Will Pridham Photography Goes FX!!

Well it was bound to happen, but I finally decided to go FX! After some deliberation at the pro's and con's of each format, the FX-format's terrific low-light ability managed to sway me just enough. Along with the D700, I picked up a several new Nikkor lenses including the 14-24mm f2.8, 24-70mm f2.8, and the lauded 70-200mm f2.8 VR. Preliminary usage with these lenses show terrific potential for shallow depth of field photography as well as providing state-of-the-art low-light wedding photography. All in all, I just feel that I will be able to offer better quality to clients than staying with DX format.

Sudbury Superstack

"The girls are out to Bingo and the boys are gettin' stinko,
And we think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night."
- Stompin' Tom Connors

Sudbury, a boom-and-bust town at the gateway to northern Ontario, has long been considered on of the icons of blue-collar. On the way back from Lake Superior, I took this shot of the stack against the a wall of clouds. INCO is one of the worlds largest nickel producers. This "superstack" sends all polluntants into the sky high enough so it bypasses Canada and heads out across the Atlantic. It's our little gift to Europe.

This is a good follow-up as an example from my "Emulating Black and White" post a while back.

More b&w from the trip here.

All About Pets Show 2008- Toronto International Centre

This is a little late coming, but I figured I’ll post it because it was such a good time. I had to pleasure of working with Terrie deMarchi of Lakeview Productions at the All About Pets Show this past March in Toronto. What a success! It seemed like all of Toronto was present at the show. I would like to thank everyone who came to the show and stopped at my booth.
here are some wide angle shots of all the actions in the isles:

O.K... I was kidding. All of Toronto wasn't there, but all of Toronto could see it on the television. CITY TV was present, as was the Pet Network. Exhibitors got to expose their products to a greater audience than just the show.

What would the pet show be without all the animals! Everything from dogs to cats, to even reptiles, amphibians and birds were present. All these animals presents unique challenges to a photographer, especially with the low lighting in the International Centre.

These wonderful animals provided unique photo opportunities with their owners! I was shooting on full manual mode with manual lenses, so those white balances were tricky. Shooting RAW format was definitely something I would recommend in this situation.

Below is the Winterhaven Kennels booth. The kids loved their show-winning Pomeranians.

Sometimes people got to dress up like animals. Thanks to the Pet Network's exhibit, kids got to strut their stuff with their face painted like their favourite animal.

I even got to meet a celebrity! Maggie, the spokesdog for Cesar gourmet dog and cat foods was present and giving autographs.

World famous dog behaviour specialist, Dr. Stanley Coren was present also, and gave everyone in the stands a lesson in humility. He was an engaging and energetic speaker that kept the crowd on the edge of their seat.

By the end of the third day, everyone was exhausted. Its hard work putting on such a successful show!!! They should try being the photographer (kidding). My feet had blisters on them (not kidding). Near the end of the day all the key sponsors and Terrie deMarchi from Lakeview Productions got together for a "family" photo.

Ominous Gas Prices...

Took the same shot I presented in the previous post and decided to have some more fun with it. Maybe I should preset it to ESSO as a reminder of an ominous future.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Rural Landscape

After adding a little snap for the printer, this is the second version:
The sky is still a little washed out.... soooo....

I went back to same spot I was during the previous post and decided to give it a go with Photomatix Pro (tonemapping and HDR software). The trick was to make this as realistic as possible while exposing all the detail in the shadows. Objectively looking at the shot now, I may re-process the image with a slight bit more contrast.

I find Photoshop CS3's HDR function not quite as good as Photomatix. Photoshop tends to really soften the image and requires much more sharpening work than Photomatix does. Colours don't seem to come out quite as vibrant for me.

According to famous wildlife and landscape photographer Bryan Peterson, in order to get full dynamic and tonal ranges, you need to bracket an HDR to the extreme limits. I usually shoot a minimum of 5 shots, with as much as 8. Two of the shots will be extremely underexposed (almost no light at all) and overexposed (almost no dark at all). One will be the correct exposure and the other two about half-way between the extreme exposures. Usually EV compensation on a camera is NOT enough to get all detail. One thing I have noticed though, is that the more exposures you blend, the softer the image gets.

Colour vs Black-and-White?

I took a drive this evening as the sun was shining on the fields. It's tough to get good photos were I live because it can be very flat. Luckily, I found a nice spot as I rounded a corner on a dirt road.

I like how the light coming from the west is filtering through the trees and adding shadows across the fields. This gives the appearance of depth in the photo. My only regrets are that the house on the right is slightly cut-off (due to some trees in the way) and the large pine in the background is cut-off.

Post-processing of this photo include the usuage of some blue and yellow graduated filters to bring out the blue sky and the yellows in the field. Also, a #85 Amber filter was used in order to tone down the greens. Usually, evening light over farm fields doesn't produce rich greens unless it has rained. For the black and white version, post-processing included the above and then converting to AgfaPan type b&w and implementing a red filter to really bring out the contrast in colour in the fields. This was discussed in my "Emulating Black and White" post.