Expressive Little Girl - My Vision

Last Saturday I went to a neighborhood picnic where some of the teenage girls were offering free face painting to the younger children -- can you say, "Photo Op?!". (See my "photostream" to view eight other images in this series.)

After having her face painted, this little girl made a funny face to her friend who was standing nearby.

Almost missed it... I nearly lost this shot because I didn't have my camera set to my standard default settings -- which is to keep my camera on Aperture Priority, and my lens set for the widest aperture.

Establishing a default setting: I also keep my ISO at 640 and my white balance on "Average" (my image file is always set for Camera RAW, with a Large JPEG for rapid reviews). With this setting, I'm ready for most action situations that I come upon. By using Aperture Priority, with the the camera/lens set to widest possible aperture, the camera will automatically give me the fastest shutter speed for that aperture and ISO. (I realize that "640" is a pretty high default ISO, but its one that gives me "controllable" noise with this camera, and enough speed to handle most surprise and unplanned situations.)

With people shots, you rarely need a lot of depth of field. In fact, shallow focus is most often preferred. But what you do want is a fast shutter speed to stop action and camera shake (even if you have image stabilization). Except with landscapes, architecture, and other "tripod" type shots, having a lot of depth of field is not as important as having SOMETHING tack sharp by using the fastest shutter speed possible. (Remember, you can have great DOF, but if the shutter speed is not fast enough to stop the action or freeze your camera movement, you will still have a soft and blurry image.)

I had done a landscape shot the day before where I did need a lot of depth of field. Instead of changing all my camera settings to my standard defaults before putting my camera away, I had left the F-stop at f13. If my next shot had been a still life or another landscape, this would not have been a problem. That's because these type of shots are often quite relaxed, where I have time to THINK about what I'm doing. However, when I see a candid portrait opportunity developing, I sometimes jump into it and start clicking away before the expressions flee -- like I did last Saturday with this little girl.

Luckily, even at f13, I still had a shutter speed of 1/100 of a second, and I caught her fleeting expression without any head movement. The extra depth of field in this shot created post-production problems, though. It took over 30 minutes to blur the background in Photoshop (having to create a mask around her hair), so that it was no longer distracting and competing for attention.

Another great example of using Aperture Priority and the widest aperture possible is this helicopter shot of the Chicago skyline by Trey Ratcliff. This photo was taken at the lens' widest aperture (f2.8), giving the camera an 1/8,000 second shutter speed with an ISO of 800. Here's the full resolution file on Flickr if you want to view the incredible detail of this image (yes, it's a little noisy in the shadow areas, but he GOT the image).

You are invited to see my "Most Interesting" images on Flickr (based on popularity stats).

Piles of Money - My Vision

This iconic photo of piles and stacks of cash (US dollars and coins) has been one of my best "conceptual" stock photography sellers. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

Although it looks like a ton of money, there is only $10,000.00 dollars here in real money. (Even so, we were happy to get this much cash safely back into the bank when the shot was over!). Those are real money bags (with coins) from the Denver Mint and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. And those are real $100 bills (before the recent design change). We were able to style this shot using only 10 grand because many of the stacks of $100 bills have ones underneath. It takes a couple of hours to style a shot like this, but the stock photo revenue it produces is worth the effort.

This is my third image in this "money series".

You are invited to see my "Most Interesting" images on Flickr (based on popularity stats).

Stack of $1000 Dollar Bills - My Vision

This is a real stack of U.S. $1,000 bills, with a little wide-angle distortion added for impact. Well, sort of...

Full Disclosure: The top bill really is genuine (and as a collector's item, is worth much more than $1000); however the bills underneath are $1 bills -- they were added just for effect. A friend lent the bill for this still life (and stood by while I photographed his little treasure). This has been a great conceptual stock photo seller.

Lighting & Post-production: The stack was lighted by one large (48"x48") softbox strobe, about three feet from the pile of money. The white seamless paper worked as its own reflector "fill" for the soft shadow effect. (This type of product lighting allows graphic designers to easily "float" the image anywhere on a page. In post-production, you have the responsibility to select any of the not-so-white background and clip it to pure white within Photoshop's "Levels" -- being careful to feather the selection around the shadow area.)

Interesting tidbits: The $1000 bill featured a portrait of Grover Cleveland from 1928 to 1946. Today, the U.S. Treasury Department no longer prints large denominations. In 1929, a $1,000 bill would have been equal to $12,440.55 in our current purchasing power!

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

You are invited to see my "Most Interesting" images on Flickr (based on popularity stats).