photography

There are 67 posts filed in photography (this is page 3 of 9).

Matt and Nell’s Wedding Video

I was absolutely thrilled and honored to be able to take part in Matt and Nell’s wedding in Houston, TX this past weekend. Matt and Nell have been dear friends for years and they are some of the nicest, most generous, and amazing people I know.

During my time there, I shot about 90 minutes worth of video, which I then condensed into the 5-minute video above.  Everything was shot using 60 fps, and some footage was slowed to 24 fps. The video was shot entirely handheld, using a Canon 60D and a 50mm f/1.4 lens.I agonized over which lens/body to bring with me, and what other equipment might be necessary. In the end, I went with something light-weight and simple, and I think the final setup allowed me to grab a few more shots than I would have if I’d used a bulkier setup.

Music via PremiumBeat with some color grading help from Color Grading Central.

Sasquatch 2013

For the second year in a row, I had the privilege of attending the Sasquatch music festival, out at the Gorge Ampitheatre in central Washington. Just like last year, the views were spectacular, the music was mind-blowing, and the atmosphere was electric.

This year, I was able to bring my Canon 5D Mark III with 70-200mm lens, along with my Fuji x100, to shoot some footage. The below video is what resulted.

It was also a joy to photograph the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis performance on opening night. Macklemore (age 29) is an incredibly gifted performer, and gave us a show we would not soon forget. Click through to see the full set of photos.
  Macklemore 11

Shooting the Pacific Northwest Regionals Yo-Yo Championship

PNWR Yo-Yo Championships 1
I had the privilege of shooting the Pacific Northwest Regionals Yo-Yo Championship this weekend at The Armory in the Seattle Center. I didn’t really know what to expect, but I had guessed that it would either be 1) a few guys doing some mediocre yo-yo tricks, or 2) an awesome display of talent from a subculture that I was only barely aware of. It was definitively the latter. Hundreds of people showed up at The Armory (dozens of yo-yo enthusiasts, along with their parents). These people have spent thousands of hours honing their skills and it shows. After watching them do a myriad of yo-yo tricks over the course of two days, I started to realize the appeal: there’s something magical about the ability to make a small, circular device at your fingertips appear to defy gravity.

For the entire shoot, I used only my Canon 5D Mark III and my 50mm f/1.4 lens along with my trusty 70-200mm f/2.8. There are unique challenges to shooting a yo-yo competition that I did not anticipate. You are shooting in a low-light environment, in a situation where both the subject and an object in the subject’s hands are moving rapidly. Thus, I had to shoot with the aperture wide open (f/2.8 or lower) but still be focused on the subject to get some decent bokeh out of it AND have a high shutter speed to freeze the action, lest both subject and his yo-yo become blurred beyond recognition. For most of these shots, I used an ISO of 2000 combined with f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/400th to 1/500th of a second. As expected, the Mark III’s high-ISO performance was exceptional.


I took a few hundred shots and only a few dozen were at a sharpness that I’d consider to be usable. There were two failures here: one is the fact that I haven’t mastered all the intricacies of the Mark III’s incredibly complex autofocus system, and the other is the fact that the 50mm f/1.4’s focusing motor just doesn’t feel like it’s well-designed for action. After some experimentation, I realized that all I really needed to make some compelling shots (compelling for me, at least) was to try and capture these performers’ expressions as sharply as possible. If the yo-yo was in focus, that was an added bonus.

Video on the other hand was much easier. I shot at 60 fps and ran the shutter speed fairly constant at 1/125, thus giving me the freedom to close down the aperture significantly. Even so, maintaining focus was challenging on some occasions. Note that I was going hand-held for nearly all of these shots, carrying a very heavy lens with no rig, and trying to focus simultaneously.

Here’s a video I put together of the event:

And here’s video of Zach Gormley, who I believe was this year’s champion. After you watch the mind-blowing things he does in this video, you won’t be surprised:

Vegas Through a Rokinon 8mm Fisheye


I recently traded in my Canon 5D Mark II (*sniff*) for a Canon 60D and a 5D Mark III (I wanted the 60D to do some cheap DSLR video on-the-go). One of the ancillary benefits of the 60D purchase was being able to finally use that 8mm Rokinon fisheye lens I had sitting in my closet. I had bought the Rokinon many months ago, not realizing that it was essentially useless on a full-frame camera. Stupid move, but one easily negated with the purchase of another camera!

I decided to take the Rokinon with me on a recent vacation to Vegas. How’d it fare in real-world use? In general, pretty well! Here are a few stray observations on this lens:

  • One of the big annoyances about this lens is the lack of aperture control from the camera itself. Instead, there’s an aperture ring you must physically turn. I’m used to this from using my finicky-but-awesome Fuji X100, but it was still a chore. Compounding this is that you get an aperture preview that is “always on” as you look through the lens.
  • Outdoors and in good lighting, the fisheye was amazing. Just setting the focus to somewhere between 3ft and infinity yields razor sharp pics. And of course, the look is quite unique.
  • In low light and using the 60D video function, I found the lens to produce images that were kind of a soupy mess. You can get a taste of that in one of the videos I made using the fisheye at night. Really not ideal, although the lack of sharpness here is probably a combination of a bunch of factors.
  • Because of the way the lens’s glass element is shaped, it’s a bit challenging to get the lens cap on and off. It will only fit in one orientation.
  • As is probably obvious, conventional photographic guidelines don’t really apply. It’s hard to adhere to the rule of thirds when your horizon is bending dramatically. After much experimentation, I found that photos I took that were mostly symmetrical ended up being the most striking and impressive. And of course, be as close to the subject as possible.
So would I recommend the fisheye lens? Depends. The fisheye produces a very specific type of image and you really have to get in close to create something visually striking (or alternatively, be really far away, as in a nature/landscape shot). I was definitely glad to have it in certain situations, but it is a lot harder to craft eye-catching images from it, since I believe the settings and situations you need to create those images occur more rarely when using this lens. Thus, if you are making one of your first, relatively-low-cost lens purchases, I’d definitely pick up the 50mm f/1.4 lens before you pick up anything else, as its versatility and sharpness are beyond compare. For the 8mm Rokinon, only niche hobbyists need apply. 

The Canon 5D Mark III Is Real

After literally years of speculation about Canon’s successor to the wildly popular Canon 5D Mark II, the 5D Mark III is finally here! The improvements are mostly incremental: better image quality, especially in low-light, some more video/audio options, and superior software options.

I currently own a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 7D, and to be honest, nothing about the new camera screams “MUST BUY!” to me. The Mark II still produces dynamite images and the 7D has some pretty robust video features. The extra $1000+ I would be forking over for a Mark III (compared to a Mark II) will be difficult to justify.

Then again, I haven’t seen the images yet. If they are truly mind-blowing, which they very well may be, I might have to dip into the old savings account for an upgrade…