Edgy Sports Photo's
Here's my famous model Curtis helping me with a demonstration that sports photos don't have to be boring. This is an evolving style and I can't wait to do his Lacrosse portraits.
Invention Convention
Caleb's invention was selected to go to the state invention convention held at Gampell Pavillion at UConn. About 10,000 kids participate and 700 are selected to display at the invention convention. 
Here are two portraits I did of him. Jen and I are proud of his effort!
Cape May Here I Come!
I'm prepping for another fun week at MARS (Middle Atlantic Region School). MARS is a week long photography school for professional photographers. This year I'm finally getting to study with Carl Caylor from Iron Mountain, Michigan. He has been on my must study with list for a long time. Often people ask why I go to school? My answer is you can never have enough knowledge, this is a dynamic field with ever changing techniques and style. Carl brings an understanding and use of natural light photography that is on different thought plane, I look forward to soaking it all in and bring some of his wisdom and artistic vision back to my clients. I think this is my 5th year attending the MARS school, maybe even my 6th, it's tough to keep track. Every year I go to at least one week long school, some years I have been able to attend two week long schools. The knowledge that I bring home always improves my photography and hone's the artistic vision. For the past few years I have been a class assistant helping the instructor and fellow students, this year I'm going strictly as a student, but of course I'll help Carl anyway I can. I'll post some images and give a report when I get back.
Dan
Aperture Follow Up
Aperture = controling the depth of field, it also regulate how much light is entering the camera.
This is the common Aperture scale. Remember that it is expressed in F stop's
Largest to smallest opening. 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32
We'll start with F8 in middle. If you need more light you go to 5.6 (you just doubled the amount of light entering the camera)
We'll start with F8 again. If you need less light you go to F11 and you just cut your light in half
Well start with F8 again if you need even more light you go to F4 (skipping 5.6) you now have 4 times the amount of light, if you go even further to 2.8 you have 8 times the amount of light.
Aperture like its cousin Shutter speed uses a logorythmic scale. Each number either doubling or halfing the light. This is were we get super technical and talk about equivalent values.
Case study: Your out photographing a flower, You want to use F8 for nice depth of field, but your shutter speed is at 1/60 of a second a little too slow for you to hand hold and you don't have your tripod. You can know sacrifice a little depth of field by opening up to 5.6 (doubling the amount of light) and now you have to adjust your shutter speed to compensate for the extra light coming through the lens. You speed up your shutter to 1/125 allowing the light less time (the shutter now opens and closes twice as fast) to register on the film/chip)
Your new equivalent (same exposure) setting will be the compromise of less depth of field F5.6 and a faster more hand holdable 1/125th of a second.
It's when you start making the choice of ISO, Aperture,Shutter Speed combinations that is when you truly start to understand photography. In "Understanding Exposure", Bryan Peterson says something like this "there are lots of ways to get correct exposure, but when you make the choices of creative correct exposure, that's photography" BTW his book(s) are incredible.
Not my usual subject!
I'm helping out some future Eagle Scouts to document some local cemetaries. It's a huge project, they must photograph, try to identify, and catalog each head stone. It was suggested to use mirrors for lighting (only good on sunny day), I went the technical route and used an off camera flash, it worked pretty well. Here is a sample photo. Good luck to these guys and the team of helpers.
How to: Understanding Shutter Speed
To understand Shutter Speed, I guess we have to start with what is a shutter does. See Wiki for super detailed info (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal-plane_shutter). Simply put the shutter controls motion. The faster the shutter speed the more it will "freeze" motion. You guessed it the slower the shutter speed the more motion blur you will get. As a photographer you have a decision to make, do you want motion in the photo and if you do how much or how little. Remember photography is a series of compromises. Motion can be incredibly useful in photography, but you must know when to apply it's usefulness vs. "man my photos suck, they are all blurry".
As a professional or amateur you look at your shutter speed (shutter speed is expressed as a fraction of a second) Here is a common scale, I'm going to use full shutter speeds for illustration (most shutter speed are in 1/3 increments) I'm going to start with the fastest to slowest.
1/8000th, 1/4000th, 1/2000, 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 1 second, 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 8 seconds, 15 seconds, and 30 seconds. These are the most common shutters speeds, not all camera's will have the top few.
If we start out with the very fast 1/8000 and then slow down you will notice that 1/4000 will let in twice as much light. Conversely if you speed up from 1/4000 to 1/8000 you will let in half the light. This is pretty important principle.
Case Study that came up recently, I was photographing Lacrosse, my shutter speed when I arrived was 1/2000th of a second (it was bright out), by the time the game ended my shutter speed fell to 1/250 too slow too freeze the action, so I either had to have blurry photos, or simply I just stopped taking photos because they were going to blurry. *for all you super techies, I moved my film speed up to the higest usable ISO of 2,500
Another example that comes up, H.S. Hockey, a very difficult subject, 1. the players move very fast, 2. the arena lighting sucks. Most amateur camera setting won't be able to deal with the extreme conditions. You will have to invest in professional level equipement $$$$ to make it work consistently or your going to have to take a lot of photos and get lucky. I would recommend using the highest ISO (sacrifice quality), open the lens wide open (most amateur lens are F4
I photographed these leaves in front of my house, on a tripod. The faster shutter speed show the leaf frozen, and as I slow down the shutter the more motion blur we get. 
1/8000th of a second
1/640th of a second
1/160th of a second
1/30th of a seconds
1 second
The lack of blur at one second is due to the "pause in the wind" during exposure, you can use pauses in "action" to help freeze motion. Example if you jump, when you reach the top you pause for a fraction before you start to come down, photographing at "peak" action will allow you to use slower shutter speeds. Advanced topic.
Side Note: You will notice a larger zone of focus or "depth of field", in order to get my shutter speed slow enough I had to close (stop) down the aperture.
