Thanksgiving from Above

I spent a week thinking about how to shoot a Thanksgiving meal. After shooting my son for almost a year, I've learned that changing the altitude of the shot changes the perspective so much. I came up with the idea to shoot the Thanksgiving meal from above.

Strobist: Specular Portrait

It's been a VERY long time since I've posted anything to the main site. In keeping with my strobist assignments, here is a specular highlight portrait.

It was much more difficult to do than I thought. I tried with people and things with very little success. As the assignment suggests, the difficulty was finding the right angle and relationship between camera, subject, light source, and background. I took this picture at Toronado down in Normal Heights, San Diego. The subject are two rare beers which are apparently hard to find in the "wild."

Here are two "bonus" pictures from the same bar.

 

Olympus 35RC

I found this guy on Craigslist for $20. Can't go wrong with a solid rangefinder. I have some Kodak Portra 160NC loaded and ready to go. Creamy and warm tones are sure to come back from the lab.

Strobist: Cooking Light

For my "cooking light" assignment, I chose to light up my 8" chef's knife and some cherry tomatoes. This is the same knife that sliced through my finger and partially severed my tendon a year ago. To be fair, I cut myself, the knife just happened to be in my hands.

My Holga

Strobist: Controlling Specular Highlights

It's been, oh... 3 months, since I've done a Strobist 102 assignment. I combined this lesson with making a listing to sell my Canon AE-1 and lenses. This assignment was about specular highlights, and learning to control them. Specular highlights are essentially the reflections of your light sources as seen reflected from your subject.

A Gallery of Backed up Film

I had about 4 rolls of film waiting to be developed. I sent them off to NCPS, and here's a gallery of the results. Not much commentary.

Basking in the Evening Sun

Here's my son, hanging out on the couch, catching some evening sun. The warm glow and angular shadows across his face, as he contemplates the three poops he took.

Actually, he's not basking in an evening sun. The couch is relatively far from the window and doesn't really face the evening sun at all. I actually fixed my stupid Chineese flash triggers by buying a new battery (not that I don't plan on replacing them still), so I used my flash to create some "sun" for my son.

I zoomed my flash head all the way in (105mm) for hard shadows and used a 1/2 CTO gel to warm up the light. Here's basically the same image taken with available light.



I totally stole this idea from Joe McNally, and not ashamed about it. If you're just getting into off-camera flash, I definitely recommend his book Hot Shoe Diaries.

2 Delays, Posting to Resume Soon

I've run into two delays on making new posts.

1. A newborn son


2. My Chineese flash triggers broke. Time to upgrade.

Canon 50mm F1.4 Focus Issue and a Fix

While shooting an event at Stone Brewery, my Canon 50mm F1.4 stopped auto-focusing. Ruh roh. After doing some internet research, I learned that the USM focus system on these lenses is a "ring type." The ring can easily be jarred out by bumping the front element. Seems too fragile. After a $100 repair fee at Canon Irvine, I knew I had to find a solution.

So, I picked up this OEM Canon Hood for $15 from B&H Photo. It threads into the body, and not the filter threads like some of the cheaper hoods. Hopefully I can keep this lens in good working order, because I really love it.

Shot taken in my 30 second light box.

A Very Personal 365 Project

My wife gave birth to our first son, Owen, on Sunday night. I never thought something could be so amazing, difficult, and easy at the same time. Most photographers do a "365 project" whey they post a picture of something every day. Sometimes the projects have themes.

My theme is my son. Hopefully I can employ the learning I talk about here, discover new techniques, and document the first year of his life.

Enjoy!

My 30 Second Lightbox

I need to sell two of my unused lenses on eBay. They're old Canon FD mount lenses for my AE-1 film camera. I need the money more than I need wide angle, and I originally purchased them way below market value. Of course, things on eBay usually sell based on price and pictures, so I needed to take pretty pictures of the lenses before listing them.

Strobist: Apparent Light Size

So this week's assignment is about apparent light size. The last two assignments were about putting the light somewhere, now we're dealing with how big the light looks to the subject. For this exercise, I bounced the flash off of the wall. The first image, the flash head is zoomed all the way out to 24mm: