Mother and Daughter - It's All In The Eyes

And people wonder why I love photographing kids. Look at the innocence and emotion in these eyes! I was taking photos at my friend Michele's parents 35th anniversary party and took a little time with her daughter to grab this shot. The best way to photograph kids is to let them be themselves and just hang back with a long lens. She was playing with this little fountain (in the restaurant courtyard) and I waited for just the right moment to capture this photo.

And where does the little girl get those great eyes? From her mom of course. So we walked just outside the courtyard by a nice wall and I shot this photo of Michele. I used a 50mm 1.4 lens to make the most of the depth of field and focus only on her eye. I wanted to show Michele and just a hint of the light fixture in the background, but also hide the fact that we were in a parking lot!

Kayla's Bat Mitzvah

Another Saturday and another Bat Mitzvah to shoot. Talk about a photogenic family! I especially love this shot of them blowing out the candles. I took this with the Canon 5D Mark II pushing the ISO to 3200 and handheld this shot using only the candlelight to light their faces.

Here, Craig (the father) gets lifted in the chair celebrating his daughter's big day. As you can tell, he was having a great time and showed lots of emotion. This is why I love photography, being able to capture people's personalities in one shot.

And...speaking of characters and personality, this little girl was hysterical. Not only did she continue dancing until 11:30pm, but she did so with a big smile on her face the entire time.

Shooting the Indy Grand Prix in Sonoma

Yeah, I know that there was a race this weekend, but hey, we were in Napa Valley, CA, so you have to have some wine tasting mixed in with the photography!

It's Sonoma in August and the grapes were ready for the picking and the wineries were staffing up for the big harvest. We went to an amazing winery called HALL Rutherford and the VIP tasting room was incredible, with the wines as tasty as the surroundings.

Oh yeah...back to the Indy race. I was there with the Target Race Team and they really made it a special day. This is the third year that I have had track photo credentials and I decided to key in on Dario Franchitti. Was it because he was in pole position? Was it the fact that he is married to Ashley Judd? Was it those dreamy eyes (according to my wife and every other woman at the race)? Maybe all of the above.

All I know is, I wish I had that hair!

I really like this shot because of the reflection of the race car in his glasses. It might be a little hard to see at this size, but trust me, at 21 Megapixels this rocks!

I love the intensity of this shot. Dario is getting settled into his car before the race and there I am, standing with a 100-400mm lens, in front of his car waiting for this shot. I have shot Danica Patrick and Scott Dixon in the past, so it was time to capture Dario's preparation for the race.

Then at 2:50pm the checkered flag came out and they took off, screaming around the first turn. As it turned out Dario took the lead and never let it go. From start to finish, he led the race. Pretty impressive. Please note that I have shot the Target drivers twice now and both times that I keyed in on them before the race they have taken the checkered flag. Lucky charm? Maybe so!

Flying upside down in Sonoma!

As part of corporate event for Target, I had a chance to photograph some friends (and newly made friends) flying in vintage airplanes in Sonoma, CA yesterday. There were two biplanes and one P7 which made for a lot of fun rides.

Of course, I can't just shoot pictures from the ground. No way! So I made my way up in one of the biplanes, equipped with my Canon 5D Mark II and a Sigma fish eye lens (so that the pictures would include part of the plane). The hard part was raising the camera over the windshield and holding on to the darned thing. With the wind blowing at over a 100mph, this was not easy!

...and even harder to hold on when we were doing aerobatics. For the last couple of weeks, this was the shot that I envisioned.

Then it was time to try taking some shots from inside a closed canopy in the P7. I did not have high hopes for this one, but the images actually came out better than I expected.

Once again, flying inverted to get my shot. After doing this maneuver 4 or 5 times to get the shot, my stomach was saying "You got the shot! Really, you got the shot! Enough!"

And once in a while (but not very often) I will turn the camera and take a picture of me. I had to capture this one to prove that I really did this. :)

Albino alligator poses for me - Thanks!

