Los Angeles - Street Portraits in Santa Monica & Venice

So I'm LA for the week, visiting family that I haven't seen in, oh, 23 years (which means what I "remember" is from photos, not actual memories), because my cousin Jenny was kind enough to fly me out here for a few days.

I took the opportunity today to take advantage of my body still being on Eastern time to get up with the sun and head to the beach with my camera. Now I've kinda been thinking for a while that I'd like to try my hand at shooting some portraits of strangers on the street. Sounds scary right? Well, a little bit, but significantly easier then when I worked at the Boston Herald and used to get sent to South Station at rush hour to do man on the street interviews.

My attitude back then used to be, "What's the worst that can happen? They can say no? So what." (Also how I got dates in college btw.)

Anyway, enough blabber, on to the photos. (That's Santa Monica beach at sunrise above, by the way.)

Met a lot of characters today, let's start with Wyndon. He was hanging out by the skate park on Venice Beach when I asked him if I could make a portrait. Peace.

This is Farah Fawcett. Her owner made sure to point out that she didn't name her - she came with that name.

This next guy didn't tell me his name, he just asked that I write, "Please Pray for Vicki." Done.



Some preferred to remain anonymous.



Caspa and Shortie.




Dr. John, a Vietnam vet who's been living on the beach since 1961.




Next is Jamie, who, when I told him my goal was to take 10 portraits of strangers said, "I can be strange."




This is Joe, who only asked that I send him a print so he could give it to his mother. Joe your print is on the way.




Who said I couldn't count a portrait of a bike?




I snagged a quick shot of this next guy as he was on his way home.




Douglas, who was probably in the middle of the next great American novel before I interrupted him.




And apparently this final fellow - who was rocking out on rollerblades - is famous. I have no idea who he is...anyone? Bueller...?

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Return to Presque Isle State Park: Erie

I finally did it. I kicked my ass to get up for sunrise. I don't know why exactly, but I have been struggling to get up and go shoot early a.m. this year. I think part of it is that I feel like I've been to the locations before, and the "wow" factor just isn't there for me.

Saturday I did it though, I made it to Erie's Presque Isle State Park for sunrise. Now you might remember the top photo below from last year at the park (one of my all-time favorite landscapes). So knowing that there were definitely good things to be seen, I set the alarm for 5:30. And hit snooze until 5:45. And finally got up at 5:55.

I will add, it helped that Jess asked me to call her at six to make sure she was up, so I had that motivation going for me. Which is nice.

Here's Saturday's select.



Now I can hear you already. "You got up how early for one photo?" Yup, that's just how it works sometimes. More to come shortly.

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Altoona: Sunrise

I know, I know, it's been farrrrr too long since I posted (but I have been Twittering daily (you can follow me on Twitter to see what kind of trouble, er links, I'm getting into), but last weekend I finally forced myself to set my alarm for a sunrise shoot. 
The above photos are from two days of shooting, one at sunrise, one on Saturday afternoon. Saturday was hot and hazy, and I wanted the photos to reflect that. Plus, I figured photo #4 was appropriate for Memorial Day weekend. 

Right after I shot photo #5, a local pulled over asking if I needed any help with my car (what, you don't see photographers roadside at 5 a.m. every Saturday morning?), which I thought was nice, maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but I can't see that happening in most places. 
Check back next week for some more images from an upcoming sunrise shoot outside Annapolis this weekend. 

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Back to Presque Isle

I just got done spending a few days in Erie, and took a ride back to Presque Isle State Park. I slept through my alarm, after intending to shoot sunrise, so I ended up shooting in the rainy afternoon instead. The light wasn't great, so I thought I'd try something a bit different with the processing on this shot. More frequent blog posts to come, I promise. 

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Sunrise: Hobe Sound

I know, I know, a week and a half? No blog? I've been slacking, but I finally answered the bell for some sunrise photos this morning and the alarm is already set for tomorrow.

I had intended to head over to Coral Reef Park but it wasn't where I remembered it. So with time running out on the darkness, I set up shop at Hobe Sound (oh, and, apparently it's "Hoe-buh" not "Hoe-bee"). 

More to come, 9 days left of spring. 

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I went to the beach with some Wizards

Well it's been too long since I shot something for me. Not "of" me, it just sorta worked out that way. I spent a lot of time looking at images of Tiger this week (page 93, this month's Esquire, photo=WOW), and I guess it got me thinking about golf images.

First off, let me say that my swing looks a lot prettier than it is. I am fairly certain that had I been hitting an actual ball, it would have flown about 50-yards straight then taken a hard nose dive to the right. 

