Who doesn’t like a paid trip to Florida? Although it was in the August heat, Lori and I didn’t mind heading down to photograph the largest tobacco trade show on Earth held at the Orlando Convention Center. I was contracted to make a fast-paced summary video of the IPCPR International Trade Show by the Panador Hat Company, the same wonderful company that sent me to the remote Andes Mountains to photograph hat weavers in 2009. At first I was going to make the trip along, but after some negotiations Lori was able to come as an assistant (and I really could’ve covered the trade show as well without her). Neither of us smoke and are some of the least educated people ever when it comes to tobacco. Come to think of it, of everyone at the largest tobacco Lori and I may have been the only ones not smoking anything (except the air… which pretty much counts). Nonetheless, we enjoyed capturing all the elaborate booths, products and decorations. Thanks again Panador!

Do you need photography or video of your next convention? Contact me! I’d love to create media to help you promote your business better. Plus, I love the extra salty pretzels they serve on airplanes, it’s (almost) worth the trip just for those.

Photo stats for the trade show:

Hours shooting: 10hrs over 2 days
Photos Taken: 3200 (plus 10 minutes worth of video clips)
Photos Delivered: 205
Hours Editing the Video: 18hrs (includes time to write the music)
Final Video Length: 2min 23sec

Challenges of shooting conventions

Maybe I’ll write a whole article about this sometime since I’ve done a fair amount of convention photography in the last few years, but for now here’s 3 things to anticipate before you go shoot a trade show or convention.

1. The lighting is terrible. It’s always directly overhead, far away (creating really defined shadows), and dim. Except when I was on a tripod for the time lapses, inside the trade show I kept my ISO at 1600.
2. Security doesn’t always like you taking photos. If you’ve been hired to shoot, keep a copy of your contract and any official permissions with you. Also, it’s common courtesy to ask permission of the booth owner if your going to take photos of commercial products.
3. Nervous people. I’m sure you’ve experienced this before but as soon as you ask “Can I take your photo?” people get all nervous and unnatural looking. Although it’s super creepy or obvious, when possible I take someone’s photo and then ask permission to use it.

Taking Time Lapses with a DSLR

I’ve recently started experimenting with shooting time lapses with my DSLR and finally think I have the basics down. Although I’m still learning, the advice I have here is simple:

DON’T TOUCH THE CAMERA DURING THE TIME LAPSE!

Put in it full manual mode, set your intervalometer, and then don’t touch anything. Adjusting exposure settings will give you an embarrassingly obvious hiccup in the final video, and of course moving the camera will defeat the whole effect. Anyone with experience in time lapses out have anything to add? I would welcome any tips I can get.

Orange County Convention Center

Sadly this desk was only a prop and did not really make cigars. However the guy in the top right was.

I seriously doubt she can see anything through those glasses

This booth went all out and even hired it’s own DJ

The original Golden Gun used by James Bond in the 1974 film The Man with the Golden Gun

Panador hats really are the highest quality Panama hats in the world

My lovely wife

It doesn’t look like it, but this guy is on 5 ft stilts

I had never heard of Cigar Dave, but apparently he is a big deal

The inventor and patent holder of the one and only Cigar In A Bottle

This is how you know the cigar is high quality

You can see the smoke hanging over the room. Our clothes smelled like fine tobacco even after we washed them.

Orange County Convention Center

The post Smokin’ Photos of the IPCPR International Trade Show appeared first on The Unframed World.

I swore I would never take wedding photos. In fact, I even poked fun at wedding photographers for not being “legit” … whatever that means. When I finally got over myself, I realized that I was knocking something I had never tried. Wedding photography provides many photographers with full-time income and deep satisfaction, so why not give it a go? I convinced my friend Julia to let me document her special day and prepared for the stress of “capturing the big moment” that surely would ensue. Thankfully working with me were two other rookies, Rebecca Bauer and Jennie Barney who did a fantastic job as well (photos by them are marked). I was most nervous about generating good ideas for group poses on the spot, but after downloading several good examples of creative wedding photo ideas to my iPhone before the group shoot, things ended up going really smoothly.

You can see the results in the time lapse wedding photo montage video (there’s got to be a better name for that) above or in the best of the best photos below. My conclusion is that being a wedding photographer is waaay different than doing architecture and landscapes. There’s a social aspect that demands wedding photographers to be energetic, funny, easy to work with, but also somewhat bossy and have a clear vision. In short, I had fun and wouldn’t mind doing more wedding if the opportunity comes along. Thanks again John and Julia for letting me photograph your wedding!

