D MKII vs a D700, etc., etc. However, more often than not, the test results posted are simple shot comparisons of the same image side by side, with the camera set on a tripod. You know what I am talking about, as a working wedding photog, we just want to see these tools working in real life conditions or worst case scenarios. What we are looking for is justification to drop another obscene amount of cash on yet another camera body, right? There's also the much cheaper alternative of renting, which is what I did at Vistek. For $225/weekend, you can have a state of the art D3s body to use as a second camera for the big day.

I thought I was set with my Nikon D3, and that the D3s only made sense as an upgrade if I were to get into video as well. Boy, was I wrong! You can bet I'll be renting that body more often from now on. The following images serve to illustrate the subtle but very key differences between pushing the limits of high ISO with a D3 and doing the same thing with a D3s. First of all, let me explain the case scenario here. The reception for this wedding was very intimate, and it was held at Oro Restaurant. The room where it took place was VERY dark, which was the reason that prompted me to rent the D3s upon finishing my scouting trip to the venue the week before. The couple wanted to keep the lighting mood of the room intact, so bouncing flash all over the walls was out of the question. It was up to Nikon to deliver on its promise of amazing low light performance:

The following shot was taken with the D3s and it shows more or less what the real lighting conditions were there. Bear in mind, I had to set a negative exposure comp to bring the light down to these levels:

There's noise in the image, but you really can't see it unless you zoom in at 100%, which makes for a very usable image even at these levels.

The D3s really shines in this shot, as the light reflecting on the face of the girl is coming from the small LED candles sitting in front of her. Again, a very usable shot when zoomed in at 100%:

For this shot, I actually had to reduce the Exposure in Aperture in order to bring the light down, as even with the negative exposure comp set on camera, the D3s was essentially seeing more light than my eyes could.

Now, the D3 was a trooper as well and during the reception after reviewing the shots in camera, I thought it had performed on par with the D3s at the same ISO level (6400). Well, the answer is yes and no. The noise level was very similar and I did get plenty of usable shots with my D3 but the subtle differences came later in post processing. At ISO 6400, the D3 images start to present a color degradation. In other words, things like skin tones don't look quite as warm or natural as with the D3s shots. Don't believe me? See for yourself, these shots were processed using the same editing preset in Aperture 3.0. Notice how the skin tones look slightly more pinkish/reddish (depending on the person's skin color).

In conclusion, is the D3s superior to the D3 in high ISO performance? The answer is a resounding YES!

Toronto Wedding and Portrait Photographer: Nikon SB-900 with 1/8 HONL Speed Grid

2010-08-13T21:35:00.000-04:00

As promised, here are some of the shots taken with the HONL 1/8 Speed Grid, attached to an SB-900. The speed grid serves no other purpose than to concentrate the beam of light to create more dramatic lighting, as opposed to spilling light everywhere. In these photos, the speedlight was aimed at the model's face, the ambient light was reduced and the flash was set to TTL with a flash exposure comp of -0.7. The SB-900 was triggered using an SB-800 on camera.

Toronto Portrait Photographer: Alien Bees B1600 with Beauty Dish

2010-08-13T20:22:00.000-04:00

The shots in this post were taken at High Park in Toronto. I was commissioned for a portrait session about a month ago, and decided to follow the old adage: "Better bring it and not need it than need it and not have it" regarding equipment. Bringing a Kata bag with two strobes, a Vagabond II battery and several stands, along with a foldable octabox and beauty dish requires a certain level of fitness to carry around a park, one that I certainly didn't have. I'm so glad I dragged that stuff around through, because the results were quite pleasing. The following shots were done using a B1600 attached to a 22" beauty dish with a difusser sock over it. The strobe was triggered using Pocket Wizards, and the power was set at 1/8 power for most of them. In my next post I'll put some pictures up of the shots that were done using an SB-900 with a HONL speed grid, which are ideal for creating dramatic lighting.

Toronto Wedding Photographer: Jack & Helen's Esession in Downtown Toronto

2010-07-28T18:34:00.000-04:00

Here's a slideshow from Jack and Helen's Engagement Session in Downtown Toronto. The journey started at Brookfield Place, then we moved on to Union Station and from there we walked over to the Skywalk, finishing off at Toronto's Harbourfront.

Dramatic Lighting Using the HONL Grids and Nikon's CLS

2010-01-04T21:26:00.001-05:00

Imagine if you came home and this was the scene waiting for you. You don't know who this person is, but he clearly knows who you are, and took the time to carefully break into your apartment, and now is waiting for you at your table.

The idea here is simple, the dramatic mood of the scene is provided courtesy of some dramatic lighting, which was created with the help of HONL's Speed Grids. I had both Speedlights (SB-900 and SB-800) placed at camera left. The SB-900 had the 1/8 speed grid on and was pointed down at the subject, and set to -1.7EV via the on-camera SB-800. The SB-800 had the 1/4 speed grid on and was pointed at the table, set to -2.3EV, just enough to see a bit of the table. You can see the setup shot here:

The RAW file was converted to TIF via Capture NX, with additional use of Nik's Color Efex Pro 3.0.

Beauty and Fashion Photography Setups on Video

2010-01-02T17:01:00.000-05:00

Fred Miranda Wedding Photogs Meetup - Toronto

2009-12-23T11:37:00.003-05:00

As the wedding season has come to an end for most of us, it was time to relax and take a few pictures just for the fun of it. Sam Obeid rallied the troops on the FM Wedding Photographer Forum, and at least 12 of us answered the call for a chance to network and share stories with fellow wedding photographers.

Oddly enough, the waitress that worked our table last night was the same waitress we had back at our Nikon meetup at the beginning of the year.

Here are some shots from the evening at The Duke of Richmond

1. Sandra and Lauren

2. Lauren

2b. Lauren post processed via Capture NX with some Curves added within the program, and then brought into PS CS4 for some dodging and Nik Filters: Pro Contrast and a toned down version of one of the Cross-Processing filters.

3. Sam

4. Mark and Paul

5. Spencer

6. Aron and Sam

7. The Bill!

8. Our waitress last night

9. Our waitress from the Nikon meet up 11 months ago :-)

Enjoy the holidays and I'll see you all at the next meet up.

ASID CEU Toronto - Chris Hodges on dealing with facility manager clients and green building.

2009-12-04T08:22:00.001-05:00

The last event of the Tayco sponsored educational series for 2009 took place at The Gladstone hotel this past Tuesday (December 1, 2009). Chris Hodges presented on evolution of the role of the Facility Manager, and how important it is to understand the needs and objectives of these key decision makers when presenting a project. Here are a few shots from the evening at The Gladstone Hotel.

Chris Hodges addressing the audience

Very trendy ornaments made out of recycled paper, magazines and posters

The audience

Signing certificates for attendees

Black Creek Pioneer Village - For the love of photography

2009-11-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

As the wedding season is coming to an end, and all I have booked now are family portraits for the holidays, I realized I hadn't shot anything personal for a very long time. Well, I shouldn't say that, because thanks to Chase Jarvis and his Best Camera project I can now roam the streets with my iPhone and be confident that any photo opp won't be missed. However, now that my DSLR camera is part of a money-generating venture in wedding and portrait photography, I think twice about taking it out "just to take pictures". I became a photographer out of pure love for the raw power of images, be it a landscape, a portrait or any other image. That kind of thinking got me worried, so last Sunday I decided to bring my camera along for a little trip my wife an I took to Black Creek Pioneer Village. It was great to break from the wedding mindset and just capture whatever felt right to me. Here are a few shots from the trip:

Using the Lumiquest Softbox III and HONL grids for wedding photography

2009-11-06T08:18:00.000-05:00

As much a I love my Alien Bees strobes, when it comes to weddings I always try to pack light. Don't get me wrong, I always bring the ABs with me, just in case, it's just not practical at all to carry them around with you. For that reason, I try to resolve most of my lighting situations with SB-800/900s. In addition, if I can get away with not using an umbrella, I will and the Lumiquest Softbox III has become a permanent resident in my camera bag for those occasions. Another item that has found a permanent spot in my camera bag is David Honl's Speed Grid. I have both versions, the 1/4 and the 1/8. If you want to add a new level of dramatic lighting to your photography, then you definitely need to get these and keep them in your bag!

