Especially for my non-portrait pictures, I often go through several post processing ideas I might have. Since this was one of the more difficult ones for me to decide which one I liked best, I thought it’d be an interesting one to share some of my various versions with 
(If you have been on my Flickr or portfolio over the last couple of months, you may have noticed that I decided to go with the top one)
Click to view Large On Black
Click to view Large
Click to view Large
Recently, Jonathan Pang totally blew my mind when he said he’d do a screen-cast with me over Skype so that he could run through some photos with me that were on his computer. I knew you could do screen sharing over iChat, but I thought that was it. I guess I don’t fiddle around with Skype too much (most of my contacts are on MSN/Windows Live Messenger).
It works differently over Skype vs iChat, though. With iChat, you actually take over the other person’s computer, your screen entirely becomes what the other person’s screen is, and you control the other person’s mouse & keyboard. With Skype, despite the feature being called “Screen Sharing”, it really is more of a “screen-cast.” You see the other person’s screen as a video stream, and you can do your own stuff on the side, too.
Anyways, among other things we discussed, Jonathan came across this picture on Flickr some time ago:
Click to view larger owner's Flickr page for photo
Jonathan actually knew exactly where that shot was taken (being the cityscape photographer that he is) and wanted to do replicate the “look.” Working together over Skype screen sharing, here’s what we were able to come up with =P
(Original picture on the right, final picture on the left. The middle picture is kind of just an “in-between” as we were working shot.)
Click to view full size
Basically, first step for me was to figure out how to get that (non-existent) blueness in the picture (that’s the middle picture). Once we were able to get there, the next thing to do was to get red and yellowness back in the picture.
We actually got to a point where our picture looked aesthetically almost like the one we were trying to replicate (by “aesthetically” I mean the post processing “look” – it obviously isn’t going to be exactly the same because the original is a long exposure and Jonathan’s shot isn’t). Though as we were in the final step of adding back in some yellow, I actually preferred the image with more yellow/green than the original variant.
If you look closely, you might be able to tell that our picture is actually blurred. Jonathan didn’t have his tripod with him that day, so he had to hand hold it – apparently he said all of them are blurry to a degree. Of course a sharp picture would be ideal, but I’m not all that bothered by it. It was a fun post processing challenge/exercise, and we both learned some new things trying to figure it out
If Jonathan ever decides to retake this shot, I’ll be sure to post up an update =P
For now, if you want to check out some awesome cityscapes of Toronto by Jonathan, you can always hit up is Flickr link, found on the sidebar or here at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jnthnp/
The the last few years, I’ve had a lot of people ask me to recommend them a camera – often, their first SLR. Well, I’ve been asked again recently and I think I’ve probably written my most thorough response yet, so I thought it might be helpful to others if I just posted my response here.
I’ve edited out some personal intro/closing, of course, but here’s the meat of it – just coppied and pasted below.
I’m not sure when I might be seeing you again next, so I thought I’d send you an email with my camera recommendations. Though to be more accurate, it’s more about how to choose the right camera for your needs, than it is about the cameras themselves.
Just a heads up first, I realize that I repeat certain things a lot here, but that’s because those are the most curcial points, and I really want to reinforce them. I promise that there will be new information all the way through to the last paragraph though!
(in other words, I promise it’s not 3 paragraphs worth of information repeated 10 times)
I am going to assume that the camera will be a digital SLR of one brand or another (that’s what I would recommend to anyone who is even slightly interested in photography), and not a point and shoot camera. Digital SLRS can now be had now for as little as 15,000 baht [~$500]. SLRs and point and shoots are completely different beasts, and function through some pretty different mechanical principles. It’s almost like comparing a go-cart to a “real” car. Yes, they both have 4 wheels, a steering wheel, and run on gas, but they’re pretty different mechanically. So for this “guide”, no go-carts.
The main gist of this “guide” is this: any digital SLR will be sufficient. The only question is which brand – this is the most important choice, the brand. The exact model, once you have decided on the brand just comes down to how much you are willing to spend. But again, any digital SLR will be sufficient. Here’s why…
A lot of people ask me what camera I use and are almost always shocked when I used tell them that I use a 6 megapixel D40 (which is the most entry level of entry level SLRs). In fact, I think when it was bought 4 years ago, it was the only 6 megapixel SLR in production – others started off at around 10 megapixels.
Even today, probably about 70% of the images in my current portfolio (www.portfolio.photokraphy.com) were shot with that 6 megapixel SLR.
