I figure most people are like me when looking at photoblogs. The words appear as blah, blah, blah then time is spent looking at the pictures. Well here is a little eye candy, my wifes oldest sister...
Photo info: 1/250 sec; F 5.6; iso 100; 200mm
Kelly needed a headshot for the work she will be doing in the future (staging homes). She staged our home, she has a real eye and talent for doing so. Of all the wifes sisters, Kelly and my wife look the most similar (all the wife's sisters are beautiful, but mine is the most beautiful of all, hahahaha).
Same pose, different light (three light setup versus two)...
Photo info: 1/250 sec; F 5.6; iso 100; 200mm
I recently had the opportunity to capture family photos for the Cook family. It is always a pleasure to be able to do something friends. Airen the oldest daughter has modeled for me before. Really great people.
The day we picked to do the photos was extremely windy. We were up on the bench above Bountiful. Wind or no, the Cooks are an extremely busy family. The boys arrived just off of football practice. So we made due...
The whole family:
What other beautiful children would I want to share pictures of but my own? It has been a while since I have shared much, thought I would do a short update on family life. The kids are getting so big!
Here is Clayton wearing some of dad's clothes...
The most beautiful baby girl ever! Vivian doing what she does best (looking cute)!
OK, a couple more:
Aren't they beautiful? I don't think it is me being prejudice...
A few weeks back the Utah Strobist group met to shoot at the Great Salt Lake. This is fast becoming one of my favorite locations to shoot. A friend of the family and one of my models Airen came along to the shoot. Here she is!
There are no coral reefs in the GSL but the lake looks great as does Airen! Me and Scott O. Smith planned the snorkeling look as something that could be useful for stock, lucky Airen was game!
There was plenty of other things to shoot besides Airen. Meet Brian, the man has some serious muscle and those tattoos remind me of Blade. The light was fading, and it just seemed like letting the background go black would be killer. 
Here is a photo of Bekah. What could be better than a white dress in the GSL? Beautiful girl in a beautiful location means beautiful picture! This is the second time I have had Bekah as a model (thanks Bekah)! 
Jenn, was a model that I had never met before. I loved that blue dress and put her one the train tracks, means awesome!
I have been asked a number of times about how I get my skies to look the way they do. Now I want to preface this by stating that I don’t do landscapes (at least not very often), so I don’t think that this is an area where I am particularly skilled or excel at. 
The stump was lit by fill flash off camera right, bare strobe with a half CTO attached
I like to shoot people photos, so when I think of wicked cool skies I think “Wow, that killer sunset would make a great back drop for a portrait”. However I am totally willing to share my technique and the little experience I do have.
Be at the right place at the right time:
First thing is a no brainer, but it is the hardest part; be where there is a great looking sky. Experience is a big part of the equation, but anyone who stops to think about it will realize that great skies usually happen in the evening and the morning. Great skies usually don’t happen at noon. Things like haze and clouds can indicate that the evening or morning is going to bring a good looking sky (think of the color from haze and the contrast added by thick clouds). The key is to be in the right place at the right time. Though even fairly bland skies can look pretty intimidating when exposed and treated properly (more below).
This photo of my son was lit by three flashes, two can be seen in the photo acting as rims, with one main shot through an umbrella, the background was under exposed about 2 stops
Watch your exposure:
Interesting skies are tough, because there is so much dynamic range. Dynamic range is a measure of the brightest part of the scene compared to the darkest part of the scene, and today’s digital cameras just can’t capture the entire amount of dark to light how we see it with our eyes. Either the dark parts will go black (under exposed) or the bright parts will go white (over exposed). If there is a lot of foreground the camera will tend to over-expose the scene, and if there is a lot of sky you will likely get the opposite.
For the sky, I tend to push the exposure negative from what the camera thinks it should be. I either do this by reducing the exposure compensation or more often I shoot in manual and decide on exposure based on what looks good to me (the bad is under exposure often results in increased noise).
Back to the original statement, if the camera can’t capture the range of brightness of the scene how do you shoot to get proper exposure for the entire scene? There are a bunch of tricks that photographers have developed to help in these circumstances. For people pictures the thing I usually do is to add fill flash. I use fill flash off camera through a light modifier like an umbrella, however you can do a decent job with the on camera flash. If it wasn’t for flash this couple would have been the same brightness as the surrounding landscape (I'm talking about the black region way behind the couple). The flash brings the scene into a more even lighting that the camera can handle.
