Category Archives: Close-up

Its Christmas Time

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This image of a store display in the small town of Lititz Pa is just one more challenge I set for myself taking photos. I love the various scenes you see around Christmas time in this town and window decorating contests keep shop owners busy at this time of year. The challenge was to capture something half decent,while having to do everything from the sidewalk outside and while the store was closed and dark. Reflections everywhere on the glass from street lamps,traffic and other businesses was my first challenge and trying to light things was my second challenge.

The clocks were lit by flash at various angles through the windows,all the while blocking reflections bouncing toward the camera. A wide-angle used up close allowed me to compose the shot and achieve some balance and allowed me to see several clocks in the store.This was shot at five thirty in the morning so I had time to experiment without bothering anyone.The one thing I wish were different is the dark area in the bottom middle. There were various items piled on the table,which did not look good lit,so I left them in shadow.

A Tasty Dickens Village

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dickens-gingerbread

 

Every year a local architectural firm takes a week out of their busy schedule to create a unique gingerbread village of some sort. The display is always incredible,with each employee vying to claim first place. The edible display is always full of humor,intricate design and detail and covers an area approximately ten feet by eight feet.It has scenes inside the buildings,lights, and they are generous enough to allow the public to come view it on certain nights. My good friend Larry is the official photographer for this project and he is gracious enough to allow me to shoot on the night he does his shooting. This little vignette from one corner features a bakery,complete with hot cross buns in the window,queen victorias secret on the corner,baskets of scones and baguettes out front and a sweet old lady out front offering cookies. It has become a holiday treat I look forward to every year.Another combination of flashlight,spotlight,available light.

Most Wonderful Time of The Year

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green-room

The Christmas season is one of my favorite times of year,so I look forward to any opportunity that comes along to photograph Christmas related subjects.Homes adorned in festive decor always draw me in for a closer look and memories of times with family gathered together on a cold winters night leave lasting impressions. Wether it is enjoying grandmas cookies or seeing relatives again,Christmas is hard to beat for me. A simple photo like this one can trigger cherished memories from the past and reliving those glory days in one’s mind can be very special.

The scene above is done using a tripod and multiple exposures utilizing my spotlight. It is one of several rooms decorated in an old mansion,which allows visitors to come and enjoy the decorations which are done by volunteers from various groups and individuals in the community and runs for two weekends in early December.The organizers are gracious enough to give me a key and let me come in to shoot anything that catches my eye.This was shot this past saturday long before the sun rose,so we did not have to contend with light shining in the windows. More scenes will come as I work on them. My friend Larry has a shot on his blog from another room. He is listed on my artists I admire section at Lefeverphoto. He chose an extremely tough room and did a stellar job.

Let The Sun Shine

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This is another flash light painting exercise where I attempted to bring out the detail in the statue. The sun was shining through the tree,but was basically backlighting everything. I shot the first exposure with the silhouetted statue and sun,and then the sun moved behind the leaves and I started with the flash portion of the shoot.The off camera flash is mounted on a six foot pole for better positioning but the statue is pretty high,so it’s not the perfect lighting scenario.

 

Steamroller Fun

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This is another example of experimenting with deer spotlights on a subject. Admittedly,I still need more practice to master this technique,but each try proves to be fun. The top photo is no spot light and the bottom is the result of about twenty separate twenty-second exposures at f11 using the spotlight. I used a wireless remote to fire my camera and also use a laptop to review what I did on each exposure to keep track what was lit already and as a reference if I need to shine the light at a different angle for better effect. Doing that also keeps you from touching the camera and creating registration problems. My spotlight has a diffuser and a snoot to keep the camera from being able to see the light source as I stand in the scene. The steamroller has the name Fordson on its radiator grill.

Best Friends

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They asked for so little,but gave so much.More than just friends.This is the epitaph that one pet owner had etched in stone in memory of a beloved cat and dog.I assume the pets are buried here just feet from magnificent mausoleums housing their owners. I was not particularly dazzled by the carving work on the cat,but it may be a hundred years old and simply be weathered. You never know what you might come across in these acres of granite.

