Dixie Dixon

Dixie Dixon is a Texas born and bred commercial fashion photographer. Just a few years out of college, this 20-something’s career is unfolding one adventure after another.
She was given her first Nikon Camera, a Nikon FG, at just 12 years old, which piqued her curiosity in the field and served as her sidekick in exploring the world. She would continually clock seven to ten hours in the darkroom without even realizing it. While in college she studied in London with a world-renowned fashion photographer and became deeply inspired by the beautiful illusion of fashion and commercial photography.

It has been said that her idealistic vision of the world is reflected into every single frame—full of life, beautiful energy, and most of all, Soul. Her passion has lead her to shoot internationally in places such as Cannes, Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Ibiza, and Barcelona recently for various brands, TV shows, commercial campaigns and editorial projects. Just this year she was named one of sixteen Nikon Ambassadors of the USA and the 2013 Emerging Photographer of the Year by GraphiStudio.

Sensuous and polished, her images create a dream world in which romance is always alive. Her fresh vision has attracted clients such as Virgin, Florsheim Shoes, Inside Edition, Nikon, CBS, G-Technology, Profoto, MAC Group, Billy Jealousy, Black River Imaging, Nha Khanh, ProFoods, American Heart Association & Angelberry Organics. Her work has been published in Rangefinder, PDN, Professional Photographer Magazine, Dapper Magazine, Living Magazine, Beverly Drive Magazine, and Nikon World.

“Honestly, I’m an incurable dreamer with a wild imagination. That’s what I truly love about fashion photography—there are no rules, no boundaries, just pure self-expression. Anything your mind can imagine, you have the power to bring to life in a single image or series of pictures. It makes me so happy to be able to work with such amazing creative people day in day out.”

WORK SHOP

9 Top Tips for Shooting Waterfalls, Creeks and Streams

A Post By: Gavin Hardcastle

Waterfalls, creeks and streams are something of a photographic specialty for me. Aside from the fact that there are thousands of them at my Vancouver Island Headquarters, they’re also really easy to photograph and often result in magical images that stand the test of time. Whether it’s a moss speckled trickle or a colossal roaring deluge, moving water seems to be irresistible to photographers and when it’s done well, can be utterly gorgeous. Let me share with you my top tips on how to shoot waterfalls, creeks and streams.

1 – Shoot in all weather

I’ll shoot in any kind of weather except for sideways rain. With waterfalls, creaks and streams I have a silly little motto ‘The Wetter the Better’. When everything is drenched you’ll find that your shadows are nicely saturated to deliver powerful blacks. I also prefer the look of wet leaves over dry ones because they looks so much more vibrant and rich.

Rainy or overcast days will also give you softer light with lower contrast, meaning you won’t usually need to bracket in order to capture the dynamic range. If you’re lucky enough to get a cold spell and things get icy you’ll find your local waterfall turns into an enchanted winter wonderland overnight, just watch your footing.

2 – Don’t always choose a slow shutter speed

Sure, it’s nice to get those silky water shots and capture the motion blur of moving water, but there are times when it’s nice to also capture a frozen moment of action. I’ll usually take two exposures with different shutter speeds and then blend them in Photoshop to create a good mixture of frozen and blurred motion. A four second shutter speed will usually be enough for silky water shots and you can achieve that easily with just a polarizer and a narrow aperture like f/16, unless your scene is in harsh, direct sunlight.

For a quicker exposure that has less motion blur I’ll try and keep the shutter speed under one second by using a slightly wider aperture of f/11 and rotating the polarizer to allow in more light. It’s rare that I’ll require the use of an ND filter. My shot below is a single exposure of about a half second during a rainy day. I tried longer exposures but preferred this one because you can still see some individual water drops in motion instead of just a mushy blur.

3 – Explore dark canyons

Don’t just explore those sun dappled streams that catch the light beautifully, that’s just too easy. Often it’s the darker, sun starved slot canyons that yield the most beautiful scenes. Armed with a study tripod you can shoot anything you want without caring about direct sunlight illuminating the scene. This opens up a new world of photo opportunities if you’re only used to shooting handheld.

4 – Bubbles turn into spirals

Whenever you see a river that produces a current of bubbles on the surface of the water, you’re in for a treat. With a shutter speed of four to six seconds (depending on water speed) those bubbles will create beautiful spirals in your long exposures. Be careful not to slow things down too much though as a ten second shutter speed will probably blur the motion too much to capture any definition. Here’s an example I shot last fall in Nanaimo, Vancouver island.

5 – Slap that polarizer on

I know I harp on about this all the time as you’ve no doubt read in my ‘Why You Must Use a Polarizer‘ article, but it really does make a huge difference when you’re dealing with wet rocks and reflections caused by water. Your polarizer will allow you to use longer shutter speeds, reduce reflections and make your colours POP!

6 – Avoid the sky

Do you really need a white triangle at the top of your image? Didn’t think so. Almost all of my workshop students suffer from some compulsion that dictates all images must have sky. I think I did the same thing when I was starting out. By omitting the sky completely, you’ll create a more intimate scene that dedicates the entire frame to what matters most and eliminates the triangle of pointlessness.

7 – Go abstract

8 – Perfect the “shoot ‘n swipe” technique

9 – Processing – go monochrome

Finally, Before/After Previews Come to Camera Raw

OK, well I guess “technically” you could see a before/after in Camera Raw but it could not have been clunkier (just turning on/off the Preview checkbox wouldn’t do it — that only showed you a before/after of the particular panel you were currently using). But this is way beyond that as Adobe took the awesome before/after side-by-side, top-and-bottom, split-view and related stuff from Lightroom and finally (finally!) brought them over to the current version of Camera Raw (Adobe snuck these in the latest update for Photoshop CC subscribers).

You access these before/after views from right below the preview window (I circled it in red above). Better yet, although the Preview Checkbox is now gone from the Camera Raw interface, pressing the “P” key now actually does what you always thought it should — now it shows you a real before/after of ALL the changes you made in to the image anywhere in Camera Raw.  Read More