Some recent food images I shot for a client are being displayed The 1820 Gallery at the Art Institute of Washington. This is the third annual, “YUM, a celebration of food photography” exhibit.

The exhibition will run from November 5, 2011 to December 30, 2011

The the address is:

1820 Gallery
Art Institute of Washington
1820 N Ft Myer Drive
Arlington, Virginia 22209

This was part of Fotoweek DC. There is some fantastic work being displayed by several photographers at this exhibit! You will definitely love it. Or just get really hungry! Thanks again to everyone for their support! Let me know if you stop by the gallery!

Being somewhat biased towards a certain brand of German car myself, I was looking forward to this photo shoot! IMA Motorsport has earned their reputation as one of the best in the business. IMA is a full equipped service center that handles anything from an oil change and scheduled services to full blown race preparation and complete restorations. Their quality of work, staff, and care for their clients truly sets them apart from the rest.

There is a lot happening when photographing a dance team. There are can be a lot of people on a stage, a lot of interesting action, and a lot of changing lighting conditions. Pretty overwhelming when trying to decide what will make a key moment and strong image. When photographing this kind of work, decide what speaks to you visually about what you are seeing and focus on that. Don’t forget to get any necessary group shots and specifically required shots of the performance, but try to focus when shooting. The shoes in the above shot are what caught my attention. Each dancer’s shoes were different. Being a step routine, the foot work was also important. It makes sense to focus on the feet.

This shot made me think of the sun as being right there on the stage dancing with her. The orange light surrounded her and followed her. The simple color pallet of orange and gray adds to the strength of the photo. I chose to follow her closely and make the shot with as much orange glow as I could.

This photo was all about mirrors. The lights to me looked like windows, or mirrors. I shot to see a “mirror image” of the front dancer in the background from another dancer. Adjust yourself move around until you can get the perspective you need and wait for the action to be right. Get the shot!

Dance is not easy to capture when you have a dark stage and have not been given a chance to preview the routines. Know your camera’s control instinctively and just go with the flow of the dance. Anticipate where the performance is going if you can and create the upcoming shot in your mind. Your shots will become stronger over time. If the anticipated shot doesn’t happen its ok too, just be ready for something even better or unexpected!

I always try to do some portrait work with the dancers I work with. Remember to keep the sessions light and fun. It’s always entertaining to allow everyone to play around a bit at the end of a session too. You can see below the lighting setup for some group photos.

I recently worked with virtuoso Flamenco guitarist Marija Temo. The assignment was to create an awesome shot of her hands and her guitar. How do you express fiery rasgueados in a still photo? The right combination of off-camera speedlights and dragging the shutter gave us the look we were after.

Marija was also recently featured in a GE Capital television commercial for Taylor Guitars. You can watch the commercial by clicking on the GE link.

You can check out her amazing guitar playing and see when she is performing next on her new website – Marija Temo.

Her Flamenco Completo act is one act you surely don’t want to miss!

I have decided to separate a few things and consolidate others. Here is the run down of changes being made!

There will be three websites.

-AncientCityPhoto.com & it’s blog (Panoramic & Performance / Live Event)
-MyDatingPhoto.com & it’s blog (Portraiture & Online Dating)
-Apostolis Ventouris Music & Arts (Site TBA) (My own music, ebooks, and photo projects)

It sounds like a lot, but it will better cater your needs specifically. The blog posts will still keep coming. I will try to post at least once a week to each one. My personal site’s blog will be featuring the gear reviews now while the Ancient City Photo blog will discuss shoots and technique breakdown, etc… MyDatingPhoto’s blog will cater more towards portraiture and news in the online dating world. I don’t want you running around trying to keep up with all my sites so I have decided to consolidate in terms of the social media.

My Twitter, Facebook, and my mailing list will cater to all three. This way you will be able to see the updates and choose which news you are interested in without having to jump between sites. Hopefully this will all work out smoothly and not cause too much confusion aside from my own!

The mailing list will now be going out as a weekly summary.

I have a lot more exciting news to come, especially with the launching of my own personal site shortly. Expect some new workshops, several ebooks & monographs, displays of my work, new music, and my own general photographic musings. And lots of Leica stuff. Because I Like-a them a lot!

So, check out my new site, give me a call, and lets shoot!