The execution here was fairly simple. I set the camera on my tripod and composed, attached my Pocketwizard with the remote cable and placed the camera in self-timer mode. I then grabbed my 6-iron (bad decision, will explain shortly), and ran down to the beach.

I'd shoot 10 images or so then jog back up and warm up and check the camera to see what I'd gotten. I shot around 50 images total before my fingers froze (estimated temp. 35 degrees).

Post-production here was a bit interesting. The sunrise is almost as I saw it, with some minor contrast tweaks and dust-spot removal. The interesting part takes us back to my poor club selection. Had I taken a driver instead of a 6-iron, the club head and shaft would have probably been more visible. As it was, I had to enlarge the head and triple the width of the shaft in post so that they'd be visible. 

On tap for this week - hopefully some images from spring training (Tues., Palm Beach), and from my final portrait session of the offseason tomorrow. 

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A special one-time offer

That's right, one time. You see, back when I first started selling prints, shortly after Gutenberg invented the printing press, my Dad's sister basically decided she needed to turn her home into the Levy Gallery, L.A. I've never been, but my parents have and she has somewhere around a dozen prints hanging in her home. Though none of my recent work. Hmmm, maybe I should make a phone call....

Anyway, I decided back then that it was wrong to charge family full price, it just didn't seem right. I've kept to that policy for immediate family, and last week my aunt in Florida ordered a canvas of the photo you see above.

There's just one problem. The canvas just didn't work in her home. It's 24x36, which while not gigantic, is a fairly large print. It's stretched on a wooden frame and ready to hang, but without the right size space and distance to view it from, can look a bit awkward. (Kinda of like sitting an arm's length from a 50" flat screen TV.)

So now my aunt is in the market for a smaller and perhaps different print for her office. And you, my readers, are the big winner. She will ship this print to you directly for essentially the cost that I paid. For $240, shipped to your door, this canvas is yours. If you're interested, hit me up in the comments or shoot me an e-mail with "Canvas print" in the subject line.

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2819 seconds in the woods

Rob and I headed down to World's End park today in Hingham to shoot, and promptly got rained on. Not drizzled on, but dumped on (the second photo was taken during the rain). That was eight hours ago. My feet just got dry ten minutes ago.

Anyway, after the rain finally stopped, the sun broke out and it ended up being a pretty nice day - too nice. No clouds, no fog, nothing. The best landscape photos live on the edges of weather - our edge came and left the first 15 min. we were in the field.

When it got dark, the sky was really clear, and there was no wind at all, so we thought it would be cool to try to shoot some star trails. Neither of us really had any experience with them, or really had any idea what we were doing at all, but off we went.

The first order of business was to find a place sufficiently dark enough that light pollution and ambient light wouldn't be a factor. For this, I have to thank my awesome friend Elena. She lives near the area we were shooting, and sent us off a spot she knew in Norwell.

So there we were, standing in the middle of the woods, with Rob cracking axe murderer jokes, trying to figure out how to calculate an exposure. He had his lightmeter with him but it was too dark to even register a reading.

Crap.

Ummmm. So we fired off a test shot on his 1ds II, F/8 ISO 1600 4 min. (we literally just picked a time out of the air, we knew we wanted F/8 or so, but beyond that...yeah, nothin'). Turned out OK, so we did a little math and shot two more frames, a 24 min. exposure at F/8, and this, 48 min. at F/11.

Not much post production here, btw, just some noise reduction and sharpening.

-Doug Levy - Massachusetts Landscape Photographer -

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Quincy Bay

Sunset yesterday on Quincy Bay, Quincy, Massachusetts.

-Doug Levy - Quincy Landscape Photographer -

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Scituate - splash & sunset

Friday I headed down to shoot Scituate Light at sunset, but, as you can see, I didn't get any great shots of the lighthouse. On the drive back, frustrated that I didn't get any great shots of any fall foliage or the lighthouse, Erin and I pulled over at a small pond just as the sun started to fade for good for the night.

I can't take full credit for this image -Erin threw some stones in the water and I made some frames. OK, maybe it wasn't quite that simple, but that was the general idea. I shot about 30 photos total, and this was the best (and final) one.

This photo was the last one I was able to shoot before the light (and shutter speed) dropped too much for me to handhold my camera - this was shot at 1/10 of a second. 

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In other fun news, check out Tim's blog for a very, very kind post about my Lightroom tutorial. Thanks again buddy. You can check out Tim's entire Flickr stream, or his Web site  for more of his work.

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My latest work. 

