John W Jacobsen Photography

One of my friends recently asked me to photograph his upcoming wedding. Needless to say, a humbling proposition. Normally when I go out and take photos I know what I wish to accomplish in mind and through perseverance, I can usually come home with something worthwhile. A wedding is completely different. These people have entrusted me with providing them with the lasting memories of their wedding day. One take. No screw-ups.

I knew I had to take some “practice” shots before the big day and I also knew that I would probably need some kind of diffuser for my flash. I talked to my friend Amy and she suggested a Gary Fong diffuser. I ordered one up and it arrive via UPS a couple of days ago.

Now granted, our family pet Sammy isn’t like photographing the bride and groom. In many ways, she might be more difficult because her coat is jet black and she is kind of – no, scratch that – she’s really hyper. Using Sammy as a test subject I knew I wouldn’t be able to stage a shot and exposure would be a challenge because of her fur color. I loaded up the Gary Fong on my SB-600 and started ripping off shots.

While the photo above isn’t going to win any awards, it did give me an opportunity to work with the LightSphere II and after a couple of minutes, I really like it. I have a feeling that I’m going to be chasing the pets around the house more over the next few days to try to get up-to-speed quickly so I’m ready for the wedding – which is now only six days away!.

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.

The March desktop background image is here! I went out this weekend and tried to capture the essence of winter in Colorado and sized it specifically for several different monitor resolutions and included a handy calendar in the lower right corner. Click on your monitor resolution below to view/save the image to your local computer. Enjoy!

• 2560 x 1600
• 1920 x 1200
• 1680 x 1050
• 1440 x 900
• 1280 x 800

My wife is a marketing guru and has been after me for some time to create some stock photography for her. Today was snowy and kind of blech so I set up a mini-light studio in our dining room and went to work.

First, I hung a crisp white sheet on the wall with some gaffer tape and set up my EZ Boxes with SB-600′s in them. I decided to use my Jr Poppers over the built-in Nikon CLS – my only justification was that I could. The two softboxes were set up on either side of the subject – one camera left and one camera right. The camera left flash was set to 1/4 power and the camera right was set to 1/2 power. Then, it was just a matter of dialing in my exposure to get these images – most of them were in the 1/125s and f/8 range (give or take a stop) and firing away. The lens I chose for these shots was my Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 Micro – it’s wicked sharp and always produces great images for me.

Sure, I could have gone with available light and tweaked the exposure compensation to get a pretty decent shot, but I wanted to use the lights to “nuke” the sheet. No matter how much ironing we did, there were still plenty of wrinkles. By throwing a lot of light at the sheet, I was able to accomplish two things. 1) The background looks pretty close to pure white and 2) you don’t see any wrinkles!

The only negative to the shots was I really wanted to get a set up shot of this but of course, I forgot about that until after I had already torn everything down. C’est la vie. Here are some more shots from this afternoon:

When it comes to having control over your exposures, you really need to understand aperture. A fundamental understanding of what aperture is and how it effects your photos is a basic foundation for taking your photography to the next level.

In a nutshell, aperture is defined as a hole or opening through which light travels. When you depress the shutter on your camera, light travels through the lens and is captured on the sensor (or film) of your camera. But what does aperture really mean?

The way aperture works on camera’s is somewhat counter-intuitive. A smaller aperture number (often referred to as the f-stop) means a bigger opening for light to travel through. A larger aperture (f-stop) means a smaller opening for light to travel through. The size of that opening greatly affects how an image will look.

A larger opening (smaller f-stop/aperture) will greatly decrease your depth of field. That means what you are focusing on will be in sharp focus, but other parts of the image might be blurry. In the above example, I used a relative small aperture (f/2.9). As you can see, the “control” key is in sharp focus, but the rest of the keys aren’t. The further away you get from the “control” key, the less in focus the image is.