In this particular example below, I used an SB-800 with a HONL 1/4 speed grid behind the couple and pointing at the wall to get some detail on the brick wall. I lit the couple using an SB-900 with the diffuser cap on and the Lumiquest Softbox III attached to it. I triggered both lights with an on-camera SB-800.

Street Photography by Clay Enos - A different style

2009-11-04T12:49:00.003-05:00

I couldn't resist posting this here, enjoy:

Toronto Wedding Photography: Ed and Bethany's Wedding at Wycliffe College

2009-10-23T13:00:00.000-04:00

Toronto has many spectacular venues for wedding photography, and the University of Toronto campus happens to be on the list of popular spots. Ed and Bethany's wedding ceremony took place in North York at the Willowdale Christian Reformed Church , but the reception was held at Wycliffe College at U of T. The day was perfect, and the natural light couldn't have been better. In my usual fashion, I mixed available light shots with plenty of Strobist stuff, here are just a few samples of the day:

Pano shot using the "Brenizer" method. Forty five (45) images were stitched up together to make this shot, which looks better LARGE :

This is the natural light I was talking about at the venue:

The "Funnest Couple Ever" having some fun with their friend James (aka Kato)

IIDEX/NeoCon Canada 2009: Covering the Tayco booth.

2009-09-25T10:29:00.004-04:00

Once again, I was assigned to shoot the booth for Tayco at the IIDEX show. What a difference a year makes. The 2008 show wrapped up right before the world economy was thrown into chaos, and the 09 show is taking place as economists are daring to say that we might be turning the corner. Well, a few of the big names were absent from the show, and the ones that were there had downsized their booths considerably. The Tayco booth was probably one of the biggest there this year, and fortunately I was there to shoot it.

This shot looks a lot better in Large This pano shot is composed of five (5) shots taken with the Nikkor 85mm f1.4 and stitched up together in Photoshop.

ASID Toronto CEU Event at The Gladstone Hotel

2009-09-23T19:05:00.002-04:00

Once again, I had the privilege of covering one of ASID's (Toronto chapter) educational seminars. The event was sponsored by Tayco and the presenter was Toby Israel Ph.D.

The venue was the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto, which has a lot of character, even in its rooms used for events. This time around, the topic was a little bit more scientific and it revolved around the psychology of design. The presenter made a clear case for the correlation between environmental surroundings in people's upbringing and how those surroundings shape the way the design. Very interesting topic indeed. Here are some shots from the event.

From ASID Toronto CEU Event with Toby Israel - Sponsored by Tayco

Graphic Design in Toronto: Business Cards

2009-09-19T19:56:00.000-04:00

Even though I concentrate heavily on photography these days, I still do the occasional freelance graphic design job for people in Toronto and the GTA looking for logos, business cards, brochures, ads, and even web site design. This particular images is that of a business card and logo I designed for a high end Audio and Video installation company:

Technical Info and Toronto Wedding Photography on Twitter

2009-09-15T14:14:00.000-04:00

Since social networking is all the rage these days, I decided to find yet another venue to make the posts from this blog available. This time the medium is Twitter, and as you probably have already noticed, there's a Twitter feed already on the right-side bar. So if you crave instant updates, I might not be that person but I'll try my best to keep the blog updated.

Alien Bees vs. Nikon's SB-900: The Battle Continues

2009-09-12T09:04:00.001-04:00

Well, is not really a battle, as each one has their place and time and at Stephanie's and Rene's big day I had to use both. The first and only time that I had to bring the ABs out was for the family and bridal party pictures. This particular situation required quite a bit of power because the couple wanted their images taken under a gazebo on a very bright day (can you say severely back lit?).

The following image was taken with a simple setup of one (1) AB1600 on a medium foldable ocatbox at camera right at 1/2 power triggered via PWs and one (1) AB800 on a 22" beauty dish at camera left at 1/2 power triggered via PWs.

The same setup was used for this larger group image:

By contrast, I just required one (1) SB-900 off camera on a Lumiquest Softbox III set to TTL -0.7 EV and one (1) SB-800 set to TTL 0.0EV positioned across the room (you can see it in the picture). All triggered via Nikon's CLS.

Alien Bees vs. Nikon's SB900: Engagement Session at Toronto's Waterfront with Stephanie and Rene

2009-08-21T21:03:00.003-04:00

It's been awhile since I last posted here but I had a few good reasons to keep me away from the computer. First of all, I got married shortly after shooting Angela and Sunny's wedding and then it got real hectic moving out of my place and moving in with my wife. After the dust had settled I had multiple shoots week after week, so I had been slacking off on my blogging duties for the technical aspects of my shots.

Stephanie and Rene's engagement session was long overdue as our schedules didn't coincide for the longest time. I decided to bring as much gear as I could in order to get the shots that I wanted. Little by little I've perfected my "equipment carrying" technique to the point that I can take a Vagabond II, a B1600, a 13' heavy duty light stand, a 22" Beauty Dish or Octabox depending on the location or effect I'm looking for, three (3) SB-800s and one (1) SB-900, two (2) more smaller light stands, two (2) dual purpose umbrellas, Pocket Wizards, Camera body and three lenses all by my lonesome. More often than not, the convenience of the Speedlights wins over the power of the B1600, but there are times where the SB-900 is not enough to overpower the sun.

Here's a clear example:
While I like this frame, it's clearly underexposed in comparison to the background and for a good reason, I was shooting straight into the sun. I had the SB-900 on camera set to Manual and at full power.

I took a few more frames using the Sb-900 but I made sure I had the sun coming from the side, as opposed to trying to overpower it. This made it a lot easier to underexpose the ambient, as seen here.

or here

I still wanted to have a dramatic sunset as a background so it was time for the B1600 to shine, triggered via PWs and set to 1/4 power. Believe it or not, at 1/2 power it was blowing out the highlights for my subjects:

In this image the 22" beauty dish was powered via a Vagabond II and set at camera left at approximately 45 degrees:

Same setups, with closer crops:

As you can see, the B1600 is very good for those times when you need raw wattage. However, when the sun settles and the ambient light starts to disappear, an SB-900 is more than enough to get the job done, as evidenced in this image:

The setup for this one was as simple as it gets: one (1) Sb-900 on a translucent umbrella set to TTL EV -0.3 triggered via CLS positioned at camera left.