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Rebecca Bauer

Photo by Rebecca Bauer

Photo by Rebecca Bauer

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Rebecca Bauer

Photo by Rebecca Bauer

Photo by Jennie Barney

Photo by Rebecca Bauer

The post John & Julia’s Best Wedding Photos OR Overshooting My First Wedding appeared first on The Unframed World.

If you’re interested in entering this competition, you can find the official content rules here.

I nominate these 5 other travel bloggers to participate!

• Y Travel Blog
• As We Travel
• Wes Nations
• Jack & Jill
• Nomadic Samuel

Green

Ohara, a less visited rural village in Kyoto, was exactly what Lori and I were hoping. With only a little research we had taken the hour-long scenic bus ride north from downtown Kyoto. After a grueling, buzzer-beater cycle to the Golden Pavilion on the previous day, our desire was for a slow-paced amble through quiet countryside. With a wealth of enchanting nature scenes and a dearth of rabid tourists, this quaint river valley town came through big time. Aside from getting lost for 20 minutes right out of the bus stop, we stayed mostly within the tranquil grounds of Sanzenin Temple, the village’s main attraction where we found this restful zen garden called Shuhekien. I took a few photos and we sat in contented silence for unhurried minutes before moving on.

Blue

Any photo hit-list for Montreal is incomplete without the lavishly decorated Notre Dame Basilica. Still a fully functioning Catholic cathedral, I have one important piece of advice for successfully photographing the gorgeous interior of this place: DON”T GO DURING SUNDAY MORNING MASS! Lori, our friend Natalie, and I thought it was our lucky day when there was no attendant at the entrance counter. As I tromped in, I recall exclaiming something enthusiastic like, “Boardwalk and Park Place guys! This usually costs like 5 buc- Wow, wait. I think they’re praying.” As silently as possible, the two ladies helped me collect my shattered dignity from the beautifully tiled floor, and we regrouped at a nearby cafe.

Since I obviously did not take pictures during the service, we returned once mass had ended, paid our $5 and shot until early afternoon.

White

After a beautiful train trip through the southern Japanese Alps, Lori and I arrived in Takayama, Japan. From there, it was a short bus ride through the switch backs of the Hida Mountains to Shirakawa Village. Well deserving of its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage site, this village provides breath-taking views of the Northern Alps and prides itself on being a time warp back to Edo period traditional Japan, complete with farm houses built with thatching. It also happens to be one of the snowiest places in Japan (measured in annual snowfall) and certainly lived up to the title.

Yellow

Inside the stunning sanctuary of the Notre Dame cathedral in Montreal, there’s a lesser known private chapel in the back right corner that I knew about from a previous visit. At the front there’s an amazing floor to ceiling sculpture. They say that even seeing just a photo of this moving work has been known to calm crying babes, warm Scroogey hearts and lower LDL cholesterol. (Scroogey: Scrooge-like. Now you know.) Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for that revelatory moment since this post features a photo of the back of the chapel.

Red

As one of the most acclaimed locations in all Japan, Lori and made sure to stop by the red gates of the Fushimi Inari-Taisha on our tour of Kyoto by rental bike. This place easily makes it to the top echelon of my list of touring destination recommendations in Japan. A big plus of the Fushimi Inari is that admission is always free and the paths are kept open all 365 days of the year. I highly recommend bring a camera to this place. The endless tunnels of torii (red gates) lining the walkways were magical.

The post Capture the Color Contest appeared first on The Unframed World.

Is this a jellyfish, a brain sucking alien or both?! Ahhhhhhhhhh!

There’s nothing like reaching the end of a great aquarium (like the New England Aquarium), and finding that they keep a whole display of just jellyfish in the basement. Let’s face it, jellyfish are the main reason we go to aquariums anyway. They’re so peaceful, but freaky-beautiful while they just float through the water.  The New England Aquarium in Boston knows this well and keeps a whole display devoted to these living lava lamps in the basement down the stairs near the coin lockers. Ya, the giant shark is cool, and the penguins are cute, but the jellyfish are so enchanting that they can’t even be near the other fish or else they would steal the whole show. So next time you’re in the New England Aquarium in Boston, don’t miss these captivating creatures.

