Circle of Light...

Wow, that title sounds like a cult doesn't it "Circle of Light"...well it's not, it's just a description of my newest lighting modifier, the Ray Flash. This is a product that is distributed by ExpoImaging, which also makes Expodisc, the custom white-balance disc that just seem like a waste of plastic to me, but a few photographers I know swear by it. The Ray Flash is a ring-flash modifier that can attach to any dedicated speedlite from Canon or Nikon. It redirects the light from your speedlite down and around your lens giving you the ability to create a near shadowless splash of light on your subject and giving you a really awesome looking catchlight in the eyes. I decided to blog about this since I got quite a few emails, Facebook messages and "what is that thing?" questions from people I've never even met before, I think all due to Moshe's photos of me (from his blog and Facebook page) from this past week's DC Area Photographer GTG.

Thanks to Moshe for these shots!

Hey Jim Garner...if you're reading this, yeah thats a Boda shoulder strap that's starting to tear...

I gotta say, the thing works as advertised: It creates a virtually shadowless fill on your subject and bathes them/it in smooth diffused even light... however that can be a very good thing or a very bad thing depending on your subject and your artistic intention. In all honestly this thing will probably spend a lot of time in my camera bag, but I think I'll definitely find uses for it in certain  circumstances. I don't do the normal "studio" portrait stuff, and those of you reading this who do, should definitely look into trying one of these out yourself. I shoot out in the world and don't have a studio with pull down backgrounds and props, so I was looking for something super-light and ultra portable, and the Rayflash fits the bill. The next best thing is the Alienbees ABR800 which looks like a stellar product (also only $100 more than the Rayflash), but its heavier and doesn't run off a speedlight I'd already have with me anyways. The ABR800 would require me to plug it into a wall or run it off a big external battery pack, which I don't feel like lugging around everywhere.

I see the Rayflash as my go-to lighting modifier for things like macro shots where flash is necessary, full face headshots where I want to smother details (such as a face that has some wrinkles or some significant wear-and tear, where I can eliminate shadows caused by the extruded details) and when I want some on-axis fill but don't want that "snapshot" look that a direct on camera flash give you. So enough talk...here come some samples I snapped last week at the National Harbor.

Kenny wants a Rayflash for Christmas... I'd send him mine if he started using Nikon gear...LOL!

Be careful using on-axis flash with glasses...I was not...

Check out that catch-light...and Hadar's modeling skills...

Flash set to 1/128th power to use as a very light fill to the ambient exposure...probably how I will use the Rayflash most frequently going forward.


Used as a fill, you can see the effect along the wood on the back of the chair...for some reason I love this shot...can't figure out why...

Flash turned off...Megan Beth as our model!

Flash turned on...richer skin tones, less harsh shadows! That white corner is what I mean by "it doesn't fit right on my D3 (shot taken with a 50 f/1.8, a VERY small lens)

Don't photographers make great models? So the bad news? The Rayflash costs about $300 which is quite a lot for a piece of plastic that doesn't actually flash itself, it requires your speedlight to do all the work. That said, if you were to build your own or buy other similar products, the light loss would be far more significant. By some work of incredible engineering or some dark magic they actually were able to build this thing and only lose 1 stop of light!!! That's crazy impressive. That means you can still shoot at smaller apertures at a reasonably fast frame-rate without killing your batteries every ten seconds!

Be sure to try one out before you hand over the cash though, mine doesn't exactly fit my D3 properly, although it fits my flash like a glove. A email to Expoimaging (and less than a 5 minute wait for a reply! AMAZING!) allowed me to discover they have individual models to fit not only specific flashes, but also specific camera bodies. Apparently the place I got it from thought I said D300 when I said D3. I bought mine from Ace Photo (a local photo store) but I'd highly recommend buying your Rayflash - if decide you it fits your style - from either BHPhoto or Adorama, as Ace Photo doesn't let you return it if it's not right for your workflow...not even with a restocking fee! Thankfully Expoimaging is able to exchange my Rayflash out for the proper model! Great customer service!

PS: Whoa, my watermark is doing something weird and I'm not planning on re-exporting these images to fix it...do not attempt to readjust your set, I am controlling the vertical and horizontal! LOL!

