By Rudy Lopez, on December 28th, 2008%
This weekend I shot a beautiful wedding in the Colorado foothills. I’ve always enjoyed photographing weddings because happy people make for better photos.
Gear
Nikon D300 and Nikon D200. Sigma 12-24mm, and Nikkor 18-70mm. Twin Speedlight SB-800 flash units. 32″ Gold reflector. Edited in Aperture 2 with Tiffen Filtering.
Contact me if you need . . . → Read More: Weekend Wedding
By Rudy Lopez, on September 18th, 2008%
North facing structures are notoriously hard to photograph. A beautiful home can look like a mash of very dark shadows and harsh angles if it faces north. This home in Westminster, Colorado has fantastic curb appeal, but it’s north facing front door and large garage doors make it a challenge to convey the drama . . . → Read More: How to get good exterior photos while shooting towards the sun
By Rudy Lopez, on September 10th, 2008%
Most of the time the automatic exposure setting on your Digital SLR will produce fine images. The camera’s brain along with the lens’ impressive array of sensors can usually figure out the best balance between shadow and highlight and provide a decent image. A perfect record of a moment in time. To me, photographers are the ultimate historians, but that is for another time. Historical photography theories aside, there are times when you want to convey more than just a moment in time. Perhaps you want to add more light to a sunny country garden scene to give it a misty impression. Or maybe you want a portrait to have a dark, brooding feeling. Automatic settings will capture the moment in time, but to express yourself you need to be able to twist and bend the light like a sculptor does with clay. As with any tool, the quality of work it produces depends entirely on the competence of the user. The tool itself is merely the apparatus your mind uses to create a physical object from the neural info stored in your brain. A Digital SLR (or any manual camera) is designed to be intuitive. The basics are simple, and the learning curve is short, if you practice. Take your camera everywhere, shoot everything on manual mode. Erase nothing. Keep track of your settings, figure out what works best. I will show you how to use the manual mode on your camera, my bet is that you will never use automatic settings again after a little training. . . . → Read More: Manual Mode – Understanding the basics of the Digital SLR
By Rudy Lopez, on August 19th, 2008%
Here are a few things you can do to make expressing yourself with photos easier.: Must you stand so close? It doesn’t matter if you are taking a photo of a person or a landscape, it is important that you get as close to the subject as you can. Our brain interprets distance and . . . → Read More: Photography Quick Tips: Five ways to immediately improve your photos
By Rudy Lopez, on August 11th, 2008%
 The area south of Chatfield Reservoir, and north of Roxborough State Park is home to impressive rock formations and equally impressive neighborhoods. Ravenna is a new development south of Waterton Rd, near Waterton Canyon. All of the homes in Ravenna are designed in an Italian style, this one in particular was built by Villagio homes. These shots are the builders entries for Custom Home of the Year. Taken over three days, these shots represent the best of the builder’s work, and I was proud to be part of the project. Hopefully, the images will help bring home the gold for Villagio. The home sits in the valley between two immense hills, with exposed rock providing privacy for the back yard and a grassy hill providing balance for the other side. The front of the home faces west, making for sunny mornings out back, and golden evenings out front. . . . → Read More: Denver Architecture – Italian Villa at Ravenna
By Rudy Lopez, on August 6th, 2008%
- D300
With image sensors getting cheaper and more powerful, most serious amateur and semi-pro shooters are opting for the versatile Digital SLR, merrily leaving their film cameras behind. This guide is geared toward people that are already familiar with an SLR photography, but are unfamiliar with the digital process. Shooting with a DSLR is just like shooting with a film camera. All of the common mechanical functions are there, right where you would expect them to be. And, while there aren’t any chemicals to deal with, each image still has to be processed before it can be shared with the universe.
THE SENSOR
In film photography, a chemically treated segment of plastic is exposed to light for a predetermined period of time, permanently embedding an image onto the film. The film is then processed to create negatives, which in turn are processed into photographs or slides. The concept is the same for digital photography, except instead of a segment of film being exposed to light, a CCD (charged coupling device) is exposed and the light is converted into electrical signals that are recognized by the camera’s processor, the files are then stored on a solid state memory device such as a CF card. Each pixel on the sensor captures red, blue, and green information. . . . → Read More: DSLR Basics – Understanding the Digital Camera
By Rudy Lopez, on July 28th, 2008%
 There is no shortage of great stories/photos that feature lavish, multi-million dollar homes. Just pick up a copy of Colorado Homes and Lifestyle and you will find a dozen top notch properties. But Denver has more to offer than stately manors, estates, and swanky lofts. Each neighborhood has its own character whether it’s the brick bungalows of Mayfair Park or the winding green belts of HIghlands Ranch. It isn’t hard to find beauty in all places, it’s just sometimes you have to look past the noise (and everything else) of Colfax, or the mind numbing aesthetics of the newer suburbs. I have a lot to say about suburbs and urban sprawl, but I will save that for another time.
. . . → Read More: Denver Architecture – East 6th Avenue
By Rudy Lopez, on July 27th, 2008%
Creating beautiful images in only part of what it takes to be a successful photographer. Managing large amounts of data while still being able to access it quickly and easily is one of the biggest challenges facing photographers. Today’s high resolution cameras generate an enormous amount of data very quickly, a 12mp camera will produce a 15mb RAW file. If you consider that a busy shooter will take hundreds of photos per week, the gigabytes add up very quickly. Developing a smart workflow and data storage/management strategy will allow you to concentrate on shooting, not where you are going to put your images (or worse, looking for a single image among thousands). I will be outlining my workflow and data management as a guide, your workflow will vary. . . . → Read More: Data Management and Workflow with Aperture 2
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