Using Strobist Techniques for Tricky Lighting at Weddings

2009-07-07T03:36:00.002-04:00

This past Friday (July 3, 2009) I shot a wedding at The Berkeley Church in Toronto. The location is beyond great for wedding photography, as it's an 1800s restored church turned into a banquet hall/event venue. The place where the couple held their wedding ceremony is lined with stained glass windows which created severe backlighting. The challenge was in lighting the couple without having the flash wash out the whole scene and killing the light coming through the windows. After trying a few setups a couple of hours before the actual ceremony, I finally settled on an SB-800 fitted with a HONL Speed Grid. positioned at 25-30 degrees camera right, triggered via Nikon's CLS. Here are a few of the resulting images:

Converting your WordPress site for the Iphone using WPTouch Plugin

2009-07-01T21:23:00.000-04:00

I had initially mentioned on this blog a website called Mofuse as a very reliable tool to make your website iPhone and mobile friendly. Well, as good as the Mofuse site is, I was restricted in the number of pages available for viewing other than the posts. That meant that potential clients could only read my posts but couldn't get any other info about the company and pricing info. Enter the WPTouch plugin for Wordpress, which ports your entire Blog, including additional pages for contact info and pricing, to a mobile friendly presentation.

Check them out, they are definitely worth a try.

Classic Black & White Portraits in Toronto

2009-07-01T14:11:00.002-04:00

The countdown is on for our own wedding next Friday, July 10. This past Sunday I had the chance to take a few shots of my future bride, Miriam, and her family. Thanks to the amazing features found in Nik's Silver Efex Pro I was able to process the RAW file for this image to get the initial B&W tones, which was culminated with good old dodging and burning in Photoshop CS4 to give the various gradations of light on Miriam's face.

SEO Optimization for Photographers and Bloggers in General Part 2

2009-06-30T06:44:00.003-04:00

If you want to learn more about submitting your Blog to blog directories, creating sitemaps for Google and other search engines, and other important topics related to search engine optimization, then I highly recommend you go to this site:

The articles are very easy to read and the explanations are quite detailed.

SEO Optimization for Photographers and Bloggers in General Part 1

2009-06-29T06:34:00.003-04:00

After spending countless hours tweaking and messing around with code for both my blogs/sites (this one and juanrojophotography.com), I've picked up a few URLs where you can go to take bits of code and paste into your own. It really don't requires any understanding of programming, you just have to follow the instructions given on the site and you'll be on your way. This is one of those URLs:

This Link gives you a tutorial on how to change the title of your post to appear as the main title of the page. By the default, when you first setup your Blogger blog, the title for your blog appears on every single page, even for archived posts and to top it off it's placed right in front of the post title. From a search engine stand point this is supposed to be quite counterproductive for your search engine rankings, as Google or any other search engine for that matter will only pick up a limited amount of words from the title to index it. If a good chunk of that title is already taken over by the Blog's name, then your post might go unnoticed by Google as the title of the blog has already been indexed by Google.

Juan Rojo Photography Now Has its Own Website

2009-06-27T06:53:00.003-04:00

In order to differentiate a little bit more the technical aspect of this blog from my wedding photography business, I decided to create a separate site altogether. The new Site will concentrate exclusively on displaying images for my clients and hopefully attract new ones, as well via search engine queries or by referrals. The technical geeky side of lighting with detailed Strobist descriptions will remain an integral part of this blog. In other words, if you are another photographer like myself, you want to keep reading this one.

Here's a shot of my new site. Not very fancy at all, but I built it using WordPress focusing more on search engine optimization rather than aesthetics. If you still want to see a better looking website, you can go Here

The Cinematico Project Slideshow - Dramatic Lighting

2009-06-24T06:14:00.003-04:00

This is a self-initiated project, which I started to fine-tune my skills in dramatic lighting, the set will undoubtedly continue to grow.

Juan Rojo Design Has Gone Mobile - Toronto Wedding Photographer

2009-06-19T13:47:00.000-04:00

Since I started using my iPhone I realized that both my website (especially my website) and blog were not optimized for mobile browsing from the iPhone or any other mobile device for that matter.

My website would require heavy redesign to make it mobile compatible, starting with the fact that the Flash-based photo galleries don't work at all in iPhone's Safari. I will address that later, much later. In the meantime, I found a fantastic website called Mofuse, which basically transforms your current Blogger or Wordpress blog to a mobile friendly version. You just need to provide your URL and in seconds you can preview what your blog will look like on a simulated smartphone screen.

If you are already surfing the web on a mobile, you can click HERE to view an optimized mobile version of this blog.

I hope this info is helpful for all you bloggers out there who also want to take advantage of the mobile internet.

Toronto Wedding Photographer: Angela and Sunny's Engagement Session

2009-06-15T21:21:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday (June 13, 2009) we had the pleasure of doing an e-session for Angela and Sunny. Probably the most easy-going and nicest couple I've met to date. Angela decided on The Brickworks as the location was very familiar to both of them, and quite frankly the surrounding area is pretty much ideal for an engagement photo shoot. When I woke up that morning the sky was overcast, which I thought it would be ideal from a lighting standpoint. However, by the time we met up with them at 8:30, the sky had opened up again and it was extremely bright. It was quite challenging trying to avoid harsh shadows but within the first hour, the clouds moved in again and it made things a bit easier for Shelley and I.

Here are some shots from the session:

For the Strobists reading this post most of the lighting was done using Nikon's CLS with one single SB-900 set to Remote mode and triggered via an on-camera SB-800 set to commander. The first 30 mins. or so when it was really bright, I used Pocket Wizards to trigger the SB-900.

Toronto Portrait Photographer - Dramatic Lighting for a Dramatic Situation

2009-05-26T21:56:00.000-04:00

While we don't hear as much about the doom and gloom of the financial crisis and the recession. The rippled can still be felt throughout the North America, people are still being laid off and quite a few have been unemployed since last year. While I consider myself one of the lucky ones, I wanted to convey the feeling of desperation and anxiety using dramatic lighting.

For this particular shot I used the following setup:
One (1) SB-800 on 1/8 HONL speed grid slightly above subject and placed to camera right. Power set at 1/8. One (1) SB-800 at 45 degree angle behind subject to camera left, fitted with a HONL gobo. Power set to 1/16. One (1) SB-900 with same setup as previous but set to camera right. All triggered by SB-800 on camera via CLS.

Post processing consisted of Nik Filters Pro Contrast, Darken/Lighten layers followed by high pass filter in Photoshop, with additional tweaking in Lightroom.

Same Strobist setup as above with post processing using Nik'Color Efex Pro 3.0 and Nik's Silver Efex Pro.

Again, same strobist setup as above and post processing done using Nik's Color Efex Pro 3.0

Commercial Photography in Toronto: Photographing Office Furniture

2009-05-25T21:39:00.001-04:00

The assignment sounded simple but being a portrait photographer, photographing office furniture doesnt sound quite as exciting. Unless, of course, the furniture is on the cutting edge of industrial design and you can place it in a very cool and trendy office environment with plenty of natural light. Well, it doesn't always work that way. The following shot looks like it was taken with plenty of natural light but as you might have guessed already, when you have severe back lighting as it was the case with the large window in the background, the bookcase should have looked quite dark. Enter the Bees! Using a B1600 with a medium foldable octabox as main light placed at camera right and aimed almost straight towards the bookcase to illuminate the compartments and binders, along with an SB-900 with a translucent umbrella set to SU-4 to illuminate the side opposite to the window light.

Also used the Expodisc to set a custom WB, which would allow everything to look like actual natural light. I added the blurred background in Photoshop to put the emphasis on the bookcase.

Event Photography in Toronto: ASID CEU Educational Seminars hosted by Tayco

2009-05-15T12:12:00.001-04:00

On Wednesday, May 13 Tayco hosted the second educational seminar for interior designers. This time, it was Susan Szenasy, Editor in Chief of Metropolis leading the presentation. The thought-provoking session showed the attendees a wide range of social and environmentally-driven projects in architecture and industrial design. As in the previous seminar, I was there to capture images of the evening.

