Lights! Camera! Robins!

I heard a commotion near my front door about a week ago. A series of shrill warbles that sounded like a robin. Upon investigation, I found that a female had built a nest in a yew bush right outside the door at about eye level. I presume the commotion was to announce the laying of a clutch of four eggs.



Not being one to waste an opportunity when it's handed to me, I've scouted various angles of view, planned placement of lights and cameras, and will document the robin family over the course of the next three or four weeks.

Mama's already gotten a taste of being in the limelight. The top picture looks as if it were taken in the late afternoon sun. Oh, no. Mid-day. Flash on a light stand ten feet away, zoomed and gelled to simulate late day sunlight and put a catchlight in mama's eye. White balance on camera adjusted to heighten the effect.

Mama took it all in stride. No prima robin she.



More to come.

Mmm ... nectar

We both struggled to get what we wanted. I wanted a picture and the hummingbird wanted food. The bird came back to the feeder again and again, despite my presence just five feet away. I'd fire off a shot and scare the little guy off. He'd come back for his meal and we'd repeat. After I got a few shots worth keeping, I let the bird eat his fill. Bounced flash fired by wireless trigger.

I got peace like a light bulb ...

These things were pretty popular back in the 1970s. Light bulbs that contained symbols, messages, logos, you name it. They didn't give off much light, but that wasn't the purpose. You could have bought one for a couple of bucks back then. They're going for around 20 dollars on eBay these days.

I got hold of a couple of oldies but goodies from a friend to see what I could do with them, photography-wise. This was the first thought off the top of my head. A composite photo. Shot the lit bulb in a lamp fixture, then took a shot of my hand holding the same bulb. Put 'em together in Photoshop.

Speaking of "off the top of my head" ... I have an idea ...

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

There be pirates

I headed up to the Port Washington Pirate Festival in Port Washington, Wisconsin last weekend. My main objective was to come back with a number of piratey portraits to feed my portfolio. I figured that anyone willing to go to the effort to turn themself into a pirate wouldn't mind posing for a couple of photos. I was right. I ran into one group of scallawags and wenches that called themselves the Sea Ratts. All I had to do was ask once to take a few photos and I became their official photographer for the weekend. Individual shots, couples, small groups, large group. I came away with shots for my portfolio and Getty Images, they had photos for their web site. Win-win.



I learned that many of the piratey participants traveled a regular summer circuit of festivals and fairs ranging from Rennaissance to Revolutionary War. One gentleman I spoke to said that since the economy tanked, having something like that to fall back on was not too bad of a way to make a living. He wouldn't go into detail about how they made money -- I presume some made money through selling concessions and others through performance fees, but I'm only speculating.



This was my favorite subject throughout the weekend. Meet the "Governor" of Port Washington. His job was to act alarmed and comically order his militia to repel the landing of a pirate vessel and subsequent invasion of his port, every two hours on the hour each day. I'd catch him between invasions, and he would always snap back into character as soon as he saw me and my camera. Lots of fun.

I've been meaning to turn my camera more often to the human landscape and this summer I plan to do more of it.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Avast me hearties!

The weekend is nearly here and I'm planning a trip to Port Washington, Wisconsin's Pirate Festival. Three days of pillage and plunder and folks dressed up as various scallawags and wenches. Some folks take this thing pretty seriously and travel from all over the Midwest to attend these types of things decked out in their piratey best. Who knew?

I don't plan on dressing as a pirate (I think I get enough points for having my birthday on September 19 -- International Talk like a Pirate Day). I do plan on catching as many piratey portraits as I can throughout the day on Saturday. Arrr!

Hope that whatever swashbuckling you have planned for the weekend turns out well.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Whirlybird

You're looking at photograph number 155 out of more than 200 that I took while trying to catch a maple seed pod in flight.

The seed pod, called a samara, is designed to carry the seed away from the parent tree so as not to compete for resources necessary for survival. I had the idea in my head for a few days to get a photograph of a falling samara while showing the path of its fall, and to do it all in-camera. Much easier thought than done.

The trick is to set the camera for a long exposure, then have a flash fire at the very end of the shot (this is called rear curtain synch). You then need just enough ambient light in the room to expose the fall of the object before the flash goes off. This is also easier thought than done.