The lighting on the couple comes from two flashes set opposite each other, one bare strobe on the peoples backs and a flash shoot through umbrella as main
Use software to blend exposures:
Another option is to use software like Photoshop to blend different exposures of the same scene. I often use this method combined with fill flash to get the sky to pop. I will expose the sky just to the point where I am keeping detail but the sky is too bright, this gets the foreground close to the correct exposure but the sky is a bit over exposed. Later in post I will darken the sky to the correct exposure (This is a good reason to shoot raw as blending exposure is really made easy in a program like light room or adobe bridge).
I don’t bracket exposures (take pictures with different exposure compensation) often, as it just doesn’t work with people. Some might suggest HDR software but I haven’t ever used HDR software.
Use special settings to process your files:
Most cameras have a vivid setting or something similar. I shoot Raw, so I can adjust the files in post by increasing the vivid slider and the clarity slider. You can do much the same thing when shooting Jpeg by increasing the vivid setting in camera. The blues and greens will get more punch. In raw I use a vivid setting of about 30 to punch up the sky, much more than this and things start to lose touch with reality.
One light setup with a flash shoot through umbrella as the main, notice how little the ambient was dropped, but still lots of drama
Increasing clarity increases the midtone contrast. This slider is great to make the different shades of grey in clouds really pop. Clarity however can do awful things to people’s skin. That increase in midtone contrast will make wrinkles pop (not a good thing) in the skin.
Now you know how I do it, hope you found something useful!
Recently Clayton has decided that he needs a camera like his father has a camera. Of course I thought it would be fun to get the little guy a camera. I looked at the cameras at Toys-R-Us and didn’t see anything that I thought was suitable and at the same time affordable. Then I remembered our old digital that hasn’t been used since we picked up the DSLR almost two years ago. 
Airen, is the daughter of some good friends Shea and Evylyn. Airen is thinking about trying her hand at modeling. She likes the camera and well the camera likes her!
She had some photos done in a studio type of environment and well it was time for environmental portraits. She looked through all the portfolios of all the environmental photographers in the continental USA and none were up to par... Until she ran across Nathan Marx Photog extraordinaire!
OK, were friends and well the topic just sort of came up, but I like the first better. Much more DR-A-M-A.
Drama is exactly what we went for (personally I felt that her other photos were so traditional boring that she needed something spicy).
Now to the beautiful photos of Airen.
I worked Airen hard, telling her to try different expressions (most of the time she had a hard time not laughing at me). If you model, it isn't about saying cheese (it is way more than smiling). It involves a bit of acting (Of course this is coming from someone with no experience with models).
Originally we (I) planned on doing a sports theme type of shoot, but time wasn't on our side. I still think we need to do the sport theme (it will rock).
I can't decide if this one below or the first is my favorite...
Sometimes, Airen had to laugh at me (it is my goofy personality that gets to people). I like this candid expression of "huh, are you talking to me?".
So we need to do it again Airen, this time we need to follow the plan. No making the photographer stress by making him throw his plan out the window (No it was fun, to heck with a plan)!
Over Thanksgiving, I made a couple of photographs of my little bro. Andrew and his wife Lindsay. We were visiting my family in Mt. Pleasant for the day of thanks and humility (the day really isn't turkey day).
Sometimes not smiling makes great photos!
Oh I forgot to mention the newer addition to Andrew and Lindsay's family, Maggie...
Maggie is the harry little apple of Mom's eye!
This is one of my favs...
Part of the alleyway had collapsed (we weren't expecting that) so the alley was a little different from what we expected. A little later we went down to the creek bed and under the over pass for a few more...
OK, for the traditionalist, here is the same pose as the first but with smiles...
Andrew was and is my best friend. We grew up playing and fighting. It always makes me happy to see Andrew and Lindsay happy together.
I was looking through my photos, and noticed a slight trend. It seems that I am making more photos of things. I mean landscapes, macro, etc. When I first started, it was all about Clayton, and from there my photography morphed. I really began to want to take nice photos of family and friends (now I don't care who it is). That is where I left off for a very long time. Not long ago I found a love for landscape photography, so I began to experiment, branch out.
I guess it is time to go back to the roots, to what first got me picking up the camera over and over again.
A couple of weeks back, we went to the Union Station at Ogden (I know three times in a row now). Papa wanted to see the cars and trains. Clayton loves both of those so we thought it would be fun to go. Last minute we had an unexpected surprise, Lynn was coming too. OK so we all know we don't care a Nat's eyelash about Lynn, but he brought his little girl Jade (or like we all like to say, Jade-O potato).
