During the caregiver modeling thread CV asked to see some of my work after I made a comment about the quality of a photo and not the girl contained within. I didn't want to hijack that thread with my own stuff, and now that it has ended I'll throw a few up here. This is my diversity portfolio, that tries to show all the different styles I can cover. Normally when I'm going for a particular job, I'll take a folio of just that style.

Hopefully the images are small enough that even though there are 26 of them it won't take too long to load, and at the same times I hope they're large enough that you can see some detail.

Hey, those are my peeps!

Very nice. That cat is mesmerizing. But hey, no fair actually going to different places to take pictures.

They're mostly taken in Cumberland (no relation to Tom) my home town, and Romania my home away from home. There's some Baltimore and Frostburg, Maryland in there too.

EDIT: Oh, and the farm is in New Jersey.

Those are excellent! How do you get such great saturation?

The first half up to the Peeps were shot with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel (the first one), the later were with a Canon EOS 30D. I shoot raw, and process with Phase One's Capture One software.

For individual shots like this (rather than a full shoot of similar images), I'll hand tune each image. After I get the white balance how I want it (usually about 500 Kelvin lower than neutral, for a bit of warming), I'll totally desaturate the preview so I'm looking at B&W. That's where I'll do the tonal balance. Then I just move the saturation back up to about 105% for that little extra pop.

I've tried Aperture, and Lightroom, along with DxO, and a few others. Nothing comes close to the "film-like" look I get from Capture One.

Great pics. Every time I see shots like this, I want to get a 'real' camera and learn how to take pix. Granted much of that is my yearning for the new Olympus EP1 (IIRC).

Of course, I could learn how to better use the one digicam I have now...

I do hate that, "if I had a camera like yours..." If the person saying that has a camera with them, I say, "give me that." After poking through the menus, and looking at all the settings, I'll white balance on a piece of paper, and force the f-stop to be as low as possible, zoom in to shrink the DoF (unless it changes the f-stop too much). Then take a couple nice shots which will usually blow the camera owner away.

Now, I'm not saying I can't do better with a nicer camera. Being able to shoot raw is a huge plus. Real aperture and exposure settings also allow much finer control. (I usually use the 5-degree spot meter built into the camera, and set the exposure manually on the hottest point in the frame to get a nice "exposed to the right" on the histogram.) When I do use a flash, its nice to get it a few degrees away from the lens. Since I don't use zoom lenses any more (if you look closely at some of the older shots have chromatic aberration--pink fringes--typical of zoom use), it's nice to be able to swap to different lengths when needed.

So, a better camera does let me get better pictures, and it wasn't until I had a good camera that I fully understood what could actually be done with a digicam.

Nice pictures Chris.

I have been using the Digital Rebel for last 5 years and have a few lenses and have been really happy with the pictures. I use CS4 to play with the image. Will try out the one you mentioned.

Some of the software from FredMiranda is good too. Looking at getting the 50D

Sub or 50D is the question

--Avi

Phase One does have a free trial period for their software.

I would really like a 5D Mark II, but yeah, I've got to finish my home theater first.

5D Mark II is an awesome equipment. I took a few pictures of my daughter with that (borrowed from a friend for 10 mins :))

Will post if i can figure out the optimal size for the forum. My HT picture is still not showing up and need to resize.

BTW, downloaded the Phase One trial. Will pick your brain to get some pictures fixed.

--Avi

actually it was a 5D Mark III..some 7K for the body

That would have been a 1Ds Mark III, for that price. I don't even dream about owning one of those. If I were making some $7k per shoot, then I'd have one. But as it is, in 5 years I've probably just paid for my gear. Lucky it's not my day job.

Not only would I want a new camera then you post stuff like Phase One and then I start thinking I need a new Mac. Then again, I always think I need a new Mac.

If only they had a mid-tower.

/shakes fist in Steve Jobs' general direction...

Tell me about it.

Can anyone recommend a good tutorial/book on how to take good digital pix? Assume I don't know about f stop, exposure, etc. I've read about it before but never bothered to really learn about it.

Who knows, I may have to go back to my parents' house and dig out the old family Canon AE-1 and even try film for the heck of it.

If you're thinking you want to get serious, get a dSLR. You really need the full control an SLR offers. Sure you can do it with film, but you're going to want to play around a lot. Playing with film gets expensive, and the feedback loop is too slow to actually experiment.

Otherwise, Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera is the book.

No, not trying to go that far. I'd just like to do better w/ the simple gear I have now, as in my simple Canon SD.

Thanks, I'll check out my library for that one now.

Very nice pics Chris. I would love to get back into photography. Decent DSLR's are reaching affordable prices now.