I created this photo strictly as a visual aid for an article I wrote back in October as well (click here for that post). Taking the little side project further, I was curious to see if anyone following me on Facebook would get close to the light setup used to make the photo. I would have to say Justin was the closest guess, as he went into some pretty good detail on lighting position.

Reproduction of the “real” world is a funny thing in the photo and video field. I guess we have commercial photography and the movie industry to thank for our completely unrealistic view on reality nowadays. What I mean by that, is that artificially lighting most setups as if it were 100% replicating a natural occurrence flat-out looks bad in a final photograph. Walking around in real life, we see things, accept them as beautiful, and we appreciate them and go on with life. However… when it comes to looking at a photograph that was done well, in respect to holding true to artificially re-creating only natural forms of light found in the world, we get REALLY picky. “Oh, I don’t like how that person’s head isn’t edged-out by backlighting and cannot be made-out from the background, ” or “the shadows are not filled-in enough for me.” We don’t know what “natural” even looks like anymore. It’s true, and a comment on the Facebook photo proves it, with a user guessing that only light from the computer screen is lighting this entire photo (not their fault, this is the general public’s view of light and what they are exposed to with every photo and video professional produced). And with today’s overstimulating, commercialized, uber marketing online world, we demand to see the “real world” in a not-so-real situation with perfect beauty lighting on faces, proper rim lighting, and fans blowing a models hair back… now that’s REAL life (I kid)! Every once in a while, we photographers can get away with a “natural” lighting approach, and get away with a people pleasing photo, but not often. We usually have to cleverly light it to ensure all of the visuals in a composition are well-lit for proper attention and detail.

The same holds true with the photo above, the concept of a stressed-out photographer editing for hours on-end in a dark room. If only the computer screen alone was illuminating the subject (the natural light source) this would be a HORRIBLE photograph, and I mean bad. It is what we are portraying (just the computer screen lighting the room), but all of the little things you see in the photos would not only be hard to see, they’d be invisible. I’m talking the camera and memory cards (objects establishing a photographer), the table, and even the majority of the head and arms of the subject… they’d all be black and not recognizable. Without an added “unnatural” lighting approach to this seemingly “natural” photograph, you’d flat-out say this is the worst photo ever of a person sitting in front of their computer. I’d show you an example, but I knew going-in that it would be a waste of time, so my setup from the get-go was executing an unnatural approach for a pleasing look. Your eyes process the idea – girl working on computer. Your mind completely disregards what it took to properly light the remaining elements of the photograph, but your mind just accepts that it can see all of these details which are required to fully form the idea of what you are looking at. Without the added lighting your mind wouldn’t really know what you are looking at, and it would then pickup something is wrong, “hey, what’s going on in this photo, I just see a faint face and that’s it.” But with the unnatural lighting, your mind maintains an unaware state, “hey, a photographer working on a computer.” It’s interesting, right? Of course, I’m speaking for the public in general, as other photographers who observe light know right away that this is a completely unnatural pattern of light (hopefully the reason they are photographers).

So, let’s get to the answer shall we? There are 5 flash lighting units in this photograph.

1. Light 1 – High and right of camera, with 10 degree grid, lighting camera and memory cards.
2. Light 2 – Camera left, striking right edge of subject, 20 degree grid dish, edging out subject’s right arm, hair, and right edge of table.
3. Light 3 – Center of camera behind subject, 30 degree grid dish, lighting back of hair and table.
4. Light 4 – Camera right, 20 degree grid dish, striking left edge of subject and table.
5. Light 5 – Hot shoe flash sitting on laptop keyboard, pointed at screen, white piece of paper taped to screen for bounce, lighting front of subject.

This photograph is also a good example of light control. In order to keep the room black, grids were needed on all of the lights, narrowing the spill of light around the room. All lights are what we’d consider “hard” lighting, with no modifiers to soften the light, all with standard reflector dishes and grid inserts. Without narrow grids to focus the light, the entire room would be visible (this was shot in my kitchen), and light would be bouncing off of every wall in the room. Any fool can setup a light and pop it off, a smarter fool can control it to serve a specific look and feel.

More to come on all things photography…

A lot of time spent on here, publishing my stories, thoughts, and images. Its like my public journal. Heck, even Ill dig into the blog archives and look back at the trail of information. Its a fun little refresher, sometimes even forgetting some of the shoots Ive done, and it all comes back after a cruise through the three years of content. Im really glad Ive taken the time to do the blog. Of course as a photographer, I am already actively documenting people, places, and events in time with photos, but the blog brings a whole extra dimension to that documentation process.