I experimented with a range of exposures from 1/4 second to 2 full seconds, and settled on 1/2 second as sufficient to catch a blurry fall. I set the aperture at f/8 to increase depth of field and improve my chances of getting the samara in focus -- those babies are hard to steer.

Locked the focus on a target area on the tabletop, composed the shot against a black background, set the camera on auto timer, had a flash unit off to the side with a grid to direct a beam of light to where I wanted to catch the samara, had another flash with a grid and green gel to add some color to the backdrop. Did a few test shots using my hand to simulate a falling object. Once happy with the results, I started dropping seeds that I had gathered from my front yard.

At that point, the timing of the drop is everything. A lot of shots had nothing in them but a trail. Some had the samara at the very top of the frame, some had it going off the bottom. I got pretty good at hitting the target with the seeds. Over the course of dozens of seed drops, I discovered that you have to hold them in a certain way to make them twirl straight down. Only six shots out of more than two hundred were close enough to keep. The shot above was the best of those.

Hmmm. Wonder what else I can drop and photograph?

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Hello, Dewey

More from yesterday's early morning communing with nature. Hoping to capture some more signs of spring this weekend.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

I got sunshine on a cloudy day

I noticed yesterday that the jonquils and daffodils are about ready to bloom in my backyard. I made a note to get out there today and shoot the not-quite-there blossoms in the warm light of the early morning sun. Only one problem. It rained last night and the day started out gray.

So I manufactured my own sunshine. I put a gold diffusion dome on a flash unit, placed a 1/4 inch grid on top of that to create directional light, clamped the flash unit to a spare piece of 2x4 lumber, placed it on the ground about four feet to the right of the flowers and fired it with a wireless trigger on the camera.

Voila. Highlights a-plenty with a touch of backlight on the blossoms and enhanced color in the background. With a nice warm glow to boot.



Have you seen those photos in magazines that show the sunshine streaming in through a window? Chances are, that light was created by a gelled flash unit or two or three. I gotta do me that sometime.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Zoo photography can drive you batty

Cuz the light's seldom right. This cuddly little guy was hanging around the bat exhibit at the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin. The exhibit itself was dimly lit with red light, just like an old photographic darkroom. Shadowy winged creatures of the night hung from various objects in the glass enclosure.

I lit the puppy up with a hand held flash unit to the left side of the enclosure. If I had more time (and permission), I would have gridded the light to form a tighter spot of light on the bat then added a second flash with a red gel and fired it at the background to up the creepiness factor. Oh, well, maybe next time.



Ms. Honeybee was located in one of those beehive-behind-glass-in-a-dark-corner-of-the-room displays. Several hives were going at once, some with a ton of bees, some not so much. I shot a couple of the crowded hives with flash held at nearly a 90 degree angle to the glass for some nice sidelighting. One hive contained just a handful of bees, and I framed up a lone worker on the honeycomb.

To me, the shot speaks to the decreasing bee population worldwide and could be used to illustrate articles on the subject or environmental issues in general. At least I hope the photo editor who reviews my submission at Getty Images sees it that way.

One more selection of zoo shots coming up tomorrow to round out the week.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

At the zoo #2 - BYOL*

*Bring your own light. Cause they sure don't have enough light at most indoor zoo exhibits without having to crank your ISO to some unreasonable level.

Of course, anybody who has tried to make a flash picture of animals in glass houses knows that you get a nice bright flash of white reflected right in the middle of your picture when you try that. Two things you can do to fix that -- 1) move the camera so as to shoot through the glass at an angle or 2) use an off camera flash and move it at an angle to the glass while you shoot from straight on, or whatever angle you need to in order to get the shot you want.

Option #1 limits your field of view, so I chose #2.

Mr. Turtle was lit with a flash unit hand held by my wife to the left of the camera. A wireless trigger (which can be had for as little as $60) synched flash to shutter. The result is a flash photo that doesn't look so much like a flash photo. Same with Mr. Red Poison Dart Frog below.



Another so-dark-you-can-barely-see-these-guys exhibit. Again, flash held at an angle to the glass (about 45 degrees) at low power to give the camera a fighting chance at a picture.