Again, I want to remind you again, that this guide is strictly for digital SLRs ONLY – a point and shoot at 12 megapixels will produce substantially inferior images than “just” a 6 megapixel SLR.
With the above in mind, I will tell you that any digital SLR that you can buy new today will be “better” than that D40 I shot 70% of my current portfolio with. More than once, I’ve had professional photographers think that I used a $3500 camera for some of my images.
So now hopefully I’ve made the point that exact camera model doesn’t matter. What does matter, again, is the brand.
When choosing a person’s first SLR, what one needs to understand, is that they are not buying “a camera”, they are buying into a “system.” Each brand has their own universe of cameras and accessories which operate in a system, and the camera is only one piece of the system. It’s a question of which system you like better – not which “camera.”
As years go by, the digital camera body will eventually malfunction, and become technologically obsolete. With a point and shoot camera, you just go shopping for a new camera and there, problem solved. It’s different with SLR cameras. When you’ve got lenses and flashes etc. that are a part of a system (brand), you can’t just pick up a new Canon camera to replace your broken Nikon – your Nikon lenses and Nikon flashes won’t work with that Canon camera. If you wanted to switch to Canon, you’d need to sell your entire Nikon system to fund your new Canon system.
So you see, a photographer’s first SLR, in most cases, ties them to a certain brand for life.
Any SLR is good enough. Pick an SLR that fits your budget from that brand that you like most.
Alright, now with all the ground work laid, we can finally talk about how to choose the brand (not the camera!), and how they differ.
For about 8 months Canon has a better camera than Nikon. For the next 8 months Nikon is “better” than Canon. Then Canon release something new, now Canon is “better.” You can see where I’m going with this.
You don’t choose the brand based on picking one Canon camera and comparing it to an equivalent Nikon camera, looking through every possible technical specification to figure out which one is “better.” Firstly because, as I’ve said, any digital SLR today is more than good enough. But more importantly, because in 8 months, whatever brand you didn’t choose will be better than the brand you did choose. But then it’ll flip back around in another 8 months.
However, one thing will never change about each of the brands – and that is how their cameras handle. Nikons will always have a certain feel to them, and Canons will always have a certain feel to them. One will never be “better” than the other in 8 months, 8 years, and I would wager, even in 80 years (unless one of them goes out of business or something haha).
The way a camera “handles”, to me, comes down to two factors. 1) the ergonomics of the camera, including the placement of buttons. 2) the layout of the camera menus. Those are the only two things, I would say, that you need to consider when choosing a camera system (or in other words, when buying your first SLR).
Honestly, take one photo with a Nikon camera, grab an equivalent Canon model, take the same picture with the same settings, look at the two pictures side by side and there will such a little difference between the two (plus, which ever brand’s is marginally better will be leap-frogged by the other brand in 8 months anyways).
The main difference between the cameras isn’t in image quality (where all the advertising is in) but rather, in the way the camera handles. Therefore, the only way to decide which camera is “best” for you, is to, well, handle, them yourself. It’s not something that can decided upon by up specs on it. Kind of like a car, yes you can read up about all the technology in the engine, its aerodynamics, brake system, etc. etc. etc. – but you’re still going to test drive the car before buying it, aren’t you?
Same goes for cameras.
Remember the pictures I took of the CIAS airshow last year? Well…I was going to tell you guys what happened, but I figured this time, a screenshot would be most effective
Clicky to view at 100%
Click to view larger
Click to view larger
I’ve recently really been liking this double umbrella setup a lot. Though apparently, I’ve been told, it’s a pretty commonly used setup by beauty photographers for closeups.
I’ve been wanting to do this setup for a while but never got around to buying a second umbrella because I wanted to have more strobes first. I like a lot of my shots on pure white, so if I lit two umbrellas, I would have insufficient light to blow the background out to pure white cleanly. Last month I finally picked up my second umbrella because I needed it to shoot a large group photo (grad).
I can see now why beauty photographers love using this setup…the skin tones and shading straight outta cam look great.
The first pic below of Haley is a heavier on the PP side of things, so it’s hard to tell as far as skin texture goes. But what really struck out to me with the PP done, was how much more “shape” his face had – as in his cheeks, nose etc. Usually when shooting with just one umbrella coming in from an angle (and maybe a reflector strip the opposite side), after my post processing, the person comes out more “drawn” (flat)- looking, whereas this comes across slightly more computer-graphic-ey.
The second one below of me is more gentle with the PP (by my standards anyways haha, I’m sure it’s still considered a lot by many).
