I love photographing several families at the same time. Just like the photos below, where I photographed 2 families with 2 kids each and their parents/grandparents. Within total chaos when you have 4 very young children, we created beautiful photos.
San Francisco Child and Family Photographer
I cannot thank enough Daphne and her daughter for being an amazing models during their photo session in Golden Gate Park and then at the beach. The best compliment I could ever receive is when Daphne told me that her daughter said about photo session: "She loved it and you! She asked about you the other day. "I want to see Fima again". Everyone had fun during the photo session!
San Francisco Family Portrait Session
I love photographing families with more then one child. Another successful family photo-session!
San Francisco Studio Newborn Photography
It is always exciting to do a studio photo session with newborns and their entourage! You never know what they are going to do. This is what Vivian said after the photo session: "It was Fun and went smoothly!"
The baby cooperated big time!
San Francisco Child and Family photography
I have been photographing Michelle and Pat's kids many times. So when grandma wants to have photo session with her granddaughters, here we go! Another fun photo session!
San Francisco Child Photographer
I have been photographing Stacy and Ethan's family since their child was born. And every year after that. Every year different location.It is such a pleasure seeing the growth of your clients children. I believe their son nailed down the "being super cute" part in the last photo session! :)
San Francisco Maternity Photographer
I was thrilled when Vivian and Dave decided to get my "Baby Step Club" package: Four photo sessions in one year: A Maternity, Newborn, 6 Month and One Year. Besides being a very good deal in savings, its a great way to document growth of a child! As always, I met with clients before photo session to discuss their goals, what kind of images they wish to capture, what to wear and not to wear. We also talked about using different locations for the photo session. Vivian wanted outdoors but when I started showing maternity photos, she really liked studio. So I proposed to do both: we meet in my studio, work for an hour and than go to the beach. Unfortunately it was foggy the day of the photo session! Surprise: a fog in San Francisco in July! :) My studio policy for maternity/child/family photography: 100% guarantee that I will exceed your expectation! So we captured studio photographs and rescheduled our outdoor photo session for different day.
I was very happy when we got to the beach several days later. So were Vivian and Dave! The light was spectacular.
I was very happy to hear at the end of photo session how happy Vivian and Dave were during the session and how easy it was. After all, my goal is, when couple looks at the art on their wall;I want to remind them: it was a happy day!
Jessica and Ryan Wedding Sneak Peek
Yesterday I had a privilege of photographing Jessica and Ryan's wedding in beautiful Sonoma county vineyard. What a perfect setting for a wedding! The whole show was run very smoothly by Jenny from Jennilynnevents.
Flowers were provided by Emily from Green Snap Dragon
Doves for the ceremony were provided by Gene from Celebration in Flight
Hair and makeup for the Jessica were done by Crystal (crystalkim555@gmail.com)
Delicious food and cake were provided by Grapevine catering
This is just a quick peek from over 2 thousand photos from the wedding.
Hope I have enough photos of their dog Sophie who behaved so well during the wedding and especially by bringing the rings to the ceremony! :)
Panorama Photography in Wilderness
Panorama photography in the wilderness. When you travel in wilderness, as in backpacking, weight is everything. So you want to keep weight as little as possible and, if you care about image quality as I do, bring professional equipment. Which limits your choice of lenses to one, unless you are built like a Sherpa or have a mule to carry it for you. But first, let’s start with camera choice. Latest generation of mirror-less cameras and their image quality is phenomenal. They are also weight less than DSLR cameras. Unfortunately their battery life is not very good. Also battery recharging, at least in case of Sony batteries, takes twice as long compare to Canon batteries. I also love to photograph Star Trails at night. For that I needed full frame sensor camera because I need very high ISO settings with clean image quality. For reasons above I chose Canon 5D Mark 3. My favorite wilderness lens is Canon 24-105L 4.0 To some people 105 is an odd choice for wilderness. I also love to photograph people and it’s a great compromise between wide lens and portrait lens.
How to bring your pro gear into the wilderness. I have been struggling with this question for a while. At first, I tried to carry my camera on my neck with a camera strap, like some photographers do. It's OK if you are only going for a few hours. Ones I went out for 12 hour hike and could not move my neck for several days. I tried to put my camera inside my backpack. But found out that I did not take any photos because it was very time consuming to get my camera out. Finally I found the solution from ThinkTank Photo They make several products that let's you carry camera where it belongs: right in front of you. Below is the photo of me using their digital holster 20 in conjunction with their digital harness in Patagonia earlier this year. They do have other sizes available for different camera sizes. With this set up, I carried my Mark 3 with 24-105 very comfortably. The most important thing: I could access my camera in a few seconds and camera was protected from elements (I carried plastic bag on the bottom of the holster in case of the downpour)! The digital holster also had room for my IPhone and maps.
By the way, if you buy anything from ThinkTank Photo, enter this special code number in the "Affiliate Box" in the shopping cart: 141269.357718 You will receive free gear with every order over $50.00!