I wanted to share this great app I discovered online. It is called Aspects and comes from CodeSparq. It allows you to quickly calculate dimensions and aspect ratios for images at any given resolution.

You can input the information you know, or require for your image and it will calculate the rest. If I know I need an image that is going to be 24″ wide by 60″ long at 300dpi for example, I can enter that information and it will give me pixel dimensions. I also use it a lot for images when I am given only a pixel dimension. Unless I am on the web, pixel dimensions are meaningless to me. Great…I have a 7000px to a side image…!?!?! Um ok. What does that translate to at say 250dpi??? ::Quick ipad calculation in Aspects…:: A HA! 28″ wide! Perfect. Now that makes sense to me!

Very useful app, especially if you aren’t right in front of photoshop. Being able to generate custom aspect ratios and derive sizing for them is awesome. There is a catch however, it is still an iphone app. That means it’s small on the ipad screen. Since it’s just big numbers anyways it doesn’t bother me. And for $0.99 you certainly can’t beat it!

Check it out here: Aspects

© 2010 Emerald Sequoia LLC

Emerald Sequoia released an app for the Ipad called Emerald Observatory. This is basically a super duper watch for your Ipad. I won’t bother going over all of the features here, but you can learn more about this awesome app on their homepage: Emerald Observatory.

So what does this app do for us photographers? Well first it makes me wake up way too early! I am often referring to this app while on the phone with clients planning out shoots.

This accurately displays the beginning and end of civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight as well as the golden hour. You know…the time when we should be taking pictures because the natural light is the absolute-bestest-most-gorgeous ever? For me reading when sunrise was happening was fine. Seeing visually the progression of twilight and the golden hour has got me thinking about shooting during those times differently.

I am better able to judge exactly when I want to be shooting for my desired effect. Especially for the quickly fading twilight times for evening and night shots. It also shows the sun’s angle from the horizon. This is useful in the city when you want to know approximately what time the sun will be over certain buildings, etc… You can do projections for future planning. Its great!

Oh and the best part…. its ninety-nine cents!!!!!!!!!! $0.99 !!!!!!!!!!! When was the last great addition to your photographic craft cheaper than $100?!?!?! (aside from David Duchemin’s $5 ebooks!)

At .99 cents there is no excuse not to have this app!

I recently created a large set of images of a local dance group. I wanted to offer a few tips for those of you interested in this kind of shooting. Dance photography is not all that different from shooting bands. You have to listen to the music, follow the dance, count & “move” with the dancer. Not necessarily physically but anticipate their movements and their leading motions. Just like concerts…don’t become a log! Move around and get an angle of view that will connect you with the dancer in a new way. Avoid shooting into the backstage area (or at least shoot without showing it!). Change your style…shoot slow shutter for motion and trails. Shoot fast shutter for portraits and frozen motion. Fast shutters for dance are more difficult than concerts. Obtaining 1/250 in the dark is often a challenge unless you are on a well lit stage. ISO 3200 at F/2 and 1/200th is not too uncommon. I’ve shot darker environments. Be prepared. If you bring an f/4 – f/5.6 zoom to a dark stage you will be out of luck in many situations. An f/2.8 zoom is a minimum. I recommend fast primes instead though. I highly recommend Canon’s 135 f/2 prime and 85 f/1.8. You should be able to get a decent motion freezing shutter speed in the dark as well as having a good working distance to keep sufficient depth of field. Also, use a spot meter and manual mode on your camera to get a more representative reading and keep exposure consistent. I personally shoot a little over exposed. If you are careful you will have enough latitude to pull exposure back down while having less noise visible even at a high ISO. Also, make sure you have everything you need on you and easily accessible. Changing cards, lenses, settings, in total darkness can be a challenge if you are not comfortable with your gear! I recommend practicing this kind of stuff before shooting if you need. It makes a work of difference!

Here is a sampling of the shots!

I just had to post about this. The Ipad has changed how I function day to day dramatically, so I figure let me just rave a little…
I have never really had brand loyalty when in comes to computers. I am not a Mac or PC guy. I can use both just fine. I’m not particularly fond of either. When Apple announced their new Ipad though, I knew something was going to be different. I have used an ipad every day since their release and I can say with certainty that this is the best computing device to hit the consumer market in my opinion since computers themselves. I don’t have an iphone, or an ipod touch, and they never quite interested me. The ipad is not just a giant ipad touch! The large screen really changes the experience.