Sculpting with Light

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This pair of images exemplifies what you can do with a small flash,a tripod and a little time. The top image is the result of about 10 different flash pops on separate exposures,all done at various angles to light the subject and bring out the texture. The bottom image is no flash added. This technique would be considered painting with light,which is essentially using a flash like a brush to bring your subject to life . I definitely prefer the top image of the two,because I feel it shows the sculptors work in a way that showcases his talent.Having wireless flash and remote camera firing is a must with this technique so you can move around your subject and operate your gear at a distance.

Back to Nature

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This old wagon has been sitting by this tree for as long as I can remember,so I finally decided to stop and ask if I can photograph it before it disintegrates to nothing.The ivy growing on the wheel caught my eye initially, so I broke out my spotlight to try a little light painting. There were a lot of things to hide no matter which way I composed the shot,so it’s the best I could manage.

Fall Pumpkin Arrangement

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I decided to light paint this arrangement as the end of fall is rapidly approaching,and images of autumn will be getting more scarce by the minute. Spiders crawling on the house and fall leaves around the scene rounded out the composition.Shot this about a half hour before sunrise,and used about 10 separate exposures to produce the end result.

Fall Tapestry

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This little microcosm of autumn color was the result of three different trees dropping their leaves in one area.One maple was predominantly red,the other maple was mostly yellow and the third tree was what I believe to be a white oak,and those leaves had a reddish-brown to magenta appearance. I find it very hard sometimes to isolate a small patch of leaves that has an appealing composition.but I like the mix and my framing on this one.

Nature’s Dazzling Display

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Fall is my favorite time of the year,and even though this years spectacle of color seems a bit lackluster,one can still find pockets of beauty if you look a bit. Despite the fact that I traveled thirteen hundred miles this month to see foliage,this scene was among my favorites and it was less than ten miles from home. If anyone wants suggestions on shooting foliage,I would say mix it up and try some tight shots like this using a telephoto to compress the scene and keep sky out of the shot. It wont be long till old man winter starts to blow and just between you and me,I hope its one of the snowiest and coldest winters.I just got four new snow tires on the truck and I am itching to get out and explore.

An Autumn Postcard

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This is another classic fall scene from the heart of Amish country featuring farmers hard at work bringing in the corn harvest. Pleasant temperatures and a mild breeze made for the perfect day to be out in the fields. A full complement of farms and silos provide the perfect backdrop to the men at work in the foreground.

Rainy Day Stroll

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I was out shooting fall foliage the other day and decided it might be nice to show some folks enjoying the great outdoors. Just as I was contemplating what might make a nice image,it started to rain pretty hard and at that moment I noticed a dad and his three sons getting out of their car, so I gave them my umbrella and they took a little stroll among these colorful maples. The blue umbrella seemed to match the blue attire and made a nice contrast with the autumn colors. Heavy rains the night before had everything saturated and provided rich colors throughout.The rain subsided a short time later,so hopefully dad and the boys got some time to explore the woods while color  still abounds.

Working Late

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This old Dodge has been part of a local fall roadside stand for several years and this year I finally set aside a night to photograph it. The truck bed is full of mums and a wide variety of colorful mums fill the foreground for customers to pick from. Let me explain how the shoot went.I arrived an hour before sunset so I could set up the tripod,fill in any empty holes with flowers if needed and start my laptop to fire the camera. First the laptop took 5 minutes to let me log on,then my camera control software would not recognize that my camera was attached. After no less than 6 restarts,the sun was now below the horizon and I was now ready to drive over my laptop.

Next the sky lit up in an area Not included in my frame,so I recomposed and shot the image. Now I was ready to give up on light painting the scene because of the laptop snafu,but I gave it one last try and unbelievably the thing works. So for the next hour I used my spotlight and a flash to light the truck, flowers,and scene and this was my result. Lighting a black truck is a real challenge but thanks to the generosity of the owners in allowing me to work the shot,I had enough time to pull it off.

 

 

 

 

Sardine Express

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I have no idea how many passengers a little Honda CRV can handle, but I am pretty sure this idiot driver is over the limit and breaking several traffic laws.Yes I grew up in an age when wearing a seat belt was unheard of, but times have changed and this little scene played out as I was out with a friend shooting recently. How many people do you think climbed into this car? Not five,six,seven,eight,or even nine,but ten.There were four boys in the back,the driver,a child in the backseat between two adults,and a mother holding an infant up front. If for some reason, they were in a crash,this would have been an absolute disaster. I blurred the plate to protect the stupid. I am more prone to get involved than not,and this time I was wondering if something should have been said, but it was their decision to travel that way.