The 30 Second Challenge

This series of jellyfish photos is slightly different than the usual Monday travel post. The post-processing screen shots are lower down, but allow me to talk about my approach to photogrpahy for a moment. Usually I only select the single, most beautiful photo from my travels, edit it for hours (like this one) and post it with behind the scenes Photoshop screen shots. After last Friday’s interview with Japan photographer Martin Bailey I was blown away to learn that Martin usually only spends around 30 seconds per picture! He admits that there are better photographers out there, but at the end of the day his photos of Japan are still breathtaking and support him as a full-time professional photographer. That number, 30 seconds, stuck in my mind since I heard it. Even if I cut my average processing time in half, Martin still has me by over an hour (I bet I spend around 2.5 hours per picture) AND he has more images to share on his blog and podcast.

Do they all make it to his portfolio? No.

Is it ok that he shows the world some of his non-portfolio shots? I think so. In fact, I’m very glad he does because I loooove visiting his site to see them.

So back to this 30 second thing. Here I am sorting though my images from the New England Aquarium. I see several shots of jellyfish I like and my first thought is “I like these… but none of them stand very well on their own. Plus, there isn’t a whole lot to edit in Photoshop. I’d probably just use Lightroom and call it good.” So I pass them by. But then I think about Martin’s approach, and I also think about how my initial reaction to the photos was positive and also how I’ve been wanting to share more photos on this photo blog. So, I challenged myself to get out of my somewhat jaded, post-processing comfort-zone of meticulously massaging a single shot in Photoshop for hours.

I made 30 seconds per shot my goal.

I ended up caving and took about 15 minutes total for the whole batch… in one way I failed. But at the same time, this still means I ended up with an extra 135 minutes I don’t normally have AND more pictures to post than usual. The key though is that I’m still happy with the shots.

I really enjoyed this challenge even though it was quite difficult. In the future I hope to progressively become less jaded in my Photoshop-to-death mindset. Just because I have several tools in my tool bag, doesn’t mean I need to use them all every time, however most likely I’ll still spend more than 15min per image in the future.

Cheers Martin!

Post-Processing Screen Shots

Yep, I really only used two masks in Lightroom. It nearly killed me, but oddly, I’m still really happy with the final images.

The post Space Jellyfish in the Basement appeared first on The Unframed World.

What you don’t see in this picture is the 2 foot snow drift I’m standing in. Although my ankle-high waterproof hiking shoes lived up to their L.L.Bean guarantee, I was defenseless to stop slushy chunks of ice from sliding into the shoes themselves. Fortunately (unfortunately for my ankles), I zone-out pretty hardcore when taking pictures and only noticed sensation leaving my frozen feet once returning to the car.

Lori and I found this quaint scene while exploring a side road in Vermont, just before finding this barn. After having spent the weekend photographing Montreal in -25°F conditions, stepping out into 25°F weather felt quite warm. In contrast, it was rather nice that only my feet were frozen . When looking at this snowy chalet (I’m not too savvy on my architecture terms… this might just be a house, but chalet just seems so much more romantic), I picture a warm fire inside with an inviting recliner and loyal golden retriever, all included in the rental fee. Although I’m not a writer, (Sure, I can peddle out 300 words for these posts, but that pretty much exhausts my weekly limit for linguistic creativity) were I to hole up for the winter and write a novel this is exactly the type of place I would choose.

Post Processing – No Tone Mapping!?!?!

This week I took the No Tone Mapping Challenge! Sounds like a real competition right? Haha! I made it up just now, but I’m glad it was convincing. But no, I didn’t even open Photomatix for this shot. It’s all old school Photoshop masking and adjustment layers. The reason for doing this was to make sure I wasn’t going soft and relying on Photomatix or my standard HDR workflow too much. Also, because “HDR” tone mapping programs are basically just a time saving tools. Their algorithms distribute contrast and value over an image just as Photoshop allows you to do by masking Curves adjustment layers. Of course, I’m all about saving time, but in many cases Photomatix blind algorithms add glow and noise and sacrifice detail. To make a long story short, this shot is not “HDR” and I’m okay with that.

What’s your take on HDR? I’m curious to know how others are implementing it in their photography. Any plug-ins you can recommend? I use Photomatix but don’t have any experience with the others. Fill us in on your workflow in the comments.

Before and After Photoshop Edits

I’ve found it quite freeing to use luminosity masks to isolate and tweak specific value ranges (lights, mids, darks). The biggest hurdle in this image was getting the colors to stand out the way they appeared in real life. The original before shot was quite dreary and dull. With a Photoshop editing though, I like the final result.

Before Photoshop

After Photoshop

The post Where to Write a Great Novel – The Gateway to Vermont in Winter appeared first on The Unframed World.

Grease Lightning Page Load Times!

