As a Photographer I’ve never had a cover before so after I had submitted a picture to the Salem Times for reader submitted pictures and they fired back a request to use it on what I thought it was going to be a newspaper insert.

As It turns out the Salem Times (Twitter feed) produces the Marblehead Home & Style magazine. It comes out in this area on Tuesday but you can see it here as just the shot of the cover! I’ve photographed many shots of the Marblehead Fireworks and this is one of my favorites but I have a few. You can purchase prints on my website Vistaphotography under artwork and lighthouses.
I hate to admit that this is my first cover but maybe there will be more? If you like it let me know here or over on my Facebook page.

You can also follow me on Twitter (there’s a feed somewhere on your right)   I usually will have different photographic links for my followers and once the fall gets here (Far sooner that we would like), then I will be posting updates from the road for fall foliage locations. If you like to discuss Fall Foliage and make plans I blog on Yankee Magazine fall foliage page Yankee Foliage.com. And you’ll find a link to my blog there below the opening pictures with a couple of my last few bylines of fall articles.  If you have questions you can post them there on the blog as comments or if you would like to ask it so that a bunch of folks can comment quicker try the Yankee magazine foliage forum here. Once you register you can ask the gang about plans and what it’s like currently. Or how about what their favorite place to pick up Cider doughnuts,  But I’m digressing…  Visit my New England Fall Foliage Fan page on Facebook where I’ll be posting links to these places and more!

Jeff Folger

Vistaphotography

Greetings from Vistaphotography everyone! This last week I went from photographing Children on Sunday morning (I don’t say shooting even though photographers say this alot ) to running down to Salem to photograph an ad piece for a local hounted house, Dracula’s Castle on Pickering wharf.
I had two models come in and play as vampires for this shoot. < The girls found out that makeup for this type of shoot is much different than normal and Jen was the first to sit out in the lobby with a towel just barely wrapped around her while the makeup guru (Marshall) sprayed her with white paint

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While Jen was going through her transformation. I took Brandy out back for some scared victim photos in different areas of the haunt.
I settled on this shot of her running away from some unseen night terror and caught between a stone wall and a hard place.

The culmination of this running away was where the vamp, I mean vampire caught up with the lovely victim and having sucked the blood from her neck, raises her head in the sensual moment of ecstasy.

For the strobist folks out there who want to know how the third shot was lit. You can check my Flickr page for a more detailed accounting but basically it was a two light affair. With pocket wizards on two flash heads. One to camera right with an umbrella and then a bare bulb flash head to camera left and above the subjects. I’m using the new PW minis/flex PWs and to be able to shoot at 500/sec I had to put a second manual pocket wizard in the hot shoe of my mini tt1. If someone wants more info on why I did this, leave me a comment.
I’m doing this to keep in practice for the weddings that I have coming up this summer. I love to back light a bride and groom during severl scenes at the reception and pocket wizards make it possible.
If anyone wants to talk about photography with me “Vistaphotography” then please go to this flickr group and join in the discussions and we can talk about photography or pocket wizards or anything you like.

To see some of the changes I made in Lightroom check my galleries here.
You can follow me on Twitter here
I’ve also started my Fall Blogging on Yankee Magazines Foliage website Yankeefoliage.com. Come by and say hello and tell me what you like about fall in New England.

At Vistaphotography I’m not as good as some of the folks out there who are using flashes (otherwise know as strobes) off camera as can be seen on Strobist.com. The first shot was to show you the horrendous light we had at 6:30PM.

This was with a Nikon and no flash and the second was with the Pocket wizards on a Nikon flash (1/16th power) at camera left and a canon flash to camera right and it was twice as far away at 1/4 power with a white umbrella.

Next I set up my Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 along with a Nikon flash on a manual pocket wizard. All were set between 1/16 and 1/2 power depending on distance and light modifier.
It took a bit to get a pleasing balance between the three flashes and you can see that as we started to go beyond the camera/flash sync speed you can see the curtain shadow start to show up. but even in a few of them where we shot at a shutter speed of 320 the curtain wasn’t so bad that if you crop in, it’s either gone or negligible.

The last shot was where Jay and I stopped and I think we were finally getting close to what I was looking for.

Jeff Folger
Find me on Yelp
Vistaphotography
My wedding site
My Fine Art gallery

As a photographer and blogger for Yankee Magazine I get a bit of mail as one would imagine. I received this one and thought it might help others who were thinking of making a foliage trip to New England this fall.

Hi Jeff -

I wanted to wait until the fall season was over (when I know you are out on the road a lot) to write and ask you another question or two. By the way, my NE visit was great even moving it up a week. The color in Vermont and up around Lake Winni was wonderful. I shot a lot of film and plan on scanning the best ones into my computer over the holidays.

I’ll attach one of my photos to this email that was taken on a previous trip (a church across from the Red Lion Inn in Stockbridge). It’s still one of my all time favorites.

(I think you have a great capture there Johanna. The color against the stone walls of the church are great compositional aspects in this photo. I’ll have to head to Stockbridge and see this church for my self. I’m also glad that your trip went so well. I never know for sure if the season will be early or late but I watch the weather all year long and I try to make an educated guess. I’m glad it worked out, ok.)

The interesting thing is that when I returned to Portland I discovered that our trees were turning colors more brilliant than I had ever seen before. (We had also had a cooler summer.) Our fall lasted from September through the end of November. This made for many photo opportunities and I carried my camera with me in the car every day. It was truly spectacular and would have given New England some competition.
(There are many areas of the country that get beautiful color from West Virginia to the smokey mountains. I’ve never been in Colorado in Sept but the aspens there can put on a fiery yellow show.)

Here are my 2 questions:

I am already planning my 2009 fall trip to NE! I have never driven around the Quabbin Reservoir but your blogs have now gotten me interested in doing that next fall. I’ll be staying in Manchester at my usual hotel. Would I be able to drive down to – and around – the entire reservoir in one day? Having lived back there I know that distances on a map can be deceiving. I’m thinking it would be a good photography day trip. What sort of time / distances are we looking at for the entire reservoir?

(Well the drive isn’t too bad but I recommend staying at a hotel or B&B (such as the Hartman’s Herb Farm near Barre MA) This way you can start out fresh and not arrive tired from the 1-2 hour drive. (longer if you stop to take pictures along the way.) I would say spending an entire day slowly driving around the Quabbin Reservoir will give a relaxing trip and then spend that night there and really enjoy a good nights sleep before heading out the next morning.
I hope this helps)

My other question is about cameras. After having used my beloved Olympus OM-1 for 25 years, I am finally going to purchase a digital camera next spring. I have started doing my research and in addition to reading reviews, articles, etc. I am also asking other photographers the same question I did years ago when I was shopping for my Olympus: If you could only own one digital SLR, which would it be and why? (Right now I am leaning toward the Nikon D90. Everyone seems to love it.) I’d like to hear your answer and recommendations.

(Well this one is more difficult since I’ve owned Canon cameras for about 30 years. Nikon are really good cameras also and the D90 has good reviews along with the Canon 40D and 50Ds. If you go to DPreview’s website you can get up to the minute reviews on all the cameras that are on the market. The biggest thing is to buy what you can afford and either the Nikon D90 or the Canon 50D will give you outstanding results. If you check B&H audio and video you will get great customer service and value too. I hope this helps somewhat and I look forward to hearing back on this years plans.)

Hope you made it through the ice storm last week okay. We got our first big snow yesterday and today is sunny with brilliant blue skies – looks just like New England!