I took this yesterday in San Francisco at the Academy of Sciences. This is a shot of their special albino alligator. After shooting some of the standard shots from up above the water, I decided to head downstairs where you can see under or above the water line. I got lucky! The alligator was perfectly positioned for me to capture him just above water with his reflection right at the tooth line. The lighting was pretty good too. I darkened the background by adding black to the image but that was about it for the editing. I did a Google search to see if others had captured any images like this (since thousands of people photograph this guy every week), but I couldn't find any view like this one. The photo doesn't really look real, but trust me, it is. A money shot in my book!
Here is a shot of the inside of the Academy of Sciences (showing the new architecture). They have done a great job with this space.

My daughter, Ali, found this cool shot. The walls of the aquarium were lit really well, with blue lights projected onto the contoured walls. Again, no editing, this was straight out of the camera. Good find Ali!

That Place Has Balls!

For the last couple of years I have driven past the community center in Campbell, CA and thought that the fountain out front (with glass balls) would be a cool place to shoot at night. So...last night I made the short trip over there and shot with my good friend, Glenn. It was a little trickier than I thought, but fun nonetheless.

We shot pictures until the sunset and then went over for a bite to eat. But, like any good photo buffs, we ate our food quickly and returned for more shots under the late dark blue skies.

With so many balls in the water (no jokes here please!), it was a challenge to find angles and apertures that worked well. If you look closely at this shot, you will notice that the light in the ripples was dancing around the front ball creating some interesting white lines.

Having fun with remote flash!

Thanks to the awesome lessons of Joe McNally, one of the foremost experts on flash photography, I decided to experiment with a remote flash and some colored gels. I took my MacBook Pro laptop and put some paper on the screen. I then set up a remote 580EX II flash with half covered in red gel and the other half covered with a blue gel. This was pointed straight at the white piece of paper so that it would reflect back at the "viewer". I had Connor and his cousins (who were in town visiting) look into a laptop and give me some looks of amazement. And...after some experimentation with camera settings, pop...we got this shot! I did a little more editing in Adobe Photoshop to darken the background, but the rest was all set up in camera. Too much fun!!!

Some pictures from Patrick's Point, CA

Everybody keeps asking me where the heck we went for the week. The answer is Patrick's Point State Park which is located about 45 minutes North of Eureka, CA. We have gone up there numerous times and it is a fun place to hang out for a week. It is also a fun place to take photos. The skies are almost never blue, due to the constant fog, but this gave me an opportunity to photograph the smaller details.


For some reason this bee was very content with me hanging out and shooting pictures of it. I was using a 90mm Macro lens so the barrel of the lens was just about stuck into his face. He was totally cool with that. :)
You can't go to Patrick's Point without driving the half hour to Fern Canyon (where they filmed part of Jurassic Park). The hike is really beautiful and fun for the kids too.

On the drive back from Fern Canyon we stopped by one of the lagoons to check it out. We didn't see much of interest until we were driving out and my wife spotted this seal hanging out in the lagoon and not too far from the edge of the water. I pulled out the 400mm lens and captured this picture of our friend.

First I shot my sister - Now I shot my niece!

We are up in Patrick's Point State Park which is just North of Trinidad, CA and we are here for my niece's wedding. Many of the 80 attendees are camping but we decided to rent a great home right on the coast (which we have rented before). And of course, being a photographer...I was asked to shoot the wedding.

While the SF Bay Area is suffering a heat wave, up here the weather ranges between 50 and 65 degrees during the summer. My kind of weather - and a very cool environment to shoot photos. The fogs rolls in all day long and provides a perfect diffuser for me. And as you can see from the pictures, the fog made a really cool backdrop too.

This last shot (taken with the Sigma Fish Eye lens) shows the entire wedding scene. Although the background is all white, that is the beach which was covered in fog.