Im surprised Ive stuck with it, and so consistently, to be honest. Im sure we all know too many of our friends and family who have started a blog only for it to fizzle out after the third post. Of course their first post is full of all of the enthusiasm, talking about all the things they are going to talk about and do on their blog. Then after that third post, things get short, dates skip months at a time (usually a post talking about how they are going to start blogging again), then a year passes and they vow the same thing. Its quite entertaining really. After seeing so many blogs end up like that, I had the fear of mine doing the same thing when I started it. Ok, here we go, lets see how long this lasts. I have my photography to thank for it chuggin along, as Im excited to share my work with you guys. My work, the stories I hear from my followers about how they loved a certain post or the photos they saw, hearing an old friend has been following the blog for a long time and love my work… these things keep me inspired to continue to do it, and do it with gusto (and not lazily posting a couple pictures with a sentence or two). I try to make the blog entertaining and informational, tying my visual work to the thought process behind the photos.

Hopefully those of you who do follow me have found it a fun/interesting place to visit. I dont see any end in-sight, I think the Matty Photography blog will be here for good. I will continue to share my photos and thoughts, a frustration or two with the photographic field I work in, raise questions, try to provide some helpful insight for fresher photographer minds reading the posts, and have a blast while doing it.

Photo above of a third grade classroom. I came in and photographed all of the third graders at an elementary school so they could all surprise their Mom’s with a Mother’s Day portrait. That’s my own mom in the middle of the pack (their teacher). It was a fun day, kids are funny, they ask the most out-of-left-field questions.

It should be no surprise to those reading this that my perspective has been warped by my obsession with photography. Like the blind gain an uncanny ability to heighten their sense of hearing, I’ve come to modify my sight and how I view the world in photography. My quest in making new and different photography (and in as great of a quantity as I can), puts me in a mode that hunts for anything that can be utilized to inspire, create, or evolve a photography concept. I’ve become fascinated and an observer of what I’ve already experienced my whole life, which is light and how it reacts in an unimaginable number of environmental variations. For example, I understand that candle light is faint, very orange in color, where fluorescent bulb is much bright and different in color temperature. I understand that glass, metal, and other like-objects hold reflective properties. All of these things you learn as a kid, but you never really have to consciously think about them in every day life and how they effect your life, because quite simply, they don’t real matter that much. Not until you pick up a light capturing device, like a camera, do you start to find an appreciation of everything you already “know.” Turns out you really don’t know much about it after all. Further more, you don’t understand how important the smallest variations in time of day, light variations, surface properties of simple objects sitting in a room, etc. really are until it comes time for you to replicate it accurately with a camera. Essentially, you are observing non-stop, taking mental notes, testing, failing, and learning all over again in a new world hidden inside of the same one you’ve known since birth. It’s a rewiring of the brain, and sometimes it’s a fricken battle to accomplish, because you are fighting your whole life’s idea of how things are. For me, it’s taking what I know about life, shoving that knowledge in to a camera, and looking at it via the lens. This rewiring process can’t even begin until you understand the camera and what it is capable of. Further more, with flash photography, the camera and only the camera is capable of seeing what flash photography can produce. After years of observing flash photography produced by cameras and the lighting tools which helped manipulate light, you can start to predictively visualize the world that your camera sees. It’s very much a trial and error process, a LOT of observing.

I don’t use the word “obsessed” lightly, so when I say that my photography (more specifically my off-camera lighting techniques) has bled into my every day life, it’s no joke. I don’t see a car sitting in a parking garage, a pool table in a bar, a dancer in a ballroom, or even a random person sitting on a bench in the park like most other people do. I don’t look at it within the same lighting conditions which are currently presented, rather what they’d look like with a number of flash lights popping off with a various set of light modifiers. I can see the same environment lit a dozen different ways, creating a dozen completely different compositions. Believe me, if you are not familiar with what flash lighting can do to an environment… well, it’s a magical thing. I think the thing I love most about the whole off-camera thing is the fact that I am literally creating an environment that would otherwise not exist. A dozen, heck… a hundred photographers can pull a camera to their face and take the same photo by just capturing what is laid in front of them with existing light. No one else can walk up with a camera and capture my same flash lighting vision. Much like a painter with bottles of paint and a blank canvas, no one will be able to paint that same image. The painter creates with paint, I paint my canvas with light, my canvas is the present world in which I paint my light on. It’s a sweet thing.

