I’m A Dork

I’m going off the deep end with this photography thing. There’s this blog by a guy who calls himself the Strobist and I fell for his schtick. I bought a Strobist-approved off-camera light kit that consists of a flash, an umbrella, a cheap set of radio-wave-powered flash triggers and other assorted flash-photography crap. It was my Father’s Day gift to myself.

The Strobist has two programs of exercises designed to teach the fledgling strobist how to use small flashes to create fabulous pictures. They’re quite interesting to dorks like me and, best of all, they’re free. I’ve decided to run through the programs and post the pictures on the blog here. (What the hell else am I gonna do with them.)

All over Flickr you can see photos with these little notes on them: “Strobist info: 580ex into 6×6 softbox camera right, Vivitar 285 HV with gridspot camera left and behind model to light hair, SB26 camera left in shoot-through umbrella at 1/64 for fill and golden foam core just below chin to reflect some golden goodness onto the face.”

The first assignment in the Strobist Bootcamp program is a headshot. I drafted Gina into helping me with this one. She’s really loving it, too, let me tell ya. She might be in for a rude awakening because she’s the only model I really have a chance of lining up to help me.

I used a Strobist suggestion on shooting heads in the corner of a room. The model was seated with a wall to her back just out of the frame. The flash fired at 1/4 power into a silver reflective umbrella at about 45 degrees on camera right. The idea is to use the wall behind the model as a clean background and the wall to the side to reflect some light onto the shadow side of the face. I tweaked the white balance in CS3 and sharpened for the Web.

I like the bottom pose better, but she’s sitting too close to the wall, I think.

I turned the camera over to Gina so she could get in on the fun. I think it looks pretty good considering the glistening skin and the funky hair, courtesy of an earlier treadmill session. I could have used the shot for the yearbook in 1987, except without the wrinkles and with more acne. Oh, and a much lower hairline. And a less fat face. And … oh you get the idea.