PP?

I haven't posted in two weeks or so, so tonight I must shoot something! Well, that's always when inspiration is hardest to find. So, I fiddled around the garage, and came back with something little. Yellow. Different.



These are painters pyramids, used to hold up things when you need to paint or stain both sides. Cool little tools, and I wanted to play with the repeating shape somehow. I'm not overly happy with this shot, but I couldn't quite figure out what to do with them...

On the plus side I brought out my lightbox, LP160s and did my first set-up shot in a while. I have to get out of the house with camera more, but it was nice to play with some photo gear.

Week 1. No, really!

Thar she blows, my picture for week #1, posted at the last possible minute. An illustrious start :)

My daughter is an avid collector of 'Littlest Pet Shop' toys, and some of them are nicely decorated with style of scrolling linework. They can actually be quite attractive, so I thought I'd put this little fishy to work in a splash picture. I figure when you need to get your creative juices flowing again, go with what you know and what you like, and I like splash shots :)

Taken with my 60mm Macro at f/6.3 with a three-light setup (left and right through the softbox walls, and background lit from above), triggered remotely. I had two other ideas that I shot today, and neither worked but I like this one. It's simple, but the colours are good and the focus is not bad.

The eye is slightly out of focus unfortunately, and it's exacerbated by the fact that the paint is a bit blotchy on the toy. Still, perfect focus when dropping a buoyant toy into water with razor-thin depth of field is going to be really hard to achieve. At least the fins and bubbles are all nice and sharp.

Band Promo Shots

After about two hours of shot selection, post processing and re-post processing, I've got a series of promo shots and headshots for my friend's band. I've shot them before but this was outdoor shots, and properly lit indoor work as opposed to the dive bar from last time.

The band members have changed up a bit too, so I was shooting some of them for the first time.

First, we did a quick series of headshots for promo use. I shot this with a three light setup: Key to camera high left, fill to camera low right and hair light subject high right and behind, all fired with pocket wizards. The key light was shooting through the Lumiquest SB3, the fill in a 43" shoot-through umbrella, and the hairlight was snooted with a Honl collapsable snoot.

All headshots were taken with the 70-200 at focal lengths around 130mm.

Lead singer - Jack


Lead guitar - JJ


Bass - Keith


Drums - Mitch


After, we headed out into the Winnipeg winter and shot some outdoor group shots. We hit the back roads and went looking for trucks, tractors, or wide open spaces.

Initially, we shot a bit on a nearby back road, but there was a bit of a lack of interest in the shots. One worked well enough to keep, but Mitch had stepped slightly forward in the frame. Not a huge deal, but noticeable and annoying in the shot to my eye:



A quick note on this shot and the following ones. I sharpened in post, cranked up the contrast and colour and then applied a very light texture from Totally Rad Actions called 'Dirt Bag'. This is a bluegrass band, and they wanted a rough look to the shots, and I found that this touch helped to capture the feel.

Our big break came when a friendly trucker gave us ten minutes or so to shoot with his rig while he was in a service station. We moved quickly, picked a few angles and started shooting:







My favourite shot of this session was taken down low, at a wide angle, with (to my eye) the best composition of the session. I'm quite fond of this one:



I just wish I had got that one boot all the way in frame! Gah!

Anyhow, thanks for reading, I'd love any opinions on these shots!

My day job meets my wannabe night job...

In my day job, I'm an IT monkey for a branch of the provincial healthcare organization here in Winnipeg. A lot of my co-workers know about my hobby/wannabe other job so I've done a lot of shooting around for them here and there.

Today, I actually had a commission of sorts from a friend and co-worker who is the lead web developer for our organization. He needed a shot of a keyboard and stethoscope and had already blown their photo rights budget for the fiscal year. So, perhaps this isn't a paid job, but maybe when the budgets refresh in the new year, they'll consider some in-house photography services.



The backdrop was left off-white since the shot is going to be overlaid on a as-of-yet-unselected backdrop colour. There is a clear difference in lighting between the rear 'wall' and 'floor' of the lightbox, but perfection there wasn't really required in this instance. In addition, popping the lights at even brighter settings blew out the chrome on the stethoscope and presented a whole new range of problems.

Lighting on the right side is an LP160 through the Lumiquest SBIII at 1/16th power. On the left is another LP160 at 1/16th power through the side of the lightbox. The left light is at a higher intensity to really make the chrome pop and to get a nice drop shadow. Both were optically triggered by the 580EX II on-camera at 1/32nd power, pointing up with the Omnibounce for a nice soft fill light from above.

Shot with the 7D, EF-S 60mm Macro at f/5.6, ISO 100 and 1/200th shutter.

Impish

My Daughter started kindergarten this year (and I've been sick every week since she started!) and her two new best friends both have short hair. Of course this means that she went in to the hairdresser and had a foot of hair lopped off this weekend.

I think she looks rather impish with the new cut:



Of course, the expression might have something to do with that.