Conversely, if I had taken that photo with a large aperture – say f/22 – all of the keys and the screen would be in critical focus. Of course there are trade-offs to aperture. Changing the aperture of your camera requires an equal, opposite change in shutter speed to maintain a properly exposed image. For example, if I had a properly exposed image at f/4.0 and a shutter speed of 1/60s and I decided to change the aperture to f/2.8. My image would require an equal, opposite change in shutter speed to remain properly exposed. Changing the shutter speed to 1/125s is the correct choice here.

Let’s take a moment to analyze that. If a smaller aperture really means a bigger opening for light to pass through. Then by creating a larger opening for light to pass through, we are allowing more light through to the sensor. If you have a properly exposed image, and allow more light, you get what’s called an over-exposure. One way to combat an over-exposure is to reduce the duration of time light is allowed to pass through the lens – a ha! A faster shutter speed will reduce the amount of light! By reducing your aperture one f-stop, you need to increase your shutter speed by one f-stop. Increase your f-stop, you would need to decrease your shutter speed by the same amount.

I’m sure many of you are thinking “whoa, this is waaaaay too complicated!”. Luckily, most manufactures have a special shooting mode called Aperture Priority. Aperture Priority allows you to choose what aperture you want, and the camera will automatically choose the correct shutter speed to make a properly exposed image. Check your camera’s user guide to find out if you have an Aperture Priority shooting mode on your camera – and figure out how to turn it on! When I’m out shooting, I can honestly say I’m in Aperture Priority about 90% of the time.

Aperture is a complex subject that can’t be covered in just a few paragraphs. I’ll be touching on this subject in more detail in the weeks to come. However, I was playing around with my old point-and-shoot tonight and snapped this picture and decided to share. While it certainly helps, this picture is also proof that you don’t need a $3000 camera to take a nice photo. My Nikon Coolpix P50 is over two years old and cost about $130 from B&H Photo   :)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you have undoubtedly heard about the latest offering from Apple – the iPad. I would also venture to say that since the product was announced last week, you’ve probably heard a lot of negative feedback. Though it’s a bit off topic, I thought I’d throw my two cents in on the matter

(Disclaimer: I have been accused of being an Apple ‘fan boy’ occasionally, so I’m sure I’m somewhat biased)

I love the iPad. Plain and simple. I think Apple has truly come up with a game changer. Sure, it’s bigger and more unwieldy than an iPhone. Yes, it’s not as powerful as a desktop computer and it’s running a crippled operating system. Big deal. It’s not supposed to replace the iPhone or the desktop computer. Apple is trying to introduce an entirely new product category with the iPad.

I’ve been getting paid to work in the computer industry since 1990. I’ve owned a computer since as early as 1984. I currently have three computers at home and I’ve had an iPhone since the day they came out. I also plan on getting on iPad the day they come out. Why? Because I think it really is a revolutionary device that will give me a better user experience doing several things that are important to me.

For one, I am an avid reader. I almost purchased a Kindle or Nook on several occasions over the past twelve months, but held out in the slim hope that Apple would come out with a new product that would revolutionize how people interact with “print” media. It appears as though the iPad has done just that. I’m not exactly thrilled about buying my books through iBooks (Apples online book store). I’d rather purchase my reading material through Barnes & Noble. Great news – Barnes & Noble already has an iPhone app for reading eBooks and it’s fairly safe to assume that will be updated for the new iPad interface. I’m also quite excited to see what kind of apps the publishers can come up with for viewing their content. Video and print together on one screen? I’m hooked.

If I’m not reading, I’m probably browsing the interwebs. Whether checking the latest scores, catching up on the news, or researching a topic that interests me, I spend between two and three hours a day browsing the internet ‘for fun’. With a 9.7″ screen offering 1024×768 resolution, the iPad will be a perfect device for me to accomplish my browsing. Sure, the iPad doesn’t have Flash. That’s fine with me. Having been in the internet field for the past twelve years, I have a love/hate relationship with Flash as it is.

I’m not a hard core gamer, but I like to get my Freecell on from time-to-time. While I don’t have the patience to fully tackle Half-Life 2, Doom 3 or any of the newer titles out today, I still like to exercise my mind with some puzzle/logic fare. While the iPhone provides a nice, simple interface to do this, the iPad will blow the doors off in respect to casual gaming.

