Post Irony

Grandma Dailey (my dad’s mother) lived in the country near DeQueen Arkansas for about 37 years. For the last 30 years she lived there alone after the death of her husband, Aubrey. She was an antiques dealer, quilt maker and made the best corn bread. She’s 93 now and her health has gotten to the point where she can’t live alone anymore and has moved in with one of her daughters in Texas. On Saturday she held an auction at her house to sell her furniture and other belongings to get the house ready for it to sell.

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I’m not sure it means anything, but Australian photographer Neil Creek chose my shot of Pikes Peak to critique on his blog. He liked it. It’s kind of neat for me to see my pic on a blog written on the other side of the world.

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Our two hummers have been coming to the feeder each evening so I set out to shoot them again. I like the background better than my first try, but the angle wasn’t as good. Most of the shots got the back of the birds and, while interesting, you need to be able to see the eye and beak, I think. I’m thinking I’ll move the feeder to a new spot to try to get better angles. Strobist info: Vivitar 285HV at about 120 degrees on camera right at 1/4 power and SB26 about 45 degrees on camera right at 1/4 power.

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Just messing around with some Photoshop actions downloaded from the Internets. I think it would look better if the blog had a white background.

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Abby’s Mimi got Abby a Snow White camping set for her birthday. The set has a sleeping bag, tent, backpack and water bottle. Gina set up the tent today and Abby loved it. Abby found it hysterical when Gina would hit the inside of the tent and make it billow out. It gave me a chance to practice a little Strobistry. A put one flash inside the tent at 1/8 power pointed at Gina’s face and another flash with the umbrella reflector outside the tent at full power pointed at Abby. I think it turned out pretty well.

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I found this guy’s tutorial on the Internets and thought to myself, “This might work for the jar o corks.” So I totally ripped him off. Surely he expects people to straight copy him if he puts all the details on the Internets, right?

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We woke up to a death in the family on Sunday. Our plecostomus was lying motionless on the bottom of the tank. I don’t know how long he was dead, because I don’t remember noticing him moving for the last few days. Gina said she saw him alive Friday night. Abby was less than devastated. She said, “It’s gross!”

The garage is turning out to be a pretty good photo studio. It’s nice for Abby because the mosquitoes aren’t as bad in there as they are in the back yard. I gave Abby the white-background treatment like I did Gina the night before. (See those on Flickr.) Then we put the bubble grill in there and Abby went crazy rubbing the bubble elixir all over her arms and legs.

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Fooling around with my flashes, I tacked a white sheet to the wall in the garage and fired one flash into the background to overexpose it and the other flash into the silver umbrella on camera right to light Gina. This what they call lighting on two planes. The flashes light specific parts of the image separately without affecting each other. The straight headshots weren’t that interesting other than to prove the light setup worked. So we came up with the flying-hair idea.

We did get one regular-type shot I thought was pretty good. Gina had just about run out of patience with me when I snapped this one.

Strobist info: SB26 at 1/2 power into the background and Vivitar 285HV at 1/4 power into a silver umbrella at camera right just out of the frame.

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Since we got the sugar water mix right on the hummingbird feeder, these little guys have been visiting the back yard every night. I set up my two flashes on opposite sides of the feeder set to 1/4 power. I put the camera on a tripod at about 90 degrees to the flashes. Setting the camera to shoot with the remote, I sat on the patio and waited for the hummers to show up. One did. I cranked up the shutter speed to darken the ambient light so that most of the lighting came from the flashes. The flash duration at such a low power is very short, meaning it can stop very fast action, such as a hummingbird’s beating wings. At least that was the theory. And it worked for the most part. I’m not too happy with the background or the angle of the flashes, so I’m going to try again tomorrow.

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