John Huegel Photography

New eBooks online at Amazon!

admin — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:00:24 +0000

I recently published four more books on Photography:

Professional Photography 101 Part 1: Cameras, Lenses and Exposure

Test Your Photography Knowledge Part 1: General Knowledge

Test Your Photography Knowledge Part 2: Exposure

Test Your Photography Knowledge Part 3: Lighting

They are great resource for those of you interested in photography. They will challenge your skills and help you to learn the fundamentals of photography. Enjoy!

John Huegel, CPP

admin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:30:58 +0000

I have just received notice that I passed the certification image review and I am now a Certified Professional Photographer! It was a long journey, including a difficult exam and multiple image submissions, but I am proud to have passed and to be considered a Professional Photographer by my peers.

There is only one other CPP in Erie County, and within 50 miles of Erie, there are only 5 CPP photographers…and I know two of the others personally, great people!

Many thanks to Dana Nordlund for providing the inspiration and support for me to pursue this journey. I think I’ll continue to try and advance in the art of Photography.

John

Water Drops: High Speed Sync

admin — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 23:40:23 +0000

I spent my hour at the studio this Sunday working on high speed flash sync on the water drop experiment. I meant to revisit this test with water and flashes, and woke up motivated to try it.

My camera can sync with a flash at 1/250 second. My quest was to see if the flash would sync at speeds faster than 1/250. I set the camera at various speeds from 1/200 to 1/2000 and the results were very similar on the drops – the flash itself stops the motion well. But at least I know how to set HSS mode now, which will be valuable outside this summer!

This time around I captured some interesting images. Of the 270 images I captured, here are the 10 or 15 best. I can say that high speed sync is not required, but a close focus on the splash spot is mandatory. For most of these shots, I had a flash at 90 degrees left, providing strong side light. I used the “live view” magnification and manual focus on a tripod to lock in a tight focus on the point of drop impact, and varied the f-stop to control depth of field.

What I learned today:

Prefocus on an item close to the splash zone to get good focus
Side flash will nicely highlight the splash
Shallow dish will create more dramatic vertical drops
A close up adapter would be needed to isolate the water, but it may get the lens to close and it would be splashed
Green dish causes green photos. Need neutral dish and colorful background.

New Lens: Sigma 85mm f/1.4

admin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:59:10 +0000

Today I received my new lens. This is a great low-light lens which I’ll find very useful in my wedding photography.

Here are a couple of images straight out of the camera. Note the extremely shallow depth of field. These were all taken at f/1.4 to see how the camera performed in low light. They were all hand-held, in Aperture Priority mode inside my house.

One Drop At A Time

admin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:31:01 +0000

I had a bit of time to kill today while my studio warmed up for a class. I tried the water drop experiment. I shot 40 frames and ended up with this keeper. This was in natural light. I’m interested to try some more with different lighting!

Dance Photography in Erie: Meaghan

admin — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:40:45 +0000

I’ve been photographing Meaghan and her family for many years. She asked for professional dance portraits to accompany her senior images. Here are a couple of neat images from our recent session.

Erie Dance: Attack Theatre!

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:14:21 +0000

Last week I photographed a unique event: The dance performance of Attack Theatre performing Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale”, accompanied by a small group from the Erie Philharmonic.

Photographing in a quiet yet packed Warner Theatre was an interesting challenge for me. I was photographing without flash of course, from the back of the theater. The sound of my camera’s shutter would have been distracting, so I muffled the clicks it by wrapping me and my camera in thick layers of black velvet. I was invisible in the dark!

I had nearly optimal settings on my camera for the conditions: Wide aperture, moderately high ISO, and a shutter speed sufficient to stop the motion of the dancers. I had my 70-200 IS lens set on f/2.8, and I switched to a 50mm f/1.8 for a couple of wide angle images.

Enjoy some of the images from this great performance. Erie does have a lot of cultural events!

New Website for John Huegel Photography!

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 23:33:12 +0000

Today I updated my website to a new site. It has an integrated blog, shopping cart/gallery, and great support for iPads and mobile phones. It’s a very clean look, and I’m so far delighted with the customer service. With my blog and other documents integrated into the website, I am certain that it will reflect favorably in my SEO results. Have a look and let me know what you think!

Erie Weddings: Kristen and Michael

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:50:00 +0000

Kristen and Michael had a wonderful wedding on New Year’s Eve. The weather was reasonably cooperative, allowing us to capture some very nice indoor and outdoor images.

What a lovely wedding. The reception was a hoot, complete with a band, DJ, party favors and a live broadcast of the ball in Times Square!

Congratulations Kristen and Michael! Best of luck to you both!

Winter Senior Portraits: Danielle

admin — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:27:00 +0000

December 11th is not too late for Senior Portraits in Erie. We proved that today!

Even though we had temperatures in the 30′s, the sun was out and the wind was cooperative. Danielle was a trooper, posing for many shots in a sweater.

Here’s a great image with one of my newest backdrops in our studio:

And the lovely glass block wall that I like to haunt:

We found some nice red brick for a few images as well:

The birds were a bit annoyed, but we had a nice few images down at the dock as well.

We finished at the beach. There weren’t too many others down there to get in our way. This looks just like summer…even though it was 50 degrees colder than summer beach weather!

Nice images, Danielle!