Without going into great detail, I was also impressed by the claim of 10 hour battery life. Ten Hours?!? Watching a movie on a cross country flight won’t be a problem. The addition of their iWork suite of applications at an affordable price was a great idea (think Microsoft Office, but for the Mac). Having the ability to work on word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations on the iPad is bigger than you think it will be.

Finally – the price! At $499, Apple has really positioned this for the masses. Apple has always been a premium company. Their hardware has always been spectacular but the price has often put it outside the mainstreams hands. Case in point, I don’t remember the source, but Apple has a 90% market share of the PC’s over $1000. And now they have a premium casual computing device under $500? Schweet!

But you know what? This device won’t be for everyone and that’s “ok”. I would never own the iPad as my primary source of computing power. I also wouldn’t use the iPad to write War and Peace. It’s not going to replace my cellphone. Everyone has their own requirements and for me, the iPad makes a lot of sense.

So put me in the “pro” iPad camp. I think it’s going to be a revolutionary device and I can’t wait to get my hands on one!

The February desktop background image is here! I’ve taken one of my favorite shots and sized it specifically for several different monitor resolutions and included a handy February calendar in the lower right corner. Click on your monitor resolution below to view/save the image to your local computer. Enjoy!

• 2560 x 1600
• 1680 x 1050
• 1440 x 900
• 1280 x 800

Don’t let anyone tell you that photography isn’t a labor of love. After much coaxing from my family and friends, I spent the better part of the last ten days poring over thousands of images that I have taken over the last several years. I’ve re-processed everything using the latest plugins and newest techniques that I’ve learned. The end result is visible here – my very own online store!

You will notice the store has been broken into three different categories of images: Conceptual, Nature & Wildlife and Black & White. Not only are you able to buy prints, but the vendor I have chosen has some pretty cool merchandise as well. As an added bonus, digital download of the images are available for purchase for both personal and commercial use. I have many more images to go through and add to the store but at this point, I felt the time was right to ‘go live’.

This process has taken a lot of time and effort but I’m extremely proud of the output. I hope you enjoy my images as much as I’ve enjoyed making them! Please feel free to post a comment or drop me an email and let me know what you think!

One of the best kept secrets in photography also happens to be the best zoom lens money can buy. I’m certainly not the first photographer to say this, but it bears repeating – When you think you’re close enough to the subject, take two steps forward!.

Getting closer will allow you to capture more detail, highlight your subject further, and often times, you will be rewarded with a photo that many others wouldn’t get.

The second image shows a much more intimate shot of the bee with a lot more detail than the first image. Next time you are out taking photos, give it a try. Frame up your subject and get your image properly exposed, and then take two steps forward and fire away!

One of the best tips I can give is to be prepared. Being prepared includes knowing how to change the settings on your camera, understanding what settings you’ve chosen, and understanding the scene you are trying to capture. If you like shooting wildlife, you are occasionally presented those special ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunites to get a great image. If you are busy fiddling with camera settings – the shot will likely evaporate before your very eyes.

One of the things I like to do to combat that is is to practice my technique at the local zoo. Being able to take your time and practice in a controlled environment will help build skills that will become second nature to you. With that in mind, I headed to the Denver Zoo this past weekend to hone my wildlife photography skills!

The temperature was perfect – for January anyways! It was mid 50′s but unfortunately, it was also fairly overcast. It’s always a struggle to make images that don’t appear flat and lifeless when the clouds are out – or to a photographer who likes a challenge, a perfect opportunity to practice new techniques to better prepare for real life situations.

After several hundred captures, these three are my favorite. The top image is of an infant hyena playing. The middle image is of a napping black bear, and the bottom image is a close-up of a male lion’s eye. By using different focal lengths, exposure settings, and lighting conditions, I was able to capture images that weren’t flat and lifeless. I can certainly take what I learned from this trip and put it in practice the next time I’m in the mountains on some obscure trail. Practice. Practice. Practice.