Click to check it out Large On Black
Click to check it out Large On Black
I’ll also be picking up a bunch of “real” light stands this summer. Since forever, I’ve been using umbrella-tripod adapters to mount my strobes and whatever light modifier we might be using. Just because I had a couple not-so-great tripods lying around, I figured they’d make good light stands, and they did, for the most part.
My basement’s ceiling is on the low side, so low that I can’t even fully extend my tripod with umbrella mounted on all the way up because the top of the umbrella would hit the ceiling first, so I never really had an issue with it being too short. That was until I shot the group picture for grad this year haha.
I’m looking forward to really being able to get my light wayyy up there when I shoot outdoors from now on – make good use of Nikon’s CLS.
Speaking of CLS, here’s a little side note…I was telling one of my photographer friends, Jonathan, today, that I think I’ll probably stick to using only hotshoe flashes all the way until I can afford some Elinchrome / Profoto, or Broncolor gear. I’m just wayyy to mobile to have stuff like a set of Alien Bees or something now because then I’ll have to get a battery pack for it too, but I don’t want to invest that much in a system that will eventually be retired in only a few years (or at least that’s what I’m aiming for!). I think I’ll just get 6 hotshoes or so and be done with that. Save up, get a really nice system.
(btw, I was able to find a 2nd hand SB-26 yesterday, pretty cool)
Last but probably the biggest change to my basement studio is…I’m planing on painting the ceiling all white this summer when I get back to Canada (I’m in Thailand now). As I mentioned earlier, my ceiling’s quite low. Painting it white would reflect a good amount of light down naturally – spill light, from say, the two strobes that are blowing the background to white. Great for hair light. I haven’t tried it yet, but the best case scenario would be that I won’t even need a dedicated light for the hair anymore!
Also, Jonathan says that because the color of my unfinished ceiling is kind of a brownish yellow, it throws off the white balance a tad. It’s no big deal for me (but it drives Jonathan crazy), probably because I mess with my colors so much in post anyways – he’s more of a naturalist in that sense. Still fixable in post, either way. I wouldn’t have bothered to paint it when just for white balance purposes alone, but hey, if I get my hair light, AND it fixes the white balance issue, I’ll gladly take that bonus.
Oh, and if you check out the picture at the very top of this post again, you might notice that there are two strobes on the right side of the photo, and only one on the left. I’ll tell you this: only one of the on the right was shooting throw the umbrella. Guess where the other one was aimed? That’s how I tested out my hair light idea Bounce! Just taped a sheet of white cardboard to the ceiling above Haley’s head and aimed a flash at it. It worked wonders.
In fact, that one light alone, pointed at the board above Haley’s head, bounced down at 1/2 power was totally enough to lit Haley’s entire face quite well. I kept that one at 1/2 power, then added an umbrella to each side, firing at only 1/64 power to add just the right amount of rim/fill to the sides. Click the photo to check out how nicely lit Haley’s hair is! (Yes I know it’s on the light side, I’d probably prefer it to be as black as his sweater is, but that’s just due to lazy black and white conversion for this informal pic.) This is a setup I’ll probably be using a lot in the future.
/Such/ an incredible time saver. For the most part it was just simple exposure, straighten, and crop adjustments – the way it should be for event pictures, if things were shot right. Nothing in Photoshop, no hand work with the brush etc. Simple, broad adjustments that can very easily be “Stamped” on a bunch of photos. Gear-wise, despite the group photo incident, we were much more equipped gear-wise this year, /a lot/. We didn’t need to make any rentals at all, which is a great time & money saver – another contributing factor to how we were able to shoot the dinner that night this year. 
alrighty, some catch up time!
Haley & I shot grad for our elementary school (Unionville Public School) again last month (we shot theirs last year as well). How’d it go? I’d say substantially better than last year, with the exception of the group photo – more on that later. All shots were cleaner, there was more consistency, both in coverage as well as the composition of the photos themselves. We were certain much less nervous – in fact, we both had quite a lot of fun photographing it.
Last year we had covered the arrival of students, them mingling around, taken the group photo, and the mingling afterwards. We didn’t take any photos of the dinner/dance later that night. The grad committee had asked this year, if we could take pictures of the dinner as well, and we agreed to it. Plus, the offered us dinner as well, which is just plain awesome haha =P
The big helping factor in enabling us to shoot the dinner as well, while still being able to deliver 2 days following the event was the fact that Haley had just gotten his Macbook Pro a couple weeks prior to grad. Last year, I had my Macbook Pro, but Haley had a desktop. What we did, was as soon as we got to dinner, we flipped open our laptops to start importing the thousand or so images we had taken of the event prior to dinner. That way we could let our Macbooks chew threw all the importing, preview building etc. of RAWs as we ate and took a couple more photos during dinner (very little compared to the amount of photos of the grad ceremony itself).
