Tracing Light Photography

India Photojournalism Trip

In November 2008 I took a 2-week photojournalism trip to India in conjunction with The Seed Company. Most of the photos are not available publicly, but I posted some to my personal site.

See the photos.

Turkey Photo Assignment

In August 2008 I did a week photo assignment in Turkey with my wife. Although I am unable to share most of the material from this trip online, I did post a couple photos here: Silent Sunrise, Turkish man, and Passport Salesman (actually this last one was taken in Amman Jordan on the way back).

TSC President’s Forum - Boca Raton

I was the photographer at The Seed Company President’s Forum in Boca Raton, FL last weekend. Here are some highlights from the event.

See the photos.

Nick Family Portraits

After many attempts at working out a time to take a Christmas portrait for the Nicks, we managed to quickly take some photos after church last week. I am pleased with how they came out. Thanks to my brother Andy for holding the reflector, and Katie for helping pose them.

See the photos.

Hilltop Renewal Center

I took photos of the Hilltop Renewal Center in Idyllwild.

See the photos.

Torrey Alumni Theatre: Pride and Prejudice

Photos from Torrey Alumni Theatre’s performance of Pride and Prejudice.

See the photos.

TSC Portraits

Last week The Seed Company hired me to do some portraits to go along with the theme of their next newsletter: Using Investment in Scripture to Disciple Children. Tanya had some specific ideas of the kinds of portraits she wanted, but the logistics of getting some appropriate models proved to be difficult. Fortunately it all worked out Saturday afternoon for a small window of time.

The house where we did the photo shoot had soft window light, and white ceilings — which meant that a bit of bounce flash off the ceiling was all I needed for soft light. If I had more time, I could have gotten a bit more fancy with the lighting to give more contrast, or some back lighting, but time was very limited. I didn’t use most of the extra lighting gear that I brought (thanks anyway, Jeff). This shoot reminded me (or, rather, forced me) to try the simplest setup first: look first for natural light, and beyond that try the simplest strobe setup first (in this case bouncing with flash on-camera using ETTL). I metered for ambient light, and did a bit of flash exposure compensation when needed. It would have been interesting to see what I could have done with multiple strobes; I think I could have achieved some more dynamic lighting, which may have been more interesting, but at the same time more distracting? Not sure.

See the photos. Perhaps one of my many avid readers has a comment.

The Johnson & Johnson Wedding

In June I shot the wedding of Erik and Hayley Johnson in the Seattle area. I have posted some of the photos from that wedding on dankatie.com.

Event Shooting: TSC Invitational in Atlanta

Although I haven’t been good at posting to this site recently, I have actually been doing a fair amount of photography. The Seed Company flew me out to Atlanta, GA to shoot at a fundraising golf event they were hosting over the weekend May 19-21. The event went well, and so did the shooting. Although it meant being away from home on my birthday, I’m really glad I did it. It was a great experience. I’m not going to post any of the photos here, since TSC will be using them elsewhere, but they were happy with the results. Atlanta is a beautiful area, and a bonus was taking a short helicopter ride over the Atlanta Athletic Club to get some aerial shots.

Brendon & Lisa’s Wedding

The Jones wedding was my first time shooting as the primary photographer for a wedding. It was also my first time shooting formal portraits of larger groups. There were plenty of challenges, and a lot that I could have done better, but overall I feel good about the photos.

The biggest challenge was the harsh sunlight which I had to deal with for the portraits, and also during the ceremony and reception (the wedding was outdoors and started at 1pm). For the portraits we didn’t have enough time to go elsewhere, and there wasn’t much shade in the yard. This meant that I had to create shade, either with my diffuser, or (in the case of the larger group shots) two large patio umbrellas. I ended up using reflectors instead of flash for most of the portraits, which I think worked out well. I had one 40″ reflector/diffuser, and one 22″ (thanks, Josh!). I could have used a bigger diffuser. Fortunately, I had some helpful people who were willing to hold the diffusers and reflectors (thanks, Mike). I’m eager to try this out more in the future for portraits.

The distracting background was another issue that I couldn’t do much about, since there wasn’t much room to back up and get less depth of field behind the subjects.

I have included here some of my favorite shots from the wedding: See the photos.