Kevin Meyers Photography Blog

yeah, i know, i'm a bit slow with this one. oddly enough though, albums, engagements and weddings kept me occupied this week. :)

i had a great weekend and it all started with a wedding on friday for my high school physics teacher's daughter. it was fun to hear so many klamath falls stories since that's where i grew up. photos will follow.

i got home from the wedding with plenty of energy left so i had a few friends over to enjoy martinis and of course a little youtube streamed over the appletv. those flight of the conchords guys are hilarious!

the next day, a friend of mine was celebrating an early birthday. ben, the guy in blue in the 'cruiser pit crew' pic, turned a mere 25! hah bar getting around via beach cruiser was a lot of fun. after a while we hit up the nickel arcade for a reminder of days gone by. prize inflation is crazy!! it takes 100 times more tickets to get a super ball than it did when i was a kid!

of course, sunday was an awesome mother's day (i forgot my camera though). i headed out to wine country to hang out with my entire family. it's pretty rare that we can all make it to the same place at one time. we checked out the property my parents just broke ground on which was exciting. they're moving up to the area after living in southern oregon for about 35 years.

finally, on monday, my parents took me to dinner at fenouil for one of the best culinary experiences my taste buds have had in a while. they have a super relaxing ambience with a great view. i tried steak tartare for the first time...and...i absolutely love it!! if you ever get the chance, you should try some.

well in case you can't tell...it's definitely engagement shoot season! i met brian and audra while shooting her brother's wedding last summer. it's always fun working with people you've met before because there's an instant ease about it.

these two stepped right into the 'model' mode so we ended up getting quite a bit of variety in their photos. they chose the pearl for the location which is hard sometimes because i strive to provide something different for everyone. you're getting a glimpse of how i think here so i hope it's helpful in your own photography. i've shot here many times so i knew it would be important to look more carefully for great compositions. shooting really tight compositions would block out so much character, it might as well be any city. yet the mark of the pearl can be recognized in a lot of portland photographer's work and risks looking too similar. paying close attention to empty space, minimizing distractions and limiting color variation yielded results i'm stoked about!

after great dinner and fun conversation at henry's, we headed back out to throw lights into the mix. there are only two night photos posted here, but a third fountain shot was posted last week so check that out too.

thanks guys for hangin' with me so long! i'm happy you were able to stick around after dinner even with a drive back to corvallis on a work night. i think it was well worth it!

hey everyone! how are ya? a little while ago i trekked up to seattle through driving snow and rain for this engagement shoot not knowing how we'd work around the weather. i'd say we did pretty dang well!

we roamed around the uw campus for a while and found some really cool architecture. the staircases inside the library were awesome. the lighting was perfect too and i didn't need to use any lights of my own. i love it when it's that easy!

it was super cold so we headed to starbucks then to jamie's parents' home on queen anne hill to warm up. i had the chance to hang out with their families who treated me to an awesome dinner with an incredible view from the dining room table. thanks again you guys for the hospitality! their home provided some really cool shots too...the wine cellar and balcony can be seen below.

i met lisa and her mom last summer at a wedding so it was fun catching up with them. lisa is good friends with brittany whose e-shoot is on my website...think 'u of o stadium' and you'll know who i'm talking about. it'll be fun to catch up with brittany and drew at the wedding.

finally, we braved freezing temperatures to get a few shots from kerry park just down the street. i had a lot of fun using a video light to balance the foreground and background light.

you guys were well worth the trip! thanks for letting me hang around with your families too.

i posted a few photos from the Shoot With Beckstead workshop on the OpenSourcePhoto forum and someone commented on wanting to get better black and white conversions like this one.

for those that may not realize, black and white conversions are actually really hard to nail down. so here's the image in reference and my steps in converting it. the before and after is posted above, and each individual step is below if you'd like to see more detail in the shot.

1) decide whether a black and white conversion will actually enhance the photo or do it more harm than good. so many times we just think "oh, i like black and white" with out stopping to question if the color in a photo is what makes it stand out to begin with. in this case, there was a huge mirror in the background (half behind the model facing out, and the other half facing the wall exposing the glue and blue backing). the blue is ligther than all the other tones in the photo and draws the eye away from the subject so it's time to "convert to grayscale" in adobe lightroom.