When we got home, everything was pretty much finished importing to Aperture for me, Lightroom for Haley except for the ones from dinner, which finished importing in the time it took us to get settled in at my place.
Once we were sure we’ve got all the images on our HDDs, first thing to edit was the group photo because we need to send it off to get printed for the next day. Ah, yes…the group photo…the only thing that didn’t go butter-smoot this year. You may remember that last year we had a but of a hiccup with that as well.
This year we had the bleachers, though apparently due to the “depth” created by the bleachers, it required the lights to be mounted super high, shooting downwards, in order to light the people all the way in the back – something we weren’t exactly equipped to do. In the end, thanks to RAW and Photoshop, I was to mask a gradient of a Curve luminance adjustment to correct most of that problem.
2nd problem, because the lights this year were more horizontal to, as opposed above the students, we had some problems with shadows on the faces of students towards the back – the kids in front would block the light from them. This one was a lot of tedious to fix up, but I went with some hand masking another Curves luminance adjustment on the troubled student’s individual faces onto of the gradient adjustment I applied earlier.
I was planning on myself a bunch of “real” light stands this summer anyways, but as I’m sure you can imagine, I’m DEFINITELY getting myself some after that incident haha.
(I have been using umbrella-tripod adapters for as long as ever. My basement studio’s ceiling is on the low side, so there really hasn’t been a point for me to to get anything that reaches higher).
The group photo took a long time to retouch. After that was one, I took a tiny break haha. The rest went smoothly. For the most part, if the shoot went well, the post processing will go smoothly as well. I remember Haley and I telling each other that night, how much we both hate having to “rescue” a photo we know we messed up shooting later in Photoshop.
All I say in regards to the post processing of the rest of the grad pics, is I love the Lift and Stamp tools in Aperture for this kind of work Such an incredible time saver. For the most part it was just simple exposure, straighten, and crop adjustments – the way it should be for event pictures, if things were shot right. Nothing in Photoshop, no hand work with the brush etc. Simple, broad adjustments that can very easily be “Stamped” on a bunch of photos.
Interesting that I started talking about Post Processing before I talked about shooting haha, but I’ll go with the flow Gear-wise, despite the group photo incident, we were much more equipped gear-wise this year, a lot. We didn’t need to make any rentals at all, which is a great time & money saver – another contributing factor to how we were able to shoot the dinner that night this year.
The meat of the grad ceremony is, well, the ceremony itself – when each student gets their certificates and awards on stage. Our objective was to get a good, clean picture of each and every student when they were receiving their stuffs. Like we did last year, Haley was up close in front (but off) the stage, and I was sniping from the back with the 70-200 2.8.
Oh, and I haven’t mentioned yet, but this year’s grad actually took place at my high school – last year it was some other high school that neither Haley nor I attended, so it was a new place. Being familiar with the place really helped, of course, but there was also something else about haven the grad at Markville Secondary: there’s a balcony/2nd floor from which to view the events on stage. Just awesome for sniping from the back. Shooting slightly downwards to the stage, not having any heads in the way. Couldn’t ask for more. I will also add that a ballhead (new for this year) + tripod collar combo is just AWESOME for shooting quick under pressure with a long lens. It’s magical.
That, a long with the 7fps of the D300s, this year, I can confidently say that I alone got at least one (two or more for most, actually), good, clean pictures of each and every student. Add that with Haley’s batch of up close pictures, and that’s what I call “coverage”
I’ll also just throw in right now, that if you’ve got a lens with a tripod collar, it’s well worth it to buy extra tripod quick release plates and just leave them attached to your lens’ tripod collar. And depending on what you shoot, I personally always just leave a quick release plate on my camera at all times. It’s so much faster to not have to move them from the bottom of the camera to another lens etc. Everything’s already ready to snap on the tripod at an instant. Really helped with shooting this year’s grad.
