In 1987 I drove up from Richmond, Virginia, to Rock Port, Maine, to attend a photography workshop. I was able to stop along the way and take some fun tourist photos of the country. This first photo is of Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse, Maine.

I was looking for this photo on my last trip to Bangor, Maine, last week. However, this was more than two hours away from Bangor, so I decided to go to Bar Harbor and take some photos there.

I was pleased with some of the photos but was still disappointed I couldn’t get a lighthouse.

In 1988 I decided to take another Northeast vacation and visited Cape Cod. Highland Lighthouse, located on Cape Cod, is one of 4 lighthouses on the outer cape. While I was in Hyannis, Massachusetts, part of Cape Cod, the closest lighthouse to me was on private property. I decided to try and capture some of the coastlines, so I shot this instead of the lighthouse.

Sometimes I think we get too locked into one visual icon representing an area of the world that we forget there is much more to see and capture.

Sometimes there are photos worth making just in your neighborhood, like this Kroger gas station near me.

Here is a bicycle race taking place about a mile from my house. My point is you don’t have to go far to capture exciting photos.

This was in my yard. While this is being posted on a Thursday, many people will post older photos for “Throw Back Thursday” why not take some time today and explore your city, neighborhood, or backyard?

Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art Lens, ISO 100, ƒ/13, 1/200

I shared earlier about doing travel photography and trying to capture a place and mood. Today I want to share my efforts here in our country’s Bangor, Maine area.

While Bangor is the biggest city in this area of Maine, people travel a great deal from Canada and go to the coast like Bar Harbor, which is only about 45 minutes away.

A person who lives in this part of Maine may be from a city nearby, but they all enjoy their state. They love to enjoy Maine’s oceans, parks, and other outdoor experiences.

The people of Maine love their water sports and fishing. The people of Maine also are very resilient. Mainers know one thing is always sure that winter is coming. They have a more pronounced Boston-like accent. It’s “Lobstah,” Not Lobster.

Maine people are hearty people. Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack in American folklore. His exploits revolve around the tall tales of his superhuman labors. One of the statues of Paul Bunyan is in downtown Bangor, Maine. He exemplifies the ruggedness of the people of Maine.

I will leave you with my last shot of the day. Remember when you travel to do the images that immediately come to mind and then look for some unique things to toss into your coverage.

When I reach for a camera to shoot an assignment, here are some variables that are important to consider:

• Can it capture the scene?
  • Is the ISO high enough for the lighting conditions?
  • Is the shutter speed fast enough to freeze moments?
• Do I have to think about which camera I have in my hand?
• Are the controls the same as my other cameras?
• Is the buffer big enough so I can shoot whenever I want?
• Can I use high-speed shutter sync and shoot at any shutter speed with my flashes?
• How does it feel in my hands?

This is not an exhaustive list, but some things made me upgrade to the Nikon D5.

The Nikon D5 is blisteringly fast and has accurate autofocus. The new AF system is nothing short of sensational. If you set the camera up correctly, the D5 doesn’t miss a beat. User error is far more likely to be the reason for a missed shot than the camera letting you down, even for the best of photographers. [My D5 Settings for Sports]

I had anticipated needing strobes to shoot the volleyball game due to possible banding issues. I arrived earlier and set up three Alienbees B1600 strobes pointed to the ceiling. I wanted to shoot at a fast shutter speed of at least 1/1000, and to do this required me to use the PocketWizard TT5, AC-9, TT1 & AC-3 in combination to shoot above the sync speed of 1/250.

Here are the TT5 & AC-9 on the flash. I was not using the umbrellas.

This is the TT1 with the AC-3 that was on the camera.

The referee said no flash less than three shots into the game. There is no time to repeatedly talk to the school officials and coaches to fix this problem. So I just switched to the available light. The available light was a mixture of LED and tungsten lights.

The Color Temperature was 4700º kelvin with a +25 magenta shift to get a good skin tone. I used the ExpoDisc to get a custom white balance. [Earlier blog on ExpoDisc]

As you can see, shooting sports is essential to me. My clients need sports as well as classroom shots, for example.

According to DPReview.com, “Studio report: Nikon D5 has lowest base ISO dynamic range of any current FF Nikon DSLR.” Now, this is testing, more specifically, the high ISO range. If you want a low ISO dynamic range, buy the Nikon D810. As they concluded in their article, I can attest to this as a working pro, “For its intended audience, the D5’s high ISO imaging capabilities, advanced autofocus, and durability are likely to be much more important.”