Susan Szenasy during her presentation

Susan Szenasy after the presentation, mingling with the attendees

After the presentation

This attendee was sketching away on his notepad/sketchbook after the presentation

The image above inspired this promotional piece I put together to thank the attendees and prompt them to register for the upcoming events (2 more left in the calendar)

Attendees also participated in a draw for prizes such as this one:

And this one:

After spending the whole night standing up taking pictures, it was time to sit down and enjoy the wine

Wedding Photography in Toronto: Floral Arrangements

2009-05-12T18:49:00.000-04:00

So the agenda for our wedding is right on track, thanks in great part to Miriam's advanced strategic planning. Last Tuesday I went to check out the floral arrangements with her. As soon as I get the info on the lady who put them together, I'll post it here because I would highly recommend her to fulfill any needs you might have for your own wedding.

Here's a close up shot of Miriam holding the bouquet.

Toronto Portrait Photographer - Headshots and Portrait Session with David S.

2009-04-30T20:13:00.000-04:00

This photoshoot was arranged by fellow photographer and friend Jared Wielfaert and he was kind enough to let Shelley and I tag along to help and do some shooting of our own. The model's name Dave and you can find him at Model Mayhem. He was extremely professional and very easy to work with.

One SB-800 camera right (65 degree) at 1/32 power on shoot through umbrella.

One SB-800 camera right (65 degree) at 1/32 power on shoot through umbrella.

AB1600 at 1/2 power on a medium octabox.

SB-800 on shoot-thru umbrella at cam left, 1/32 power.

SB-800 on reflective umbrella with 1/4 CTO gel, high above subject at cam left. WB set to Tungsten

High End Office Environments in Toronto - Tayco's Metropolis conference table and Sona chairs by Boss Design

2009-04-28T10:20:00.001-04:00

As the resident graphic designer/photographer at Tayco I get to work in and photograph office furniture that most people dream about. Ergonomically designed accessories, worksurfaces with enough space to hold all the stuff that sometimes piles up on us and workstations that you actually enjoy working in as opposed to dreadful cubicles. The showroom at Tayco has a section with a large window that allows for plenty of natural light to come through and illuminate most of the setup placed there.

The only challenge faced while capturing this image was to get a neutral white balance that would render the color of the chair as close to white as possible. There was plenty of light coming through the window but it produced severe backlighting, so I had to introduce an artificial source to compensate. I placed an 18% grey card on the table, fired a frame for the reference WB and then took it off and captured the image you see* here.

*After a few adjustments to Levels and Curves in Photoshop.

Toronto Event Photography - ASID CEU Educational Seminar Series at The Gladstone Hotel on Queen St. West. Hosted by Tayco

2009-04-23T17:01:00.000-04:00

Last night I had the pleasure of photographing the first event of Tayco's Educational Seminar Series. Penny Bonda, FASID, LEED AP, and Eco Editor for Interior Design magazine was the featured speaker. The presentation was titled The Green Materials Maze and it was certainly an eye-opener for me. However, the emphasis was on which materials to choose from for interior design projects and how to tell the real deal from hype. You can visit Penny's blog by CLICKING HERE

Here are some shots from the event. The room at The Gladstone was quite interesting on its own. The lighting was quite mixed, with gelled stage lights, natural light coming through the windows and overhead lamps throughout the room. Needless to say, it made post-processing quite interesting.

The shots of the podium were taken using a custom WB from my ExpoDisc

This is when things started to get tricky and I opted to set the WB to Auto and then fiddle with it in post.

Door prizes for the attendees

While the lighting was a bit challenging, the room at The Gladstone had a lot of character and one that I wouldn't mind going back to again and again.

This is the lamp that was hanging on top of the bar.

Since I was on Queen St. West, I decided to grab a few shots on my way back to the car but I was so tired that I literally just took a couple:

Downtown Toronto at Twilight, Dusk and Darkness

2009-04-17T10:05:00.001-04:00

I went on a photowalk last night (Thursday) with fellow photographer Zeekid from TPMG. We were pretty much wondering aimlessly along Queen St. West trying to find inspiration but we found ourselves struggling to find good angles, subject, etc. It was fun nonetheless, as I had not been out taking pictures in awhile and I was itching to just go out and shoot.

Most of the shoots were taken along Queen St. West, with a little turn on Spadina just to return and walk back to Yonge and Queen St.

Have a great weekend!

Scotiabank Theatre

Triumph Bike Rider on Queen St. and Bay

Queen St. West walking east from Spadina

Strobist portrait taken by Zeekid with my camera. Strobist info: One (1) SB-800 as commander on camera, One (1) SB-800 to camera right with CTO gel with diffuser cap and Lumiquest Softbox III. Fired via Nikon's CLS on TTL mode.

Same setup as above but this time it was me taking a picture of Zeekid

Rush Hour Human Traffic in front of Osgoode Hall on Queen St. West

Wedding Photographer in Toronto and the GTA - Wedding Photography and Engagement Sessions

2009-04-03T23:18:00.001-04:00

The high point of the wedding season is upon us again. Let us capture that magical and unforgettable moment in both of your lives. Check out our packages Here. Our different price points give you access to the same high quality wedding and engagement images with a variety of available add-ons. Here are some samples from an engagement session and a wedding:

1. Kevin and Lynsey Engagement Session at The Distillery District

2. Another take from Kevin and Lynsey's Engagement Session at The Distillery District

3. Carrie and Joe's Wedding in Massillon, Ohio

4. Carrie and Joe's Wedding in Massillon, Ohio

5. Carrie and Joe's Wedding in Massillon, Ohio

Toronto Stock Images Now Available Through juanrojodesign.com - Events, Communities, Urban Architecture, Urban Landscapes, Business Environments and m

2009-04-02T11:55:00.001-04:00

As a photographer, my image collection has been growing exponentially and I've decided to make the best selection of all those images available as Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free stock images for Editorial and Advertising purposes. If you can't find what you are looking for, feel free to e-mail me at juan@juanrojodesign.com and let me know what your image requirements are.

Salsa on St. Clair West set now available for Purchase

2009-04-02T07:24:00.001-04:00

Pictures from the Salsa on St. Clair festival in Toronto now available for editorial and advertising purposes:

The Beaches Jazz Festival 2008 Image Gallery Now Available

2009-03-26T16:19:00.000-04:00

The entire Beaches Jazz Festival 2008 Gallery is now available as Rights-Managed images for editorial purposes. You can access the whole Gallery here: http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/juanrojodesign/gallery-show/G0000A4YICQFjTpc/

This is the image that made it to the section of Toronto Magazine on Queen St. East

The one and only Johnny Max of The Johnny Max Band

Imbayakunas is another staple band of any Toronto street fest. I've personally seen these guys at Taste of the Danforth, Taste of Little Italy and The Beaches Jazz Festival

Jeanine Mackie of the Jeanine Mackie Band had a powerful voice that kept me shooting her band longer that I had anticipated

Image Archive Now Available for Stock Photography and Prints

2009-03-25T14:01:00.000-04:00

Due to the growing number of images in my collection and encouraged by the recent purchase of one of them for print, I've decided to incorporate the e-commerce functionality of Photoshelter to my website. In time, I will create specialized collections better suited for stock photography but for the time being, you can access my current files in three different ways:

1. Go to my website: juanrojodesign.com and click on any of the images displayed there, which will take you the Photoshelter space for that image. In there, you'll be able to (options for each image might vary): A.Purchase it as a rights-managed image B. Purchase it as a Royalty-free image or C. Purchase a print thru EZ Labs (U.S.) or Pikto (Canada).

