Downtown Knoxville
Hello friends. Juicebeats here.
Saturday morning I was on a mission to take some artistic photography in downtown Knoxville. I met up with fellow photographer, Lev Gross-Comstock of Comstock Photography. We grabbed our Starbucks' coffee and headed to start shooting in Market Square. I've been downtown many times, but I've never really stopped long enough to see the area through an artistic perspective. We both had our 50mm lenses and started shooting in Market Square. My first few shots weren't of any buildings; I actually saw a bed of flowers that caught my eye. Since it is spring, I thought it was only fitting to take a couple snaps.
After getting a few different shots in Market Square, we headed down the street toward old Gay Street. We caught a couple of early risers walking down the street.
We also stopped to shoot a few cool things in the window of a production company.
Next, we headed over to the bridge overlooking the train tracks. I know that a lot of photographers have shot on this same bridge, but I wanted to try and get a new perspective and maybe achieve something new. I decided to capture a few high dynamic range images (HDR), which is taking a few of the same images with different exposures and putting them together to create a photo with a lot of detail. Here are a few examples.
They may almost look like paintings or drawn pictures, but they contain all the detail from the pictures I took. I set my camera up for the shot and took a normal exposure photo first; then, I took two more shots with the exposure compensation at -1 and +1, then to more at -2 and +2. This captured all the highlight and shadow detail that the original shot could not pick up. I edited the original photo in Lightroom as I would normally and synced all the same edits to the other four photos and exported to Photoshop. Finally, I combined all the images together in Photoshop and exported back into Lightroom where I finished the editing. Several steps were required to create these images, but I think they turned out pretty well.
After taking those shots on the bridge, we headed down to the tracks to take a couple shots.
I love how taking a shot on the railroad tracks with a wide angle lens makes them look like they go on forever. I had a lot of fun walking around and looking for things that I normally wouldn't pay attention to when I go downtown in the Old City.
Lev and I ended up walking around all over downtown from Market Square, to Gay Street, the Old City, and back up through the other part of Gay Street. We got some good exercise and took some great photos. It was a great learning experience for me and fun to capture some of the art of downtown Knoxville.
All of these photos in the blog and few others are available for purchase. Just click the slide show below. You can also download copies as screensavers or backgrounds.
Subscribe to the blog below to receive updates on everything that is happening with Juicebeats Productions.
Right now I am offering a $50 print credit with an individual or couple portrait session and $75 for a family session. Contact juicebeats1@gmail.com for more information.
Juicebeats
Sweet 16 Photo Session with Cami
Hello friends and photography lovers.
Juicebeats here, and yesterday I had the pleasure of working with a beautiful soon to be 16 year old Cami. Our photo session was at the Springbrook park in Alcoa, Tennessee. Cami wore an off white dress with a jean jacket and cowboy boots. Megan Kiphart assisted me on the shoot. Cami was a bit shy in the beginning of the session, so I had to do something to make her a feel a bit more comfortable. Hmm...Why not wear the tiara I brought for her to wear in some the pictures?
That got some great smiles out of her.
Cami under the tree
Springbrook Park is wide open but has some visually interesting spots for photography. There is a part in the park with a bamboo forest.
Cami in the Bamboo forest
The park also features a fountain, duck pond, and lots of trees and shaded areas.
Cami by the Fountain
Cami liked those parts, but I think her favorite part was when she got to blow sweet 16 confetti at me. She got a real kick out of doing that and even threw some at me too.
Cami blowing sweet 16 confetti
Here comes the confetti
I loved working with Cami, and it was great to see her feel more comfortable as the photo session went on; this made for some great candid moments. We had a lot of fun in the park. Enjoy these photos for Cami's sweet sixteen.
If you would like to book a photo session feel free to contact me by email juicebeats1@gmail.com or you can use my contact page.
Juicebeats
How to Photograph Art & Lighting Techniques
Hello friends and photography enthusiasts,
This past week I was asked to photograph some paintings for a friend. This would be my first experience with art photography, but I already knew that I would need a good lighting set up to do it. Luckily my uncle, Michael Messing of Michael Messing Photography, was available to help with the lighting set up. We used 2 strobe lights set up at a 45 degree angle from the paintings with the camera placed in the center.
Diagrams of the set up:
To make sure we had the correct amount of light hitting the paintings, we tested each corner of the painting to see if the light was evenly hitting the picture. The light meter showed us what aperture to set the camera to for best results.
Setup: For these shots of the paintings we used the sync speed of my camera to the flash which was 1/200 shutter speed. The aperture was set at f10 and ISO at 100 for best results without introducing digital noise. My camera, the Nikon D610 with the 24-70mm f2.8 was zoomed all the way to 70mm to flatten the image as much as possible. You could even go higher using a 70-200mm lens to further the flattening.
When creating digital prints of paintings, you want them to to look exactly like the originals with no glare from the flash, and the color has to be on point.White balance is key! I shot in RAW format so I could make any changes necessary later if needed, but if I was shooting in JPEG format, I would have to make sure that everything was exact. Before taking the first shot, I used my white balance cards and had Michael hold them up in front if the painting.
I took a test shot of the cards in the frame, so I could use this shot later to correct white balance in Lightroom when cropping the paintings and correcting the color.
Once we had everything where we needed it, it was time to take the photos of the paintings. Every shot was framed so that the focus point was in the middle of the picture with little surrounding area. The way to do this is to keep the lens zoomed in but move the Tripod forward or backward depending on how much you are trying to take out. This makes it so that you will not have much cropping to do later on.
Here are a few examples of Maria Walker's Art. If you like her work and would like to purchase a print copy of the art, please leave a comment below, and I will get you in touch with her.
Don't forget to Subscribe to future blogs and updates by entering you email information in the subscribe link below.
Juicebeats