Let's give geckos a hand!

Day 31 and man was I just out of luck today. I thought today might break my 365 streak.

Pardon the elaboration of my household melodrama, but my delightful and lovely son is going through sleep training as of last night. 'Sleep training' is a nice way of saying 'cry it out' which is something my wife and I swore we would never do. Having said that, the boy was up an average of 6 times a night for the last two weeks, and at six months old, that's not a good thing. He needs to learn to sleep.

So, I'm exhausted, so is my wife. Family dinner, grumpy older kid, loads of errands, you name it, it was a rough Sunday and I just want to sleep. In my heart, though, I know that 'The Project' must go on!

In this sort of scenario though, I am very lucky. I have a macro lens, a love of macro photography, a good flash, and some amazing critters living in my house. I give you one of natures most fascinating structures, the Gecko's sticky hands!



These pads are covered with countless little hairs that are so small, they actually form magnetic bonds between the electrons of nearby molecules! They really are nifty, and they have an amusing tendency to want to climb on my wife's face.

Shot at 1/60th, f/8, ISO 200, 580EX II on-camera, angled up 75 degrees, 1/2 power with the Omnibounce. Shot through plate glass, and the Omnibounce seems to really, really help with reflections.

I just noticed that I shot back to back hand pictures...

This post may cause paralysis...

Day 30 of my Project 365 and I was playing with lighting again.

Inspired by the legend of the Hand of Glory, a candle and/or candleholder made the from the hand of a hanged criminal. It was said to immobilize any who saw it lit. You've been warned.



If you can still move, please read on.

I shot this a few times and it was pretty frustrating honestly. You have to frame the shot, fix the focus, set up the lighting (or in my case the light blocking sheets of bristol board), turn out the lights and then do a ten second exposure while hoping you don't knock your models hand. This was my sixth or seventh snap and the best by far.

Things that didn't work the way I would have liked: Ideally I would have preferred to have a single, defined flame at each fingertip, but I could only get my wife to hold her hand still for so long, so this all had to be done in the aforementioned ten seconds. I would have preferred not to see the tip of the lighter in the shot, and I'm sure a more competent post processor could have removed them, but all of my attempts looked horrid.

Things that did work: The fingers are crisp and in-focus, and the soft candle-like light gave a bit of an eerie glow to the hand. My wife did a fine job of keeping her hand steady for this shot, and also she agreed to help in the first place!

Once again, a shot I like more than I dislike. I had an idea, and within a half hour or so, I had a shot that looked like I imagined.

I feel the need...

Day 29 of Project 365 and as always I was looking for inspiration.

Sometimes inspiration comes from a ray of light shining through a window, or a simple little object with striking colours. Sometimes, inspiration tries to beat a red light and just about kills you on the way home from work. Want to guess how my drive home was today?

Don't get me wrong, I'm hardly to worlds best driver. I'm not overly defensive, I can have a bit of a quick temper, and I really don't like driving around people who clearly aren't in full, confident control of their vehicle. Having said all that, I have two kids, and my driving habits have seriously mellowed since I started having little people in the back seat routinely.

Still, every now and then, you feel the need. The need for speed!



Taken in my driveway, ISO 200, f/11 at .8 seconds shutter, 25mm focal length. Although I have been using the 60mm Macro almost exclusively, there was no way I could frame the tach in my car from the front seat, so I switched over to the kit lens. Even with IS I had to brace the lens on the steering wheel, and take several shots before I got a nice sharp one. I wanted a larger blur on the needle, but this was the longest I could manage a handheld sharp shot, and I really didn't want to absolutely floor it in neutral.

All in all, I think I nailed this shot pretty well. It was over-exposed a bit, but easily corrected in post.

p.s. Yeah, it was -17 Celsius at 4pm in Winnipeg today. Brr.

Deep Blue

Day 28 of my Project 365.

I *liked* my prior water drop shot, but I wanted to try and nail the focus a bit better. Instead of just doing the same shot, I backed the lens off from the splash, set up both strobes and shot in a clear acrylic container on a royal blue background.

Here is the result:



I like the structure of the splash, and after a bit of tweaking in PP, the colour has the richness and deepness that I was looking for. The focus is better, but there is still a blur from the limited shutter speed. I can only sync at 1/200th, so that's the best shutter speed I can manage. If I could crank it to 1/400th or so, I suspect it would be like crystal.

I'm going to have to figure out how to manage a faster sync in the future, but I think it's a limitation of the camera body and strobes.

p.s. I noticed a bunch of new followers, thank you all for joining in! If you are doing a Project 365 as well, be sure to drop me a comment with your blog address, so I can return the favour!

Yo Dawg, I heard you like strobes...

Day 27 and a new piece of gear arrived on the UPS truck today!

I have that family portrait shoot coming up next week, and I decided I wanted a little more oomph from my fill light than I was getting with the little 32 Ws one, so I ordered a LumoPro LP120 manual flash, which comes highly recommended from Strobist and quite a few other off-camera flash resources.

This is strictly a manual flash, no TTL, no focus assist lamps, nothing fancy, but a decently powerful hotshoe flash that has a variety of ways to trigger it: on-camera, PC cord, optical slave or miniphone jack. Supremely useful little lights to use, especially off-camera.

So, since I had a new toy, I have to shoot it, right? I decided to fool around with a DIY construction paper snoot on my 580EX II to get a spotlight effect, and ended up with this:



One thing to not is that I do not have a seamless black background, and that it really noticeable in this shot. I have also misplaced the flash shoe that came with my 580EX II so in this shot, the flash is precariously balanced on whatever small black things I could find! :D

Not all that happy with this shot, but with the tools I had it at least looks close to what I imagined.

The Cage Without Walls

Day 26 was a day of generic drudgery. Cold weather, long meetings, and crabby kids. Today I also knew that I wouldn't have a lot of time to devote to a set-up shot like last night for some unknown reason.

So, a shot at work was a requirement for the day, but I had very little time to accomplish this. I barely had time to step out of my cubicle. I made that my challenge for the day, and came up with this:



ISO 200, f/6 at 1/20th shutter, handheld, natural lighting. I would type more in this post, but I'm out of time for some unknown reason.

Risque photography...

For day 25, I wanted to tell you a story. A story about a nut, who likes to get naked in front of people.



Okay, so it's not exactly NSFW. I felt a bit goofy today, and came up with the idea of a peanut M&M that likes it when you watch. The original plan was to have the second shot with all the shell removed and just the chocolate, but it appears to be impossible to separate the shell from the chocolate, so this had to suffice.

Critical components in this shot: Lightbox, pocket wizards, tripod, shutter release. Without all of that I wouldn't be able to get such clean, identical framing on the little photos. Gear may not make you a good photographer, but it sure helps.

I really like this picture, I hope you do too!