Beyond the off-camera light visions that I can’t seem to escape, I also see the world via the perspective of the camera lens a lot. Along with the restrictions, advantages and disadvantages a camera, it becomes almost a second nature reflex (viewing the world through a camera). How I can expand or compress a composition with different lenses given visual challenges, where a camera’s pros/cons or the human eye’s pros/cons have the leg-up with the presented light, how a lot of situations can be best captured in a still image. It all comes back to that being a constant observer of light, but within the confines of the photography world, constantly rewiring my brain, mentally preparing it for if particular occasions present themselves, I have a plan of attack and a better understanding of them from a camera perspective. Again, my “old” brain already knew all of these basic things, but it had no idea how to reiterate that via a camera. That’s my job… to tell a story, project an idea or mood, draw your attention to or away from details, etc. and to do it on in one still image. Of course my brain can immediately interpret a scene, know what it is, what it’s about, but wait… how does that work for a camera?

I wish I could rattle-off a list of ridiculous (and definitely nerdy) thoughts that pop into my head which take a completely random topic in life and I somehow tear the entire topic apart with photographic daydreams. Just the other day I was flipping through the yahoo news feed and came across that article about a planet scientists spotted in space that orbited two suns. They related it to the binary star system showcased by the planet Tatooine in Star Wars (hey, it was their nerdy reference, not mine). The suns move independent from each other, meaning that the day light and sunsets view, from this planet perspective, would be different every day. You could imagine what this did to me, my mind full of curiosity of the lighting possibilities this would create. This would also mean that mid-day shooting would be able to produce visually pleasing images since one sun’s light will fill in the shadows made by the other. How cool would that be? Then mixing in off-camera lighting on top of that, booyah. Would be fun, but unless Canon includes a free space ship capable of flying 2oo lightyears away in the box with the new 5D mkIII, I won’t get a crack at capturing Tatooine anytime soon.

When will photography stop invading my every day’s train of thought? I’m gonna peg that guess around… never. At least not until somethings else comes along that can slap me in the face as hard as photography did. It’s been a delight capturing images steadily for about six years now. I’ve capture thousands of images for myself personally, I’ve had the great fortune of capturing casual, important, and once-in-a-lifetime events for personal and commercial clients. I get to wake up and create images, cataloging a period of time on earth (hopefully with some style). Some times I wonder what will happen to my images once I’ve passed on, and they are all that is left of my professional efforts. Will my kids hang them on the wall, have a gallery of them on their iPads (38th generation)? Hell, I have no idea what the road ahead holds, photographically, but I have a feeling that the future images out there waiting for me to snag will only get better and better as my relentless mind won’t stop thinking about clicking a damn camera.

As of about a month ago, I got a handful of shirts produced for myself and crew. Wearing them at events gives my biz extra cred and visibility, not to mention a uniformity. That’s where I thought the idea would fade off into the sunset, serving it’s basic business function. To my surprise, there have been quite a few requests, people asking for their own piece of Matty fabric. I’d love to accommodate. I mean… you are wanting to buy a shirt to help further my business marketing? Ok, I think I can allow that. So, I’m in the process of figuring out how to get these out there and easy to order, so sit tight guys, and I’ll let you know what I know more on how I can make this happen. They have an athletic fit, solid material, comfy. I’m also going to mix up the placement of logos on the shirt, so if you have ideas, please comment below!

Photo above of yours truly, snapping some photos from one of the viewpoints along the route. Little warm on the journey out, indicating 103 degrees during a pitstop.

Completed a family portrait shoot the other day in Sedona. The background looks fake, in fact, I bet some people might just automatically assume the photos are photoshopped. It was scenic to say the least. Those photos are coming soon to the blog.

I hoping to squeeze in some other portraits while I’m here if the opportunity arises. Stay tuned for more from Arizona.

I’m hoping we all have heard of surface tension, the resistance to an external force, entering water for example. Think of water as having a skin, just a really thin skin. It’s the reason bugs can sits on top of water, and the reason you see the reaction in these photos. A drop of water hits the surface, that same drop of water is tossed back into the air much like a trampoline when you jump on it, never breaking the surface tension until it then falls back into the water. A column of water follows the drop of water back into the air, an exact opposite reaction of force that the drop applied to the surface upon first contact. Even when you throw water through the air, the tension of water keeps it relatively globbed together as it travels (as captured in the later photos in this post). Science, random acts of force applied, and capture timing all at play together, so every photo produces something completely unique.

