Pro Techniques

Proximity was a factor: corporate and advertising photographer Robert Rathe lives about 10 miles from the long-closed Lorton Correctional Complex in Fairfax County, Virginia. So was a fascination with the concept of what constitutes a prison—physical structure or state of mind? And so was the attraction of documenting and preserving a bit of local history.

For Jess Findlay, outdoor photography was a natural. Growing up in British Columbia (BC), Canada, surrounded by lush landscapes, enthralling wilderness, and birds of every feather, nature called to him every time he stepped outside, spurred on by family activities that included hiking, mountain biking, and birdwatching. As a young child, he would buy disposable cameras for family outings, and that only whet his appetite for the photographic arts. Before he knew it, he was thoroughly immersed. Nature and photography were on converging paths, meeting at a crossroads that would mark his future forever.

Some years ago Steve Simon took a leave from his job as a newspaper photographer in his native Canada and headed south across the border on a self-assigned project. “I’d loved photography since I was a kid in Montreal, roaming the streets, inspired by Cartier-Bresson,” Simon says, “but I’d been working 10 years at the newspaper, doing the same things again and again. I was looking for a way to get the inspiration back, to explore the power of what photography can be.”

Hi everybody! I’m very excited to be launching a new Q&A column here in Shutterbug—a magazine I’ve been reading, and been a fan of, for so many years—so it’s truly an honor to be here with you. I invite you to send in your questions to editorial@shutterbug.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in Ask a Pro. OK, let’s jump right to it.

A unique way to create complex geometric, multicolored designs is to attach tiny Christmas tree lights to a bicycle wheel and spin it in a dark room or outside at night. I found 7 ft of Christmas lights powered by 3 AA batteries online for about $12, and that was just enough to cover the entire circumference of the front wheel of my son’s medium sized bike. I took the wheel off the bike with a simple crescent wrench and used black electrician’s tape to affix the lights and the wires onto the rim, figure A.

Hospitality photography focuses on hotels, resorts, and casinos but it’s not just about capturing luxury accommodations and lush exterior shots of surrounding vistas and scenery. It’s as much about highlighting comfort, relaxation, and fun. The pictures may include special dishes prepared by gourmet chefs, waiters serving tables, and guests enjoying the ambience and amenities. It’s a smorgasbord of images designed to appeal to a wide range of tastes, albeit presented with an air of sophistication to make any potential guest feel like a prince or princess upon arrival.

There are many kinds of white light. At first this statement seems like it doesn’t make sense, but if you look closely at a typical light bulb in your living room (the old kind, not the new florescent type of bulbs) and compare it with, say, a daylight florescent fixture, the light bulb is much more yellow than the florescent light. Similarly, if you compare sunrise and sunset lighting to the light from an overcast sky at noon, the lighting from low angled sunlight is very yellow—it looks golden, in fact—and the cloudy sky produces a white light that is more bluish.