Photography – Page 13

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.

Abby Family Fun Photography

10,000!

By Don on Sunday, July 6, 2008

This is the 10,000th shot on my Nikon D40 I bought back in November. (The camera started over with the numbering at 0001. It skipped 0000. The first shot started at 0001, of course, and the camera isn’t smart enough to know that this wasn’t the very first shot.) I bought it to take pics of Abby, mostly. Our little digital point and shoot was getting outdated and I wanted something a little more flexible. I didn’t realize that the DSLR would reignite my latent interest in photography. I’m looking forward to the next 10,000.

Abby Family Fun Photography

Abby Monday

By Don on Monday, June 30, 2008

Here’s a twofer for Abby Monday.

Sunday was a red-letter day for us. We’ve been sorta encouraging Abby to use the potty with little luck. But she was saying she had to pee, and Gina let her run around sans diaper to see what would happen. Generally when she gets loose in the house without a diaper she pees on the floor. Once she even pooped on the floor in the laundry room.

Gina was messing around in the bathroom when Abby walked in and sat on her tiny blue potty. She does that sometimes and Gina didn’t think anything of it. Directly, Abby says I pee-peed. Gina skeptically leaned over and looked in and what do you know, she actually had peed. You can imagine the dance of joy we all performed.

This morning when I was taking Abby to school, I said to her, “Remember yesterday when you peed in the potty?” She replied,”Yeah, my Daddy proud of me. My Mommy proud of me.” And so we were.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Going Green

By Don on Monday, June 30, 2008

Another in the continuing saga of Strobist Lighting 102. The assignment was to use a single flash combined with some other light modifier to make it appear as if there is more than one light source. You had your choice of three concepts: financial planning, going green or physical fitness. I chose the going green concept.

My first thought was to shoot our recycling bin and its associated contents. I first turned over the bin on the coffee table and tried putting the flash behind it for some backlighting and a huge mirror on the opposite side to reflect some light on the front of the trash. I got some nice glow through the back of the bin and the reflected light from the front worked pretty well, but the edges were ugly. Walls and couches and clocks showed around the edges of the bin. Light from the flash spilled around the edges, too. Snooting the flash didn’t allow enough reflected light from the front.

I abandoned my first plan and just shot a pile of stuff piled on the table with the flash fired into a silver umbrella and a reflector on the opposite side to reflect. I used the mirror in some shots and a piece of white cardboard in others as the reflector. That kept the light from spilling on other living room objects so the background went pretty well black, though there was a little spill on a white pillow on camera right. I was too lazy to get up and move the pillow. I think the shot you see here is one with the white cardboard. I figure the shot could be used to illustrate the concept of what’s acceptable to recycle.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Still Strobin’

By Don on Saturday, June 28, 2008

Here’s Abe again modeling for me on the Strobist Lighting 102 assignment concerning umbrella specular reflections. The idea is shoot a portrait using an umbrella to create a specular reflection behind the subject so as to outline the shadow side. It worked pretty well, I think, even though the wall I used for a backdrop is not highly reflective. I’m still not happy with Abe’s modeling. I think it might be because he makes his own specular reflection.

Adventures in Strobistry Gina Photography

Snoot Full

By Don on Thursday, June 26, 2008

Today’s Strobist lesson, kids, is light restriction. I made a free cardboard snoot about 11 inches long to fit over my flash head and throw a narrow beam of light. (Gina cracked up when I told her it was called a snoot. She cracked up further when she surveyed the dining room and saw my myriad homemade pitcher-taking accessories.) I was a little surprised at just how narrow my snoot made the beam. It made a rectangle of about 2 feet by 1 foot on he wall when shot from about 7 feet away.

The point of the exercise is to see how light restriction affects your photographs. You can see here the light hits the side of Gina’s face and falls off quickly at the top of her forehead. It falls off quickly at the bottom, too, but that’s off camera in this shot. She was sitting inches from the wall, but by shooting from about 45 degrees from the flash, the area of the wall the light actually hit is out of the shot.

I made the same shot of the Abe Lincoln bust I bought for $15 at the charity e-mail auction held at the office. Abe has been a patient photographic subject, but he’s all coppery colored and I don’t really like the actual photos of him. The real Lincoln wasn’t all that photogenic, either.

Adventures in Strobistry Photography

Jar O Corks

By Don on Wednesday, June 25, 2008

I love this jar o corks that sits on our kitchen counter. I shot it back when I got my TTL cord for my little SB400 flash and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. When I read the Strobist Lighting 102 exercise about specular highlights I said “Snap, I can try that out on the jar o corks.” (I didn’t really say “snap.” That would be stupid.)

I know there is a great shot to be had involving this jar and the corks. I just don’t think this is it. I did learn a great deal about moving the highlight around and making it bigger or smaller, however. I tried to use a desk lamp diffused with some tracing paper to provide some backside fill. To balance the light from the lamp, I tried a CTO gel on the flash, but I couldn’t get it right. The lamp made a specular reflection of its own, compounding the problems. I seem to remember reading on the Strobist something about bouncing the light around with mirrors to fake like there’s more than one flash. Maybe I’ll try that.

Strobist info: Vivitar 285HV camera left at 1/16 through a sheet of typing paper.

Adventures in Strobistry Family Fun Photography

I’m A Dork

By Don on Tuesday, June 24, 2008

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.

Colorado Hiking Landscape Photography Vacation Yampa River float trip

Ahhhhrrrggg

By Don on Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Pikes Peak shot from the dam at Manitou Lake, which is about 7 miles north of Woodland Park, Colo. My photos here turned out pretty noisy because I failed to turn off the auto ISO feature when I switched to manual exposure mode. The camera bumped the ISO to 1600 and I didn’t know it until a couple weeks later. I was pretty bummed because I loved the light and the reflection on the lake. I mean, how many times am I gonna be able to shoot Pikes Peak in such cool light? Lesson learned, I guess.

Camping Colorado Hiking Outdoor fun Photography rafting Vacation Yampa River float trip

The Yampa at 23,000 cfs

By Don on Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Dale in Warm Springs rapid.

When I saw the gaping maw of the hole near the bottom of Warm Springs rapid, it occurred to me that I might be better off not being in any boat that had even a slight chance of going in there.

When the two park rangers recommended we portage two of the boats, watching the carnage from the shore became even more attractive.

When the second boat down the rapid flipped in the hole and the upside-down raft and its captain disappeared around the bend, I knew I would be walking around the beast.

It was day three of rafting the Yampa River in northwestern Colorado. I had taken a brief swim in the chilly, brown water the day before and didn’t want to repeat that experience.

We launched from Deerlodge Park on the eastern tip of Dinosaur National Monument into a river barely contained in its banks. The silty water was the color of heavily creamed coffee and carried trash, lumber, brush, and whole trees even. And dead animals: goats, cows, deer, etc. We had 18 people in 8 boats and would be out five days and four nights, May 21-25.

We spent a day and half in the Deerlodge campground rigging boats and running the shuttle under glorious skies and temperatures in the 70s and 80s. We left the comfy weather and luxurious pit toilets behind when we hit the river.