Every year around Easter my daughter and a group of my closest friends go camping at the Indians campground in the Los Padres National Forest. It is one of the best parts of my year. I often do some photography while I’m there. This time, the fun stuff was putting a strong IR filter on my lens and getting some long exposure shots of the Arroyo Seco river.

This photo is a 25 second exposure (I know, my previous post is a long exposure shot too, must be the flavor of the month.

It was just after a storm, so I got some shots of clouds as well.

All photos @ Alex Schoenfeldt 2012
All rights reserved
San Francisco Photographer

Yesterday I posted a candid street portrait taken with a bellows lens by Lensbaby in the mission district in San Francisco.

Here are two more photos from my experimenting that I think hold up. They are a lot more dramatic in their effect, as they were taken at a wide open aperture. (yesterdays shot was f With a bellows lens and a wide open aperture, the amount of detail in the photo that is truly in focus is paper thin. If you like that effect of not is another story, but I think it works in these two.

All photos © Alex Schoenfeldt 2012.
All rights reserved
Alex Schoenfeldt. San Francisco Bay Area Photographer.

This photo was taken at a child’s birthday party. There was a tea party (back when that meant a party where you drink tea and not a political movement) and a treasure hunt and face painting.

The girl in the photo is obviously of Asian descent. I think her heritage is Korean, but I am not sure.

For me the thing that sells this photo is her unblinking intensity. She’s a pretty little girl, and she is staring into your soul, perhaps finding it wanting.

Photo © Alex Schoenfeldt 2007
Alex Schoenfeldt Photography
San Francisco Bay Area Event Photography

At the park on a nice sunny day with my daughter and some friends. Zaria is laying down on her mom’s la, and the sun is hitting her pretty blue eye just so.

This was one of those grab the camera you have with you moments, which was my phone. The iPhone does pretty well in macro mode actually, and it can digitally zoom for an even better effect.

Photo © Alex Schoenfeldt 2011. All rights reserved.
San Francisco Photographer

I did a pregnancy photo session for a couple recently. We started on the hills above the ocean somewhere south of Pacifica CA. We got some great shots of the two of them but the award winner is posted below. The long back hair, round pregnant belly, dark Indian skin, the dark cliff walls, the cold white-capped ocean, this shot just works in my opinion.

It’s on the blog twice. I was just going to post the color version you see first. This shot is a bit intimate, and I know for a fact the husband has some conservative family members, I thought I’d check before I put it out there on the interweb for all to see. I emailed a proof of the shot with my request, and when I got the email saying “yes” back it also said “aren’t you going to use the black and white version?”

Which one do you like better?

I took this black and white shot in Plitvica National Park in Croatia some number of years back.

The color there were gorgeous. I grabbed a roll of slide film out of the bag (remember that stuff?) and was shooting mainly for the colors I saw.

Only when I got back to the USA and had the roll processed that I realized that it was black and white slide film, which is really rare. Most of the roll was just not very interesting. Images that had been framed and composed with color in mind and as one of the main focal points just looked dull in black and white. This shot though, I’ve always loved.

Now, shooting digitally, I don’t have to worry about this mistake any more.

Copyright Alex Schoenfeldt 2001. All rights reserved.

Wednesday night 11:30 PM I got an emergency text from a client, Jeanne Henzel Swartz, proprietor of Joona She was having a photographic emergency. She had just finished a hat for a competition, and photos were due at 10:00 AM tomorrow. She had been planning to shoot it herself, but her model flaked. She needed me to come over and get some shots of this hat.

I said “what the heck.”

I roll into her studio in an industrial part of town just before midnight. We scope around for a while, and decide to try a few things. We have one well lit room with blank walls, a funky handmade shelter by the waterfront (we are basically in the port of Oakland) and a congregated metal building that looks interesting. We shot for about an hour, came back to my studio, picked our favorite made some quick adjustments in Photoshop, popped it on a thumb drive, done. I was in bed by 2:00 AM.

I say we nailed it.

Here is the one in front of the blank wall. This is the one that got submitted to the contest (which is why the aspect ratio is weird) . We felt like it showed off the hat the best.

Here is the one in front of the funky handmade structure on the edge of the San Francisco Bay in the port of Oakland. This one is my favorite. It is a little busy, but man there is a lot going on here.

And lastly, the one in front of the metal building. The photo we went with was the first shot we took, and this was the last. Funny how that worked.

All photos © Alex Schoenfeldt 2011
San Francisco Photographer

Every year to commemorate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. children participate in an Oratorical.

Montclair Elementary in Oakland California asked me to take portraits of the participants with their certificates.

The full gallery of all of the shots can be seen here:

http://schoenfeldt.com/2011_Oratorical/

Here are some of my favorites.

All photos © Alex Schoenfeldt 2011. All rights reserved.
San Francisco Event Photography

This photo speaks for itself.

For this photo, in the early evening I pulled over on the very quiet Highway 69 between Mariposa and Oakhurst. I mounted the camera on a tripod, and waited for some cars to appear at the edge of the image.

I then exposed the image for 30 seconds, (f8, ISO 200) so the lights from the cars would streak across the image.

Photo © Alex Schoenfeldt 2005. All rights reserved.
Alex Schoenfeldt is an official Yosemite National Park wedding photographer.