2. Go straight to my Photoshelter site:
http://pa.photoshelter.com/c/juanrojodesign
and browse the Galleries or perform a search

3. Perform a search of my Photoshelter archive from my website. In the upper left corner of my websit you'll see a Search box with the Photoshelter logo. In there, you can input your search string, which will bring up results found in my archive. If nothing comes up, it means I haven't photographed it yet. I always welcome suggestions and feedback on the type of images that you are looking for, as opposed to me trying to push images that might not have any value for art directors, photo editors, graphic designers, etc.

This is my somewhat customized Photoshelter archive:

Night Photography in Downtown Toronto - South East Corner of Yonge St. and Queen St.

2009-03-14T09:41:00.000-04:00

The following shots were taken almost two years ago with a Nikon D80 and the Sigma 10-20mm (I miss that lens). When I took them I knew they had potential but it wasn't until now that I was able to bring my vision to life with the help of Nik's Silver Efex Pro (I love Nik's software:Viveza, Color Efex Pro and Silver Efex Pro). Both shots were taken with the camera set on a tripod as the Sigma is terribly slow in low light.

1. Coming home from work and some grocery shopping. RAW conversion in Adobe Lightroom, Pro Contrast Applied in Color Efex Pro, then bleach Bypass with modifications, and finally Silver Efex Pro.

2. Waiting for the light to turn. RAW convesion in Lightroom, Pro Contrast in Color Efex Pro, then Silver Efex Pro.

Testing the Lumiquest Snoot

2009-02-28T21:21:00.000-05:00

What can I say, I'm a sucker for dramatic light and any gizmo that allows me to get that kind of results and it also happens to be very portable it's a good candidate for a place in my camera bag. Last week, I purchased a Lumiquest Snoot and it wasn't until today that I got the chance to test it. I'm dying the try these tools (Snoot and the HONL grids) outside but the frigid temperatures in Toronto have kept me indoors for most of February.

The setup for the accompanying shots was very simple, just one (1) SB-800 with the snoot on at 1/32 power and triggered via Pocket Wizards.

1. Light set at camera left, slightly above subject, post processing in Lightroom for the cross-processed look

2. Light set at camera left, slightly above subject, post processing in Lightroom for the cross-processed look

3. Light behind camera and slightly to the left, post processing in Photoshop via Nik's Color Efex Pro with additional refinements in Adobe Lightroom

Testing the HONL Grids

2009-02-24T21:09:00.000-05:00

Ever since David Hobby featured them in his blog, I had been contemplating getting the HONL grids (1/8 and 1/4), as well as a speed trap to attach them to my SB-800. Last week I finally broke down and ordered them and they arrived in the mail today. These are my first test shots with the 1/8 and 1/4 grids. as well as the speed trap. They basically concentrate and soften the light beam from the speedlight giving some very dramatic results. In these shots there's not a whole lot of ambient light because I killed it with aperture and shutter speed but I can already envision quite a few cool applications for the new acquisitions:

1. SB-800 with 1/8 HONL grid above subject at camera left. Power set at 1/32, triggered via Nikon's CLS. Post processed via Nik's Color Efex Pro

2. SB-800 with 1/8 HONL grid above subject at camera left. Power set at 1/32, triggered via Nikon's CLS. Post processed via Nik's Color Efex Pro

3. SB-800 with 1/4 HONL grid above subject at camera left, small golden reflector handheld by subject at camera right. Power set at 1/8, triggered via Nikon's CLS. Post processed via Nik's Color Efex Pro

First Published Image

2009-02-19T20:07:00.000-05:00

Back in December of 2008 I was contacted by one of the staff at Hambly and Woolley Inc. She was the project coordinator for a publication for Tourism Toronto called Toronto Magazine. She had found one of my pictures from the Beaches Jazz Festival and wanted to use it for a section of the magazine on the Queen St. Streetcar line. At the time the hired photojournalist, Simon Hayter, had started working on the photo essay (I'm assuming late fall), the Beaches Jazz Festival had already passed so they wanted to use my picture to fill that void. Needless to say I was pretty excited about being published for the first time. It's not the front cover but you gotta start somewhere, right?

I picked up the magazine last Friday from the offices of Hambly and Woolley Inc. You'll probably find this magazine at an information centre or some other tourism related office and it's also being distributed overseas by Tourism Toronto.

Here's the front cover of the magazine:

My photo is the one on the right hand top corner of page 35

The Beauty of Available Light

2009-02-14T00:05:00.000-05:00

While I'm a big fan of the Strobist movement, sometimes the best light is the one that is available, whether it's beautiful sun light or the light coming from a lamp on the ceiling of a greasy spoon diner.

In the following two shots the different sources of light (big windows at the front end of the restaurant and plenty of artificial light inside)in this diner provided for some very interesting colors, which were further enhanced with Nik Color Efex Pro Film Effects.

Then there's always the beautiful light produced by the last rays of the sun before the sunset

Warmer Weather, Sick Again

2009-02-07T15:11:00.000-05:00

Well, today is well above the freezing mark and I'm spending it inside my apartment as I've come down sick with a cold again. That can only mean one thing, either go through old shots or do self-portraits. Well, let's just say that I look just like a feel, which is not a good thing. I found a couple of old shots that never made it to Flickr because they needed some post processing added:

On this one I had to clone out a good chunk of a translucent umbrella that was showing up on the left upper corner of the frame:

This one needed a bit more colour and contrast added to it:

I also added more colour and created a blurred background for this one:

Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0

2009-02-01T11:12:00.000-05:00

I've been experimenting with this wonderful package for the past couple of days and I can honestly say now that it's become a regular tool y my post processing arsenal. Today I decided to go for a random photowalk, which took initially to Cherry Beach near downtown Toronto. It was a cold morning but not as cold as previous ones when I'd end taking self-portraits and playing with different lighting setups. Anyways, I tend to digress. Here are a few samples of what you can achieve with some of the filters present in Color Efex Pro 3.0 also in conjunction with Nik's Viveza:

Before:

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

I did screw up the landscape shots a bit, as I left the ISO at 800. Thank God the D3's 800 ISO is very clean.

Studying Light

2009-01-27T22:19:00.000-05:00

Today I decided to add a few more speedlights into the mix. The following frames were shot using a couple of variations of the following setup:

The post-processing for this picture involved a little bit of everything. Converting the NEF file to TIFF using Capture NX, adding a couple of color control points to bump up the saturation of the blue background and add a bit of brightness to the eyes. The TIFF file was brought into Adobe Lightroom and then edited using Photoshop CS4, where a couple of filters (Glamour Glow and High Key) from Color Efex Pro 3.0 were applied. The processed TIFF was then brought back into Lightroom where a variation of Matt K's Nostalgia preset was applied.

More Selfies with Lumiquest Softbox III and Alien Bees

2009-01-26T22:35:00.000-05:00

The setup for these shots was just the same as the one for the previous post. The only difference being that the background SB-800 was substituted by a B1600 at 1/32 power with a green gel over the reflector. Both triggered by Pocket Wizards.

Silliness with the Lumiquest Softbox III

2009-01-24T17:11:00.000-05:00

This is pretty much what happens when it's -20C outside and you just don't feel like braving the weather to grab a few shots. I set up one (1) SB-800 with the Lumiquest Softbox III at a 90 degree angle above and slightly in front of me. I tried initially to set it up right above me but it kept producing a very pronounced hot spot on my forehead. I finally decided to move the softbox slightly in front and I bounced the light back to my face with a gold reflector held at chest level. The speedlight was set to manual at 1/32 power and triggered via Pocket Wizards. The few shots that have a blue background were shot using another SB-800 with two (2) blue gels and aimed at the curtains of my condo. The yellow lines in the background were provided courtesy of the sun coming through the curtains. The background SB-800 was also set to 1/32 power and also triggered via PWIIs.