No tech specs here, no benchmarks, just my thoughts based on daily use. So lets get the to the meat and potatoes…what has this giant battery with glass done for me?

Benefits!

1. Speed. I go from standby (I never actually turn in off) to my email or any webpage in seconds and then back off. No waiting for my laptop to load, or come out of standby. No operating system hanging, or trying to update, etc… Waiting for a computer to load now seems like eternity.

2. Efficiency. I check a lot of websites. I read a lot of blogs. I use RSS readers on my browsers but the ipad offers a much greater experience. I update all my sites in a wonderful app (i’ll write about it in another post) and it lets me know how many new posts are in and from what sites. I read what I want now, and read the rest later when i’m away from my network even. No browser, no pop ups, or random content, or full websites to load. I get the content directly in a format that is enjoyable to read and view images on. Now I can read about Strobist, Lenswork, and McNally’s work while eating lunch in the park!

3. Portable portfolio. Yeah, images do actually look good on the ipad. Adjust brightness for your viewing lights and you are set. The ipad optimizes all your images that get loaded, but I have yet to see a major degradation on the quality. 400mb worth of images got turned into roughly 150mb of data on the ipad. It’s obviously doing something to the images…I just haven’t seen an impact visually yet. Color accuracy is close. Not calibrated close…but close enough for marketing what I do.

4. Great photography related apps! (not necessarily about actual photos however) I will be going into detail in another post about specific apps. There are a bunch of apps that totally help in planning, estimating shooting times, etc… I will be updating regularly about a bunch of apps that have made my photoshoot planning and execution so much easier.

5. Battery length! With the screen brightness set to zero I can go all week or longer. (depending on use) For indoors, brightness zero is actually pretty decent for most reading. You can also keep the music playing through its “ipod” app with the screen turned off! All day tunes with practically no battery drain! 10 hour+ battery life is great on set, or when you want to get away and do some personal shooting without loads of cords, adapters, etc… for several days.

6. NO KEYBOARD!!!!!!! NO MOUSE!!!!!!!!!! WHOOOO HOOO!!!!!!!!!!! Finally!!!!!!! An intuitive interface that navigates well with nothing more than simple hand motions! I never liked a desktop mouse and keyboard. And laptops are even worse. (Don’t even get me started on netbooks…) Finally a device that is comfortable and enjoyable to use! I am overjoyed.

7. The ipad fits in camera bags…even small ones! Thinktank Retrospective 10, UD40, even a UD30 hold an ipad with ease! The ipad also fits in a Scott E Vest! This makes travel so easy. Think about it…Scott E Vest fits a Leica, 2 or 3 lenses, Ipad, phone, mp3 player, sunglasses, pocket camera for video, and other small miscellaneous items. No carry on luggage. None of this even shows on you! Now you are free to use your carry on for whatever you need…and even still have a “personal item.” A laptop usually counts as a personal item, so a small laptop bag can fit a LOT of stuff when there is no more laptop! It is amazing how things change when the laptop gets removed from travel!

The ipad really makes personal computing feel personal. I have actually found myself spending more time viewing images as well. It really feels like you are holding the image in your hands versus viewing on a computer screen.

I use my ipad to schedule my workload, plan my shoots, and keep track of everything else. It’s also my blog, book, and post reader. I can handle the majority of my needs on this device! There is even an app to shoot wireless, and control my cameras from the iPad with Canon’s transmitter. (this is going to make my remote setups even easier!) What is great is that I can keep inspirational content on this thing for whenever I need a boost. Brooks Jensen’s podcasts are so great to keep around. As are David DuChemin’s PDFs.

If you spend some time with an Ipad you will definitely come up with all kinds of ways it can fit into your lifestyle. I highly recommend giving one a try!

DC in the morning is just awesome and relaxing…right before all the traffic and crowds begin that is! I recently had a portrait shoot with Jennifer downtown. REALLY early. Jennifer is not only an awesome person to photograph, but she knows her thing when it comes to property! If you are looking to buy or sell your house, check Jennifer out! These were my two favorites from that shoot. I’ve been doing more and more shoots inside the city lately. Hit me up if you want shoot down there! It’s great fun in the morning.