I needed my fill light (camera left) a little higher as there is a bit too much shadow on that side of her face, but I like this shot a lot :) This was shot with the 70-200, a four light setup (primary, fill, background and hair) and processed in a vintage style. Fairly standard for my portrait stuff now.

On the business side of things, there *is* no business side of things at the moment. I'm okay with that, it's there if I need it, and all it costs me is $13 a month for hosting at the moment. I don't have as much time to devote to it as I'd like anyhow, so another year or two of practice won't hurt me.

Pom!

Tonight, after two weeks of exhaustion, I got out my camera. Two weekends ago the bug the family had came back with a bit of a vengeance and we ended up at the ER with my little dude. He vomited for seven straight days before we finally shook the bug.

This last weekend was my daughter's fifth birthday, so we had a party with her kindergarten classmates, and one with our family. I took some pictures then as well, but those are just for us :)

So, the subject today was a case of bright red pomegranates that finally came back into stock at our local Costco. We are big pom fans in our house, so this was a joyous occasion.

The first shot is the cutoff stem, which tend to be full of these curled little fibers that remind me of the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi :)



Second, I was just playing around with contrasting subjects, and my wife pointed out that our composter was full of little garden slugs. How could I resist giving one a chance to sample such an exotic treat?



I named him Sluggy Slug. Good boy, Sluggy Slug.

I miss Carl Sagan...

Not much to say about day 187, but this is my take on the Pale Blue Dot.



This is the same paperweight used in this shot but lit more simply, and with (to my eye) a stronger composition. A blue gelled LP160 at 1/2 power through my SB3 softbox is above and to the right of the weight (a little to close thus the strong specular highlight) and a second gelled LP160 is shooting through the left side of the lightbox at 1/16th power, just to fill a bit but not blow out the shadow. Shot at ISO 100, 1/200th shutter, f/5.6.

A simple shot, but crisp, I like the colour and the composition works. I'm glad I got this shot, I was about ready to give up for the day before I reworked the entire light setup and reshot it. Perseverance!

One sharp lens...

Day 185's picture was made possible by a mishap with a glass, some hot water, and a cold sink.

First off, here is the picture:



How sharp is my EF-S 60mm Macro? THAT sharp.

The glass, when filled with hot water and placed on the cold sink split nearly perfectly up the middle. It was just too crazy a thing not to use in a shot somehow, and this is what I came up with. I was originally going to mock it up as a fake Canon advert, but I decided that co-opting the Canon logo for this might not exactly endear me to them. As it is I still think it's a fun shot.

In hindsight my lighting could have been a bit harsher on the background and it could have been a bit more even, but for three speedlights and a cardboard box with a sheet of glass from a picture from on it, I'll take it :)

Blue balls...

Today, another lesson has been learned. The lesson is:

If you liked your last crystal shot, and you bought some geodes at the Museum and thought that they would be interesting to shoot, don't bother. They will look like crap. Geodes are supposed to be hollow and colourful, but no, they will be solid and all white and boring. Damn.

So that explains yesterday's lack of photo.

Today, I decided to work with something similar with coloured glass. While I was shooting around and trying different compositions, I noticed something interesting when one of my flashes didn't fire. I stumbled into a neat effect, and it made today's shot:



Ah, suggestive post titles that really are only marginally related to the content of the post.

This effect was acheived with a flash laying flush on the paper with the glass balls. The light shining through them gives this cool like refraction pattern, and it reminds me of a natural gas burner. I took a bunch of these shots until I found one that looked just right, like little blue flames. Let's just say that this trick is more consistent at making little blue flames than my furnace is.

This took surprisingly little light, one LP160 at 1/64th power, and the 580EX II bounced off the ceiling for a little bit of fill and to trigger the slave on the LumoPro. That was enough light to shoot at f/9, 1/250th shutter and ISO 100. I suppose having the speedlite two or three inches away really helped as well!

Lose a flower, gain a picture!

Day 155 of my Project 365. Friday. At long last.

When I got home, I discovered a nice bouquet of flowers on the kitchen table. Flowers that used to be growing in the backyard. How nice of my daughter to harvest them for us.

Oh well, got a picture out of it at least!



This is a Purple Aster, and fortunately there are several blooms left in the backyard. This wasn't the original pose that I had in mind, but she wouldn't sit still so a bunch of random shooting finally turned up one that was a keeper. I'm trying not to abuse the white background, so this was shot against the pink wall in her bedroom. Still bright, but there is a complementary tone to it.

This was shot with a key light to camera right, fired through a LumiQuest Softbox III which I have been waiting for on backorder for a little while now. It's small, but better than a bare flash and a bit more controllable as far as light spill than an umbrella. It's designed to be small enough to be used on-camera, and it fits nicely on the 580 on the 7D.

Fill light was from an LP160 to camera left, with a shoot through umbrella. ISO 100, 1/250th shutter at f/3.2. Both lights were firing at 1/8th power.