I really had intended to do an in-depth behind the scenes video, but as I was prepping for it, although we were thoroughly preparing for it, it just didn’t seem like there was anything “un-standard” about what we were doing. I mean, you’d see the gear, and it’d be cool for gear geeks and whatnot, but there really wouldn’t be much more to the video than that…so I didn’t end up doing one. I didn’t feel like there would be any “oh, that’s a good idea, maybe I can implement that in my workflow/do something like that too” kinda moments – which is what I feel really good behind the scenes videos do.
The "cover photo" for the project - the only one in color. Click to view a slideshow of the set of images.
One of our projects for photography class was a “photojournalism” project, and although it’s supposedly a film course, we were allowed to use digital if we chose to for this project for reasons I’m not gonna get into explaining.
Anyways, I kinda put a bit of a spin to this project. Maybe some of you have noticed it already when you saw the series of pictures…
It isn’t technically photojournalism. It doesn’t document a series of happenings in time exactly…it’s not like “she does this at 7:15pm and then at 7:45 she does this, then at 8:30 she does that etc.”
All these pictures are kind of “timeless.” And I don’t mean that in an artistic way, but really in a quite literal one. I mean it as in the stuff in all these pictures could have all existed in parallel, at the same moment in time, ya know?
I wish I could have claimed it was my 100% intention to add that spin to it, and that I “came up” with the idea, but the honest truth is that I just naturally found it more powerful with the same person in all the pictures, that’s what I wanted, and I went with that. I didn’t even know how exactly I would end up “justifying” it as “photojournalism”, but I trusted what I wanted to shoot, and trusted that I’ll be able to come up with something to say about it later (for those wondering, I’m to report that it went through fine with the teacher).
So, thinking back in hindsight, the reason why I found it more powerful to have the same person in all the pictures is because I didn’t want it to be about the person in the photo, but rather, what they were doing. On the other hand, I didn’t want to completely remove the person from the picture either, I wanted a “victim” in each of the photos.
My teacher did later suggest, though, that I could somehow obscure the person’s face from view, to add to the anonymity factor. That, however, I feel, would have taken away from one of my other objectives from this series of photos, which is for them to be really “raw” and in in the person’s face about it.
In help create that feeling, from a technical aspect, I did something I don’t usually do with my portraits, which is to let myself have really, really blocky blacks and blown out highlights. I decided that I would deliberately go for that this time not only for the “harsh” factor, but long ago, one thing that had always stuck out to me about being one of the properties of photojournalism, was that it wasn’t nearly as much about the picture quality as much as it was about what was in the photo – the content.
Admittedly, I look a lot more at commercial photography than photojournalism or even editorial, but from the photojournalistic photos that I’ve seen (or at least the ones that struck out at me, ones I remember anyway), most of them don’t come “perfectly” exposed or come without motion blur or noise. In short, I also went with the blocky blacks + blown out highlights to retain some of what I consider the “photojournalistic” look.
Note that I say “retain some of” and not “create the” photojournalistic look. There is without a doubt a commercial and very “digital” feel to my photos (for example, you never see any “trying to recreate film/faded images” kinda look in my pics), and I feel, for now at least, that it is part of my “look” in photos, and I wanted to make sure I retained it, even when going photojournalistic this time.
Ps. thanks to Claire for being an awesome model! You can check out her Tumblr here at http://www.muggins.tumblr.comI realize that I haven’t posted in over 3 months. Things have been crazy (in a good way).
I’ve just arrived in Thailand for my summer holiday 2 days ago. Just starting to get a chance to cool off (ironic, considering the weather here haha). Changes + new content coming in the next week!
Ps. Remember, you can always keep up with the latest as soon as it happens by following Photokraphy by pkennethv on Facebook!
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/photoKraphy-by-pkennethv/155413659093
Upon getting home from the wickedly awesome and fun rooftop shoot downtown with Jonathan, I get a message from him asking if I was free for him to come over and shoot some stuff in my basement for his school’s yearbook (he’s editor). How awesome is that? More photography with friends! 
Anyways, after some mischievous actions ie. taking taking a butt-whoopin’ portrait of him to be used in the yearbook instead of the standard ones taken by the “pro” that the school hires (he says he’s “allowed” to because he “run[s] yearbook”***), he asked me if I could take a picture of him in my signature “High Pass seamless white portrait” style. I couldn’t have been more hounored to be asked!
Click to view Large On Black (it's much better!)
Thought it was pretty cool how he shot my latest display pic just the day before I shot the one above as his (he shot mine the night we were up doing the rooftop shoot, there’s a hyperlink to it at the top of this post). I processed the pic myself though (as you can tell by the intense High Pass applied…) And yes, I do realize I look a tad like I’m just about to sneeze…unfortunately, they all kinda came out like that. It was cold and windy (relative to how we dressed).