Game changer...

I usually don't like to post about things I haven't actually spent time using or was not present for, but this is too big and most people won't have heard about it (and most won't for a while until this company starts to pick up speed). About a year or so ago a company called RED decided to build a video camera called RED ONE, but this wasn't a regular consumer video camera, it was a fullblown professional digital cinema system that is completely modular. Not only that, this system is able to produce video at 4k resolution at 30fps (4k is around 2X 1080P high definition). The tag line of this company is "making obsolescence obsolete". This is something they have taken to a whole new level with their two new product lines that have been announced only a few days ago. They unveiled the EPIC and SCARLET systems which they refer to as DSMC's which stands for Digital Stills and Motion Camera...yeah that's right, I said Digital Stills (hence why I'm blogging about it). RED has gone and made a modular DSLR. Stop the presses, roll out the red carpet (no pun intended) and alert the media! Now for the really cool stuff!

You buy a "brain" of whichever system you want to go with...then you get to decide what components to buy to do what you want to do! If you want a shoulder mount video camera that shoots at 3K at 120fps, you can do that, if you want a full blown cinema studio over-the-top monster camera...at 28k resolution at 24fps...yeah you can do that too! On the still photo side you get to choose your resolution from 4.6MP (megapixels) all to way to a mind-bottling (like it's so crazy your mind gets trapped in a bottle) 261MP!!!!!!! And the best part of all of this? You won't have to buy new lenses when you decide to move up into the big leagues, that's right you can strap on your best Nikon, Canon, PL and Mayima lenses on and start shooting both photos AND video!

Oh and one more thing...coming soon: 3D!!! Oh yeah...that's why I said GAME CHANGER!

Check out RED.com for more info. As much as I love my Nikons...this is a very good thing for the industry and I hope they sell LOTS and LOTS of cameras!

Fresh Coat of Paint...

I recently decided my main website was a little bland and I definitely hated not being able to display my images at sizes larger than 800X450 (a non-standard aspect ratio for photographs). I've decided to rebuild my site and it now supports resolutions of 1200X800 (I could set it higher, but right now most visits to the page are screen resolutions of 1280X800 and 1400X900, so most will be able to view at almost full screen!!!). The actual interface design changes a bit, but it's more of an evolution rather than a complete top-to-bottom redesign. A lot of the visual elements and color scheme stays the same, just the content and the resolution of the content changes. Also now when viewing a gallery you have the ability to view a 'thumbnails' view or email a link of any image to friends or family, which is really cool! So if you see a picture on the site you just HAVE to show someone, you can email them a link directly to the one you want them to see! (Tip of the day for Mac users: You can select a portion of the screen for a "screen shot by clicking "command-shift-4", I've been asked about that numerous times...just figured I'd fill in everyone who didn't already know)

Here I've posted a quick screenshot of the before and after, see how much empty space there was around the old one? Keep in mind these images were taken on a monitor with a resolution of 1920X1200, so your display will most likely show less empty space.

Look at all that empty space not being used...so bland!

Complete redesign, menu options on the bottom, larger display, no more boring white background!

Thumbnails view inside of a gallery...

Email pop-up window for emailing images to friends and family!

So what do you think? I hope to be finished getting everything the way I want it by the end of the day (Friday) so I can go ahead and make it live, until I do the old site will still be visible.

Coming soon to a blogspot near you...

WOW! I just realized I haven't posted anything in almost 3 weeks, whoops. Well I'll have at least 2-3 posts by next week up to make up lost time. I got a new photographic tool(toy) that I'm gonna post some review stuff up, including some sample photos I've taken and some others I expect to take later this week. I've got some other updates as well coming soon that I've been spending a bit of time working on, which I hope to announce by Fri/Sat of this week, well at least I'll tell you about it by then if it hasn't launched by then. 1 billion points to whoever can either guess A) what new tool/toy I picked up or B)what I expect to announce/launch by the upcoming weekend.. first person to 2 billion points wins the prize...which is to be determined. (BTW check the Drobo post, I've added an update to the bottom about the past couple week's experience)

Feeling DROOBY...