A cool shot at the park

So...here I was at a park at 5pm yesterday and I was teaching a co-worker how to shoot pictures with her DSLR. And damn it was hot! I was explaining the concept of shooting with a fast shutter speed in order to get a clear shot and also mentioned that there are times when you want to use a slow shutter speed. She looked at me and said "When would you want to do that?" So I set the camera for 1/25 of a second and went over to the swings in the park (asking the parents first) to shoot some pictures of a little boy having a great time swingin' high. I took a couple of shots and knew that I needed a flash to do it right, so I ran back to my car, grabbed my 580EX II flash and got this shot. I love the motion blur in the background with the boy crystal clear in the shot. Too bad he didn't have that huge smile on his face when I grabbed this one!

Fourth of July on the Lake

We spent a couple of days at our friend's cabin near Nevada City and took a short break from the city life. They have all kinds of toys for the kids and adults; motorcycles, boats, air guns (yike - keep these away from the 14 year old boys!)... We spent Saturday on the nearby lake and relaxed and played in the water. As always, I broke out the 5D Mark II and 100-400 lens to grab some shots of everyone riding the wake of their boat.
There is nothing better than seeing your kids having a blast! I am amazed at how many hours the kids could play on this raft, getting bounced around like rag dolls. I lasted about 30 minutes and I was done. But, I think I was smiling and laughing like this too. It is good to be a grown up kid!
Who is this hot babe on the single ski? Oh yeah, that's my wife showing the kids how it is done!
And here is the "Con Man" chillin' out on the wake board. He makes it look so easy out there.

Critters and Views of Colorado

I am not sure why I love photographing animals as much as I do, but it is fun to capture the beauty of animals in their natural habitat. It must be some of Moose Peterson's influence rubbing off on me. We took the better part of a day in Colorado to visit Estes Park. What a cool place!
The entire drive from Boulder to Estes is magnificent. Great views of the majestic mountains and endless trees in all directions. Even the kids were impressed with the scenery.The park is known for their Elk, and there are plenty of them to view. When we first pulled into the town, we saw a bunch of people who had pulled over to the side of the road to look at the Elk on a golf course. Not exactly the picture I was looking for! As we headed deeper into the park we encountered some really beautiful animals like these and they were very close to the road. Let me tell you, this stops the traffic in the park as everyone wants to do a "drive-by shooting" with their cameras out of the windows of their cars. We parked and walked back to get this shot.

Photographing my sister's wedding!

So many people told me that this was a bad idea. Many other photographers said to me "Never photograph a family event!", but I have to tell you that this was not the case for me. My sister and her new husband were relaxed and looking great! I had a chance to capture the day for them and deliver a gift of images for which I am proud. I also had a chance to spend more time with them because of this. Like I said, Sue and Ross looked amazing and made it easy for me. Having the beautiful surroundings of Boulder, CO didn't hurt much either.

My family and I stayed at the Boulderado Hotel which is located in downtown Boulder. This is a very old hotel which has a ton of character and old world style. When I first walked into the lobby area, I knew that I had to capture a picture of my sister and her fiance in this place. When they came by the hotel to meet up with me, I dragged them inside to get some shots.

And then we were off to capture some images at a local park. We had a beautiful day (in between two days of thunderstorms) with bright sunlight which made the shooting conditions tough but we worked around that.

Having fun with photography! - "Midnight snack"

So...it was late on Friday night and I needed to finish an article for Digital Reproduction Magazine (in Australia). I was writing about using fish eye lenses and how to use them to create interesting images. A friend and editor suggested that I write a side bar article on fun uses of a fish eye. This, and the fact that I could not sleep, led to a funny picture. I thought to myself "wouldn't it be funny to put my camera in our refrigerator and take a "fridge eye view" picture of me raiding the ice box?" And there it began. I cleared an area of the middle shelf, repositioned some food, set the camera to manual focus, set the 10 second timer...and...got this shot. It makes me laugh!
I call this one "Midnight Snack". :)

I shot this with the Canon 5D Mark II, Sigma 15mm fish eye lens, Lexar 4GB 300x CF card.

Graduation Time!

Connor with two of his teachers

Yesterday was a great day for the Cable family! Connor is happy because he graduated 8th grade. Annette is happy because she no longer has a 50 mile commute in the carpool and I am thrilled to be done with the rather large tuition. :)

Me and the graduate

Now we have a child in high school and I am starting to feel old.