Still had the ISO cranked up in order to catch some ambient light in the background so as not to be totally flash lit, but nowhere near as high as I would have without the flash.

A couple more flashy zoo pics to come.

Pictures from the Henry Vilas Zoo, Madison, Wisconsin. Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Winter light

It snowed last night. No surprise. It's the Midwest and it's late February. It happens.

I took advantage of the fresh blanket of white stuff to get out and do some shooting this morning. Other than a few small woodland critters, mine were the first footprints in this neck of the woods. Nice. Quiet. Just me and a light breeze.

Took some straight shots with available light. Then got out the flash, a stand, a couple of warming gels and a wireless trigger and set out to play with the possibilities.

I trekked into the middle of this trio of pines and set the light stand behind the middle tree. Set the camera to Incandescent white balance to turn things a tranquil blue. Erased the legs of the light stand and my footprints into the tree cluster in post.

More snowy magic to come.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

When life hands you ice ...

The web site for the Fish Creek Winter Festival promised a load of ice sculptures, which got my heart racing a bit. Door County is an artist community and I imagined that the folks there would be pretty fair hands at turning blocks of ice into spectacular works of art. Cool.

I specifically packed a couple of strobes, gels, and stands anticipating making some nicely lit twilight photos of carved ice in all its glory.

Only reality didn't quite match up with the pictures I had in my head.

I arrived on Friday evening looking for a visual feast of icy artistry. What I got was more like a late night drive through snack. I was only able to locate three ice sculptures that evening -- a chubby boat anchor (or maybe R2D2 on the Atkins diet), an ice cream cone-looking thingy with a club stuck inside and one that my wife thought was one of those tall fountains with a big stone ball in it. I mentioned that it was probably intended to be a martini glass with an olive, since the sculpture was situated in front of a business that sold liquor.



The next morning I discovered a roughly horse-shaped chunk of ice in front of a cafe. I asked the folks standing nearby if they knew whether the artist would come by and finish the piece. I was told that the work on all sculptures was finished and that they had been done by local high school students, most of whom had never previously done any ice sculpting. You don't say ...

Anyway, I made the best of the situation, lit a couple of the sculptures, skipped the fountain/martini because it was located under a streetlight that poured green light all over everything, shot the horse and moved on to bigger and better things.

As they say, when life hands you lemons and ice, make a Slurpee.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Sure, why not?

When you're standing in a field of ice chunks the size of dining room tables, and they're a crystal blue color, and the scenery is all other-worldly to start with, why not try to augment the feeling by pulling out a flash unit to see what happens?

I had brought a couple of lights and stands along with me on the trip to Door County, Wisconsin to photograph ice sculptures that were carved as part of the Fish Creek Winter Festival over the weekend. Those didn't pan out the way I had hoped (not many sculptures to choose from, and not a very high quality of art in my opinion, but that's for another blog post).

After I had shot a number of photos out on the ice in available light (see previous posts), and with the night closing in on the scene, I packed up and headed back to my car. Spying the bags of lights and stands in the back of the car, it hit me. Take a stand and a flash unit back out on the ice, dummy. So I did.

I set up a wireless trigger on a flash, placed a couple of warming gels over it and set the white balance on the camera to incandescent. I started by pointing the flash on the light stand directly at the ice chunks and firing away while walking around, but that wasn't doing it for me. It impressed the snot out of a bunch of people nearby, though. I then tried to backlight some of the more translucent ice with varying degrees of success. I finally took the flash unit off the stand and placed it inside some spaces in the ice and hoped the wireless signal would be able to pass through several feet of ice to set off the flash. Better.

As the daylight continued to fade, the gels on the flash created a warmer and pinker tone. I would have loved to have gotten a person in these photos, but by this time, the dozen or so folks that were present when I arrived had gone their way. And only posessing two hands, I did not bring a tripod along to go with the camera, flash unit, and light stand I had to carry to try some self portraits. Plus it was a bit treacherous walking around out there. Who would have thought that ice would be so ... icy?


Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

I've got cabin fever!

Got. To. Get. Out!

Had a great model shoot with Grant last evening. He posesses a face that can go from serious to silly/George Clooney to Gomer Pyle in a flash. He'll be using the shots for his work (serious and not) for ReelSEO.com; I'll be sending a selection to Getty Images for stock licensing.