I just received my Drobo 2.0 on Thursday, and let me tell you...I'm excited! I used to use a grand total of 15 external hard-drives (16 if you include both drives in my RAID 1 system...and this doesn't include internal drives I just have laying around) to store all my media on. Why the ridiculous number? Because I was afraid of data loss! So for every 1TB (1TB=1024GB or 1000GB depending on what system you go by) of storage I needed, I had 2TB to make sure if a drive died I'd have it backed up. Since quite a few of those drives were 500GB Western Digital My Books, this means I need 4(FOUR!!!) drives to store 1TB of needed space (2 for storage, 2 for backup). Some of my drives were larger, but I currently have about 8TB of storage total that I am using. So there's two questions that I'm going to answer that you probably would ask me if you were standing in front of me right now...

One of several shelves that hold my storage and battery backups...just in case...






8 internal drives, 2 external and a Dundee award (from "The Office" for the 2 people that don't watch the show)

1st: "You have how many drives? Why?"

The reason why I have so much storage is for keeping all the photos of all of your beautiful faces and the beautiful places I've been to backed up in triplicate, as well as organizing all of my digital media ranging from a huge iTunes music library to old family photos, to about ton of movies and TV episodes. Yes, all of my movies and TV shows on my drives are LEGALLY bought and I own all of them on DVD (some I bought on iTunes) and rip them to my computers so I can watch them over my network on my computers or sync with my iPhone, without having to track down the disc and waiting for it to load in a DVD player. Even with 8TB of storage, I barely have 800GB free across all of my drives. I am a pack-rat of digital media...I have an addiction...

Glossy...SUPERglossy!


Doesn't get much less complicated than this!


FW800 + USB2.0 = Awesome!

2nd: "What on Earth is a Drobo?"

A Drobo is an amazing piece of technology. It is very much like RAID 5 array, but it is self-healing and you can mix and match drives and upgrade your storage at any time. So what's RAID 5? RAID stands for redundant array of independent drives(or disks), which is used in computers and servers to either provide very fast data transfers OR very solid backups of you data. RAID 5 is designed to backup data across 3 or more drives in such a way that allows any one of the drives to completely fail without losing any data (meaning you can recover you data and then replace the drive. This allows for massive amounts of storage with very minimal risk of loss of important data. The downside of RAID 5 is that if one of the drives fail, you have to pull your data off, wipe the drives clean, buy a new drive and rebuild the RAID from scratch...BIG pain! Big waste of time! Not to mention RAID 5 systems are pretty pricey.

What makes the Drobo so unique is that if a drive fails, you can simply pop it out and throw in a different drive (ANY capacity, doesn't have to be the same) and the Drobo will automatically shift the data around to make sure that you data is again backed up across all drives in it and your data is protected. I've had a number of hard drive enclosures and hard drive power supplies die on me, and 1-2 drives fail on me too. Now if TWO drives fail simultaneously (which would be almost impossible...note that I said almost...like finding an unused lottery ticket on the ground that's the billion dollar winner...)that's when you'll lose data. That's why I still plan to use some of my existing externals just as a tertiary backup of really important stuff like my family and my client's photos.

Massive nest of mess...

Another big reason I got one is that I'm sick of having to dig through a GIGIANTIC rats nest of power cables, USB and Firewire cables just to figure out which of them kicked the bucket. With this guy, I have 1 power cable and 1 FireWire cable to worry about...down from 4 of each with my current setup! Drobo can store upto 4 SATA drives and depending on what drives you throw in there can give you up to 4.1TB (usable storage, not including space reserved for backups [as of this post 1.5TB drives were the largest available]) but with hard drive sizes ever increasing, you will eventually be able to throw four 4TB drives in there! I'm starting off with just the one Drobo 2.0 (with Firewire 800...yes Steve! IEEE1394 is still very much needed these days!) and will be dumping a couple of my drives in it to save on space, power outlets, cables and overall headache.


Snapshot of Drobostation software seeing my drives, but also...not seeing my drives?