2) then adjust the exposure, black clipping and contrast sliders so the photo doesn't look so "muddy."

3) you'll notice that your eye can't focus on the subject so well, so to help recenter your eyes, add some vignette (the sliders are toward the bottom right corner in lightroom). see the darker corners in the fourth photo?

4) add a little bit of warmth to the photo using the shadow hue and saturation sliders. i chose an orange hue with just enough saturation to warm things up without it looking overdone. for this photo, it looked best to warm only the shadows. use highlight hue and saturation, and you'll get a sepia toned image.

5) in photoshop, get rid of any other distractions using the clone and healing stamps. this step took a long time, but was totally worth it! i also brought the contrast and brightness up in an adjustment layer. there are way more tricks in this step than i can explain here.

anyway, this should get you pointed in the right direction for converting to black and white. i used to use actions for this, but a single action can't work for every photo. lightroom is an incredibly easy way to give each photo the appropriate attention for this sort of conversion.

have fun!

my cousins, a few friends and I used to get together weekly for poker games. this was the first in over a year and it was a ton of fun to get started again. i hosted for the first time and it turns out one of the rooms is perfect for poker. oh, and by the way i won! :) judging from the photos, you might think we only allow blonde females. well it's true. hah

matt can't believe he lost. he had the high pair (queens) after the flop and i had pocket sixes. he went all in with a 92% chance of winning. i had enough to cover it so i decided to call. a six on the turn gave me the win!

one of my colleagues, greg pierce, raised the following question about a recent photo shown below.

"I remember seeing a video tutorial on how to get that perfect blur from someone riding past you on a bike. It was on open source I think. Do you remember anything like that Kevin or care to share your technique for getting that shot?"

i'd be happy to! i just tried typing this in prose and it took forever and was really confusing...so we'll go with numbered steps.

1) camera in shutter priority mode; you want to control your shutter speed

2) camera in multishot drive mode; you'll want to just hold the shutter release down for many shots hoping for the perfect one. ;)

3) choose appropriate shutter speed; i start with 1/10th of a second and adjust from there, the key is to blur the background, but not beyond recognition. increase the shutter speed if you find the background completely blurred away

4) if your background is far away, make sure your aperture is closed down enough to keep good depth of field. even if your shutter speed is right, the background may be too blurry simply due to shallow depth of field. an increase in iso may be needed so you can close down your aperture to bring definition back into your background blur.

5) prefocus on the area the subject will be moving through; you'll want to take your eyes away from the viewfinder a bit so you can do what's explained next

5) shoot with both eyes open and don't bother looking through the camera; you can't see through it during the exposure anyway and you need to keep the subject in the same spot of the frame. i pick a spot on the subject and make sure the end of my lens is always in line with that point.

good luck and have fun!

i posted the bike photo in question below (shot at 1/13th of a second) along with another blurred motion shot. the fountain shot is a lot easier since it only requires steps 1-3 above. it's shot at 1/10th of a second.

i'd known melissa was coming to town for a while so we planned lunch and a some fun shooting around portland. elena and demetrye joined up with us and it was the first time we'd met, although i recognized elena from the opensourcephoto forum. glad you two could join us! see you again soon.

melissa and i then roamed around nw 23rd ave. taking photos, but since i shot film...well...i don't have much to show. ;)

here are a couple shots of monday's pug (pictage user group) meeting. this was the first held in my studio and it worked out really well. there were a number of newcomers as well as regulars so it was a lot of fun to hang out and chat afterwards. thanks everyone for coming!!

we had the pleasure of learning from melissa jill. she was in town from arizona to shoot a wedding so the timing was perfect for her to hit up our pug in the same trip. she's a super active blogger so click hereif you want to see more photos!

pictured below from left to right: darcie, ellen, melissa, barb, juli, me, craig, laura, mark, john, tammy, jos