Wrapped up the Phoenix location photowalk. Thought it was a very enjoyable afternoon, Met alot a cool local photographers, got some marketing ideas from some, tips from others. I think the only down side was the heat we had to shoot in. The dinner afterward was my favorite part, think I could have just skipped the shooting and just talked 'shop' with everybody.
Don't think I got too many unique shots - this one is about the only one that I think was different from the others submitted by the group but I enjoyed it none the less and I can check photowalk off my list of things to do in 2008... but you bet I'm going to do another.
My try at being a hand model - for this entry for the latest CSLR Challenge. Basically, a little sandwiched strobe work. - 2 580ex II @ 1/8th power to each side and slightly to the rear. Background is an color burned layer of a rusty shovel. Its my first try at using backgrounds. I recently went around shooting rocks, gravel, stucco, etc. Anything with texture to build up some stock for Photoshop work.
Been a long time since i did a Technique post. But in hosting the 'Old Skool' Challenge that prevented the use of any computerized post processing I came up with this entry. It's basically a composite of one image taken three times with different positions and light sources - all in one exposure.
To achieve this, I setup the camera on a tripod and set an long shutter speed of 5 seconds. Then hand triggered a strobe to light the apple and moved it to a new position, firing the strobe at each position.
Volla, an old school composite without photoshop...
CSLR Challenge #117, "Grounded". Had to try and make a senoran desert mushroom look interesting. Ended up taking this shot at night with 3 strobes to try and encircle the shroom with light. Also used a fish eye to get some interesting perspective. I like the way the mushroom broke through the hard gravel. But in the end I don't think it was enough as It didn't make the top 10 in the challenge....
Don't know why but I love this shot. Just a bit of vignette and desaturation of all colors but red. I like the soft focus of the shot as well as the highlights off the silver nail polish. All this from just a shot of Alma getting ready for a night on the town.
Got a little more practice in 'the Studio' this month setting up for a Senior Portrait session. It was also the first time using a new grey background I got of Ebay. (I was really getting bored with my typical low key and high key portaits)
This was a 3 light setup, Using my big photogenic studio strobes as the main and hair light. The main light shot through a 24x36" softbox placed about 3 ft from the subject. The hairlight (which is missing her hair and hitting her back in this shot) was about 10' back. for the 3rd and final light, I used my old vivitar 283 flash, put it on a stand with a bout a 6" white snoot to selectively light the background. the white snoot helped soften the edges of the light. While this is a very basic technique, It's my first time trying it and I'm satisfied with the results I got. I think it really adds variety to any background by changing the distance between the flash and the background you can vary the size of the 'halo' also adding gels would add a variety of color to your shots - all with a single background.
The final formula thats been working in my studio is putting background about 12-15' behind the subject to prevent too much light from the main spilling on the background - that way I have control of how the background looks, I'm getting about a 3 stop difference between the background and the subject in this setup which will let me shoot low key or blast it with a big strobe for high key. Another important thing with the distance, is that it lets you throw it out of focus to hide any wrinkles you may have, although with my current 85mm portrait lens this limits me to about F5.6 more than that and I better get the Iron out....
"Floating in a Sea of bokeh" was shot for CSLR challenge 116. My other two entrys were full of colored lighting effects and photoshop work to make them spectacular.But this shot leaped out at me and I entered it just as is -(and it place highest out of all my entries). It was my first entry that didn't make a to photoshop. No cropping, tint, exposure adjustments - nothing. It was liberating - and very satisfying to have a shot like this straight out of the camera. Being a geek with all the computer tricks sometimes makes me forget that I'm supposed to be a photographer. And as such, I should 'TAKE' striking images, not 'MAKE' them....
Keeping the challenges going with this entry of a Angels Spring training edition of a bud light can. Shot in my favorite 'kitchen studio' with 3 strobes, the main from camera right bounced off an umbrella, and the other two behind the subject equal distance apart and at about 20 deg behind the centerline of the subject. This 'wraps light around the ball and bottle to get them to stand out against the black background. And of course I had some fun with the reflection - it was a logo challenge afterall
First I took a can of coke, cut the back off of it and used a thumb tack to poke holes along the lines I wanted the lights to show through.
A piece of Aluminum foil was used as a baffle so that I wouldn't have a 'hot spot' right in the center of the can where the flash would have a direct path out the holes - This diffused the light and evened out the 'power' of each hole.
Put the can on the flash and 'Wa-La' you have instant Las Vegas effect on your can!
Had an interesting thing happen in my CSLR entry, Streetlight. I wanted a diagonal crop to emphasize the centered-ness of the photo but of course you can't post diagonal crops on the typical web page so I put it on a grey background that was close to the CSLR background color. Initial I got a few comments that didn't like the crop, saying it was awkward. After showing it to Alma she said it was because the backgrounds didn't match so it looks like some dorky frame around the pic. So I set out to match the background, digging into the page's .css file to find the background RGB values (38,38,38) but photoshop skewed the colors when I converted the image to SRGB so I had to revert to the tweak and test method and eventually found 42,42,42 were the right values - reposting the comments all change on how nice the crop was. You can see the difference in just these two blog entries. - and the pic is currently in 1st place in the 1st day of voting - thanks Mama!
Streetlight
Keeping with my commitment to continually challenge my photography, I just barely made the cut off date for Challenge 113.
I'm not too proud of my entry - it was soo much better in my mind than when I actually executed it.
I think the light and the perspective mismatch makes it 'not work' for me. I used a small mirror in my mouth to capture my teeth and took a separate pic of the cake and composited the whole thing.
I think the bigger challenge was trying to take a picture through a mirror while sitting in front of the camera without being able to see through the viewfinder!
The pic just made it to 9th place keeping up my record so far at staying in the top ten for all my entries.... so I still getting lucky :)
No muss, no fuss. I imagine that if there was a lot of Magenta color in other areas of the image, that this technique could effect them but it would be nothing a little Layer Mask couldn't fix.Had to laugh on this one - I'm forever striving for tack sharp images, pouring money into L glass, high pixel count bodys - so what images am I finding myself liking enough to enter in photo contests? Yea, blurry out of focus ones! Go figure...
Just finished my first shoot with a new 85F1.2L and I am in love. I read alot about this lens so I knew what to expect, great bokeh, razor thin dof, yada, yada - but man I was still floored looking at the my shots. Yes, the micro dof is tough to work with - even in a studio setting but the blur of the out of focus areas is just dreamlike. It may be hard to tell on this low rez image but the contrast between the razor sharp strands of hair and the blur of Aly's face which fell out of focus in less than a 1/4" - It used to be standard practice for me to go through all my shots after a session and delete all the out of focus shots, but with this lens I'm finding that hard to do sometimes.
I debated getting the 70-200 2.8L IS instead but now I have no regrets. There is a down side though - I think I'm seriously hooked on primes now...
So 'lil monsters' from Taw#5 came in Second place in this month's CSLR Challenge. My second entries from the 'Water Wheel' shoot didn't do as well but this one here still came in the top 10 at 8th place. I curious how long I'll be able to keep this up, I imagine it's easy for a 'noob' as myself to do well in the begining, but I can see it being tough to not get into a certain style that just gets stale after a while.
I used my big studio strobes bounced off the back wall to create ALOT of diffused lighting but more importantly to have even lighting across the whole area - Lately I've been taking the 'Strobist' approach and using my 580exII but this called for a bit more power.