On a related note, I was mighty close to ending up on the front page of Richmond Hill Highschool’s year book (looking anonymous – face not clearly visible). That’s one of the things Jonathan wanted to shoot yesterday. I was being the model for the pic, but then when we switched up positions for testing purposes (me behind the camera, Jonathan in front), the first picture I snapped was the picture. I took maybe two more shots of him, but the first shot really was the winner.
So that just goes to show how good of a photographer I am…nailed it on the FIRST shot!…KIDDING haha. It shows how bad at modeling I am 
(or maybe both, if you are feeling exceptionally kind <3).
EDIT: Apparently I did make it into Richmond Hill’s yearbook – some people in the yearbook committee liked the shot of my better than the one of Jonathan.
Jonathan messaged me last week about an interesting location he wanted to shoot at. It’s the very newly constructed RBC Dexia building in downtown Toronto. Here’s the article he sent me about the building as well as two pictures from Flickr.
http://spacing.ca/wire/2010/01/16/a-new-view-on-toronto/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomms/4390115196/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomms/4387757080/
He already had one idea he wanted to do there, and I came up with some of my own as well. Before I even saw the name of the one of the Flickr photos above (”Fight Club”), I knew I wanted to do a Tae-Kwon-Do picture there (with strobes of course!). Some of you might have remembered this photo of me which I worked with Haley Ma last fall.
[blog post on it here: “Ken Day”]
Click to view Large On Black
What I haven’t really said about it though, was that that one picture was the only one timed perfectly (kick execution) out of the whole day’s worth of shooting. Not only that, but it wasn’t actually even one of the attempts which we tried to get “the photo”. I was just messing around and Haley happened to snap it, which is the reason why the softbox is visible in the shot. I had come to the conclusion that the reason why it was so difficult for Haley to nail the timing was because he doesn’t do Tae-Kwon-Do himself – so it’s difficult for him to judge the split second timing of when the kicking leg is at its apex, fully extended.
This time, it was my turn (someone who’s been doing Tae-Kwon-Do since I was three years old) to be behind the camera (the pressure is on now, huh?). So asked my awesome friend, Gloria, to be the one kicking. Conveniently enough, she just happened to be wanting a new Facebook display picture. What awesome timing. Some of you might remember her…errr…backside from what is still by quite a large margin my most popular photo on Flickr.
Click to view Large On Black
I think it goes without saying that we weren’t supposed to be going up an unfinished office building, and we have read online that some photogs have been denied entry, but then again, we’ve also seen pictures from those who have made it up to that 41st floor. So it was worth a try. We made backup plans just incase (didn’t want to go all the way downtown and come back without pictures).
But long story short, and without all the laughs and epicness which I’d do no justice trying to write out here (Jonathan’s Mission-Impossible type planning to get around security), alas, we were not able to get up there. The four of us (Jonathan’s photographer buddy, Myles, being the fourth) then proceeded to search of our “Location B.” We ended up going to the top of a parking lot which Myles and Jonathan had stumbled upon previously.
Here’s what I came back with.
Click to view Large On Black
Click to view Large On Black
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m rather heavy on the post processing of my pictures, so I thought it was worth mentioning that this last one was virtually Straight Out Of Cam (not that it makes it better or anything, just saying it as an random article of information you might find worthy of notice).
Click to view Large On Black
Jonathan’s got a wider variety of angles than me, ’cause I take a long time (relative to them, I’d still take longer if there was more time haha) to shoot one picture. I just want to keep tweaking it until I get the lighting exactly the way I want. I’d rather have just one awesome picture rather than a series of not quite as awesome images (if I’m shooting personal work, if there’s clients, that’s another story, of course). After all, you really should only be showing one picture from a particular shoot/that’s similar looking in your portfolio (unless you’ve done a TON of work, and can show off 15 galleries, each containing images with a consistent themes).
Jonathan might be putting up his shots soon here’s his Flickr address
http://www.flickr.com/jnthnp
PS. Both Gloria and I agree that doing a similar urban strobed Tae-Kwon-Do match with full sparring gear would make for some INTENSE pictures. Keep an eye out for those in the coming months 
PPS. When you are using a hotshoe mounted SB 800 or SB 900 as Master controller for off camera lighting, be sure to change the power settings using the SB 800, and not the Commander Mode menu on the back of the camera…like what I was doing for a good 15 minutes…
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