Scott Clevenger Photography Blog

One of the coolest things about doing this photography thing is getting to go to my kindergartener’s school field trips.  Last week Luke’s class went to Smith Nursery to pick strawberries (and eat a few) and learn a few things about the nursery.  They all had a great time and got to bring home a basket of strawberries they picked themselves.  Luke’s basket was gone the next day.  Here’s three shots from the trip.  (and yes, the boy needs a haircut.)

Check out that strawberry grin!

Last week I had the opportunity to cover a Capitol Ministries event in Raleigh.  Their goal is to deliver the gospel of Jesus Christ to the political leaders of our country on a local and national level.  Capitol Ministries president and former NBA player Ralph Drollinger delivered the final message of the evening.  Follow the link above to find out more.

For those interested in the photo techie stuff scroll down to the bottom of the post.

The cool thing about this location was I have actually shot a wedding reception in the same room so I was a little familiar with it.  The not so cool thing was the low available light.  I’m shooting a D-300 so I didn’t want to crank up the ISO to much in order to keep the noise acceptable.  The room was set up with two spot lights on the speaker but they were not quite bright enough for me to feel comfortable using my 70-200 lens and avoid motion blur.  My solution was to gaffer tape my light stand with a SB-28 mounted on top to one of the heavy duty poles holding up one of the spot lights.  I zoomed the head all the way to 85mm and set the flash to 1/8 power at ISO 1000 f8.  I shot a few test frames and chimped the results and ended up dialing in the camera at f4/f4.5 125sec at 1000ISO.  I probably should have made some adjustments to the flash but I was a little rushed in the set up and would have had to remove the tape to get to the buttons on the flash. So I just ran with it.  For the crowd shots I had my SB-800 mounted on camera set to TTLBL and bounced it off the ceiling with the bounce card out.  I used pocket wizards to trigger the remote flash and let it flash with the SB-800 too.  All I had to do was be mindful of where the remote flash was while shooting and let the camera figure out the flash output of the SB-800.  This gave me some cool side highlights/backlight depending on camera position.  It makes for a heavy rig with a flash and pocket wizard mounted on a D-300 w/grip and 70-200 lens but I got some in focus and lit shots out of it.

Tony Chester and Jon Norris from OnWired.com contacted me about shooting some portraits they could use as “bio” pics for various blog interviews they are doing. They didn’t want your boring old corporate head shots though; which worked out perfect because I didn’t really want to shoot those anyway! I think it worked out. Here are some of my favorites.

Finally I have some form of a blog! I can totally see the potential of word press but man I have had some issues. I’m still figuring it out so hopefully my posts will get better and be easier on me! Oh yeah and today’s my birthday.