As you may have noticed, this site now loads quite quickly. For such an image heavy site like The Unframed World, I feel it’s crucial to make sure you all don’t wait too long for content. So, this week the whole site was moved to new servers in the UK as well as got some pixy dust sprinkled into the code. To be precise, the homepage used to take up to 20 seconds to fully render, now the best time we’ve clocked is just over 600 milliseconds! It’s systematic, It’s hydromatic, Why it’s a grease lightning! (Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go)

How we improved page load time

To be honest, I have only a vague idea how “we” improved page load times. All credit goes to a good friend of mine named Louis (a.k.a. the Code Whisperer… not really, he’s too humble and would hate that nick-name). He did all the real work while I asked dumb questions and provided the dinero for the new server space. Louis is a seriously brilliant computer wiz that I met last year at a hostel in Baltimore. If you’re in need of web site help, send me an e-mail via the contact page and I’ll send your request to him.

Aside from moving the site to a dedicated server (rather than a shared one where several sites are all using the same bandwidth), I believe he stripped away a lot unnecessary code, set up some page caching and image crunching plug-ins, and expertly performed multiple backflips to invoke more speed. Again, this is all very far over my head (especially the backflips ), but I know one thing, the site loads ridiculously fast now. I’m very grateful to be able to deliver content to you with less delays now. Thanks Louis!

Post Processing

This image was a pretty straight forward Photoshop edit. In Photomatix, I made sure to keep the luminosity slider as low as possible to avoid losing details to the classic HDR glowy look. Also, in the Photoshop Edit screenshot below, you’ll notice the “Yellow De-sat” which selects the white stone in the stairs in the ceiling. In this HSL adjustment layer I dropped the Yellow saturation about 10 points in order to create a stronger emphasis on these elements since they create the dramatic movement in the photo.

One of my goals was for the final image not to be overtly “HDR.” So how do you think I did? Any areas that stick out to you?

Photoshop Edit

Before and After Photos

The post Where’s the Butler? appeared first on The Unframed World.

Bates Hall in Boston Public Library, just before Officer Grump E. Pants showed me the exit.

30 seconds before this picture was taken – With closing time minutes away, already the Boston Public Library security guard had been happy to ask me to pack up my camera (“Officer Grump E. Pants” was the name ironed on his uniform if I recall correctly). With only minutes left my selective hearing kicked in and I race walked through side rooms toward Bates Hall to avoid being herded out with the other stragglers by Officer Pants (BTW, the difference between race walking and running is all in the hips… if that helps your mental image). Consistant with the librarian’s advice earlier, nearly all of the 150 preppy smart people studying in the grand room previously had cleared out. With camera already mounted, I had only a few moments to set the tripod and shoot.

5 seconds after this picture was taken - Officer Pants walks into the room. Awesome. He attempts to make friends by giving me the nick-name, “Sir-with-the-camera!” and explains that Bates Hall is not the Exit. I already know it, but let him finish to allow one last bracketed series of shots to click through. I apologized for holding him up and followed his directions to the exit.

It’s Cool to Be Smart

Boston Public Library is the first public library in the U.S. and was established in 1848 (that’s before the US Civil War!). On opening day, the library had 16,000 volumes available. Now it holds over 8.9 million books as well as numerous periodical and A/V archives. Over the years it’s added several branch libraries and upgraded its technology, now equipped with free WiFi.

The room in the picture, Bates Hall, has a Renaissance style coffered ceiling and is the primary study room of the McKim building which was built in 1895 and houses the library’s research collections. Boston Globe writer Sam Allis described it like this, “Bates Hall, the great reading room of the BPL, vast and hushed and illuminated with a profusion of green lampshades like fireflies,” and as one of Boston’s “secular spots that are sacred.”

Post-Processing

Sorry guys, this shot has almost no tone mapping blended into it. Only the wall and floor textures have a little Photomatix kick added. As you can see in the Photoshop screen shot below, I pulled most of the texture and detail in the final image using mostly Curves Adjustment layers.  There were a few people to paint out which took the better half of 2 hours, and also I finally took time to get savvy with the Selective Color adjustment layer in order to snipe some rogue Magenta in the Yellows (and they thought they could escape me… mwuahahahahaha!).

Before/After Photoshop Edits

Before Photoshop Edits

After Photoshop Edits – (as always, click to enlarge)

Before/After Slider

(Slide the slider to compare the before/after shots. Best viewed in Firefox.)

The left side is one of the original bracketed photos (the +1 to be exact). The right side is the final edited photo.

[beforeafter][/beforeafter]

The post Friendly Officer Pants: Bates Hall in Boston Public Library appeared first on The Unframed World.