Tsunami Surfers...

My dad and brother formed a surf band called the Tsunami Surfers that has been playing in and around Bakersfield.  Last weekend they played the Kern River Spring Festival located at Hart Park.  It was a great opportunity to connect up with them and to have an opportunity to photograph the event.  They have put a tremendous amount of effort in the group and sounds pretty tight.

The venue was a pretty tough location to photograph with harsh back lighting and a very attractive fence in front of the band but I think I was able to work around it and get some pretty nice shots.

To minimize changing lenses on this I just used two (2) Nikon D300s with the Nikon 17-55 2.8 AF-S DX and the Nikon 70-200 2.8 AF-S VR attached to each body.  As mentioned above the lighting situation was pretty complicated and to keep things simple I would meter off the concrete floor using exposure lock to prevent the band from being under exposed.

The only thing I forgot?

Earplugs...

Heather...

I had a great opportunity earlier in the week to photograph Heather who is a local model here in town.  She is expecting later this month and we have been trying to coordinate schedules for a few weeks now to do a shoot.  With time running out (she should have the baby literally any day now) we set up a time after work and decided to take advantage of our local California City Central Park.

It was a great time and we walked away with some really nice images to include some really special ones such as the one at right with the rainbow in the picture.  Luckily Heather noticed that and we were able to take advantage of it!

A walk in the field...

The weather is really starting to change around here!  The fields are starting to bloom and every day this week I've driven past these rows of wild flowers growing everywhere and I've had this image in my head to create.  We took the opportunity to bring the kids out here and spent about an hour playing around in the flower fields.  It was pretty cool and everyone had a great time!

This image was shot with a Nikon D300s with the Nikkor 70-200 F/2.8 lens set at 5.6.  

Shrimp and Sausage Boil

I did a bit of food photography today to capture the results of a shrimp, sausage, potato and corn boil.  It is a very colorful (and tasty) meal.  We pulled all the ingredients together and staged the shoot to include even  fresh bread in the background.  It was really fun to shoot (and eat) and the images came out exactly what I was looking for.

The lighting configuration was fairly simple and straight forward.  I had a medium Photoflex Softbox overhead and a grid spot shooting across the screen from the top right of the frame.  Both modifiers were powered with Alien Bees AB800.  I put the Nikon 50 1.4 AF-D lens on my Nikon D300s and shot the scene at F/9 for a bit more depth of field.  

Adventures in photography...

I took the opportunity to take a break today and that resulted in a photo boondoggle that ending up bring me back to Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills California.  It is really a neat place and this is the third time I've been there.  Every time I go I find something new and exciting about the place.  I hope you enjoy the images, just click on the one above and you will go through the selects from the day!

This was all done with a pretty light setup that included one of my Nikon D300s, Nikkor 17-55 2.8, my old Bogen (Manfrotto tripot) and newer Giottos MH-3000 Ball Head.  This little setup worked out very well and enabled me to stay "focused" on the composition I was looking for instead of lugging what would have been a very heavy camera bag.