Shadowplay Photography

Well last weekend was the annual Mermaid Parade at Coney Island. It rained, but not the whole time. It’s always a lot of fun shooting this event. All the colorful locals get dressed up (or down depending) and have a grand old time marching down Surf Avenue. This year was rainy as I mentioned, but it cleared up after the first half hour or so. I didn’t get any running make-up shots like I expected, but it turned out to be a productive shoot anyway. See my Flickr page here for the gallery.

On a technical note: shooting with the 5DM2 in the light rain caused no problems, even though people have complained online about poor weather sealing. Of course I was nervous about the whole time. All the shots were taken at ISO 400 with the excellent Canon 70-200 f2.8 L IS. Noise levels at ISO 400 were almost nonexistent which helped as the light was generally low. Also, almost everything was shot at f2.8, not because of low light, but I wanted paper thin depth of field to separate the participants from the crowd in the background.

Last week (actually I’ve been sitting on this post for about a month now), I was lucky enough to snag one of the few Canon 5D Mark II’s floating around. Even three months after its initial release the supply is still quite scarce. Even spare batteries are out of stock everywhere (those that do show it being in-stock are marking up the price as much as double the list).

DPReview recently posted their extensive review of all the camera’s functions and features. So if you’re looking for a feature run down, check that out (if you haven’t already). These are my first impressions after playing with it this week.

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Last night we had the opportunity to go to a lecture by noted photographer Jay Maisel hosted by Adorama and Nikon. I have to say, both my wife and I came away inspired. I loved Jay’s easy going, approachable attitude.

Jay has a wonderful philosophy on photography that he discussed while displaying a slide show of his past work. He breaks photos down into having three primary characteristics: Light, Color and Gesture. Light and Color are fairly self explanatory, but Gesture is trickier to describe. Gesture in this context is the form, action, or attitude of the subject.

He also delivered a few wonderful tips that can help our own photography:

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Our Alma Mater the Florida Gators won their second National Title in three years last night defeating the Oklahoma Sooners 24-14.

I realize this has nothing to do with photography, but I just wanted to say well done boys. Of course, now I’ve got to go another eight months with no college football. Guess I should use the time to work on my portfolio.

Canon PowerShot G10

A great photographer, Jay Maisel says “Always have a camera with you, it’s easier to take pictures that way”. This is great advise, you never know what you might miss. This is especially true here in New York City, where there’s always something going on.

For my entire photographic career I’ve shot with SLR’s or dSLR’s. I’m used to them, the form factor, the heft, the control placement, etc. The heft part of that statement is usually the problem, it’s just too much to carry around all day. After much debate I told my wife, I want a G10 for Christmas (luckily for me, she obliged). So after a couple of weeks of use, here’s my mini-review…

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Well, after 5 years of no updates I’ve finally decided to scrap the old website and venture into the world of blogging. Woho

I’ve also started hosting my photo galleries with zenfolio at: rohandp.zenfolio.com. From there you will be able to view, comment and order prints of all of our photography. Take a look and let us know what you think.

We’re going to be adding links to some of our favorite sites, location reviews, how to articles, and much more going forward check back… As for now as they say on TWIP “it’s time to take the lens cap off” and go shoot.