hdr

never really dug the hdr thing.... can't really use it for portraits, all that noise looks kinda stupid, blah blah blah. but it does do stuff like this kinda nice. and maybe i can figure out a way to make it do portraits or something.

oh, and that's our street right now. they say we might get 10" of snow. cool. 

new equipment....yeaahhhhh!!!!!

yep, so today i got some new equipment in. i got an alien bee 800, a vanguard battery pack, and an alien bee ringflash (that's the ab800 and ring flash up there in the picture). so yeah, two new flashes, each of which is three times as powerful as any flash i had before. and i'm not going to lie, these lights are pretty sexy.

so i spent most of today getting to know my new lights..... this is the honeymoon period, when we're exploring each other, finding out all those little quirks that are so delightful right now, and will drive you crazy in about a year.

but yeah, the best thing is that now i can throw huge amounts of light around. i still have my small flashes, and i'm still going to use them a lot, but anytime i need more power (for outside, or lighting a large area, or something far away..... whatever) i'm reaching for these.

so, like i said, we're still getting to know each other. but i took this picture, and i quite like it:



it's everything i'm drawn to in a picture. dark, moody, mysterious but lit well. i was using the ring light as a ring light, hence the ring shadow there..... probably will get tired of that look really quick..... but for now, i'm feeling it.

anyways. new lights are always exciting.

a few new shots.....

day 365 - last day

so, here it finally is, the last day of the 365..... it's been a good run. i've learned a lot, made a lot of mistakes, figured a lot of things out. it was a great learning experience, that's for sure. one of my rules for this was that i was going to keep things limited to lighting..... no crazy photoshoppin, no texturing or even dodging and burning of the images..... i wanted to get really great at lighting. and i think i have. i feel like i've really mastered my equipment at this point, i know what's going to happen if i put this umbrella here, and that reflector there. there's a predictability now that i never had before.

so what's next? well, since i've barely touched photoshop in so long, i probably need to re-up my game there. i'd like to start doing more composited type pieces, maybe start to work in some graphic design stuff on top of or behind my photography. and really start thinking in terms of concept more, and execution less. get back to my art school days, to try and make things that are solid conceptually, from beginning to end.

there are so many different types of things you can do in photography, and i want to get into all of them, really.

i'm really looking forward to shooting other people again. that'll be nice. not spending hour after hour staring at myself will be a welcome change.

i'll probably continue to put things here on this blog, but probably not as regularly as i have been. so that's it. see you people around.

setup shot:

day 364 - mirrored light paint

i started this one out thinking i would do it all up in camera again..... the idea was to take a picture of me waving around the light saber, and then using the nikon camera effects, duplicate the picture, flip it horizontally, and then overlay it it back onto the original version.

but, apparently nikon didn't think anyone would ever want to flip a picture in the camera, because that's not an option. so i had to do it in photoshop. i kept it quick and dirty, got in and got out, and that's it. the reason one half of the image is darker and less contrasty than the other is due to differences between how my camera handles raw files and how photoshop handles raw files..... i could've fixed it, but i kinda like the asymmetry in all that symmetry.

day 363 - flower

alisia got some flowers, and wanted me to take a picture of 'em, so here it is. i did two setups, one natural light, one lit with a softbox. she liked the natural light one better, i prefer the darker, more mysterious softbox lit one. but anyways, figured i'd post 'em both. did a crazy gradient/vignette on the natural one, just to pop the center out some.

my choice probably just reflects a prejudice to lit photos. so prejudiced.

day 362 - overlay

did this one in-camera, if you can believe that. i just found out my camera has a multiple-exposure mode. i knew some nikons did this, but i didn't know that mine did..... it's not in any of the shooting modes, it's down tucked away in the image adjustment menu.

anyways, having found out about it, i wanted to try it. so i set up and took the usual picture.... big softbox camera right, 32" trigrip bouncing light back up into my face.... the usual. shot a bunch of those. then i went outside, put the camera into manual focus, put the lens as out of focus as it would go, and took a bunch of pictures of all of our neighbor's christmas lights.

came back inside (it's cold out there) and used the "image overlay" feature on the camera to drop a bunch of out-of-focus lights on top of my super-in-focus portrait.

it's cool, it takes me back to film days, when you'd click the shutter and not know what you got until you got back to the darkroom..... there's a certain mystery to it, and when you finally get your test print you're either elated or saddened by what you did or didn't capture.

i guess this brings what feels like an element of chance back into things. i could do the exact same thing in photoshop, with much greater control over it, but it's more fun this way.