I am very excited to announce that I have updated my blog and have moved it to a new home: ottorascon.com/blog
You can also see my portfolio site over at: ottorascon.com
My many thanks to Google and Blogger for the great intro to blogging. I will continue to upload new content and share about my shoots. So check it out and please update your Google Reader to the new address. Thanks and Rock On!
//Otto
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Jason - 2nd Year Portraits
The last time I saw Jason was about 6 months prior to our shoot. Now if you have a kid, or are close to one, you know how incredibly and ridiculously fast they grow. So this was my reaction to seeing him on the day of the shoot: "WHOA, YOU ARE SOOOO BIG!" I hope I didn't freak him out, or his parents. But here he was with his cool flowing hair and a lot taller than I remembered him. Gone was also his little baby face that I was used to. You can tell by the photos that it took a while for him to warm up to me. But I had him by the end, just look at that smile on the last photo!!! I love it.
Prepping For The Shoot
I wanted to give the parents a different look for Jason's 2nd year portraits. You see, up to this point I had only photographed Jason in the studio. But now that he was running around and climbing stuff I figured shooting outdoors might be a lot of fun. His parents liked the idea, so we went with it. I had with me my strobes and light modifiers, but quickly realized that I wanted to shoot with natural light. Having strobes would have slowed things down way too much and would have felt cumbersome. So I just followed him (ran around) along with a lens. You have to be quick with 2 year olds, my daughter reminds me of this fact on a daily basis!
The Set-Up
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens
- Lightroom for processing and exporting of RAW files
Labels:
Portraits
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Henry's 2nd Year Portraits






Prepping For The Shoot
I really wanted to bring out Henry's eye and hair color for this shoot. I also wanted to do an outdoor shoot since the previous portraits had been in the studio. So I used my trusty Alien Bee strobe with a medium softbox. I was able to power the strobe with a Vagabond portable battery pack, which allowed for quick recycling of the strobe. This is good thing since I knew I would need to fire a bunch of flashes in a row in order to capture any fleeting moments. The funny thing about plans is that they do not always go the way you want. Henry is a vivacious little dude that LOVES to run (he's 2!), so I had to be ready to capture him away from the strobes. The first couple of images are non-strobe images.
The Set-Up
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens
- Alien Bee 400 with a medium softbox
- Vagabond battery pack
- Pocket Wizards
- Lastolite grey card for white balancing
- LIghtroom for post-processing and exporting
Labels:
Portraits
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Morty the Dog







I had been wanting to photograph a dog for some time. I really love dogs, but I am allergic to most so owning one anytime soon does not seem to be in my future. I also wanted to give to my co-worker, and I thought that a handful of portraits of her amazing dog would be encouraging. She loved the photos and I had a great time working with Morty.
Prepping For The Shoot
So how do you approach photographing a dog such as Morty? I had a few to ideas:
- One idea was to use an off-camera flash with an umbrella. I would use my 80-200mm zoom and use a Pocket Wizard to blast my flash. This was my preferred method. I thought Morty might stand still long enough to blast off a few flashes. That DID NOT happen.
- My second idea was to go all natural, which is what I ended up doing. There was no way that he was going to stand still. He seemed pretty excited and full of energy that evening. I also really wanted to capture him in his environment and the strobes would have gotten in the way.
The Set-Up
This ended up being a pretty easy shoot in terms of gear. I used the following gear:
- Nikon D700
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens
- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 lens
- Tokina 12-24mm f/4 (this lens rocks!)
- Post processing in Lightroom 2
Labels:
Portraits
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