-Doug Levy - Scituate Landscape Photographer -

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Cape Neddick - Nubble Light

I headed to New Hampshire yesterday, intending to shoot foliage with Gwyn. Welllll, that didn't work out so much. After a few failed location attempts with Gwyn, I gave up on the foliage and thanks to my fancy new GPS, found a lighthouse just over the border in York, Maine.

In the middle of the day I got a text from a friend of mine:

"How're the leaves?"
"Eh, I went to a lighthouse."
"Of COURSE you did."

It seems I have a small affinity for tall buildings with lights on top.

While I was shooting I did get a chance to chat with photographer Luca Diana, who set his tripod right next to mine (with his shiny new Canon 50D). I just spent 20 minutes on Luca's site and suggest you click on over. Yesterday he was actually on his way to catch a plane to Italy for six weeks (lucky dog).

And hey, if you find yourself in Jackson Hole this winter, Luca also teaches snowboarding.





After I was done shooting down near sea-level - I should call it rising tide level, because the waves came after me, again - I climbed back up the rocks just as a tour bus was pulling in. At least 50-100 people quickly came bounding out (yeah, 50-100, I'm a bad estimator), including at least a dozen Amish people.

As the tourists were getting off the bus I actually overheard one tourist ask another, "This is the Atlantic, right?" Right.



-Doug Levy - Cape Neddick Nubble Light Lighthouse Photographer -

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More from Maine

This first image is perhaps my favorite of the summer. I love the way the light hits the window of the lobster boat heading out to fish at sunrise.

I may have a few more shots to add once I finish going through them all, but here are a few from the last two days of shooting sunrise here in Portland. These were all shot from Bug Light Park. I didn't get any I really liked of Bug Light itself, but it was worth it for these shots of the boats in Casco Bay.

I'm still playing with black and whites in Silver Efex Pro, but for now I'm not thinking it's worth the $200 it costs to purchase the full version. More to come on that though after the free 15-day trial ends.

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Portland Head Light

I'll (hopefully) be blogging a lot this week, as Portland's pretty photogenic. I got up this morning at 4:45 to head out, and by the time I realized it was raining sideways I was committed - no chance I was going back to bed sans photos after I'd already left the parking garage.

The above image was processed similar to yesterday's with Nik's Silver Efex Pro. I usually prefer to blur the water in my images, but any exposure longer than a half a second or so resulted in so much rain on the lens that the photo was unusable. I shot about 100 frames to get 20 that didn't have substantial amounts of rain on the lens (thank god for lens filters).

The filter was the only thing that got wet (and me, I was totally soaked through), but at least my gear made it out unscathed.

More TK.

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I've never shot film but...

Never having shot film didn't stop me from playing with the film simulator presets in Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro. We're in Maine, after a short trip from Bowie (9.5 hours, 8:15 a.m. arrival), I went for a ride to Portland Head Light and Cape Elizabeth.

The overcast skies made for some great black and white possiblities, and what you see above was processed with Nik's Agfra APX Pro 100 preset. Again, not having ever shot film, I don't really have expectations for each preset, and I'm not 100 percent sure that the conversion is necessarily better (as in, worth a $200 plug-in better) than just converting in Photoshop, but it does provide some interesting starting points. I've got the free demo for 15-days, so I'll play around some more and post on this subject again.

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Last Visit to Sandy Point

Tomorrow we head to Akron, so I got up at 4:45 for one last visit to Sandy Point for sunrise. I'm not real happy with the images, especially as my favorite composition, the vertical photo, is an "almost."

What's an almost? A photo that looks good at first glance, but won't print well at all (hint, it's because the rock is blurry at a 100% view). My tripod must have moved in the sand during the exposure (5 seconds) and it's just blurry enough that I can't save the image.

Anyway, I've got some more cloudscapes like that last photo to still work up, maybe I'll come up with something nice there, but my hopes are kinda dim on that front.

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My favorite two from Sandy Point

Well I was back at it this morning - 4:30 wakeup (but back in bed by 6:30). Anyway, I just finished working on these two. I'll probably hit it up once more before we leave town.

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Moonrise at Sandy Point

One more from last night. Maybe I'll do a series.

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One more From Sandy Point

Off to bed for now, more to come from today when I get to the files tomorrow.

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More from the park

It's not everyday I get to shoot both sunrise and sunset at the same location.

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Sandy Point State Park

We're in Annapolis for the All Star break. That means photos at sunrise here - at Sandy Point State Park. I'll be going back for more - we're here for ten days - but this is one from this morning as a taste.

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