In just a few hours, I was shooting from inside fluorescent lighting and outside with daylight and shade. I finished the time shooting under the mixed lighting of LED and tungsten and working without an assistant to keep the costs down for the client. The Nikon D5 allowed me to capture all this at such incredible quality.

I use my Nikon D5s for video shooting as well. Most of the time, it is for formal interviews. The cool thing is that D5’s entire ISO sensitivity span is available in a 4K video recording. So, I can also shoot at these incredibly high ISOs in the video if needed.

Missing a shot because you have different camera systems is what sometimes happens. You forget how to make a change because it is other on one camera than on another. The Nikon D5 camera has freed me up to concentrate on any subject in any light and look for the moments I want to capture.

Often, I find that while there might be enough light to make a photograph, the light isn’t the best quality. The Nikon D5 works excellently with their Speedlights and doesn’t limit me to just shooting with them. I can use other systems like the Alienbees and still shoot at any shutter speed.

Here is the lighting diagram for the photo above.

The leading light is an Alienbees B1600 with a 20º grid to keep the light tight on them. I put enough light on the background to light it and then used a CTO gel over an Alienbees positioned behind the background with a 30º grid.

So, how is the resolution of the Nikon D5? Well, this 6′ x 9′ banner worked just great. You can walk up and look at the details in the poster.

Having the workhorse Nikon D5 in my bag is great because I feel ready for any situation.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, ISO 18000, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

Did I ever tell you how much I love my job? Every assignment is meeting new people, capturing their personalities, and hopefully introducing them to you.

I love meeting a teacher that looks like one of the NFL linemen showing the tender side of caring for children and wanting them to learn all they can.

With children, I get a chance to watch their personalities forming. Watching children work is one of my favorite things to see. You can picture them working their minds.

Peaking in on them working is how I often feel when I am asked to photograph children for organizations. I see myself being the fly on the wall as they work and play. Here you can see the sensitive moment of the child tenderly placing her Lego block.

This little girl has to re-think the needle on her sewing machine. I am catching a child super focused and enjoying herself. Now to capture things like this, I believe my personal experiences come into play.

My grandmother sewed all of her clothes. I remember watching her work. Today my daughter is doing costume design for theater. Capturing a passion requires you first to understand it is a passion.

I also love to capture the group dynamics going on. I love this photo of the boys playing ball. I watched as each of them found their role while one of them was batting. They were learning how to play ball with the school’s baseball coach.

Now what is fun to watch is how patiently the coach is with all the kids and then taking the time with them individually, teaching them how to be their best. I could also see where the coach couldn’t teach everything they needed to know but took it one step at a time.

The older kids were more coordinated in their sports. I captured this young girl spiking during their win over a rival school.

I had my first opportunity to capture these young girls learning manners. Here they are learning how to introduce themselves. How to make eye contact, shake hands, greet with a smile, and have a good voice.

While shooting something, these two little boys asked me many questions. They wanted to interact with me, and hopefully, I captured their curiosity and eagerness to engage with others.

I will end here with another moment that just took me back to our oldest son. When Pokémon came out, our son Nelson was the age of Ash Ketchum. In 1997 when it first was on TV, our son was nine years old. These guys were earnest about Pokémon, as I remember our son Nelson.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the founder of Chick-fil-A, S. Truett Cathy said:

“Love what you do, and you’ll never work another day in your life.”

S. Truett Cathy

Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art Lens, ISO 28800, ƒ/4, 1/250

To flash or not to flash that is the question? In the photo above this was done without a flash.

Now I have an Alienbees B1600 behind them and one in front. While technically, the one with flashes is better, I still am not satisfied with the flash. Due to restrictions on where I could put the flash, I could never get what I would call a natural look.

The most significant difference between these two photos is where the minister stands. The lighting is designed to hit him on the face, not the front row people. So here, the available light is quite acceptable.

No question that here I was able to achieve the “natural light look” with the strobes. The significant difference between the two photos is the dynamic range appears more critical with the strobes.

While the photos where the lighting can be made to look natural look best with the flash, I find the flash is announcing that I am there shooting. This makes people look at me much more and limit the number of natural expressions.

I love the moment here with the little girl during a chapel service. The reason for those wondering about the blue light is the stained glass window on the right of the frame.

As you can see from these photos, it isn’t always easy to choose to use flash or not. With today’s cameras having such high ISO capabilities, you can get more acceptable images without a flash than we could just a few years ago.