Also I feel it is fair to say that I definitely had some problems with my unit initially, but I want to blame it on the drives I was using, not the Drobo itself. I found 4 250GB SATA drives I was using as a pair of RAID 0 systems I had in a desktop I built 3-4 years ago, that I was no longer using (back when I was a PC junkie, and 250GB's was HUGE!). I had some wierd formatting issues that I'm working out with Drobo Support, but I bought a couple of new SATA drives to throw into my Drobo to start from sratch and all seems to be functioning perfect...for now. I won't wipe my data off the old drives for a couple weeks just to be on the safe side for now though. If I'm thrilled with Drobo (and I expect to be) I'll order another one to hold another set of drives to further simplify my life! As Leo Laporte would say, "I'm feeling Droooooooby!"

My initial impressions (outside of the formatting/won't mount properly issue...which again I think was a problem with my drives) are extremely positive. I open up boxes of a TON of new electronic devices, and except for Apple products, the experience is very bland. Drobo was packed in a really nice foam enclosure and a "muslin" type wrap and even as unimportant as this may seem, the little extra touches go a loooonnnggg way to making you feel like you just invested in a high-quality product...not a piece of junk. Also very rarely are such high quality power cables and power supplies included. Usually hard drives, PCs, enclosures, ect. all come with cheapo $1 cables that feel like dental floss. I've never seen such a thick FW800 cable in my life! Again, this may seem trivial but it helps ease that buyers remorse syndrome when you've spent $500 on a box to hold hard drives. Build quality of the Drobo is top notch and feels like it could withstand a cannonball. My only complaint is the front cover is extremely glossy and seems to be a bit of a dust magnet, and glossy plastic is kinda hard to get dust off of (it tends to just slide around avoiding your attempts to remove it). I doubt this will become a major concern; after all, it will just be sitting on a shelf next to my computers...it isn't something that needs to be spotless at all times. Check back in a few weeks to this post for a followup on performance and reliability!


Also...I wanted to get this post up quick before I forgot I ever starting typing it, so I haven't gotten around to taking high-quality review photos for this like I did for the SB900/Sony a350 reviews...all these images are just quick snapshots with my iPhone, hopefully if I get time I'll swap out these images for better ones soon.

UPDATE: Well I've had my Drobo up and running for about 2.5 weeks or so, and the thing has been running like a champ. It hasn't dismounted on me even once, keeps up with streaming video over an Apple TV, while watching something else Macbook Pro over the network WHILE watching a yet another movie on the Mac Mini it is connected to. This empirical test was also done during a file transfer to the Drobo in excess of 25GB!!! The only strange thing I've encountered with it is a truly bizzare Scifi type noise when the drives start spinnning up after the computer put itself to sleep. That could be related to something with powerlines with my audio system or battery backup unit, but it's truly odd. The only way I could describe the noise is as what you would expect a ray-gun from a 1960's Scifi movie would sound like if it was charging up to fire, like a bwoooooppp!!! Imagine four separate drives spinning up in unison while a low RPM fan kicks in as well...there you go! I've swapped out drives several times since the inital setup and each time it was able to shift my data around without any problems, I even tried a disk swap while transferring files to the Drobo, although I would recommend avoiding that whenever possible.

To put it simply, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this product and definitely plan on getting at least 1 more in the next 6 months or so. Any photographer, videographer, or really anyone with something to lose (data I mean) should get one of these, even if you only put a couple 250GB drives in to hold you personal photos and videos from vacations and family events...NOTHING in the world is more important than your family and the images you have to remember them by, I learned this first hand about a month ago when my grandfather died and my family had virtually no good photos of him that weren't heavily faded or washed out from the passing of time. My only suggestion is that oyu make sure your drives WORK before you put them in, that was the cause of my frustration the first few days. Also keep in mind that it could easily take several hours for the Drobo to optimize itself again if you replace a small drive with a very large drive. When I replaced my 250GB with a 1TB drive it took about 10 hours since I had another two 500GB drive and a 1TB in it already.

Networking Extreme...

A few weeks ago I shot a wedding down in Austin Texas with the beautiful and talented photographer Kim, of Kimberly Brooke Photographic. I met her through a mutual friend Armin Defiesta. Armin was unavailable to shoot with Kim that weekend as he was shooting a wedding that day already, but he forwarded my info to Kim, who I had never met before. After a couple phone calls and emails talking about a myriad of subjects, Kim had me fly down and second shoot with her in one of the nicest venues for one of the nicest couples I've ever met. Kelly and Brett just had so much love for each other, which showed up in every click of my camera (even when they weren't in the picture!). It was a gorgeous outdoor ceremony at Austin71 with a great view of the countryside as a backdrop to a perfectly lit (that always helps) afternoon ceremony, which led directly into some great music from the band "Radiostar" which played the best mix of top songs from the 80's that I'd ever heard. I'll let the pics do the rest of the talking, here's some of my fav's:


Have to add in some detail shots...