Back to the cabin fever. You may note the lack of outdoorsy/naturey pictures on this blog of late. If you've been visiting here a while, you'll know that February has traditionally been a month in which the landscape pictures go away and shots taken on my dining room table and in my basement take over. It just happens.

Hopefully, a four-day weekend which starts tomorrow will rectify that situation a bit. I'm heading into the icebox way way up nort' to watch the norders cavort. Fish Creek Winter Festival. What's not to like about a festival that features events like the Toilet Seat Toss or the Bicycle Throw on frozen Green Bay?

More to come.

I've been blogged. Fotoblogia, a photography blog originating in Poland, selected a photo of mine to include in a listing of 15 inspirational winter pictures. Makes me want to get out and shoot even more now.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

The rose

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.
- W. Somerset Maugham

A single rose can be my garden ... a single friend, my world.
- Leo Buscaglia

Can anyone remember love? It's like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.
- Arthur Miller

A rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.
- Clive Bell

As someone who deals with a constant stream of strange activities going on in my mind, I can fully appreciate that last quotation. This photograph was inspired by signage seen in Macy's during the previous holiday season. I fully suspect that those signs were achieved through a combination of photography and computer illustration -- but I wanted to try to achieve a similar effect in-camera.

So ... off to my studio, which is a room in the basement. The setup for this shot took many hours over the course of several days. I set up a white seamless paper backdrop and a gridded strobe fitted with a red gel aimed at it. Fiddled with the flash intensity and distance to the backdrop until I was happy with the effect.

I attached a plastic flower to a light stand and used it as a stand-in for the rose that would eventually take its place. I set up a gridded strobe to light the flower from the left, set up a white foam board attached to yet another light stand just out of the frame to the right to bounce some light into the shadow side of the flower. Nice.

I did some timer-assisted self portraits to see if the crazy idea would work at all and discovered that all kinds of red and white light were spilling onto me from the two strobes. Argh. Not nice. Fiddled with the lights to try to solve the problem. Created new problems in the process. Gave up for a few days.

Came back several days later and re-set the lights in the original setup. Taped, clipped and balanced more sheets of foam board on yet more light stands and spare tripods to block excess light from spilling onto me. The final setup looked like a maze of light stands and foam boards, but I finally got a shot of myself in silhouette with a nicely exposed plastic yellow daisy.

Went out and bought roses. Kept one, gave the rest to my wife. Nice. Convinced a model to walk through the maze and stand in place. Three exposures. Done.

This picture is kinda like love -- simple yet complicated.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Snow, up close

A little pile o' snow, macro style. It's interesting how transparent snowflakes are. And they're awful tough to photograph. If they don't shatter into pieces upon landing, there's the chance that they'll melt before you can focus and shoot. Then there's lighting them so they actually show up. At this point, any measure of success I have in capturing snowflakes on camera is due to luck, not skill.

Happy Groundhog Day. Here's to an early spring!

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Getting flaky

I woke up Saturday morning and discovered that this fella and a few million of his buddies decided to drop by.

I put together my tried and true DIY macro photo setup (taped two 50mm f1.8 lenses together face-to-face, attached them to my camera along with a flash bracket and flash aimed just in front of the lens combo) and headed out to get a few shots of the guests.

I set up a mirror on my deck to collect some subjects, then moved in and fired away. The dark background is courtesy of the reflection of my camera. The blue tone was provided by setting the camera's white balance to incandescent. The flash (at 1/16 power) added just enough definition to the icy flakes.

Brrr. Nice.

Settings: ISO 100, f/16 @ 1/80. Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Love is in the air. Duck!

If anyone has an idea of what I was trying to say with this photo, kindly let me know, 'cause I sure don't.

Happy Friday.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Lonely hearts

Isn't that all any of us ask?

Still playing with Valentiney still life ideas. Helps to keep me occupied in the bitterly cold January of northern Illinois.

Good old box of Sweethearts candies on a light box with a gridded flash high and behind the subject.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Valentine take-out

Mmmm ... loooove.

Technical details: A coupla flashes, some red gel, a coupla grids, beaucoup reflectors. Mix well.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.