Why Panorama photography? Why not take extra wide lens and capture everything in one exposure? I was asked those question many times. The simple answer is this: The wider the lens, the further away your subject will appear to be. So when you photograph magnificent mountains, for example, they will look very far away. But if you use longer focal lens and make several panoramic exposures, the perspective will be compressed, the closer your subject will appear to be. Another reason is files size. If all you want is web image, this is of no importance to you but if you wish to print panorama image, you want the biggest files size possible (panoramas never look good in 5x7 or 8x10). They look beautiful large.
Creating Panorama images:
Tripod: You want all panorama images to be horizontal! (Unless you are doing vertical panorama). Tripod with leveler will help you achieve this with ease.
You want to eliminate image parallax by finding lens nodal point. In plain English, you want to rotate camera/lens combination not where camera mounts on a tripod (camera center) but in center of lens (nodal point). Instead of trying to explain what it is, below is the link to Really Right Stuff page on the subject. By the way, all my panorama equipment is from Really Right Stuff.
http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/Panoramas-Made-Simple
Yes, the camera can be hand held. With practice you can make decent panoramas. But if you have lots of lines in the photo (fences, electrical lines, tree lines, etc.…) your software will have very hard time stitching it together and you will not be happy, especially if you are stitching more than 3 images together.
Below is a panorama photo made with 25 images stitched together using pano gear from Really Right Stuff. Please notice how many horizontal lines are there (deck, rails, etc.) This kind of image is completely impossible task for hand held camera.
Secure your camera vertically into tripod/pano gear (your file will be larger). ALL camera settings must be on manual: aperture/shutter speed/focus/ISO/white balance. The last thing you want is for one image to have focus in the foreground and next one on the background. You will never be able to make clean stitch. For pano photography you want high aperture number to get foreground and background in focus. Since camera is on the tripod, shutter speed is less important. You may have very strong highlights and shadows in the scene. Adjust exposure for middle ground (unless you also doing an HDR. Focus on what is important in this photo and turn off auto focus. Just for this reason alone, I love lenses that have auto focus switch on the lens. Trying to go through the camera menu to find focus switch is a pain! Do not put any filters in front of the lens, especially polarizing filter! You will get more even files to stitch together. If you take multiple panoramas of the same scene, before I start moving camera to photograph, I take a photo of my hand. This way in Lightroom I can easily identify different pano groups. When you photograph panos, you want to overlap your images. The rule of thumb is to overlap it by at least 30%. 50% is even better.
To process images, as in stitch them together, I use Photoshop. Latest Lightroom can do it also but I still prefer Photoshop.
In Lightroom, identify what images you want to stitch. Take the first image and do all adjustments to your liking. Select all other images, including the one you just adjusted and sync all images to the first adjusted image.. You want all files to be the same. Photoshop will love you when you make stitching easier. While all images are still selected, right click, edit in, and in the drop down menu, select Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. In Photomerge window, I get good results with auto selection. I also select Vignette removal and Geometric distortion correction. I leave Content Aware fill unchecked. I like doing it as needed by myself ones stitching is done. If I use tripod and pano gear, very little content aware fill is ever needed.
Below are few of my panoramic images:
Enjoy your panorama photography.
Star Trail Photography
There are few things you need to make great Star Trail photos:
- Be as far as possible from light pollution and preferably during new moon or when the moon is below horizon. Apps for sunset/moon/stars: LightTrac, Sunrise, Star Walk, TPE (The Photographer's Ephemeris).
- The image below is a great example of light pollution. Bear in mind that I am at least 30 miles to nearest small town (population less than 700 and 3 miles higher)
- Be as close as possible to ozone layer without any clouds.
- Camera with very good image quality (low noise) at high ISO (1600 or higher)
- Cable release or intervalometer is essential.
- Tripod is extremely essential (mostly).
- Warm clothing, headlamp with red or green light, collapsible chair and refreshments.
- Fast wide angle lens is essential (2.8 or faster)
- All camera setting on manual including focus and color balance with image stabilization and noise reduction off; exposure drive is set to multiple exposures.
- Be on location 2 hours before sunset to find Polaris star, compose the image and include as much sky as possible.
- Photographing just the stars makes boring photos. Create scale by including foreground in the photo.
- LOCK the camera to make sure it does not move in the next few hours. Most tripods have a hook at the bottom of center column. I usually hook my backpack to it to make tripod more solid or bring a lightweight bag, fill it with rocks and fasten it to the hook.
- Be creative and take a photo/s of foreground before/during or right after sunset.
- Change the focus to almost infinity.
- Start photographing stars at least 2 hours after sunset Test exposure with different ISO to determine proper exposure.
- Keep exposures to 30 seconds or less.
- Take at least an hours’ worth of exposures. Two hours is even better.
- Believe in higher power that what you are doing will turn out OK because you cannot see it in the camera.