To capture at high speeds to prevent motion blur, you need to either have a super bright constant light source, or a flash to achieve super fast shutter speeds. Technically, with flash you don’t need to capture at a high rate of shutter speed, ’cause the flash pulse is acting as your window of time in which light is exposed to your camera sensor (flash pulses can be very fast, like 1/10,000th of a second. So, if your flash pulse lasts only 1/10,000th of a second, and it’s the only light to hit your sensor, then you’ve effectively only captured that duration of light, which is definitely fast enough to capturing water in motion.

I spent a couple hours getting these shots. Playing around with different colors, angles, and lighting, I got a bunch of different compositions. Of course it took a while to get good at timing the drops. Going through the process, I had a newfound appreciation and awareness of just how spot-on you have to be. Timing came down to hundredths of a second, making or breaking whether I got an interesting capture or not.

After the drops came the tossing of water. A shot glass filled about halfway, the water tossed straight up in the air. Really simple, and got some fun stuff. Ended up turning all of the tossing photos on their sides in post, I think they look more interesting that way. Lighting is what makes or breaks all of these shots, no surprises there.

This was my first time through this, but I plan to revisit with a better setup and approach to get better photographs. This was a super impromptu shoot, and conducted in my kitchen. Next time around I’ll most likely do it in the studio and use lessons learned to make this a much easier and faster shoot. Anyone can do this kind of a shoot with a DSLR and a flash, and of course… patience.

I would think there may be dryer parts of the island than others, but nothing like this…

Pretty extreme, right?! It’s gonna seem ever more contrasted when you get a look at all of the jungle photos coming up. Notice the fine roadway, literally the whole thing is made of new and old patches. It was too a point that it looked almost like an old cobblestone road. The drive itself was another ridiculousness of the trip that can not be explained, unfortunately it has to be experienced to understand. Believe me, when I tell you, “it was the worst drive I have ever been on,” I can’t be more sincere. It’s called “the road to Hana” by the locals (Hana being the closest town to where we were headed for our jungle hike), but I think it is more accurately described as “the never-ending, life-threatening, nauseating, exhausting, day-long road to Hana.” If you think this is a “normal” road, you need to go to the doctor and get your head checked. I love me some fun curvy roads, as they are a blast on my sport bike, but this road really does deserve the title of ‘insane.’ I could write pages about the drive itself, but I’ll leave it at that. If you visit Maui, think twice, no… think four or fives times before deciding to make the journey to Hana. Also make sure you have a well-constructed final will and testament in order, cause there were a couple times that timing with on-coming traffic would have spelt disaster if we had been just a second further up the road. Let’s just say that the pucker factor engaged itself more than once for everyone in the car during the drive.

Let’s get to the fun leg of the trip, the reason I’m writing this post, and the part that produce some really great photos. Three hours later, we arrived at the base of the hiking trail, and I was extremely surprised to see how many people were in the parking lot. My sole thought, “holy shit, how did all these people make it here in one piece?!”

I snagged my camera and we were off to the trail. All I was armed with was my 5DmkII, mounted with a 1.4 50mm lens. A light, simple, fun lens, so my shots would be limited, but I didn’t want to pack a bag with more lenses. I compromised for a simple setup and a smaller variety of shots so that I could enjoy the hike. My larger lenses would double my camera weight to 6-7 pounds. I’m really glad I went with the 50mm lens cause it is also super fast, which really came in handy, as the bamboo forest was surprisingly dark even in the middle of the day.

Living in the PNW, I’m used  to greenery, trees, hiking trails, etc., but this place was something else. The vegetation was so thick and green and everywhere. It was almost like plants were growing on top of other plants. I’m sure if I stood still long enough I’d have plant-life taking-root on me. The air was super humid, like I was half walking and half swimming through it. I couldn’t tell you if I was sweating or it was condensation forming on my skin, and I didn’t care, this place was pretty amazing.

The trail took on many forms along the way. The best way I could explain it is that it went in stages. Different trees and plants for a few hundred yards, then it would switch-up to another variety and size of greenery. And then we saw it, the opening to the…

Bamboo forest

A mountain of bamboo ahead, with one small entry point on the other side of the bridge. It was like something out of a pixar movie. It didn’t seem real, we laughed at the fact it WAS real. This marked the beginning of the bamboo forest we would be making our way through, with the end of the trail being an extremely tall waterfall.

