Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Balancing flash and ambient, attempt #1

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Not too bad, but I think it’s a  bit overexposed, should have tried adding some CTO or CTS gel for effect, but that’s what attempt #2 will be. And the obligatory hand shot:

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;-)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Nuke 'em 'till they glow


I was at my daughter's inline hockey practice a few days ago, and since my wrist is sore from a crash landing (yep, on inline skates... first one to mention mid life crisis gets banned :-P ), I decided to take some pics instead of practicing my (non existent) skating skills:


(BTW, I really enjoy readng strobist (though I'm pretty late to the show), and I totally dig DH's humor and writing style. What's that got to do with anything? Well, read on if you wanna know.)

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Lighting 102: Cooking light

This was a tough one. Since I’m taking this course  about two years late, I didn’t want to peek at the results beforehand, so I just did my best to come up with something interesting. Which I didn’t, but that’s to be expected from jumping head-on into something I don’t have the hang of yet.

My first attempt was pretty bleh (you can tell there’s a piece of paper and a metal fruit bowl in there, nothing special about it):

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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Glass!

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Looking good, huh? Much better than my last attempts at shooting glass bottles. This time, I did it “by the book” (you know, that book).

Bright, shiny things…

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Don’t get the wrong idea, I was looking for something to shoot for this assignment, and this can suddenly caught my attention. Since it was a bit heavy to place over my son’s notebook, I  had to empty it first (that’s why you can see the -- whatever it’s called – on top).

Thursday, April 15, 2010

My new toys arrived!

Yes! Check  ‘em out ;)

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(You can’t actually see them, they’re under the flashes, but I’m gonna be posting a lot of pics with these critters!)

Here’s another one, sans the good looking model:

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Sunday, April 11, 2010

Weekend panning shots

I took my camera to a small plaza and started taking some dull pictures of trees and stuff, when I saw some motorcycles speed by and decided to try my hand at some panning shots. I think they turned out pretty nice, but in the second one a by-stander got in the way. I think it still looks cool, though.


Taken at ISO 400, f/5.6 and 1/40 shutter speed


Taken at ISO 400, f/5.6 and 1/30 shutter speed.

You just need to follow the subject with your camera (I turned on servo- focusing, so the camera tried to keep the subject in focus all the  time).

First shoot! (part 3: glass)

Last part of my First Shoot blunders: shooting glass. I read "Light: Science and Magic", but didn't actually do much of the exercises... and lost a chance to get the photo I wanted. There was this cool bar with bottles lighted from below, and I wanted to get some pics of people standing beside the bottles: The bar alone looked like this:


Nice! But as soon as I added some light to it...

First shoot! (part 2: falloff)

As I said in my previous post, some of the pictures I took looked pretty bad, as I made quite a few mistakes (Let's chalk it up on it being my first time). I think the first and most important one was not really getting into the role of photographer, I was more like a guest with a camera, and that held me back quite a bit (I didn't get really close to people, I didn't try for better angles, etc.). Oh, well...

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

First shoot! (part 1)

Yes! I had my first chance to do a "real" shoot yesterday, and even though the results were less than spectacular, at least I learned a few things.

First, some background: I'm a hobbyist, and I recently bought my first (d)SLR, a Canon T1i, along with an 18-200 zoom and a 430 EX II flash. I've been taking pictures for quite some time, but flash photography always scared me a bit (besides, this is my first hot-shoe equipped camera, so my only experience with flash had been with the pop-up variety... yuck!). Anyway, on to the shoot...

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Texture - Light: Science and Magic


Here's an interesting exercise on revealing texture using just light.
Subject: a very uninteresting gray glove lighted from above:



And now the same glove lighted from the side (notice how much more texture is revealed):


BTW, Light: Science and Magic is a must read for anyone interested in lighting!

Strobist - Lighting 102 - Angle


Ok, here goes... first exercises on lighting, as per the Lighting 102 "course" on Strobist.

Different angles for my model (still don't have a remote for my flash, so I used a spotlight)



I must say that my model was extremely cooperative!