- I also need to mention that you need a way to bring your camera on the trail. If you are only hiking short distance to a location, this is not an issue. But if you are going to wilderness and going to hike for days, carrying your camera properly is very important. I tried ones to bring my camera on the trail while hanging it by it's strap over my neck. After 10 hour hike, I could not move my neck for several days. I also tried to carry my camera inside my backpack. I ended up not using my camera at all because of the effort it took to get camera out. Until I found ThinkTank product Digital Holster in conjunction with Digital Harness Here is the photo of me in Patagonia and the above mentioned products attached to my backpack:
Post Processing: Computer with lots of ram Bring all images to Lightroom.
- Select the first image from the series and adjust it but stay away from radial and graduated filters.
- Select ALL images from the series and batch sync to match first one.
- While all images are still selected, Edit in Photoshop >Open as Layers
- Blending mode to lighten and clean all planes and satellites lights.
- This was my very first Star Trail image. Total of 181 exposures. Exposure #1 was during sunset of your truly. This is where I positioned my camera to face North and found decent foreground.
- I left my camera on a tripod in the same spot and came back several hours later and took hour and a half worth of exposures at 30 second interval (total of 180 exposures). This is how star trail image looked like:
- I then combined the image I took during sunset with star trail image and called it "Loosing my religion".
- Here is the final image:
- Here are several more samples of Star Trail Photography:
My Patagonia backpacking trip
Last month I went on my lifetime dream vacation: backpacking in Patagonia! Combining my love for photography with my passion for backpacking!
The hardest part of the trip was getting there. I left my house to go to the airport Monday morning but did not start my tracking until Thursday morning.
Since I am much better photographer than a writer, I will let my photos tell a story about the trip.
Modern San Francisco Family Photography
I have been photographing Kristina and Mike what seems like forever: their engagement, their wedding, a model for a day photo session, their newborn daughter photo session, their daughter's one year portrait session and now their daughter's 2 year anniversary. Love it when my clients trust me with their milestones!
Golden Gate Park Family Photography
I love photographing families and children in Golden Gate Park. So many beautiful places, so many beautiful backgrounds and when you find the right light- it's magic time. This is exactly what happened when I photographed Cherry, Charles and their daughter! Magic!
San Francisco Newborn Studio Photographer
What can I say? I love photographing newborns. The follow directions well! :) And there is no need to tell parents to look happy at the photo session. Their joy is contagious!
San Francisco Infant and Family Photography
I was very excited when Michelle and Pat contacted me to photograph their one year old daughter. They wanted to create similar images I created 2 years ago with their other daughter. Having pets in photo session with 1 year old and 3 year old? Bring it on! We love challenges! Also the cake: I offer cake photo session for one year old clients. The clean-up is on the house. Sometimes one year old clients do not take kindly to the cake. The joy of being child photographer! :)
A modern San Francisco Family Photographer
I love it when my clients choose their home for family photography: kids are very comfortable in their own environment. This is what we did with Bethanne and her family. After photographing in their home, off to a near-by park. Kids are happy again!
Humor Family Dog Photography
This is a homage to Alisha Minnette, a photographer who brilliantly photographed her dog as if it was her child. Few days after I saw Alisha's images on FB, Jessica and Ryan contacted me with request to do something similar with their dog. Since I do both: photograph children and dogs, and in my experience, Alisha missed few funny cliche images, I was very excited to collaborate! :)
A Modern Fashion Engagement Photography
What can I say when the sun and the weather helps you during an engagement photo session? This is exactly what happened last week when I had the privilege to photograph Lana and Jeff. The second we finished our photography in the Marina Green in San Francisco; it started to rain. While we are driving to a location on Mt. Tam for more dramatic photos, the clouds were threatening to open up, but the minute we stopped, the sun shone through and gave us beautiful light for our engagement photo session! And what can I say about sunset? It was just incredible!
My backpacking trip in High Sierras.
I just finished a one month, almost 300 mile backpacking trip from Echo Summit (near Lake Tahoe) over Mt. Whitney to Whitney Portal near Lone Pine (Pacific Coast Trail sectional/John Muir Trail). After few days on the trail, PCT hikers gave me a trail name – “Tripod” – because I was carrying a 7.5 pound tripod. After 9 tiring days, I had to ship my tripod home. I am a professional photographer by trade. Nature and star-trail photography are my hobbies. At first I was photographing just vistas, but after a while they felt empty without people in them – I am a portrait photographer for a reason. So I started to include hikers in my photos (PCT, JMT and sometimes support people). If you see anyone you know, please let them know.
This is the visual story of my trip:
A Fashion Portrait with a Tux!
I was very excited when Stacy called me. She mentioned that her son has a Tux from being a ring bearer last month and asked me if it’s OK to photograph him in upcoming family photo session wearing it? Are you kidding me? I love making creative and unusual photographs! Bring champagne and let’s get it started! And now we have proof that her son was ladies’s man even before puberty! 
To make this work we needed a location where wearing a tux would be OK. Palace Hotel in San Francisco is such a place. My motto is: “It is always better to ask forgiveness than permission!”
Lucky for us, hotel security intervened just as we wrapped our “fashion photo session”!
