John W Jacobsen Photography

We were met with overcast weather when we awoke this Independence Day, and with it our plans to go in to the mountains exploring were scuttled. So to make the best of the cold and dreary morn, I baked some blueberry muffins!

My wonderful wife knows how much I like blueberries and she had just happened to pick up a pint at the local super-mart. Armed with fresh blueberries, I baked up a batch of six jumbo-sized muffins. During the baking process, I realized that I didn’t have any decent pictures of one of my favorite food items so I broke out the camera and the 105mm Macro lens.

Surprisingly, taking photos of food is actually pretty easy. I placed the muffins on a wood cutting board and placed them near a window with beautiful natural light. I set my white balance to ‘cloudy’ and fired off about 75 shots. One thing to look out for is shadows. If the light coming into the scene from the window is harsh or overly bright, you will want to use a inexpensive reflector set up opposite the window to help even out the shadows. If you don’t want to spend the money on a reflector, you can use everyday items such as a piece of white paper or some aluminum foil. As the name implies, you are trying to reflect some of the light back in to the photo. Trust me – it really does make a difference. In this case however, using a reflector wasn’t necessary because of it being such an overcast day.

Once I got these images on the computer, I noticed that the cloudy white balance (5600 Kelvin on my D300) was a little bit too warm for my liking so I dialed the temp down to about 4700 Kelvin. Being able to change the temperture of the image is one of the biggest benefits of shooting in RAW vs JPG/TIFF Fine. I’m so happy with the end result that a batch of these are going to make their way to the Fotolia stock photography agency.

Finally, the best part about food photography is once you’ve snapped off all of the shots that you want, you can eat some seriously delicious food and after all, isn’t that what holidays are all about?!? =)

No, not that Twilight, I’m referring to the time of the day right after sunset, before it gets totally dark out. A recent trip to Las Vegas reminded me how much I liked shooting at twilight.

For photographers, twilight begins about 15 minutes after sunset. Light disappears quickly so you need to have a sense of urgency. At most, you will get a ten minute window of perfect light to get your shot. Once your shooting window passes, there isn’t much you are going to be able to do to salvage the photos. The skies will be too dark and your subject is going to blend in to the background leaving you with dull, lifeless images. You are trying to capture that dark blue sky that tells the viewer that yup, this is indeed night (but it’s not so dark that the viewer can’t make out your subject).

In order to take advantage of the light, you need to follow some simple rules and you will get the shot every time:

1. Get there early! I try to get to my location about 30 minutes before sunset so I can scope out the perfect shot and overcome any last minute obstacles.
2. Use your sticks! Because this is a low light situation, it’s nearly impossible to handhold your camera to get the shot – especially if you are shooting at a smaller aperture where the shutter speed could be 15 or 20 seconds. Set up a tripod to eliminate the blur!
3. Shoot in Manual mode. Your camera’s meter is going to try to overexpose the image. By shooting in manual you can control the exposure and get the desired look. Is the image in your LCD too bright? Crank up a faster shutter speed!
4. Take a lot of pictures! Don’t rely on your camera’s LCD screen to determine if you got the image you wanted. I often take 100 or more images of the same exact scene and throw most of them away when I get them back on the computer.
5. Enjoy the moment. Unless you are photographing a national treasure (Golden Gate Bridge perhaps?), you will very likely be the only person there. Enoy the time and have fun while you are shooting.

After you get the images on your computer, you can tweak the colors and composition as needed. I always try to get the image as close to perfect in camera as I can. Invariably, I will usually end up cropping an image and mess around with the settings in RAW a little bit.

Finally, if you really want to angle for some dramatic skies, try to shoot right before or after a storm. At the very least you will end up with some wicked looking clouds in your image and if you’re lucky, you might also get some spectacular colors to light up your image as well.

I’ve been on vacation all week. For the most part, I’ve done a whole lot of nothing! Well, that’s not entirely true, it seems like the days have flown by and it has been quite eventful around our house.

The week started off with our terminally ill beagle Sidney getting drastically worse. We knew that he had pancreatic cancer and we suspect his pancreas burst on late Saturday afternoon. There really isn’t much that can be done to cure this particular form of cancer. So while we were somewhat prepared for his imminent passing, it came far too quickly for both myself and Tara. On Sunday morning, we brought the little guy to the vet for the last time. R.I.P. little dude!

I spent quite a bit of the week working on both this website as well as learning, practicing and honing my small flash photography skills. An invaluable resource during this time was Kelby Training. Some people I know have used this and recommended it in the past, but being stubborn, I didn’t really pay attention. I wanted to beef up my Photoshop skills so I thought I would give Kelby Training a try and wouldn’t you know, I’ve spent over 10 hours learning about photography and off camera flash from the likes of Joe McNally! Kelby Training definitely rocks and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about photography or photo processing.

With the week winding down, I’ve also whittled my “to-do” list down as well, including raking all the leaves. I decided I better get some “fall” pictures or my wife would never forgive me. Some of these photos aren’t typical fall foliage orange, red and yellow, but I think they represent how I feel about fall. I love the change of season, especially in fall as it gets cooler out.

Still plenty to do this weekend as well. We’re planning to make a short trip up to Rocky Mountain National Park tomorrow morning and then I have a date with my friends Rachel and Greg. They purchased a great old farmhouse on the outskirts of town and they are letting me (cajoling me?) play in their barn for the afternoon! This could be trouble!