Adventures in Strobistry – Page 3

Abby Wednesday

By Don on Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Abby was looking pretty cute right after her bath today, so I dragged out my Strobist gear to try some on-axis fill flash. I set up my 45 inch Westcott reflective silver umbrella with the SB-26 on 1/2 power and for the on-axis fill used my SB-400 covered with a plastic Country Time Lemonade container over it as a diffuser. (The lemonade now resides in a Zip-Loc bag in a kitchen cabinet.) The point is to throw some light to soften the shadows created by the main light. Now, David Hobby uses a ring light as his on-axis flash. I don’t have a ring light. I’m not even sure I know what a ring light is. I had to make do with my DIY rig.

Abby Adventures in Strobistry Family Fun Kansas Photography the farm

The Farm

By Don on Monday, September 1, 2008

My parents live on 40 acres west of Parsons, Kan., that used to be part of a larger working farm. There are several sheds, silos and whatnot still on the property, including this old-time chicken coop. This is the kind of coop that Foghorn Leghorn guarded in the old cartoons. The outside has great peeling paint and deteriorating wood. The kind of stuff we amateur photographers like to take pichurs of. I set up a couple of flashes inside so the ceiling and back wall of the coop would be visible.

Abby Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Abby Sunday

By Don on Sunday, August 17, 2008

It’s Abby Sunday.

A few days ago Abby was sitting at the table after dinner and she put her chin on her hands in a very cute way. I knew it would make a good picture so I tried to recreate it this afternoon. I put a flash and umbrella on the table to camera right and another flash camera left and behind her with my DIY gridspot mounted to provide a hair light. She didn’t really want to go along with my directions and this was as close as I could get to her original pose.

Two Abby stories: First, the other day we were eating dinner and she started saying, “A-B-Y” over and over. We finally realized she was spelling her name. We told her it was A-B-B-Y and she started adding the extra B. She said she was practicing it at school.

Second, this one’s kinda gross. That’s why I like it. She’s been doing this thing while eating where she tilts her head all the way back and puts food in her mouth. It generally causes her to gag and we tell her to stop it. At lunch today she tilted her head back and popped a single macaroni and cheese noodle in. It immediately gagged her and I could tell she coughed it up the back way into her nose. Then she sneezed and the noodle shot out her nose followed by a wad of snot. It was funny.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

More Hummin’

By Don on Tuesday, July 22, 2008

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.

Abby Adventures in Strobistry Family Fun Gina Photography

Tents Are Funny

By Don on Friday, July 18, 2008

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.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Jar O Corks Redux

By Don on Monday, July 14, 2008

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?

Abby Adventures in Strobistry Family Fun pets Photography

R.I.P. Plecostomus

By Don on Sunday, July 13, 2008

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.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Shampoo Ad

By Don on Saturday, July 12, 2008

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.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

My First Hummer

By Don on Friday, July 11, 2008

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.

Abe Lincoln bust Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Two-Flash Donnie

By Don on Tuesday, July 8, 2008

My well-used Nikon SB26 flash came via UPS today and I was pretty pumped. In the Strobist world the 26 is just about the be-all, end-all of flashes. It’s almost 15-year-old technology, but it has a built-in optical slave that fires when it detects the light from another flash. Unfortunately, the Strobist craze has driven up the price on these babies. I almost opted for buying the current generation SB600, but the 26 was $75 cheaper and the 600 won’t fire wirelessly with my D40 camera. The little pop-up flash on the camera will fire the 26 if I don’t want to use the big Vivitar. The 26 won’t do the fancy through-the-lens-exposure control that tells the flash when to stop putting out light when the right exposure is reached, but I want it for manual use anyway. I dusted off old Abe and fired light at him from two sides.

Now I can get on Flickr and say things like: Vivitar 285HV into a silver 43″ umbrella on 1/4 power camera right with a snooted SB26 at 1/64 camera left and little behind model for hair light and a white card at lower camera left for fill on model’s face. 285 fired via poverty wizard with 26 slaved.