Sigma 24-105mm f/4.0 DG OS HSM Art Lens Sample Pictures

Unique is the snow sliding off of the metal roof of the foreground barn. I looked for a perspective that would capture the uniqueness and provide interesting lines at the same time.

When shooting tightly-framed portraits with your general purpose zoom lens, zoom out to the longer focal lengths to help you keep better perspectives.

A dog and her girl make good use of a bench. The easiest time to photograph a camera-shy dog is when it is sleeping.

Well, self-lit at least. The above image shows 6 Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT Flash units lighting themselves. The flashes were triggered from a Canon ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter mounted on a Canon EOS 5D Mark III DSLR (love this camera). I used a Sigma 24-105mm f/4.0 DG OS HSM Art Lens set to 57mm. ISO 100, f/11 and 1/200.
 
The six flash units are in their included shoe stands and the heads are directed at -7 degrees (slightly downward). The flashes are sitting on a black back-painted glass desk surface. I am standing on a stool with my feet just under the glass table top.
 
You would not believe how well this setup lights up dust and other imperfections in the glass. I microfiber-cloth-dusted immediately before and a couple of times during this shoot. The angled light across the black surface makes the dust glow. Photoshop's Dust and Scratches noise filter quickly removed most of the problem. I used the history brush to restore details that were removed with the dust (including the flash names).

When there is a straight line near the edge of your frame, choose a focal length (or lens) that has little or no distortion. While a tripod makes keeping the scene perfectly centered and aligned in the frame much easier, I didn't have one available at this time. The Sigma 24-105 IS lens' OS made this 1/5 second handheld frame possible at ISO 100.

Snow clings to the trees while chunks of ice float down the creek on this very cold morning. When steam is rising, it is most visible with the sun behind it.

When considering your blurred water photo ideas, some visualization skill is needed to foresee the outcome. But there is often some surprise waiting for even the most skilled visualizers. The colors being reflected become a significant part of such an image with this frame gaining some color from a sunset. Contrast was increased during post processing.

When I was a kid, sledding required a big hill and a good workout dragging the sled and my body up that hill. This creative kid found a better way that includes some very unique rigging.

The illuminated-for-Christmas building was beautiful, but I wanted something more than just a shot of the building. Fortunately, this brick archway was available across the parking lot. Unfortunately, the archway had very little light on it. The solution to this problem was easy. Take two pictures with one exposed for the building and one exposed to make the brick visible. Stack the two images in Photoshop and delete/mask away the too-bright building through the arch to let the darker building image show through.

I spent the last couple of hours of the day at this location on the Susquehanna River. The sunset did not deliver anything special for me this evening, but when the light went dim and my exposures became long, the motion blur of the ice flow became interesting. I was challenged to find the white balance I liked best for this image, but ended up using a custom white balance selected by using the distant ice as my neutral point.

For this snow picture, I kept the entire bottom of the frame uninterrupted with a snow base. The top of the frame is primarily sky with a curving mountain ridge being the next horizontal line. The primary features drawing the viewer's eye are the dark contrasting hickory tree trunks positioned about 1/3 of the way into the frame.

The daughters spent all afternoon making an impressive array of cookies. They completed with little time remaining before the guests were due to arrive and I wanted to capture the memory before their art was destroyed/consumed. I mounted a flash and positioned the large plate of cookies beside a white cabinet to use for bounce flash. I selected two cookies to emphasize with the rest of the cookies providing the background.

A couple of participants in an AI Servo focus test session run down the driveway in the late day sun. It is never hard to evoke smiles from the kids when asked to run toward the camera. Train them young. :) The dog jumping at them also helps.

Six Canon 600EX-RT Speedlites positioned to light up the back of the neighboring flash from an angle creatings a unique image. The flashes are positioned on a black back-painted glass desk.