Bling it on

I’ve been cooped up inside a lot lately. Not able to get out and get any naturey-type shots. Not that late winter/early spring is terribly inspiring here in the upper Midwest. What isn’t white is brown. Ah, well. Eighteen days until spring.

So in the meantime, I’ve been tinkering with my Home Depot-inspired studio lighting setup, and am just about ready to take it out on the road for some portrait sessions. Along the way, I got a chance to shoot some bling shots as part of an engagement photo package for a lucky couple (lucky that they’re getting married, not necessarily lucky that they have me for a photographer).

So I thought I’d post a few samples of the bling shots and a couple of self portraits to show you what can be done with a four-foot fluorescent light fixture, daylight-balanced tubes, a reflector, and a beat-up 25-year-old flash unit. The portrait background is fabric that was on sale at Jo-Anne’s held up by a frame built with less than ten dollars’ worth of PVC pipe from HD and held in place with three spring-loaded hand clamps that cost 98 cents each.

The ring shots were taken with the same basic setup. The top shot shows the ring on a mirror. A white sheet of foam board was used to reflect a white background. The ring and Bible shot was lit by a small LED flashlight.



Chic on the cheap. Gotta love it.

Photo blogging: Sure, I’ve shot pictures of waves. It’s tricky. You gotta time them just right. You’ll wind up with very few keepers -- most of your shots will look cruddy. Now I’ve just discovered another trick to photographing surf. Instead of photographing breakers from the outside looking in, you really have to photograph waves from the inside looking out. And that’s why I will never be an outstanding wave photographer. Be sure to check out the site's home page, which shows the photographer at work. That little teeny person in the lower left of the picture holding the yellow thingy about to be clobbered by a 20-foot wave - that's the photographer.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.