The Blacksmith Shop

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This is a wall mural on the side of a small shop in a local town. I have no idea why this subject was painted but the artist is Wayne Fettro,who seems to do a lot of this type of work. I decided some light painting was in order to showcase the work.It took about 10 different flash pops to do everything.

A Rainbow of Scooters

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I noticed these scooters parked at a one room school the other day, and contemplated shooting them.As I drove up the road to turn around,I noticed a youngster about a quarter-mile up the road heading toward the school on yet another scooter. I imagined the possibility of him passing by the scooters and me getting a shot,but lo and behold he actually stopped right at them and I quickly snapped the shot.

Dutch Country Corn Harvest

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The Amish farmers have been busy in the last month harvesting thousands of acres of corn. Wet weather has delayed the work slightly,but it doesn’t take them long once they get going. I usually like to find a nice farm in the background,so the viewer can see the whole setting,instead of just the wagons.

Chasing the Pig

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I rarely post photos that are not on the visually appealing side, but since I have viewers from all over the world,I thought I might share one of the more interesting activities that takes place at the local fair each year. What you see here is known as the pig chase,where contestants compete to catch a greased pig. Some times the pig takes a good hit as he is tackled,but in twenty years I have never seen a pig or person get hurt. Pigs seem to be pretty tough from what I have seen,and the addition of lard on their bodies make them hard to hold. From children to adults,there is a size of pig that matches each division,and believe it or not,I have seen pigs actually run with an adult hanging on their back. For children under five,there is a rooster chase,which really gets interesting,and by the way,the guy in yellow did not catch the pig. Being the fastest at this event often times means you are the one that will be feeling ten other guys landing on your back in short order.

 

Your Dream Ride Awaits

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Fall is the time when the annual street fair comes to town and this carousel was calling to me to do a little light painting. Both myself and my good friend headed out before sunrise to do some shooting at the empty fair and I settled on this particular horse with its cool color scheme as my subject. The first glitch I ran into was the street lights were pretty bright,so my longest exposure was around 8 seconds,which limited my flashlights ability to be the strongest light source. I went to plan b,which utilized flash with a snoot attached and that puts the light beam in a very narrow area across the subject. The flash was attached to an extendable pole to allow positioning it wherever I needed without standing on the carousel and having it move . This shot is the result of maybe 30 flashes throughout the scene,including the ice cream stand on the left. Carousels seems to have a magical quality that captivates the imagination and transports you to another world.

Theodore Burr Arch Truss

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This is the interior of a local covered bridge that has been closed for over a year due to damage from tropical storm Lee last year. Not sure exactly what the problem is,but if you look at the exterior,the bridge has a slight bow to it. This bridge sits approximately eighteen feet above the creek,but last years flood was an extreme one that hopefully wont be seen for another hundred years.I used flash to light the interior in an attempt to show the intricate construction that goes into these beautiful structures. This bridge was built in 1867 at a whopping cost of $4,500 dollars. The arch design is credited to inventor Theodore burr,who lived around the early 1800s and was a cousin to Vice President Aaron Burr.

Hot Air Express

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I was chasing this balloon the other day and when it finally landed I drove up a dirt lane to watch it deflate.This Amish lady and her children pulled right into the field beside me,and initially the kids got out to run over to the balloon but the boy started crying, so they loaded back up on the wagon and I had enough time to get a photo.The girl had a basket of homemade treats that she was holding,and I was in my truck about 15 feet away hungry for a snack.

Cart before the Horse?

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I have heard the saying, don’t put the cart before the horse,but never saw it in the real world till now. The horse and buggy on the right was leading the lone horse somewhere,but who knows.Not sure what the guy on the left was doing either,as he was just there on the backroad.This was a split second shot taken on the back roads.

The Rio Grand Caboose lodge

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These old cars were part of a car club that was out touring the farm country,and I happened to spot them parked at a motel that is totally comprised of train cabooses. Each guest spends the night in his very own caboose, which come in every color under the sun. The evening was basically pouring rain,but after shooting under an umbrella for 30 minutes,the rain stopped and I began lighting the scene with flash. I thought the two modes of transportation complemented each other and harkened back to a simpler time.The yellow caboose is the Rio Grand.