Fixing White Balance in Post

2009-01-22T22:28:00.000-05:00

If you have the means to purchase one, please get an ExpoDisc. It's money well spent that goes towards reducing the time you spend in front of the computer fixing stuff you could've done in camera. However, if purchasing yet another piece of equipment is just not possible then there's always Photoshop. Probably most of you know this little piece of info already but just in case, here it goes...The following images of my fiancee and I were taken by one of the facilitators at the marriage prep course we are attending. White Balance was set to auto on the D3, and as amazing as the AWB on the D3 (gets it right 90% of the time) is, it can be thrown off sometimes. This is one of those cases:

As you can see, the image is a bit on the warm side

The easiest way to fix this in post is to click on the White Balance Tool (I) on the Camera Raw tool panel and cick on a white or gray point in the image:

I clicked on the whitest portion of my shirt and this was the resulting image:

Now, this is way too "cool" for my taste so I proceeded to go to the Camera Calibration Panel and from the drop down menu, I selected the Camera Portrait profile and obtained a more pleasing result:

If this is still a bit too cool for your liking, you can go back to the WB temperature slider and tweak it a bit.

If you have a few other photos that need to have the same WB settings applied, you can proceed to save the settings for this photo by clicking on the drop down menu located to the right of the word Basic, in the basic panel:

From the drop down menu select "Save Settings" and it will allow you to save the setting from this photo to a file, which you can use by clicking on "Load Settings" from the same drop down menu. Just make sure you use the same settings for the same scene/room where the lighting was identical otherwise you might get very undesirable results.

This is another picture from that night, with the WB correction applied as well as the Lighten/Darken and Glamour Glow filters from Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0

Diversity

2009-01-19T09:33:00.000-05:00

Ever since I moved to Toronto, I've been fascinated with the ethnic diversity of the city. It's quite amazing that so many people from so many different cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs live together in peace on a daily basis. As a photographer, you try to convey that cosmopolitan atmosphere of our city whenever we are are out and about taking pictures. Yesterday (Sunday, Jan. 18), I had such opportunity. A group of students denominated "Students for Israel" were holding a rally at Dundas Square in front of the Eaton Centre. For those who happen to read this blog and don't live in Toronto, Dundas Square is on the East side of Yonge St., which is the main street that divides the city on down the middle. While the rally took place on the East side, on the West side there were a group of Muslim students handing out literature on Islam and also protesting the Israeli offensive in Gaza. While the police were out in force for most of the rally, when it was "officially" over they pretty much left the scene and people from the East side came over to talk to the protesters on the West side. Amazingly enough, people just voiced their opinions, some got into heated discussions, but violence never played a role. That's why I love Toronto! Here are a few shots from the day:

Nikon Porn and the awesomeness of fast glass

2009-01-10T07:49:00.000-05:00

Last night (Friday, Jan.9th) I attended a an outing of my local camera group (tpmg.ca) non-exclusive for Nikon users. As you can imagine, everyone brought out their gear and were ready to play. I thought I had some decent glass until people started pulling out the big guns and also the small ones but very fast. It's probably the first and last time (until the next meet-up) that I got to play with the very rare Noct-Nikkor 58mm f1.2 or handled first hand a Nikon D3x. People were definitely not messing around when the organizer said "bring your gear". Here are a few shots from the night using said optic pearls:

1. Shot using Noct-Nikkor 58mm f1.2. If you are not used to manual focus through the viewfinder, I picked up a tip from fellow TPMGer Charlie to use Live View when in need of precise focus. It worked every single time.

2. Another shot with the Noct-Nikkor 58mm f1.2

3. This one was taken with a rare Nikon 28mm f1.4 prime. Amazing what fast glass and the clean high ISO (4000 in this case) of the D3 can do with just a tiny bit of available light. This place was quite dark.

4. Shot with another rare piece of glass, a manual focus 35mm f1.4

5. This one was shot with a good old Nikon 50mm f1.4. I tried the new G version and really didn't notice any difference in performance but then again, I'm no pixel peeper.

6. The only D3x at the outing and Shelley wished it was hers ;-)

Happy New Year Everyone!

2008-12-31T09:21:00.000-05:00

2008 is coming to an end and I must admit it's been a good year in all aspects of my life. On the photography and graphic design side of things it's been a great learning year! I got to meet a lot of interesting people and I learned a lot from some of them. My photographs have changed, from lots of landscapes and urban scenes to flash photography with Model Mayhem models. I did a lot of graphic design work for a natural supplements company, and all of it ended being published as advertising pieces in several trade publications. One of my photos got purchased for a tourism publication, which is due out in Jan. 09. Looking back, it was a great year!

So here's my list of professional freelancing goals for 2009 so I can go back to them throughout the year and see where I am standing at that particular point in time:

1. Heavily promote my wedding photography offering.
2. Get at least three (3) bookings (weddings) for the early fall season.
3. Get published again.
4. Generate at least $10,000 in freelance income.
5. Complete at least one (1) full scale personal project.

Ok, I think that's it for now. Last but not least, this is my last picture of 2008 with the accompanying setup shot below. The white balance used was a custom WB obtained with a reading from my ExpoDisc.

Available Natural Light

2008-12-28T00:49:00.000-05:00

This shot was taken using available light from a window coming through a curtain made out of some cloth material, which acted as the perfect light diffuser. My cousin's face looks pretty soft when viewed at 100% because at the time I was using a Sigma 30mm f1.4. Little did I know that this lens, as with anything Sigma, had quality issues and when used in AF mode pretty much focused on anything BUT your focus point.

The picture was further post processed in PS CS4 using Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0's Draken/Lighten and Glamour Glow filters.

Available Light Using Strobist Principles

2008-12-26T09:18:00.000-05:00

While the Strobist mantra is all about using off-camera flash, what happens when all you are allowed to use is available light? I found myself shooting my church's Christmas Pageant last weekend and while I could use off-camera flash, setting it up was a whole different problem, as the children were moving all the time and coming in and out of the "stage" from different directions. The biggest problem was the lighting in the church, big lamps place in line beaming down at a 90 degree angle. In other words, a lot of kids were going to show up with "raccoon eyes" in the pictures. So here's the step by step problem solving scenario for this type of situation:

Problem 1: What white balance do I use? Too warm and you'll end up with a lot of color correcting in Photoshop, dial it down too much and you'll end up with the same problem. Save yourself some grief and PP time and get an ExpoDisc (Neutral).

Problem 2: Raccoon eyes on the kids from the light source pointing straight down over them. I found the best case scenario was when the kids were looking ahead with their heads tilted up at 15-20 degree angle (as if they were looking for their parents in the crowd). The perfect case scenario was when they were holding sheets of paper to sing their parts. The paper acted as a weak but "better than nothing" reflective source.

