December 10, 2013 by alxe24

Funny Christmas Card picture idea.

Happy Holidays to you all.

My wife gave me the idea to do a funny Christmas family picture for this year post card and she also came up with this concept.

Taking the picture wrapping the kids on Christmas lights, which later evolved to having the kids wrapping us with Christmas lights. We did a first run, (very long run) and then worked the images on photoshop. After I was done my dear wife suggested a rerun. As much as I didn’t like the idea of persuading the kids once again we went for round two. I am glad I did.

On the sec on try I did the kids shoot first and my wife and I second. It ended up being simpler to shoot and that did not add so much extra time on post work.

Thanks for watching.

Here is the first image I did and cost me the re take.

“Weekly photo challenge: Unexpected”

Here I was trying to take a picture of my little boy and as I was pressing the shutter release he decided to do a stunt jump. Nothing happened to him. I love the picture since it was quite unexpected and it would make a darn good commercial image for children’s place.
My wife did not enjoyed the picture as much as I did.

Leap of faith.

November 20, 2013 by alxe24

Dia de los muertos. Day of the dead.

Dia de los muertos (day of the dead) at Hollywood Forever cemetery.

This was my first time attending such event and I must say, I had a great time. I could not believe the amount of people there. For starters I had to park the car almost 1 mile away from the cemetery. There were thousands of people there, and for the most part the vast majority were dressed up in all kinds of colorful costumes, families, couples young and old. It was great.

There were all kinds of things to see. Rows of altars honoring people. All kinds of display and little shops. Live bands and performers. And of course a bunch of good food.

Here are some of the pictures I came up with.

October 2, 2013 by alxe24

Self portrait. One direction.

The other day I came across a picture like it and got inspired to do one of me, for me.

The second picture was my first attempt. After I was done, I thought all 3 faces look quite similar, therefore I decided to reshot a few frames with some hats to make the mini me’s a look a bit different.

Here are both versions of my self portrait.

Feel free to comment or ask any questions.

Regards,

Alex

September 21, 2013 by alxe24

Kids photography.

Kids grow fast. Very fast. That’s what they do. On the other hand I take a bunch of pictures of them and I do that very often. I like to think I do a decent job at keeping up with their growth pictures.

Here are some recent ones. Some are just for the sake of taking pictures, some others are ideas I see online or things that pop on my mind.

Now that Sofia is almost 9 and Sebastian is 5 I can go back in time and find pictures of just about every week of the year. I love that.

I enjoy Kids photography a lot, it’s fun. You sure will not regret all those pictures in 5 or 10 years.

Don’t forget that they will not stop growing and will not be kids forever.

August 13, 2013 by alxe24

Self portrait. Mad Hatter.

I just started toying around with the idea of a Mad Hatter self portrait.

I found a Mad Hatter hat at Disney and that sparked the idea. I took it home, try it on and shot a few frames (actually about 100) and this is one of the images.

Now I like to find more appropriate clothes and do live make up as supposed of digital make up and try the same shot again.

Here it is. Mad Hatter self portrait.

I shot this self portrait with a Canon 5D MrkIII Canon 24-70 f2.8 L @ f11 One strobe (Einstein with a Paul C Buff octa fitted with and egg crate and CTO gel) as a fill light I use a Canon 580EXII on an Lastolite easy box also with a CTO gel and the lights were triggered with Pocket wizards.

The purpose of the gels was to compensate for the color temperature light that is shown in the image (to the right)

MAD HATTER SELF PORTRAIT.

August 6, 2013 by alxe24

Breakfast at Tiffany’s tea party

Here are some of the pictures at a breakfast at Tiffany’s tea party.

The party and all the little details were great, it sure was a fun evening.

January 26, 2013 by alxe24

Pictures of a hand Made pen.

Happy new year. It has been quite a few months from my last update. One other thing I enjoy doing besides photography is woodworking and making pens. That is one of the reasons for my absence here. I just finished making a pen that I wanted to make for a while and here are some pictures of it. I hope you enjoy them.

Regards

Alex

July 6, 2012 by alxe24

Picture of the day. The new iPad III pictures

For Christmas 2011 My dear wife got me an iPad that I have been enjoying a lot. Now that her birthday it’s coming, it is time to get even and I got the new iPad for her.

The original lighting setting for this pictures was done with one Travelite 750 set to 1 o clock with a 11″ reflector and a 30Deg grid. I used a flag beneath the reflector to block the light a bit on the white background behind the box. At 7 o clock I position a white bounce card to open up the shadow on the front left side of the box. After a few shots I decided to add a second light to color the background and that was done with a Canon 580 EXII with two cuts of blue gel. All the lights were triggered with a Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5.

The Camera I used is a Canon 5D Mark III with a Canon EF 24-70 f2.8 L. White balance I think it was set at 6000K, iso 100 F14 speed 200th.

Here is the original shot I took

Click on it to enlarge.

I kind of like the first picture but I wanted to incorporate the actual iPad to the image.

Click on it to enlarge.

Then I decided to be creative and start playing with colors and that is when the Canon 580EXII came in. Also I turned on the iPad so it would look cool with a picture on the screen.

Click on it to enlarge

When saw that third image I did not care for it. The exposure was not nearly enough to record the screen (IT WAS ON FOR THIS PICTURE) and I think the crop did not look right at all, it was like a black square in front of the box. Then I recomposed the image and started trying to light the display with a third light in such way that it would show the image. Needless to say it did not matter what I did or where I positioned the light, the darn display was too dark or I ended up reflecting light into it or got a bunch of glare on a black screen. That is when I did something I don’t do often… Think. The answer pop right into my head.

The exposure for everything but the screen was already done with the flash, the camera was steady on a tripod. The flash duration is quite fast, therefore it did not mater the shutter speed being at 200 when nothing is moving. Now are you thinking what I’m thinking? You’re right. Turn of the ambient light and work on total darkness, take a picture for 30″ and see what happens. Bingo, the box and background are exposed by the flash and the screen it exposed using it’s own light. (I had to play with the exposure time to get it right, it ended up being 5″or 10″) and that is it.

Click on it to enlarge.

By the way, the picture on the display is my wife reading my iPad. I took that picture a few months ago and I thought it was going to be cool to use that image for this one.

If you have any comments or thoughts I would certainly appreciate if you leave some feed back.

Regards to all.

PS: If you made it all the way to the end here is a bonus picture of the settings.