My third attempt for the Strobist Bootcamp II Assignment 1.
This is my brother, and if you know of an engineering job (or heck, a job) in the Pacific Northwest, let us know. If I was running an engineering department, I would totally hire him.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
June 22 - Strobist Bootcamp II Attempt 3
June 21 - 140 Project
Yet another blog-padding photo-a-day.
This is from an afternoon shooting for the 140 project. Pay attention: I may someday be famous and rich for my contribution to the project.
See http://140faq.blogspot.com/ for more info.
June 19 - Strobist Bootcamp II Attempt 2
I'm a goober and forgot to post this.
From the Strobist Bootcamp II, Assignment one.
This is my second attempt at the assignment, and the one I ultimately submitted.
Posting late 'cause I want to make sure my blog photo-a-day count is correct.
Strobist info: Two Vivitar 285s, shoot-through umbrellas on Cactus triggers. Key umbrella located high and to subject right / camera left. This gave the corrugated metal background some interest, as well. The other umbrella was used behind camera for on-axis fill.
Monday, June 29, 2009
June 29 - Three Dee
Went out tonight in search of a photo, and realized as the garage door closed that I'd left my tripod in the other car.
Best to leave without waking up the doggie, so I thought I'd turn this into a challenge. Either shoot high ISO, wide open, available light, or.....
Then, duh, I've got my flash gear. Had some idea for other made-up shots, which I won't reveal here since I need ideas for OTHER nights where I come up empty-handed.
Saw this ribbon rack near a cement wall at REI and thought it would be interesting for shadows. I also heard a recent interview on NPR where some entertainment industry goober was talking about how 3-D is the future of the movie industry. (If 3-D and computer animation become the norm, I think I'm going to have to ditch the movie hobby completely. Pixar is cool, 3-D is interesting, but mainstream? Please!
Anyway, setup two 285's with gels from camera right and left. One flash had nearly dead batteries, so I chimped the shot with the blue light until I had the exposure I wanted.
Another trick I tried (though apparently after this shot) was to switch to green automatic mode so that the popup flash would fire for better AF. Then back to manual mode for the actual shot. Worked nice, but I figured this out before switching to try a green/orange pair. By this time, flash B had given up and so the the original 3-d colors had to work.
Disappointed by the slight out-of-focus. Not sure if I think this shot is clever or just a lame 80's gelled shot.
Anyway, glad to be posting again!
Thursday, June 18, 2009
June 18 - Echoes
Nice evening for a walk, so only took a couple photos. Loved the reflections of the evening light on the downtown pond.
June 17 - Broken Rules, Lost Haven
Chase Jarvis reminded everyone to break the rules today, so I did.
- "high-fashion tilt"
- shot at night w/o tripod
- white-balanced wrong
This is the old Boom Town records downtown. Lots of great import albums, vinyl, and hard-to-get (or special order) stuff. Spent plenty of my high school years wandering the aisles and finding stuff that I thought would make me seem cool.
Sucked to see it close down, and sad to see it still empty.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
June 15 - Learning to Love
Somehow missed posting this one, so I had to do some HTML trickery to get these posts back in order.
My buddy bought a great new lens - the Canon 135f/2.0L. To avoid lens envy (Shoot More, Want Less) I decided I'd go out that night with the goal of shooting with my second least-favorite lens, the 100-300f/4.5-5.6
I liked these sunlit grass stems, and the composition. I don't like how the lens isn't very sharp when wide-open.
June 14 - Boot Camp II Attempt 1
First attempt at a headshot for Strobist Boot Camp II.
I've setup some portraits with other awesome friends, so I'm going to see what I like best before the deadline, and submit that one for the assignment.
Went for some fairly dramatic lighting here, and I think it might be too much. Umbrella high and to subject left / camera right. On-Axis fill (it's not just for pig statues!) with umbrella, just below/behind camera.
IIRC, the key light was at 1/4 and the fill at 1/16. Both on my lovely Cactus triggers. Which are working very well with the Radio Shack 2xAAA battery holders on pigtails. The second power switch is helping me keep the batteries in good shape, and moving the battery out of the receiver seems to give better reliability. Not a perfect solution, but cheap and workable until this photo hobby starts paying it's own bills.
Thanks to my awesome first volunteer subject.
June 12 - Stripes = Slimming
What the hay, I missed a couple days, and had two shots I was very happy with on this day. This was my more artistic and original concept. Loved the colors and mix of textures, and how it distills down to a simple stripe pattern.
June 12 - I'll Stop and I'll Shoot
Found this in Amity, as I was between Corvallis for my little bro's graduation (congratulations!) and the in-laws house further north.
Another one of those "visualized the shot and had to turn around to stop" moments. Those moments are pure gold to me, because I know how often I skipped these in the past, and I enjoy the heck out of taking the 2 minutes to try the shot.
Really happy with how this turned out. Exactly as I wanted. I guess my only wish is that there wasn't a stripe starting in the LLH corner of the frame. Didn't want to change the cropping, and didn't want to edit out, though.
June 9 - Hail Yes
Start of catch-up posting....