The bamboo was SO thick. You can see in the photos of the trail, not a lot of light was getting through. You were forced down the trail, as you had no option of veering off course, the bamboo grew so close together that you couldn’t squeeze between the stalks, and was to the point where you couldn’t even see more that 15-20 feet into the forest because it overlapped in the background. The trail was very well-maintained, with board walkways constructed in the boggy areas of the trail.

The bamboo went on forever. Call me stupid, but I had no idea bamboo grew like this, and that kind of quantity. It was such a sight to see. As we hiked on, we eventually popped out of the bamboo and back into more of a jungle-type landscape. And we got really luck with some sun rays…

Which leads us to our final destination on the trail, the waterfall. A few smaller falls along the hike, but this guy was a monster. I can’t tell you how tall it was, but lets just say I would have needed a really wide lens to try and capture it all in one shot. It fell into a pool where we refreshed ourselves in the water after the long hike out there.

We then had the pleasure of experiencing it all again in the reverse order as we made our way back. It was a really fun experience (minus the road trip out to the hike location), and I feel so lucky that I got the chance to do it.

I’ve made these photos, along with others, available for purchase at the newly created online store. There you can purchase your favorite photos in the sizes and quantities you want, printed at one of the best pro shops available, and have them delivered right to your door!

Click here to visit this gallery at the store.

The town is very much a tourist-based economy, the place is a ghost town in the colder months, and packed in the warmer ones. Walking around during the off-seasons, entering restaurants and stores, you quickly realize a very consistent theme, you are the only one in them. It makes you wonder how they manage to keep the businesses open, but then it makes you realize just how busy they are in the warmer times of the year. Because of the crummy weather we are still experiencing, the town was still very much dead. This meant that we practically had the town to ourselves this last weekend.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have grown up with very great friends and families around me. A couple of those families own beach homes down in Long Beach, so over the years, I’ve spent quite a few weekends and holiday breaks relaxing in the town. The last couple years the timing hadn’t been right, and I’ve been absent from the beach visits with the clans, but when I got the call a month ago about another journey there, I was sure to mark it on the calendar. Somehow it had been about five years since I had made it down to the beach, man I hate how fast time goes. Another reason why I’m glad I’m a photographer. I get to document and photograph the people, places, and events around me as they whizz by. I was sure to bring my camera bag this time around to snap some shots. I would have gotten a lot more photos, but the weather was very iffy and I wasn’t about to get stuck out in the rain with my equipment, so I only brought the camera along when I knew we weren’t going to get stuck in a down-pour.

We did get some breaks in the weather and ventured out to the beach and a couple of the lighthouses. I thought I’d share a couple of the photos I took during the trip.

Good friend and P-51 Pictures video director, Andy Lahmann, is always helping out my photo biz when he is available and within a reasonable proximity to my photo shoots. So when he asked me if I’d take some photos for his movie poster design, I was happy to answer the call.

Sitting down with Andy and his graphic designer, Ryan Scott, we hashed-out the visuals we wanted to accomplish with the photography for the poster. Stage one was capturing the train tunnel, an integral part in the movie. Later on in the design, we will photograph subjects with flashlights and other details, and all of the elements will come together in a final poster design. I really like doing things like this. I’d never call the final poster design a “photograph” by any stretch of the imagination, even though it will be a culmination of a number of images. I honestly don’t know how other photographers do call practices like this photography. Anywho, the reason why things like this are fun is because of the goal in mind for a design. The steps, forethought, and vision that goes into a project like this give my tasks direction yet a creative flexibility. Shooting each stage with the other stages in mind, so composition, angles, perspective all come into play, so it’s not just shooting from the hip.

These images were shot in Bellingham. I used to spend a lot of time on hikes and little adventures in the wooded areas which are bordered by the bay. The train tracks are no different, never further than a stones throw away from the water. Spending time out there was easy, calming, and always a joy to photograph. I’d shot a few photos in the train tunnels a few years back, and I had the itch to go take more ever since. The extra bonus this time around was the resulting photos would be put to good use right away.

Stay tuned for more imagery on this poster design! Like I said, this is just stage one, I’m excited to shoot the next elements for the design.