This little light of mine

I've been thinking about this shot for a while. Ever since I did the red Christmas ornament shots a week or so ago, I've been pondering what to do next and thought of photographing a candle out in the woods. I've just been waiting for the right time. The right time being either a fresh coating of snow or a foggy winter day.

The foggy winter day came today, so I packed a candle, lighter, camera, boom stand, flash, gels and grid and headed out to a local forest preserve. It was a pretty straightforward shot once the light was set up - the boom allowed me to place the flash directly above the candle to create a ring of light with a grid attached. A double layer of CTO gels allowed me to shift the color balance to incandescent to simulate twilight while maintaining a warm white light on the candle -- this was shot mid-morning.

The setup for the flash is shown below. After that it was just a matter of laying on my side in the melting snow until I framed up a few shots that I liked. Then home to change out of my wet clothes.



Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

A holiday twofer

Some holiday tchotchkies have been hanging our house for years. In the case of Mr. Snowman, it's been nearly three decades. I'm guessing your house also features some longstanding decorations that have hung around year after year.

Playing around with lighting featuring a lightbox to throw some uplight, a couple of strobes fitted with honeycomb grids, one for the key light and one with a green gel set up behind the subjects to throw a circle of color on the black foam board backdrop -- I still can't get over how a grid makes the light from a rectangular flash head into a circle, but I'll take it. Some strategically placed white foam board reflectors round out the lighting setup.

Hoping that things are going well for you in the runup to Christmas.

Cheers.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Snowman (with bokeh background)

Christmas is the season of lights (oops, I mean the holiday season is the season of lights), and I can channel my inner Clark Griswold and light up the house like nobody's business. I can also play with out-of-focus circles of lights because there's just so many lights to make out-of-focus.

Bokeh is a photographic term used to describe the quality of the out-of-focus background produced by any given lens. You can get a thorough explanation here.

This photo was lit with a single strobe camera right. White reflector placed just off-camera to the left to add fill to the shadows. Silver reflector used to throw more reflected light onto the dark hat of the ceramic snowman (oops, I mean person of snow).

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Season of light

You gotta love a holiday that's marked by the lighting of lights.

Have a merry Christmas.

Little Christmas tree

One of many small lighted trees we have around our house. Absconded into my basement photo area and placed on a small light box. Sheet of light green Canson art paper (available at most hobby stores) used as a backdrop. Hand-held flash unit bounced off ceiling. Tree replaced on fireplace mantel. Wife is used to decorations disappearing for short periods of time.

Post processing (in Photoshop Elements 6.0): Orton processing applied. Vignetting and gaussian blur added. Photo of blurred golden lights layered over the photo and blended via "soft light" setting and 25% opacity. Layer over tree and bucket selected, feathered and deleted. Lens flare added to light bulbs. Adjusted brightness and contrast.

Hope this Christmas season is going well for you and yours.

Photo sightings: Digicamhelp.com is featuring my photo, “What to My Wondering Eyes Should Appear” on their home page for the next week or so. Check it out – the site offers a LOT of helpful articles about getting the most out of your digital camera.

Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Running around in holiday circles

It probably wouldn't surprise you to hear that we're greatly scaling back on the Christmas gifts this year. Sorry, economy. No can do. Do try to get by without us. kthxbai.

It doesn't mean that things are any less hectic at the old homestead. With a full contigent of kids and their significant others coming by in the days before and after the 25th, things will be hopping. But in a good way. Without so much attention paid to stuff this year, we'll have more space to focus on each other.

What a concept.

Photo: "Wall of Bokeh lights" background and Christmas ornament overlaid with lights of our main Christmas tree. Light source: Light box and reflector card. 135mm prime lens, f2.8 at 1/125 second, ISO 400. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Cast your bokeh to the wind

I’ve written about and displayed examples of bokeh here before. Bokeh refers to a lens’ quality in rendering out of focus points of light as circles. This is the time of year when we have a lot of little lights around the house – perfect for playing with bokeh shots. When I say a lot of lights, I mean a LOT – I’ll cover that in a future post.

To boost the bokeh-bilities, I built a bokeh background (I love alliteration). I started with a sheet of black foam board and a strand of 50 colored miniature lights. I randomly punched 50 holes in the foam board and inserted the light bulbs, similar to the old Lite-Brite toys when I was a kid (do they still have those?).

I’m now playing with placing a number of subjects in front of the bokeh board to see what happens. Stay tuned for more bokeh madness.

Click on this posts headline for image EXIF data. Click on picture to enlarge the bokeh dots. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

What to my wondering eyes should appear ...

I think that we could all probably use some more wonder in our daily diets. A serving of slack-jawed awe. A few more goose bumps. An occasional side dish of pure delight.

I know that I get faded and jaded by the ordinary-ness of life. I skip the AOL story about the never-before-seen sea creature that scientists just discovered and click on the story of baby naming trends in the wake of the presidential election. Sea creature. Big deal. Maybe we can call it the Barack-Osaurus.

For a few minutes, at least, I'd love to see the world as a two-year-old does, where practically everything is new. Where magic is commonplace. Where miracles occur on a regular basis. It's the same stuff that you and I see, but it's seen in a different way.

I'll work on it. December is a good month for doing that kind of thing.

Click on this post's headline for image EXIF data. Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.

Christmas brings color to a cold, gray world

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. Isaiah 9: 1a-2

Merry Christmas.