Had a massive hailstorm this day, and it ripped a stripe right through town. Had some sweet thunder and lightning at work, but only a bit of hail. Around 4:30pm, reports of the parkway stopped with standing hail.
I was downtown soon after, and there was mulched leaves on many cars from where the hailstones tore through the tree leaves. The guys at McMenamins were breaking out their snow shovels to clear the parking lots. In JULY.
Standing water everywhere.
My massively witty title came to me only today when I was finally getting to post-processing the photo. It's one of the only photos I shot that day, though -- which was a shame, because this was some pretty intense weather and some great photo ops.
Monday, June 8, 2009
June 8 - The Good Kind of Dust
This photo is sort of embarrassing.
Some people hate it when others see their messy house. Me, I'm fine with the messy house, but for someone to see my neglected ride? Just not enough hours in the day for tons of riding, let alone the toothbrush treatment on the Park stand. Music blasting. Black Butte Porter underneath. The smell of citrus degreaser.
Strobist info: Single umbrella camera left and low. Vivitar 285 on Cactus trigger. I wanted some shadows for detail, but diffused, soft light on the large bits. Wanted to show the quality of the machining but also the texture of our great Central Oregon volcanic dust.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
June 7 - A Nice Pair of Wheels
Got this on an evening walk. Wasn't the first shot I had envisioned. When post-processing, I was torn between this shot and the other, which was a straight-on shot of the wall, the wheel, and a door.
But I've done that kind of shot before on this project, and I liked how I spent a couple minute trying different angles.
Though I'm not totally in love with this photo (too much rustic farm debris photos in my 4-H photography days in high school) I do really think the wheel shadow is nice, and like the mottled sunlight.
June 6 - Balloon on the Lawn
In a way, Balloons over Bend is such an obvious choice for photography. I mean, at least half the town is up early, coffee cups in hand, kids in jammies with blankets and bed hair. And half the people have cameras. In fact, when I got my first DSLR in 2005, this event was the first place I took photos.
Unfortunately, Saturday morning winds were stronger than the Friday morning winds, so no balloons took off. One brave crew raised their balloon for the entertainment of the crowd. All was well until the wind picked up a bit, and the down-wind folks shrieked and ran away. (The balloon just slowly leaned with the wind -- so I don't think anyone was really in danger.
Kinda like how this shot captures a stranger (with camera), her shadow, and the balloon as they were packing it up.
June 5 - Rust-oleum
I liked this for the colors and textures of the pole. In this shot, it looks like rust, but elsewhere on the pole you can see at least 3 colors of paint besides the rust tone.
I love using the 50 for this because it lets me fade things off as they exit the frame.
Also a feel-good photo because I took a photo break during the day to take this shot -- and it feels good to dedicate 10-15 minutes to looking and shooting.
Friday, June 5, 2009
June 4 - 2 Light, On-Axis Fill
Oh, and you thought my last post was a link-o-rama.....
The purpose of this post is threefold.
First, I would like to introduce you to my lighting assistant / model. I do have other breathing lighting assistant / models, but they are related to me. (Do stop sniggering; I may act like a pig but am not related to one!) And so I don't post their photos here. But seriously, I use this pig statue as a stand-in when setting up shots, and also for those late nights where I'm playing around with lighting concepts. When my kid was smaller, the pig was almost a perfect stand-in. But my baby is growing up quickly, so I now need a larger pig.
Second, I wanted to play around with the on-axis fill that David Hobby has been discussing lately. My key light is the obvious light you notice, camera left, bare flash. My fill is a second flash, bounced off of a white Ultimate Frisbee, held on-axis with the camera. (photo here) Meaning if I had a laser beam pointing out the lens, and extending behind the camera as well, I would position this light as close as possible to this laser beam(s), and would point directly at the subject. See, the same thing that makes on-camera flash boring is that it is flat, but if you are using just a teeny bit to bring back detail in your main light setup, it's quite nice. You can click the following links to see the contribution of the key light and the fill, by themselves.
Oh, and thirdly, I needed my daily photo today.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
June 3 - First CSA Box
Totally snapshot photo, but I'm so excited about our first CSA box and it was taken on such a hellish day, that I'm still happy about it. Also played around with a juice pitcher "Gary Fong" diffuser for the flash.
So this is our first tub of veggies in our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) membership with Groundworks Organics out of Junction City, OR. We got:
strawberries
garlic whistles
cauliflower
onions
cucumbers
carrots
lettuce
sugar snap peas
....I think that's it. The stuff tastes fresh from the garden. Lemme tell you, this makes it pretty hard to eat grocery store vegetables. Just like the veggies from our garden when I was growing up in Eugene!
June 2 - Light Gathering
Though I really enjoy the excuse to take a photo each day, sometimes it's nice to grab a quick shot of an interesting object or shadow, and go to bed at a normal hour.
So nothing particularly special about this. I liked the shadow.
Now I notice that some wicks are burned and some are not. Strange. I guess we don't go for the birthday candle effect?
Monday, June 1, 2009
June 1 - Shop Light
Feeling bummed about not shooting the last couple days, I was grabbing my camera bag out of the car, and liked the contrast between the shop light and the ceiling behind.
The dangly bit of chain was a bonus.
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