San Diego Lighthouse Reenactors

[rpcrowe]

I visited the Old San Diego Lighthouse on Point Loma where reenactors in 19th century garb were our guides. They looked like actors out of a Western movie.

[Melkus]

Oh I really love these. Great job

[Sergio M.]

Fabulous photos, Richard.

[rpcrowe]

[tybrad]

Very nice portraits! I'd love to meet them all. Maybe make them more "period" in B&W, sepia, or blue-tint (can't recall the name)?

Well done!
Tyler

[Sergio M.]

Richard, thanks for the extra helping. These are really great.

[Mike Buckley]

You're right that these aren't just people wearing period costumes; they really do seem like actors effectively playing a role. You had wonderful light and you expertly took full advantage of it.

The only quibble that I have, which may be a matter of personal taste, is that I think the vignettes are too heavy.

[rpcrowe]

Here is a sepia version on one of my shots...



And here is a Black and White version



What do you think?

[kaneohebud]

Richard: Really nice portraits. You captured their essence. They really could be from the era portrayed.

[Mike Buckley]

I'm a fan of sepia images, so I especially like that version. I also can't help notice that it has a very similar composition as the color image of the same person, yet looks fine and in my opinion better because it doesn't have the vignette.

I forgot to mention a detail about the last image in the first set. The stove pipe has some brightness at the top that adds shape to the pipe. I'd like to see that shape displayed all the way down to the bottom of the frame. Alternative, crop the image to include just a very small part of the stove pipe or none of it at all.

[rpcrowe]

Mike... The sepia and color versions are actually two different, but very similar, shots. If you look at the lighthouse keeper emblem on the left lapel (right side of image) of his jacket (the letter K), his beard covers most of the emblem in the sepia shot and not as much in the color shot...

Additionally, the shot with the stove was one of my least favorite of the group...

Luke, the man with the concertina was playing Civil War songs. He was from Ireland and we talked at length about the exploits of the Irish Brigade during the American Civl War and the settlement of Irish on Mexican landgrants in Texas during the late 1820's and early 1830's. He had not heard of this and I only knew about it because some of my Irish ancestors settled Texas in this manner.

[martinp2502]

I really enjoyed looking at these, thanks and well done.

[Donald]

Richard

I think this is an excellent set of images. Every one of them is high quality.

It's stupid to pick one out and say it's better than the others (because it's not), but as soon as I arrived at this one, I just tool a quick intake of breath. The composition. The angle of the head. The close crop. The light on the face. Brilliant.

[AB26]

Hi Richard,

Very nice to look at.
Not much of help to me, however. I want to know how you have done it. Did you use studio lights?

Thanks for sharing.

[rpcrowe]

Thanks friends... Donald, that close-up was one of my favorites of the shoot. Luke is a handsome guy whose personality just bubbles through. He also looks to me like one of the actors in some of the Clint Eastwood "spagetti westerns".



Andre... I used a 70-200mm f/4L IS lens outdoors with a Canon 430EX straight on for fill light. I shot in AV mode. Indoors, I used a 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens on my 40D and bounced a Canon 270EX flash modified with a Joe Demb Photojournalist FlipIt diffuser/reflector. The PhotoJournalist FlipIt really increases the versatility of the little 270EX. Without the FlipIt, the lens hood of my 17-55mm f/2.8 lens would cause a shadow at the bottom of the image by blocking the light from that low sitting flash.

Outdoors, the 430EX flash allowed me to balance the intensity of the light on the subjects against the bright gray, misty sky. Even with the ambient light being diffused, I think that my flash opened the shadows under the subject's hats.

In this shot, I am not sure if it would not have been better to crop it a bit tighter at the left of the image to crop out the very edge of Luke's shoulder. I tried it both ways and settled for this one.

One thing that I did not do was bring my WhiBal card to the shoot. I realized that I had forgotten it when I was a couple of miles from home but, since I was running late, I did not go back for it. The light was extremely overcast which made for even illumination but the daylight balance of my flash, which was warmer than the ambient light, tended to give me a mixture of light temperatures and, without any target, I had a difficult time with white balance. I have the Scott Kelby book, "Photoshop CS6 for Photographers", which has a tear out white balance card in the rear. I am going to cut a piece from that card and carry it in my wallet for emergencies like yesterday. If it works O.K., I will use that when and if I forget my larger WhiBal card. If it doesn't work well, I will just buy the smaller WhiBal card and carry it in the glove box of my car.

Something else that I did not have with me, I had left my reading glasses in my car which was parked a long way from the lighthouse. Without my reading glasses, I had problems seeing the controls of the camera and flash. I adjusted my camera/flash pretty much by habit and guesstimation. It's hell getting old but, it sure beats the below ground alternative...

[oleleclos]

Excellent pictures Richard. Some fine compositions and pleasing lighting.

I'm glad you kept them in colour. Using monochrome here would in my view be phoney. The world was in colour even back then, and the only reason pictures from that period are monochrome is lack of technology. If colour photography had been invented first, there would be few monochrome pictures and none of the "monochrome is better than colour" nostalgia.

Not that there isn't a place for monochrome, and CiC is full of proof of that. But please no monochrome for nostalgia's sake is all I say. But I do agree with Mike that the vignetting on the colour images is slightly heavy handed.

[rpcrowe]

Gosh Ole, I didn't realize that people were in actually in color those days I agree with liking color images better than B&W or Sepia except in cases like reproductions of old west "wanted" posters when B&W would be mandatory!

[oleleclos]

Gosh Ole, I didn't realize that people were in actually in color those days

A common mistake

[Plumcrak]

Richard, absolutely wonderful captures. I think the gent in the tan jacket appears to be a tad bit grumpy! Very well done.

Cheers

[rpcrowe]

Actually, he was quite friendly... Looks can deceive. Here he is asking another reenactor for forgiveness due to a percieved slight



To be truthful, he was helping her to pick up some bsiness cards which she had dropped. I caught the image because it looked like he was asking her to marry him...