Ring Light Black & Whites

We ran over to do a little prep work in my classroom today and I remembered that I have been wanting to try out Mr. B's homemade ring light (I'll post a link to the site he used for directions when I find it.)  However, when I went to grab a camera off the shelf I realized that they're all in the shop getting cleaned over the summer!  All I had on me was my cell phone, but it worked just fine.

 ANSEL

 ME

(Emerson took this one.  I like that the jagged cut edge of the light becomes a frame.)

 EMERSON

DUSTIN

(I always avoid getting this vent in pictures, but in this case I like how it turned out as a backdrop.)

Make a Blog Book! You'll love it.

To my fellow bloggers:  Make a blog book!  I ordered one last year and absolutely love it, and I just ordered another one.  They're sort of like yearbooks for my family blog (not this one.)  My kids and I were reading through the first blog book at bedtime.  They really love it (of course... it's the story of them!), and so do I.  In fact, while reading it I stumbled upon these pictures that I had kind of forgetten about.  I had never posted them on this blog before, so I thought I'd share them.  They're from back in October of 2010.  It's not very often that I look back through my old pictures and posts on the Internet.  But having a tangible book in my hands makes it much more fun.  I used Blog2Print, and the quality was excellent, but I think when I make a book from my photography blog I'll use something that allows me to get full page photos, which Blog2Print does not.  I've ordered photo books from Shutterfly before, so maybe that would be a good option.  Anyway, I encourage all of my fellow bloggers to get your work printed and bound every so often, and I'm going to make it one of my goals to do the same for my photography blog.

Goose Island Camping

Here are a few photos from camping at Goose Island in La Crosse, Wisconsin back in June.

Mississippi River

Sweet Emerson 

Becca's Fire Ring 

Star Trails

This star trail photo is a combination of two 11 minute exposures.  I was looking for a program on the internet that combines multiple star trail photos to create longer streaks, but actually found that doing it in Photoshop is really simple.  You just copy all of your shots into one and change the blending mode to Lighten--so simple!.  If you look closely you can see a small space between each star trail (especially the really bright one right by the trees.)  Of course I wish the space wasn't there, but I'm glad I was able to figure out where it came from--the space is a result of using long exposure noise reduction on my camera.  The camera took an 11 minute "blank" exposure after each actual exposure to reduce the noise you get with exposure times this long.  I'm not sure which is worse--excess noise or spaces between the star trails... guess it's something I can put on my to do list.  I shot in RAW+JPEG fine mode and used the RAW files, so I was able to reduce what noise I did find in CameraRAW.  Another thing I encountered with these shots is the awful purple corners I seem to get whenever I do long exposures.  I had heard this before, but looked it up to confirm--they're caused because your sensor gets hot during long exposures.  Not sure how to prevent it, but a little work with curves, layer masks, and vignetting made it a little better.  If you know of a better way to shoot or edit to solve this problem I'd love to hear about it.  By the way, the orange glow on the right was from a campfire across the road.  Not sure what they were putting in their fire, but it was HUGE!

Behind the Scenes :: Corey & Nicole's Most Popular Shot

   I'm one day shy of going a whole month without posting anything, and I am not ashamed to say that.  My family and I recently traveled back to Wisconsin and Minnesota for a 43 day marathon vacation visiting friends and family, and it was G L O R I O U S!  I decided to let the photos pile up and not worry about keeping up to date on my blog.  I figured there would come a time when I was back at home and feeling uninspired or out of ideas and then I would have all the time I needed to post from my backlog of pictures.  I guess you could say I wasn't a total slacker, though, because while back in Wisconsin I did a lot of portraiture-- two senior portrait sessions, a shoot of the Done Right Seamless Gutter construction crew to update their website, a family session which included couples pics of my three siblings and their significant others, plus two additional couples sessions.

     I managed to keep my facebook photography page a little more up to date, so if you'd like to see some of these pictures you can check them out at facebook.com/vanoverbekephotography.  The picture below is of my brother Corey and his girlfriend Nicole.  We were saying goodbye to everyone the evening of this shoot, so I felt a little rushed which I never like.  I'm usually the opposite, actually--shooting for too long and taking too many pictures.  In the end, though, I think we got some really great pictures, and the feedback on facebook was awesome... my most popular post to date!  This picture was the most popular and my personal favorite too.  I had a vision in my head of how I wanted it to look, and it came out exactly how I wanted.

     I thought it'd be fun to post a "behind the scenes" picture of how this shot was created.  I didn't want to post it on facebook, because I thought it might ruin the ethereal mood of the photograph, but since most of my blog followers are photographers themselves I thought this was a more appropriate place.  I was lucky to be shooting in my Dad's backyard, because he and Corey own a construction company and their trailer was parked right out back.  What do you know, they had just the right ladder for the job.  I actually wish I had one of these here in California.  It folded down super tiny and was about the weight of the step stool I sometimes take along on shoots--and my stool only has three steps!  I had a bit of an audience since we were all over at Dad's for dinner together before we flew back to Cali.  It was fun, though, to get to show my family what I love to do. :)

New: In 2012 and 1888, respectively.

From my mom's garden

 A church in Baldwin, WI.

Eau Galle Reservoir Sunset

I shot a bazillion HDRs while visitng family in Baldwin, WI but didn't have access to my computer to process them until today.  It about drove me crazy to wait to see them.  So, prepare for a few HDRs on their way.  Couldn't decide if I liked color or black and white on this one.  What do you think?

Purple Rain

The first morning we woke up on the Wisconsin leg of our vacation it was raining a little bit... and we couldn't have been happier!  A little drizzle combined with my mom's perennial garden made for an excellent photographic start to our midwestern adventure.