February Essentials...

Day 55 of Project 365 and we are talking about late winter essentials.

What could I be referring to? Toques? Mittens? Scarves? Oh no, my friends, we are talking liquor and pain killers.



My T4 arrived today, which is the equivalent of the W-2 for any American readers, and that means tax time.

I wanted to do something different in the lightbox today since I think everyone is probably sick of seeing shots with blown out white backgrounds. Since I wanted to shoot curved glass, I thought I would play with my highlights instead of worrying about minimizing them. I had read some Strobist articles about specular highlights, and I wanted to try my hand at them. The basic rules as I understand them are a reflective surface paired with a comparatively large source of light, well-diffused. You want a large surface reflection which trails fades over a large section of the reflection.

I focused on the shoulders of the whiskey bottle (not my normal brand, but one I had on hand) and I think the result is okay, but it could use work. I achieved this by moving the flashes further away than usual from the sides of the lightbox, cranking down the power and angling them towards the top of the box through the sides. This should diffuse and then reflect the light.

I like the effect and I think I will play with it some more. Having said that, I really, really can't wait for the weather to improve so I can get out more.

I have another family/children shoot scheduled for March 6th as well, this time I am just going to roll with the kit lens and the 60mm Macro. Not ideal gear, but I had results with my kids that I thought were at least decent, and this client agreed. This will be another no-charge shoot with just charges for prints, but it will help build my portfolio.

Oh, also, there's this:



And this:



Like them? Pardon the crappy aliasing, these were just quickly downsized from the original PNGs. A friend is doing a site and design for me in exchange for some photos of his soccer team in the spring. Also I guess you all know my full name now.

Secret of the Ooze

Day 53 of my Project 365 rolls around, and I am sitting on a big pile of green, red and blue ice cubes. I can't help play around with them.

I wanted to see what they would look light heavily backlit, so I rigged up a clear plastic berry dish on some of my daughter's Megabloks (high tech all the way here) and used that to place my 580EX II underneath, triggered with my Pocket Wizards. Killed the lights, set up a black screen around it to keep out any ambient, and shot from above:



ISO 100, f/10, 1/60th shutter. I can't help it. Every time I see this, I think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. I have some other ideas for these cubes, so hope you don't mind a new shot with them every now and then. They are fun to play with.

On a more serious note, I am very, very close to registering a small business and trying my hand at some simple part-time portraiture work. Some of the people I have done shots for are prepared to give me referrals and it would help to finance some new equipment if I could write off purchases against that income. It's not an unreasonable idea... I hope.