Jacob Maentz’s Blog

I had the opportunity last week to photograph my new baby nephew while visiting my brother and family in Appleton, Wisconsin. Baby Rhys was three weeks old during this photo shoot and what a cute and growing young boy he is. We set up a mock studio in my brothers house using natural window light for all of the images. I did use some fill flash with my SB-800 to help compensate for light during the later hours of the day. We used a black backdrop and black sheets on the floor for the necessary shots. I love the way ambient light looks and prefer this method whenever possible.

Here’s an image I wanted to share because it doesn’t happen too often. During our photo shoot baby Rhys decided to take advantage of having his diaper off and fired a stream of pee over his head. The photo says it all.

I have been working on a project this past week photographing a newly built Log House in eastern Tennessee. The house actually belongs to my dad and his wife and is a beautiful home. The project manager asked me to photograph the final built house for advertising purposes, etc and I have had a lot of fun with it. It’s hard trying to be creative with a subject like this, but it is possible. I tried to showcase the house in it’s beautiful surrounding environment and focus on the details of the interior. I believe I have captured what the project manager was looking for and pleased myself in knowing I can still let the creative juices flow on a project like this.

I was able to use the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) for the inside of the house and I am learning more and more about the power of this system. There are many sites out there that have great resources for the CLS including the Strobist and Joe Mcnally’s Blog. I hope to blog more about Nikon’s CLS in the future with some tutorials, etc.

For now, I have included a few pictures here to show what I have been working on. A little bit of Photoshop, yes. Some NIK filters were used for the outside color image and I added the moon for the evening shot. Actually, the moon was there while I was shooting the image, however, I wasn’t able to get a sharp picture of it to use. I was borrowing a tripod and it was really shaky…invest in a sturdy tripod if you plan to shoot at night! I can’t wait to get my tripod back.

Let me know what you think of the images.