To flash or not is often up to the photographer and how it fits into their style of photography.

Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 200, ƒ/5.6, 1/80–Alienbees B1600, triggered with Pocketwizard TT1 and TT5 system [logo from Wikimedia Commons and modified]

This weekend was my daughter’s high school homecoming. This is her senior year when everything is the last time for her class. They commented on how they all stood around the first year and were afraid to dance at the party. Now, seniors didn’t care what others thought as they did as freshmen.

If you follow my blog, you know my daughter is involved in theater, and her friends are primarily other theatre geeks. They are not an exclusive group, so I said this was most of her friends, but the theatre kids love most people and are excited to have more people hang out doing life together.

Great Self Esteem = Great Photos

When a photographer’s subjects are confident and can relax and be themselves, you spend more time just capturing those moments versus spending so much time trying to pull them out of a person.

The photographer’s key role in making this happen is to create an atmosphere where the subjects feel like they are in control.

I try to convey this by asking many times throughout the photo shoot if there is anything else they would like. I suggest combinations of people and try to keep the excitement going, but I am always trying to say I am here for you.

I arrived early and started by picking a location. I set up my lights, and my wife helped by standing in as a subject so I could get the light set right on her face and balance it with the background and other light on her face.

For the better part of 15 minutes, I was troubleshooting. I had one lens that was not working with my flashes. I finally found the combination of working with my Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8 on the Nikon D5 that would work for me. This required me to move back and forth to get the close-up shots and then walk fifteen feet around to get the group shots.

By the way, I spent a good hour working with my cameras and all my lenses to test them with flashes.

I believe I have a lens that was just repaired. That is the problem. I now know for sure what the problem is that I was having such a problem with when I was setting up for these photos.

Once I had the lights in place, I didn’t change them. I moved closer and further back and occasionally twisted the models to the left or right to get a different look. In the closeup of my daughter, I just turned her until the strobe off to the back was directly behind her.

Here is the setup for you.

I was so thankful to be photographing my daughter and her theatre friends. They exuded so much more confidence than they did just four years ago.

What I think is so exciting about taking these photos this weekend is I feel like I captured the traits in these kids who are now young adults. Just before next year, they enter the workforce or go off to college to live their own lives.

I am so proud of who my daughter has become and the friends she has made in her time in school.

In the TV show Friends, we watched these six people do life together for over ten years. They dated each other and had to break up with each other. The reason so many of us returned to watch the show was we loved it when no matter what happened, they worked hard to keep their friendships intact.

What I love about photography over text is its power to capture emotions. To capture emotions, you need to be prepared. The camera must be set correctly. You must have considered the lighting for the photograph. You have been thinking about and taking into account the background. Will you make it razor sharp or blurry and out of focus?

But even more important than knowing your gear is to know your subject. You cannot capture that which you have no knowledge of or understanding.

For me, to do great photography that is compelling requires the photographer to be involved in their subject’s lives long enough that they let you in to see them for who they are.

I had watched these kids from when they were young and had them in my home many times, allowing them to get to know me and me.

While my relationship is different than my daughter has with her friends, there is a relationship. I think that is key to understanding your role as a photographer. I am not trying to be their friends that hang out every day. I want to be like a parent, the safe space where they can hang out and be themselves.

Georgia Bulldog’s Freshman Running Back #35 Brian Herrien scored his first collegiate touchdown. In contrast, UNC’s Safety #15 Donnie Miles could not stop him during tonight’s Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game, September 3, 2016, at the Georgia Dome. [Nikon D5, Sigma TC-2001 2x, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, ISO 45600, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000]

In the photo here, I am sharing the touchdown. The image without words communicates. The text adds more meaning. However, how will you measure it in your meetings with your team?

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Now I am sitting in a meeting where they look at the analytics of how their audience is responding to their communications work every week. Most of those in the profession are doing something similar. Most use things like Google Analytics to evaluate and measure their communication effectiveness.

Finally, the light bulb came on for me when I realized that everyone was evaluating their work mainly based on our analytics. Well, that isn’t the light bulb moment.

What was the moment realizing that Google Analytics, YouTube, or Vimeo analytics don’t measure still images?

However, we know that research shows that people respond better to visual communications, and specifically, they react first to a still image over all the other forms of communication. We cannot get that feedback through present analytics.

Here is one of the latest research projects about how people view images.

EYETRACKING PHOTOJOURNALISM: NEW RESEARCH EXPLORES WHAT MAKES A PHOTOGRAPH MEMORABLE, SHAREABLE, AND WORTH PUBLISHING

Funded by the National Press Photographers Association, this study follows a long line of research, looking at how people consume news content.

