day 120 - looming plant

my goal is to become like an online poker player.

i think no one is ever born a natural at anything. any real skill requires time and effort to cultivate. i don't think of things in terms of talent, i think of things in terms of skills. if you practice something long enough, you'll develop a skill at it. the more you practice, the more skilled you become.

in the world of poker, there are great players. it takes time to become a great player, though. you have to play a lot of hands to get to the point where you know what to do with ace-ten six handed versus two handed. eventually you build up your skills to the point where you know what will happen if you play it this way, or that way. you've had enough experience (sat through enough hands) to build your skill to the point that you are a formidable poker player.

in the last few years there has been a number of very young poker players entering the scene who all play very very well. how, if they are so young, have they had the time to build up their skill?

it's because of online poker.

see, you can have as many games going simultaneously as you want in online poker. some people will play twenty or thirty poker games at the same time. it's not hard, since most of the time at the poker table you're sitting there waiting for someone else to figure out what they're going to do. if you're playing thirty games in the same amount of time as a traditional player plays one game, you're getting thirty times the amount of experience. you're testing different strategies, trying out ways of playing that might work and might not work. i'd say a year playing online poker that way is roughly equivalent to twenty years maybe of poker room playing experience.

anyways. there are photographers out there who have been shooting for thirty, forty years. they've used all kinds of equipment in all kinds of settings and come up with all kinds of lighting solutions. it's difficult to try and be a photographer without comparing your work to theirs.

but i'm hoping to create with this 365 project a situation like playing online poker.... i'm doing three or four photography setups a day, and i have been for the last six weeks or so. that's a lot of setups, that's a lot of experience. my work has definitely improved. i know my equipment better, and i know how to achieve different looks better. i can't tell how my work compares to people that have been doing this much longer than i have.... maybe they all went through times in which they did as many or more setups as i am.... but i'm definitely improving at an accelerated rate.

setup shot:

day 119 - shallow dof

one problem with using a shallow depth of field is that it's difficult to nail down what you want in focus. especially really close up, that depth of field gets really narrow. add to the mix the idea of autofocusing with the camera on a tripod and using a remote shutter control..... it's near impossible to get your focus correct.

but i tried anyways. at f1.8, on a tripod, with autofocus. it came out allright. i actually moved the camera far away from me, and then cropped in tight, that way my dof was wider, and i had a bit more leeway with what is in focus and what is not in focus.

setup shot:

day 118 - crazy sharp

yep, dig the new lens. spent maybe an hour outside taking wide open aperture pictures of any and everything. the autofocus is quick, man. quicker than the 18-55mm that came with my d60. it's fun to play with.

setup shot:


bonus tako shot to show off wide open aperture:

day 117 - the new hotness

just got my new lens. f1.8, with autofocus. now that is what i'm talking about. not the greatest picture, i was too excited to put it on the camera, didn't take the time to get a great shot.

setup shot:

day 116 - soft with floor bounce

our dark wood floors make bounced light go odd colors.

setup shot:

day 115 - double soft

first, i got to say that this setup is solid gold. seriously. look at that image. it has so many contrast points.... my right arm is light against the dark corner back there, and my left side is dark against the light wall. it's like the maximum amount of dark on light light on dark possible. solid. gold.

okay, my idea here was that i wanted two really large, soft light sources, one on either side of me. i only have one super big softbox, so i figured i'd set that one up on one side, and for the other side bounce some light off a wall. i've been playing with different compositions lately, so i figured i'd show a big chunk of the lit up wall, and have that corner back behind me.

there was only one problem that i encountered with this setup.... at first i wasn't gobo-ing the flash that is set up to illuminate the wall, so i was catching some hard light on my face, which was throwing a strongly defined shadow behind me. i wanted the flash to light the wall first, and then have that bounce hit me. so i set up a gobo to prevent direct light from hitting me, and there it is. problem solved.

setup shot:

day 114 - workin the corner

i'm starting to shift my mental focus from just light the subject and ignore the background to more of a whats-the-background-got-that-i-can-use approach. so with that in mind, i moved a bookshelf and set up here in the corner of the room. i put a beauty dish high camera right, and an sb-3 low camera right with a blue gel, popped a few shots, and there it is.

i like the geometric angles made by the wall joints and ceiling. the lighting isn't all that amazing, but it's a good image overall.

setup shot: