Mark

Summer hiking in the East Bay.

Summer is upon us, and I’m finding myself roaming the hills in Alamo and Danville to occupy myself during this pandemic. The trails are wide and allow for passing with at least six feet of distance. These photos are with my B&W camera.

This view is of Mt. Diablo. The oaks trees are plentiful, and rolling hills in the foreground covered with dry grass.

Wispy clouds that I thought were very expressive. I composed the image with a profile-like cloud to the left with the oak trees in the foreground.

This image was mostly about the flow and glow on the clouds. I balanced the clouds with the hills and trees.

This composition caught my eye back in Spring, and I made this image in B&W. The trail gracefully winds throughout the image.

I made these photos while visiting my sister’s family. I usually end up trying to keep up. This image was composed as they were farther on the trail.

The sun peering through the trees makes a dramatic impact. The light rays illuminate part of the dry grass.

Valentine’s Day Table Setting

Christmas Cookie Tree

A good day to you! I thought it might be kind of fun to mix it up and show photos I collaborated on with my sister at www.happyhappynester.com. Lately, the weather has included clouds and rain, which makes photographing with window light more of a challenge.

My sister asked me to help to shoot her project, so I agreed. I have several Profoto B1 lights plus light modifiers. Plus, I added my Canon 5D Mark IV with 70-200mm ƒ/2.8 L II. She baked the Christmas cookie tree and styled it. Meantime we agreed on a spot to shoot in her kitchen, which allowed plenty of room to place a miniature tree with twinkle lights in the background to create bokeh. I set the camera up on my Gitzo tripod with an Arca-Swiss B-1 ball head. I connected the camera using a TetherTools USB cable to my MacBook Pro.

I taped the lines down to the floor to avoid tripping on the cord. I placed the TTL-Canon module on the camera and synced up the laptop to the camera using Capture One Pro 12. I then set up two lights in the background on “Channel B.” One with a zoom light modifier and barn doors and the other also on “Channel B” with a Magnum light modifier. The key light was to the right of the camera with an OCF 1×3 lightbox modifier with a fabric grid attached on “Channel A.”

The ISO was 1600 @ 1/100 @ƒ/2.8 to allow mixture with the twinkle lights. The TTL-C module placed “Channel A” plus one-stop, and “Channel B” at 0 stops.
I took a test image, and it was pretty close. With Capture One Pro 12 you can edit the image to your liking and then place the TTL-C module into Manual and set the rest of the photos “Copy from Last,” and your changes will apply to each image.

We shot several images with variations and then went in “Adjustments” in Capture One Pro 12 and selected SN-14, which are the free samples. I applied the color style to all the finals and then exported them to the desktop. I then sized them in Photoshop 2020 and saved them as .jpgs. At that point, they were ready to go onto the blog. I hope you like them.

Death Valley National Park

An afternoon elevation at Death Valley National Park. Hasselblad 500CM and 50mm ƒ/4.0 Distagon and Kodak T-Max 100.

Happy Women’s Day.

Happy Women’s Day! Circa 1990’s in Orange County, California. I volunteered to photograph for The United Way. Leica M6 and Tri-X.