“You can tell which ones are done by people who know what they are doing,” said a 21-year-old male participant, “whether it’s the focus, or the angle or the lighting, being allowed to be up close — all that stuff.”

The sad thing I realized while sitting in that meeting was that this latest NPPA study was not new but had been done in the past in some other way but gave us similar results. The problem I faced in this meeting was that we couldn’t get the same data each week. There is no way to know without using eye-tracking technology to give us then the analytics we so desperately need in this meeting.

Each week we only see what Google analytics is telling us, which is what stories are getting clicked on, and it does not help us know how to engage the audience by use of visuals. Since we can get analytics on video, a high volume of videos is being produced compared to still photos because they can see engagement scores.

If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Manage It.

A Forbes magazine article debunks this statement and says, “The important stuff can’t be measured.”

I think communications professionals today suffer the same syndrome as the people in the scriptures of the Bible. They often lack faith because they want something measurable.

Scripture also teaches us that …

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

– Hebrews 11:1

Because we have the research that shows us how people prefer to get the information we need to do what we know works rather than wanting to rely only on that which we can measure each week.

Wells Fargo executives instructed their employees to “Do what it takes to make money,” even if it leads to some fraud.

Taking care of the customer and doing what is right requires one to have faith in something that isn’t always measurable in the short term.

A successful business always serves its customers and makes their lives better. In so doing this, the company will become successful.

The businesses that fail are those who turn the focus from serving their customer to serving themselves over the customers.

The critical thing to take away is that you can’t just look at data from a macro level and think it tells you a story. Digging deeper into your analytics is the only way to see the actual situation, and always want to make decisions with the correct information. Realize that some of the most important things impacting your customer are not always measurable.

Nikon D5, Sigma TC-2001 2x, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, ISO 102400, ƒ/5.6, 1/4000

Friday Night Lights in Georgia were shining not so brightly on Roswell playing Milton. I maxed out my ISO at 102400 most of the night.

Here are more photos just from that night and two other games.

Roswell High School is presently ranked #1 in Georgia and #8 Nationally by USA Today.

While I could have lowered my shutter speed from 1/4000 to 1/2000 or even 1/1000, I enjoy having super sharp images due to freezing the motion.

The Nikon D5 is helping me capture those moments even if I need an ISO 102400 to capture those fleeting moments in sports.

Now earlier in the year the sunlight was still a factor in the game, but going forward you are relying on the stadium lights.

I have been a Nikon shooter since the very beginning of my professional career. Nikon has met the challenges and provided me with the best camera you could own throughout my job at the time that I owned that camera.

Today I can compete because my gear frees me up to get the moment. This is why you buy great camera gear to remain and be genuinely competitive. Your client deserves the best images you can deliver.

I posted last week how I shot this promotional shot. Here is that link if you missed it.

After I took the photo, I created an 11″ x 17″ poster that they could put up around the school and in the community. So if you are around Roswell, Georgia, this next couple of weeks, you will see this up in the restaurants, stores, and places the public visits.

To make the poster, I brought it into PhotoShop, added the text, and created a drop shadow with the text.

Now to get all the traffic going by the school to know the play is just around the corner, I made a banner 6′ x 9′.

Here you can see me installing the banner with my wife. This will give you a good perspective on the size of the banner.

Here is that banner next to the HUGE football banner.

Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art Lens, ISO 3600, ƒ/4, 1/100

Storytellers Abroad participant, Alison Waller, is surrounded by children in a church service as she is capturing her story on Gnoyi.

Waller produced this story of Gnoyi’s dream to become a part of the Togolese medical community. Gnoyi failed his high school diploma test. Without his high school diploma, he would never have been able to be a part of the medical community. With the help of Hôpital Baptiste Biblique, he was able to raise funds and find the courage to retake the high school diploma test.

“With the added education, I will be respected more, and people will have confidence in what I say, so I will be able to approach my patients in a way that they will have confidence in what I say, and I will be able to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and they will listen because of their respect and confidence in me. So I will do it though humbly, and I will give glory to God.”

Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art Lens, ISO 3200, ƒ/4, 1/100

Here you can see Waller shooting footage of her subject leading in the church.

We still have openings for the Honduras Multimedia Workshop from October 29 to November 5. The deadline to apply is August 30, 2016. 

Click here to learn more. Then, get your money in now to hold your spot.