Here's the post processed version of the singing angel. Post processing to provide a more "angelical" look was done in PS3 using Nik's Color Efex Pro 3.0:

This is the lighting setup for it, I guess you could duplicate it with a diffused or bare strobe placed right above and slightly in front of the forehead to provide a better bounce on the sheet of paper:

More Lumiquest Softbox III Testing

2008-12-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

Given the harsh winter (and it just officially started this Sunday) I really haven't or rather dared to test this unit outdoors, so I took it along to my camera club's holiday party, which took place at a local pub. I slapped it on my SB-800 set to slave and added another SB-800 to my camera on commander mode. I added the diffuser that comes with the SB-800 to the strobe that had the Lumiquest Softbox III on it to diffuse the light even more. The settings on the camera were as follows: F4, at 1/15 shutter speed and ISO 1000, flash set to rear sync, which is probably the key to the whole setup (thanks for the tip Taylor)

As you can imagine, being indoors and in a dark setting to top it off, the trick resides in positioning the softbox just at the right distance away from the subject, otherwise you walk a thin line between "hot zones" around the face or an underexposed subject. For this particular photo, the power on the SB-800 was set at 1/128 and I still had to handhold the strobe above and behind my head to get a decent exposure on the faces with the minimal amount of blown highlights on the cheeks and forehead. Even then, I had to go into Photoshop and fix/eliminate a few.

Skin smoothing and Glamour Glow were added via Nik's Color Efex Pro 3.0

This next photo was taken using the same technique, but using a different post-processing technique in Lightroom:

Overall, I'm very pleased with the results obtained with the Lumiquest unit so far. I won't be putting the translucent umbrellas up for sale on Craigslist any time soon but it's good to know that whenever I feel lazy enough not to carry around my tripod bag (which I use to carry my umbrellas and light stands)there's a very portable alternative available.

Lumiquest Softbox III

2008-12-16T21:26:00.000-05:00

I had heard many good reviews about this portable unit for close range portraits and such. David H. had nothing but good things to say about it so I decided to break down and buy it since it's very affordable. I had the opportunity to test it out today with a new co-worker for whom we needed to do a company announcement accompanied by a photo. I dropped the ambient exp. by about 1 stop and let TTL metering figure out the rest. I will try to post side by side comparisons with a shoot-through umbrella but right now it looks like it delivers as promised.

Lightroom Post processing

2008-12-10T10:02:00.000-05:00

Some people at Flickr asked me how the post processing of this image was done:

As I mentioned in the Description section, it was all done within Lightroom and used Matt Kloskowski's Sin City preset as a starting point. Okay, so I'll shut up for now and present you with the different settings used in Lightroom to achieve the look shown above.

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3.

Step 4.

Step 5.

Step 6.

Starting Image:

The Big Chill is Coming

2008-11-10T19:40:00.000-05:00

Even though the winter doesn't officially start until Dec. 21st, it sure felt like we were deep in it his past weekend. Jacqueline, came out all the way from Vancouver for a photography-filled week with various local photogs. Neil and I were one of those lucky ones who managed to capture her vibrant personality on digital. The weather was better than initially forecasted, as it didn't rain on us until after we were done but it was cold nonetheless.

We set up equipment just outside the Distillery District (Toronto, Canada) in front of an abandoned restaurant called Canary. Cops stopped by to check out what we were doing but they were okay with us taking pics, they did stick around for about twenty mins. to make sure we were in fact taking pics, as opposed to something illegal.

The setup for all the shots in the set was simple, two lights most of the time positioned at 45 degree angles in front of the model. One of the lights (B1600) was fitted to a 22" Beauty Dish and used as a main light while the second (B800) had a Paul C. Buff medium foldable Octabox attached to it and used for fill.

The final look of the images was achieved through Adobe Lightroom with further tweaks in Photoshop CS3. Here's a before and after:

BEFORE

AFTER

The Learning Curve

2008-10-30T17:03:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you think you have the shot, you look at the LCD screen quickly to check but you really don't pay too much attention because you get caught up in getting more poses and more shots. Well, this is a perfect example of a shot that had the right lighting but a hard shadow ruined the whole thing. The hard shadow thrown across her neck came from the pose and I didn't notice it until I opened the file in Lightroom (aren't you happy when that happens?). Anyways, at least it gives the model an nice decapitated look :-) Have a happy Halloween everyone!

Think Post Processing First

2008-10-24T10:38:00.001-04:00

If you read through internet forums as well as trade mags such as DPP (Digital Photo Pro), pros relying heavily on post processing for their trademark look seem to agree on one thing, you have to see the end result in your head first before you can even touch the camera. Having a pretty good idea of your concept and how you want to execute it will help you a great deal in setting up lighting and directing your subject. Going into a photoshoot with no particular aim or idea has proven quite fruitless for me and more often than not I end up scrambling for different post processing techniques trying to bring a dull image to life by the miracle of Photoshop.

This is one such example, I went through 50+ shots after this photo shoot and this was the only image that caught my attention. From there, I realized the lighting was ideal for a certain PP technique and that was it. Needless to say the models never made final selects out of the proofs, which tells me that they weren't very happy with what I shot. Live and learn.

On Location - High Park. Toronto, Canada

2008-10-22T14:28:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, fellow photographer and Strobist, Neil (http://www.flickr.com/people/neilvv/) had arranged a photo shoot with Lora (http://www.modelmayhem.com/LoraIngram) from Model Mayhem. Finding a suitable location was a bit of a challenge as there were plenty of people everywhere due to the nice, sunny weather. We ended up at High Park, hoping to get some fall colors. The setup was pretty simple, an AB1600 on a 22" beauty dish as main light powered by a Vagabond II portable battery and a Speedotron head powered by a Speedotron battery pack as fill. The AB1600 was placed at camera right and in front of the model, while the Speedotron was placed to camera left slightly behind the model.

1. This shot was one of the first test shots we did, without the fill light.

2. This one incorporated the Speedotron as fill light.

Bundle up, it's getting colder up here.

Alien Bees and Speedlights Comparison

2008-10-15T16:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday (Tuesday, October 14th 2008) fellow strobist Shelley and I embarked on a little test of lighting and props on the lake shore of Toronto. We started out using an AB1600 on a medium octabox and tried to balance the ambient light but the problem was that the light was fading rapidly and the AB became to powerful (even at its lowest setting) so the highlights were constantly being blown out. The obvious option was to stand further away from the light, but as you can see in this example Shelley was not standing in the best of terrains and it just got plain dangerous as you tried to step further away from the octabox:

In this sample, the WB was set to Flash and the ISO was at 2000 in order to capture the ambient light without a tripod. The picture control was set to landscape (I had left it that way from a previous outing the day before)

As you can see, in the sample above, we were not quite capturing that dark gloomy mood we were looking for, so we decided to switch over to SB-800s triggered via Nikon CLS. To get the bluish color on the ambient, we dropped the WB to around 2600K (temp) and put on a daylight balance gel on the off-camera SB-800. The power output on the off-camera flash was 1/64th. Note: bring a flash light with you to find a focus point, otherwise use a cellphone as shown in this pic.

Looking back on the shot, we should've set up a second flash to light the upper body but I still like the way this one came out.

TGIF - Strobing Thursday

2008-10-10T07:03:00.000-04:00

I was a little sick of spending the evenings at home watching TV so I decided to go out last night for a street shooting session, which later evolved into a Strobist session. I called fellow strobist Shelley (http://www.flickr.com/photos/shelleyannmc/)to see if she wanted to join me in my excursion. The night was kind of a bust because it was windy and the umbrellas kept getting knocked over, to the point we gave up on them and tried to go with bare flashes. However, the bigger problem was the lack of planning on my part so we were just aimlessly scouting locations and trying to shoot at the same time. Lesson learned for the day: SCOUT YOUR LOCATION FIRST!

