first from new studio

it's been a while.

since my last post, we've moved across country, and now we live back in eugene, oregon again. it's good to be back. we've moved into a place with a big garage, which i've promptly taken over and turned into something of a studio. gone are the days of low ceilings and rearranging furniture. now i can shoot wider, and put lights higher than ever before. these are exciting days to be alive.

anyways. for this shot, i wanted to get some strong color gels on things, and pop out the subject with a gridded white flash. it's all hard light, which made for some interesting shadows on the background. it was a good experiment. something to try next time i'm in front of an interesting or crazy looking wall.

it's good to be back.

setup shot:

no text. just picture.

baha'i temple

the only baha'i temple in north america, and i live maybe two miles from it......

i dragged a tripod along, and tried a few hdr shots of it.... it was a nice cloudy day, so i tried to bring the clouds out without making it look too fake..... hdr has that grungy quality that it brings to everything, it didn't really flatter the building, it more just made it look like it was set in one of the lord of the rings movies..... but there it is. i might go back and try reprocessing a few of the hdrs, see if a decent mask and cut layering job will bring the tonal range without the grunge..... so, maybe more to come?

chicago

i'm gonna miss it.

self satisfied

i've been getting bored with desaturated things here lately, so i decided to pursue doing a really strong background color gradient for a change. i have a roll of white seamless paper in my living room, but i usually only use it as a 3/4 backdrop, since pulling it out can be such a pain.

the biggest problem i encountered on this shot was getting enough distance between myself and the background to maintain separate lighting situations. i didn't want key light to spill from the front to the back, or blue background light to spill from the back to the front. the key to keeping things separate is distance, or if you don't have distance, you can gobo it.

luckily our living room is just long enough to do the job. i decided i wanted the key light gridded.... so that i'm sortof half silhouette and half properly exposed. i used a reflector to fill a bit on the dark side of my face, and let everything under my arms go to black. the blue background lights were set to fill with the center just slightly hotter than the sides, and i set up a gridded flash flying in the middle to make the clean center glow.

all in all, it came out allright. i would like the glow to be a bit tighter, and maybe the blue not quite so saturated, but then again, i did this so i would have some color up on the blog again, so maybe not......

i guess i'm ready to start shooting cheesy glamour stuff now.

setup shot:

also in the arsenal

so, i've been trying to shoot more and talk less lately. trying to get to know some of my less-often used modifiers, and trying to reverse engineer a few things i've seen people do here and there online. so in the spirit of all of that, here's a bunch of pictures i've taken here lately, with setup shots and nothing else. enjoy.

experiments with light