LPM

After posting this post about Bled, I'm honored to let you know that it was published also by Landscape Photography Magazine! 

LPM is a great magazine; superb photos by amazingly-talented photographers are published there each and every month. I truly recommend you to have a look at this great magazine. 

Bled, Slovenia

Travelers visiting Slovenia hear about Bled as the primary site to visit. It is a beautiful town by an amazing lake surrounding a small island. Not just an island – there is a castle on it. This magical combination, along with other factors, makes the place a highly photogenic scene.

When I arrived at the lake, it was immediately clear that the site stands up to its reputation. The good weather was also on my side and perfect for shooting.

I admire long exposures, for many reasons. One of them is that nowadays, anyone with a simple digital camera can capture a one-shot amazing photo of a place (after several tries that the digital cameras allows, unlike films), but not everyone knows how to use HDR and long exposures. So to be a bit more unique, I aimed in that direction.

Like a disciplined photographer, first thing was to find a good angle for photography. I found that walking around the lake was very comfortable (6-7 km only), with a good walking road and great weather. When I say “great weather “, I mean great cloudy sky, not too sunny (so it will not be too contrasted), and without rain that might damage my equipment. I calculated the time and figured out that I will have enough time to finish surrounding the lake while pinpointing the interesting photography locations, then go back to get the car and get back to the marked points that I have found in order to make the long exposure evening shots.

So while surrounding the lake, I found a location with good a view of the island, the clouds played a major role in the sky and the sun shimmered amongst them. I decided not to miss the opportunity, pulled out the tripod, composed and shot 3 shots that created the HDR on the right.

Later on that day, I came back to another marked spot, not that far from the previous one. The sun was no longer there, only clouds and the threat of rain. Quickly, I set the camera on the tripod, calculating the right exposure. It was not too dark to get the long exposure that I wanted, so I used my ND filter, and with aperture of 22, and shutter set to 20 seconds, I got the photo below.

The long exposure makes the water look blurry, “milky”.  The motion of the clouds makes them look like brush strokes. As a bonus of this point of view, I got the castle on the left side, and Bled itself on the right. I’m happy with this result, hope you are too.

I'll be happy to add more information. If you have any question please post them below.

* Special thanks to Mr. Dafner for reviewing.

Coming Up Soon

Bouncin'

see this photo in my Gallery

Shooting a bouncing ball is very challenging. Not only one need to consider the background and the surface on which the ball bounces, calculate the time of exposure relatively to the time take the ball to complete the movement, and then find the right aperture for the correct exposure, he also need to know how to operate his flash(es) in the right manner, to get a good result.

Why should we care about the flashes that much here? Well, if we will not use any flashes here, we can get a great photo, in which the ball will be caught once, only once. It is mainly because we have one ball, and one click. Then, the one that will see the photo will have no idea what was the movement of the ball while the photo was taken: was it from left to right? top down? or maybe the ball was hanging in the air? anyways, if we want to give the feeling of a real bouncing ball, the technique is to use repeating flashes, while the ball bounces in our frame.

So we are going to use the flickering option of the flash (repeating flash), in order to catch the bouncing ball. Thus, in an exposure of 2 seconds, the flash flickers multiple times on the ball; each time the flash "catches" it in a different spot, so we see it several times in our frame. This way, we give the impression that the ball "moves" inside of our photo.

Mounting the flash on the camera is the simplest way to do this. The problem is, that then we result with a "flat" ball, which is less interesting. In order to give the ball a bit of depth, I wanted to put the flash in 45°. For this, I needed a flash that knows how to flicker independently, and the SB800 is great for that purpose. But as mentioned, I did not want it to mount on the camera, so I needed a remote cord to connect the flash to the camera. Unfortunately, I did not have this cable; so the only solution came up to my mind was to use Advanced Wireless Lighting (Nikon's term for using flashes in remote mode): use master unit and a remote one. My D300 camera does know how to function as a master, but not as a repeating master. Hence, I mounted to SB800 on the camera, and set it as the repeating master. Then, I placed the SB600 to be a remote unit, and as such it knows how to respond to whatever signal it gets from his master, and if its master tells it to flicker - it flickers!

If you are interested in the technicalities, i setup the SB800 to work as a Repeating Master (see page 76 in the manual). After many tries, I figured that i need something like 20 flashes in my frame, so i chose 20Hz with flash level 1/64, that will allow me 24 flashes per frame (see table in the manual, page 48). I set the SB600 as a remote unit. The camera was set to exposure of 2 seconds, and that is it (Oh, well, the aperture was f/8...)

Using this setup, I succeeded to create flickering flashes from 45°.

Thanks to my friend Rika for her SB800 flash, and for a great Saturday afternoon!

Let There Be Light !

Those who know me can tell that I do not own a studio or any other "pro" equipment. All I have is my camera and 2 flashes. Luckily, getting a good result, which is a good photo, does not always mean that one should own a studio (or rent one). What I mean is, the thing that I love in photography is that you do not always need to buy or build a complicated setup, but you can do it at your home, sometimes on your own bed, right after the idea came up to your mind.

And this is exactly what I did this time.

In this post I would like to talk about the following photo:



The idea came up while reading a book in my room. I used this bulb, and unintentionally I took a glimpse at it, and then saw the light and the reflection on it. It made me wonder how I can make a photo from this, the bulb and the reflection that showed nicely its contour.

Using the correct exposure, I can catch the light of the filament, but then the reflection will not be seen since it is not strong enough. When you expose on the filament, almost everything except it will be dark, because it is an extremely strong light and nothing in the area can match it. Yet, catching only the filament is not such a big deal - I wanted to catch in addition to it some light on the glass enclosure that will emphasize its outline, so I understood I need some other strong-light-source that will simulate the reflection: my SB600 flash.


However, trying to use the flash alone will result in a "hard" light that will not look good on the glass enclosure of the bulb, and what I wanted to get is a soft and easy light to show only the outline. The problem is that the flash is very small and fires a high contrast light, and we need some light source to be much bigger than the bulb. To solve this, I have used White Foam Core. The flash fires on the white board, that reflects the light on the bulb, so from the bulb's point of view, the thing that lights it is much bigger, hence softer, than the direct flash. This way we end up with a good exposure on the filament, against a dark background, and a nice contour of the enclosure of the bulb.

In the following photo, you can see the setup... on my bed, everything is improvised on the moment.

When Basketball Meets Art

This time, the post is related to the photos in my gallery "When Basketball meets Art".
For example, have a look at this shot:

Even though there are no real secrets or real innovation in the way i did it, i would like to share the process.

First of all, I must thank all the amazing girls that took their part in the shootings. This photo is part of a series that you can see  in the link above; in this particular case - Avigiel Cohen and Liron Cohen: THANKS! :-) These 2 girls are GREAT israeli basketball players.
Liron, in my opinion, is the best Israeli-women-basketball player ever. Last year she played for Wisla Krakow and lead her team all the way through the 2010 Women-Euroleague Final Four! This year she plays in Famila Wuber Schio, Italy.
Avigiel - she is the best promise of the women-basketball in Israel. Nowadays she plays in UC Berkeley, USA.

I love taking photos of basketball. Not only I think this is an amazing game, I also find it extremely photogenic. After shooting Maccabi Tel Aviv games in the Euroleague for over 2 years, I decided to take photography of basketball down a more artistic path. I thought of dark photos, hardly lit, lots of drama in it, but full of action.

So what do you need in order to make this kind of photo?

Court

First of all, you need a court. Even though the basket itself is not showing in the photo, the marks on the floor give one a hint that all of this happens on a basketball court.

Light

Photography is catching light, and this case is not different. We need a main light source, but because I want the photos to be a bit dark, unlike a "standard" basketball photo, we place the main flash on the side, 45º or more. The second light source is needed only to distinguish the elements (girls and ball) from the dark background, so we place it as a back-light, a bit behind our girls. When this done, the exposure will result in a dark background, since nothing lights it up, and the girls will be lit dramatically, from their side and back.

Posing

Even though it looks like an action shot, do not get mislead: this is completely not spontaneous. We thought of some action poses, choose one, and did it again and again till all elements worked together: light, pose and focus.

a short YouTube video that i took during the shootings can explain a lot of these:

Argentina/Chile 2010