Beautiful bride makes the job REAL easy...












Talk about a get-away car!!!


I don't know whose got a goofier face, but at least she was tryin!


We got there kinda early, so Kim and I did a little impromtu photoshoot...even caught her chimpin' in the mirror while the girls were getting their makeup done!


I caught her dancing on the job too! LOL!

I had a blast, and would encourage any photographer reading this to network, network, network (check out [b]ecker's [b]school for example)! You'll never know who you meet, or what you'll learn. Every other photographer (whether they shoot weddings, sports, fashion, product,ect) I've ever talked to has taught me something, even if they weren't trying to! We should all try to help each other out to expand our ability to constantly move the bar up a notch to give our clients a consistent world-class experience!

Also keep a look out on Kim's blog for her post about the wedding!

Trespassing in Georgetown (Aly and Dustin's E-Shoot)

So we have a [unspoken] trespassing rule in photography... "It's better [read "easier"] to ask for forgiveness than to go and seek out permission..." this rule pertains to trespassing on people's property in areas like Alexandria, DC, Georgetown, Leesburg, well pretty much anywhere in which private property has WAY more character and 'cool-factor' than public places. This past weekend Erin and I had our engagement shoot for Alison and Dustin in Georgetown (therefor the tip-toe trespassing law holds true). We walked all over town on a near-cloudless Sunday afternoon/evening and found some great little alleys and doorsteps to intrude on (even a classic VW Beatle to use as a prop). I'm looking forward to their wedding that Erin and I are shooting for Armin Defiesta Photography in May, it sounds like it will be a blast! Check out Erin's post too! Here are some of my favorites from the day:






...more trespassing, unfortunately the gate had some pretty fresh paint on it...








...had to wait at those stairs for like 5 minutes waiting for people to stop getting in our shot...


...Alison grabbed a camera and chased after the celebrity [Dustin] outside Papa-Razi


...threw in some off-camera flash for a little fill as the Sun was dipping behind the buildings...

New view on the World (Wide Web)

Just got finished setting up my new 24" LCD. I REALLY wanted to get an S-IPS panel, but I really didn't want to pay 300% more for one. I calibrate all my monitors to prints that I've made on my Epson R1800 and prints I've received from the labs I order from, so if there's a little bit of visual color shift from different angles it doesn't matter to me. I just need it to be accurate from where I'm sitting, so I settled for a mid-range display. This replaces a 4 year old LG L1720P (TN type panel) that I had purchased two of when they first came out for $480 each...it's ridiculous to me how cheap good electronic gear is now.



Here's what my "office" looks like now...a bit like the matrix. (from left to right, 24" Samsung LCD,15.4" Macbook Pro, 17" LG LCD, 40" Samsung LCD) I'm so addicted...I'm even considering picking up a Mac Pro sometime next year after the Nehalm processor refresh and picking uo another 40" LCD to use as my primary system...I need to go to counseling or something!

It's all about the details...

One of the things I love to capture when shooting a wedding or any other sort of event is the little details and parts of what makes that event special. I find that these small components are what brings back more vivid memories. The only thing I love capturing more than details is pure unbridled enthusiasm (if you don't know the reference, then NO SOUP FOR YOU). Here are some of the details I found unique or interesting at a recent wedding along the North Shore of Maryland that I shot with Armin.


Bill was into his guitars and music...nothing says it better than custom made picks...


Even an ordinary chair bathed in a late afternoon glow from a setting Sun can tell you a little more about the day and how gorgeous the ceremony was...











The florist had set up these very unique candle holders to illuminate the post-ceremony celebration...

You see why I find little details so critical in telling the story of your special day? It's all about the things you may forget about years from now, but just like a familiar song or scent, it brings back such vivid memories of one of the happiest days in your life!