This shot was taken by Shelley and it was probably one of the best ones of the night. The technical setup is as follows: ISO pumped up to 2000 and WB set to 3700K while using a CTO gel on the SB-800 positioned at camera left and set to 1/128 power with the diffuser cap on. We tried using umbrellas but the wind kept knocking them down.

I was so frustrated with the lack of results for the night that I proceeded to walk back to Dundas Square (Toronto, Canada) and shoot a crew of break dancers that I had seen earlier. No strobes this time, I just relied on the amazing high ISO capabilities of the Nikon D3. All shots were taken at ISO 3200

Have a happy thanksgiving! (Canada)

No Pictures for you today!

2008-10-08T19:28:00.000-04:00

Well, I had my mind set on a photowalk around the downtown core today and figured the rain wouldn't be that bad. Boy, was I wrong! By 5pm it was very clear that I was going to have to cancel my plans and wait until tomorrow. I took this shot before leaving the parking lot of my office. About an hour and half later I made it home. Tomorrow will be another day and hopefully better pictures will accompany my post.

Nuit Blanche 2008

2008-10-06T21:05:00.000-04:00

I had never been to this event before so I thought it would be a great opportunity to take a lot of pictures. I even envisioned running short on memory cards but by the end of the night (or morning) I had only taken less than a hundred shots. I think it's time to get back to Strobism and leave street shooting to those that are actually good at at it. I'm looking forward to October 18th, when I'll get together with fellow strobist Neil () for a photo shoot with a model. I think it's time to start pushing the envelope of creativity and lighting possibilities and I hope it will show in my next post. Having said that, here are a few shots from Saturday night at Scotiabank's Nuit Blanche 2008:

1. Stairs to Heaven

2. Anatomy of Kink

3. The Classic C

4. City Hall

5. Ice Cream Blues

6. Dancer on a streetcar window

Lighting on Location

2008-05-19T20:11:00.000-04:00

Have you ever visited the Stobist page on Flickr and wondered in amazement how those really cool shots were engineered? Well, here's a quick post on the setup and the resulting image:

1. The Setup

2. The Result

This setup (check out the notes on the Flickr image) is not for the starving student but it sure beats the more expensive stuff (Profoto, etc.) in price. Have a great week!

The Creative Process

2008-03-11T09:39:00.000-04:00

If you ever found yourself stuck in a creative rot then Flickr is the place to reconnect with your creative self. For a site that started as a medium for uploading family pics, etc., the evolution has been rather dramatic. Nowadays, if you spend the time to look for talent and inspiration you will find it and you will definitely be surprised by the quality of it, so before this post gets too long here are some examples of the people whose Photostreams are just jaw dropping amazing:

PROVERBS 31:10
http://www.flickr.com/photos/proverbs31/

Chris Kovacs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chriskovacs/

Zuan
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zuan/

Peter Bowers
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_fabulous/

Rodolphe Simeone
http://www.flickr.com/photos/all_the_names_are_already_taken_pfff/

Tiny Dancer
http://www.flickr.com/photos/disneyprincess/

Simon Pais-Thomas
http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonpais/

These are just a few of the many talented photographers you can find on Flickr. Visit their photostreams when you feel low on inspiration.

Photoshop Retouching for Fashion Shoots

2008-02-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

Well, most pros actually leave this part of the job to a photo retoucher but if you are on a budget, actually have the time to do it and have some basic knowledge of Photoshop here are a few steps that you can follow to achieve that "magazine look":

1. Do not go crazy with the retouching, subtle changes work best:

2. Start by zooming in on the problem areas:

3. Copy the background layer by hitting Ctr/Cmd+J then create a new layer and select the Spot Healing Tool (J):

4. Make sure that the box "Sample All Layers" is selected in the File menu:

5. Select the problem spots and make sure that the circle (cursor) is bigger than the problem area. You can increase or decrease the size of the circle by hitting the left or right bracket key. Click on the problem area and drag the cursor until you see a black spot form over the spot and then let go.

6. In this particular example, the image could use a bit more highlights. Select Curves from the Adjustment Layers (circle half black and half white) menu at the bottom of the layers palette and adjust the entire RGB curve as follows:

7. We did remove spots and blemishes from the model's skin but further smoothing might be needed and this can be accomplished by using a localized blur. Create a new blank layer and then while clicking on the Ctrl/Cmd key select Merge Visible from the Layers drop down menu. This will bring up a new image copy with all the properties of the layers below. Select Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur from the Filters menu:

This process will add a global blur to the whole image but you want to apply it locally so add a Mask Layer (third item from the left at the bottom of the layers palette)and invert it (Ctr/Cmd+I). Now select the Brush Tool (set foreground color to White) and adjust the settings of the Brush Tool as follows:

8. The final step (for this image) includes a slight sharpening of the eyes and lips. Once again, create a new layer and then while pressing the Ctrl/Cmd key, select Merge Visible from the Layers palette drop down menu. Select the Pen Tool (P) and start carefully selecting the eyes and the lips. If you have no experience with the Pen tool then use the Polygonal lasso tool, which is not as accurate when drawing curved shapes:

9. Once the selections have been made go to the Paths tab in the layers palette and select the Work Path layer. Once selected, click on "Load Path As Selection" (third item from the left at the bottom of the Layers palette. Then hit Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+I to invert the selection and go to Filters>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask. The amount of sharpening depends on the resolution of the image:

10. Your final layer structure should look something like the following. Don't forget to rename your layers so you know where to go to back to in case changes need to be made:

Candids and Street Photography

2007-12-17T22:07:00.000-05:00

I must admit it, I still take a candid every now and then but they are increasingly scarce in my Flickr Photostream. I think there's a certain invasion of privacy involved in it and a detestable "paparazzi" feel to it. In the words of Michael Grecco (author of Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait): "... I do not use the shoot-people-from-a-distance-with-a-long-lens approach. This does not work and is strictly for amateurs who are afraid to engage their subjects". A lot of people would beg to differ with Michael's view but in my opinion he's right on many levels. Photographing a stranger does not convey any emotions other than the interpretation of the person behind the lens. While some of those spontaneous captures might be amusing and compelling at times, they do not tell a story. Having said that, sometimes the image calls for the right mood and the right person at the right time:

Taken on Saturday, December 15th, 2007 after leaving the Bedford Academy. It was just a few hours before the city of Toronto got hit by a snow storm, which dumped 25 cms of snow on the ground. It was a cold night and maybe the prospect of spending all day Sunday at home prompted this lone soul to roam the streets in search of a pub that would provide some comfort. Again, that's my interpretation, maybe this guy didn't want to go out in the first place but he got talked into it by his friends and he was just thinking: "damn it, I should have stayed at home".

Toronto and Ontario Landscape Images Available for sale as Rights-Managed and Royalty-Free stock images

2007-12-11T11:58:00.001-05:00

You can view the whole gallery here

I've always been fascinated by landscape photography but always found a good excuse not to take those sort of captures myself: "Oh, I live in the city, there aren't many places where I can take interesting landscape shots, blah, blah"

I recently decided to stop looking for excuses and start looking for good locations within the city to setup something somewhat similar to what I had seen in magazines. The few things that I've learned so far and which I think are pretty much standard for this type of photography are as follows:

1. Scout your location first. I live in Toronto, Canada and it can get pretty cold in the winter so if you are crazy enough like me and decide to go outdoors shooting on a cold day, you better have some sort of concept in your head of the shot you are looking for, otherwise the temperatures won't allow you too much time to walk around while trying to figure out what you want to shoot.

2. Get up early or wait for a sunset. Dramatic skies are more evident and have better colour at this time of the day.

Here are a couple of samples all of them taken early in the morning: