Katie

I spent the month of September shooting pictures for a lot of people. Nothing wrong with that, but I was kept so busy, I didn't have time to make any pictures for myself. I did get to go out this past Saturday and do some landscape shooting just for me. Didn't come back with too much worth keeping, but it was good to get out and play with possibilities.

One of the things that going out on Saturday helped with was a senior portrait session on Sunday. Once the fairly standard selection of senior picture poses were in the bag, I experimented with environmental portraits, and I'm pretty happy with the results.

Nearly every shot from the session is lit with flash, but in such a way as to blend in with the late day sunlight. Sometimes the flash was the key light with the sun adding an accent. Other times I let the sun be the main light while filling in the shadows with flash. Katie's mom is standing just to the right of the larger tree in the picture above, holding a flash unit aimed at her daughter which was fired with a wireless trigger. Had there been no flash, the right side of Katie's face would have been dark.



For the most part, this was straight-ahead, no diffusers, stark nekkid flash. There wasn't alot of choice because a diffuser or umbrella would have gotten blown away by pretty strong winds. But it worked.



Besides helping to balance the ambient sunlight, the flash adds a little catchlight in the eyes, a little sparkle, a little life. Nice.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

This and that

As one month ends and another begins, I go through the same thing -- looking through the photographs of the past month and opening a new folder in which to stash photographs yet to be taken.

I keep my pictures organized on my hard drive by month. Subfolders identify specific places and subjects that rose to prominence during that month. It may not be the most user-friendly way of keeping track of things, but one thing it does afford is a quick visual review of my photographic activity of any particular month.

June of 2010 was a busy one. Lots of storms rolled through this month. Today's photograph is of a storm cell that came through northern Illinois in early June. I was standing on the inflow side of the storm. Grass bent toward the cell as air was drawn into the system's convection engine.

The June '10 folder shows lots of places visited, lots of activity. Which is good.

For what it's worth, I'm taking about 1,500-1,700 photographs each month. Not all are kept. June saw about 450 keepers out of nearly 2,ooo clicks of the shutter. That means that about 80 percent of the pictures I take aren't worth seeing. But it doesn't mean that I'm wasting time and energy. Most of those photographs served as guides along the way to capturing the keepers. I am a constant chimper of the LCD screen on my camera. I shoot, look, quickly evaluate and try something else as necessary. Sometimes it's an exposure adjustment. Other times a slight change in position and framing. Or a change of lenses. Sometimes I scrap the idea all together and start an entirely new approach. Each click of the shutter gets me closer to producing the strongest possible image of the subject. Hopefully.

By the way, I had someone ask me if I posted the exposure information of my photographs anywhere and the answer is no ... and yes. I don't specifically post EXIF data, but Flickr does. It draws EXIF data from each picture I upload and posts it in conjunction with the image. If you're ever curious about the exact exposure and camera settings I used to get a particular shot on this blog, just click on the photograph. It will take you to the image's page on Flickr. Scroll down the right hand sidebar until you see "More Properties." Click the link and you'll get every piece of info recorded by the camera.

Hope your skies are sunny and clear as you head into the month of July. But then again, there's something to be said about those storms that occasionally roll through.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Framed

A long time ago, when I was a fledgling graphic designer and commercial illustrator, I landed a gig creating renderings of home designs for a local builder. Looking over the first set of rough drawings, the client said the houses looked good enough, but "you need to find a way to frame the subject to keep the viewer's eye from wandering off the page." We eventually settled on adding strategically placed tree limbs and other landscaping here and there to do the trick.

Taking a long walk on a long pier to get close to the Sturgeon Bay Canal lighthouse, I noticed the meandering overhead catwalk wrapped itself around the edges of the frame in an M.C. Escher-like configuration. Looked good to me. Plus, the Red Rule was calling.

I nestled the lighthouse just right of center -- I often try to imagine diagonal lines crossing the frame from the corners. I'll either place the subject along one of those diagonals, or put them in one of the four "V's" formed by the crossing lines. It's kind of a mashup of the rule of thirds and the golden mean. Weird but it works.

I finished it up with some High-pass post processing, which simultaneously increases and decreases contrast. Weird but it works, too. I'll explain it further sometime when I fully figure it out.

Until then , have a great weekend.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Magnolias

Just doing my part to add to the profusion of flower photos in the world. Magnolias in bloom, Batavia, Illinois.

I generally try to avoid photographing in the afternoon sun, but this shot had a couple of things going for it. One, the flowers were fabulous. Two, the sun was partially obscured by high hazy clouds, which helped to diffuse what would have otherwise been harsh light.

I moved to the shady side of the tree and caught some blooms backlit against the darker backdrop, helping them to stand out from the rest -- I also used a long lens at a wide aperture to make use of depth of field.

Every little bit helps.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

The moon moved me so I moved it

Some double exposures of the moon and the goings on around the Sturgeon Bay lighthouse. As I packed up to leave, a couple of gentlemen arrived to do some fishing. I was nearly back to my car when I looked out to see them at work (good work if you can get it) on the pier. I zoomed in on them and got a shot or two, then added the moon in post.



While the telephoto zoom compresses and flattens perspective, I like how the waters on the shore side of the pier are calm while the open water beyond tosses and churns. I also like how one guy chose to anchor his net on the pier. It was pretty windy that night.

Photoshop tip: If you have a good shot of the moon in the semi-dark sky, you can select it with the elliptical selection tool, copy then paste it into another photo. This automatically places the moon on its own layer. It will have the dark ring around it from your selection, but not to worry. Select "Lighten" from the layer options menu. Voila. The moon is now seamlessly blended into the picture. You can then adjust the opacity (which will control the brightness of the moon) to your taste. Flatten the image and save.

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.

Actually, I didn't want it to

Stop, that is. Great foggy/frosty mornings over the weekend. Hadda geddout and shoot. Saw the stop sign against a backdrop of white, and the red rule* called.

*Red rule: If you see red, shoot it! Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Have an original New Year, or What are you going to do with YOUR blank canvas?

For the past several years, my first blog post of the new year generally features optimistic anticipation of the 365 days to come and displays the first meaningful photo I've taken for the year. This year, the thing is, I have yet to take my first meaningful photograph (OK, aside from the quickie I set up to illustrate this post).

Not that I haven't toyed around with some shots, but so far, nothing has emerged that I can look at and say, "That's worth sharing with the world." For the most part, I've spent the last couple of weeks with family, enjoying the holidays and only occasionally taking time to think about photography-related stuff. Then I received a piece of mail on Flickr from someone who has been following my photos both there and here asking for some advice, which got me thinking some more.

So here's what I've thought about. Perhaps you can use some of it to inform your own picture taking, or maybe even apply it to other things in your life.

It's OK if you're not original, but do be yourself about it. It's true that there is nothing new under the sun. There are only about three dozen basic story plots, upon which all of the novels, plays and movies of the world are based. Every innovation of humankind has been or will be achieved by applying one of 40 basic principles. Dozens of hit songs over the years have been based, in whole or in part, on the same four-chord progression.

It doesn't matter what you're setting out to do. Most likely, it's already been done, and done remarkably well by someone else. Or maybe a thousand someone elses. So what to do? Go ahead and do it, but make it your own. Theoretically, there is no one just like you, so whatever you do, imbue it with your distinct personality and outlook on life.

The story is told of a budding photographer who is waiting while famed photojournalist James Natchwey, who has covered every major world conflict since 1981, is reviewing his portfolio. Natchwey silently and quickly flips through page after page of the studen't photos, which represent, up until that time, his life's work. When he reaches the last picture, he looks up at the student, who eagerly awaits the master's critique. "I'm afraid," Natchwey intones, "These pictures tell me nothing about you as a person." End of session.

Do your photos provide a glimpse of you as a person? The things you care about? How you feel about your subjects? If you can do that, then you will have accomplished something -- work that is unlike anyone else's.

And that's a good thing.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Bordering on winter

I'm usually not one to add borders or any other decorative elements to my pictures. I like to let the image stand on its own. But because of the white background of both this photo and the blog page, I decided to add a drop shadow to help define the photo's boundaries.

It also seems like we in the upper Midwestern US will cross the boundary into winter this week. Snow is in the forecast. Brace yourselves. Here we go again.

Have you ever thought you've figured out how to do something, then picked up some new information that makes you wonder how you ever did the things you thought you had figured out in the first place? I picked up a piece of Photoshop wisdom that has pretty much revolutionized how I do my post processing. Two pieces, actually, but I'll only cover one for now.

When adjusting levels, holding down the ALT key (on a PC -- I believe it's the Control key on a Mac) while moving the left and right sliders shows how much pure black or pure white is in your image. That made it very easy to know when the background of the photo above was sufficiently adjusted to white without adversely affecting anything else. Conversely, the combo of ALT plus the black slider helped me know when the pine needles and cones had maximum amount of definition without overdoing it. The result is an image with a very tasty amount of contrast

Up until now, I kept the sliders at the edges of where the histogram began to show image data. Visualizing the blacks and whites allows you compress the tonal range and add punch to any image. The above photo looks like it was taken in a studio under controlled lighting. In reality, it was taken outdoors on an overcast day following an overnight snowfall.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Getting my black and white on

I finished my first season as a gallery artiste recently. I've had several photographs hanging in an art gallery in Door County, Wisconsin since May of this year. A few brave souls even found it within themselves to part with some money to be able to take my work home with them.

The gallery is now closed for the season and it's time to start making plans for next year. I'm refining my black and white digital processing techniques to put a higher level of visual impact in my fine art photos.

Things I've learned so far (and didn't necessarily know going in to my first season as a b&w fine art photog):

Always convert color files to b&w. Yeah, I know digital cameras come with a b&w mode. Don't use it. Why?

Because back in the days of film (you remember those days, don't you?), serious b&w photographers would use color filters to translate what they saw in the chromatic world into an image comprised of shades of gray. They used red filters to darken the sky, yellow or orange filters to play up foliage and green filters to enhance skin tones. Blue filters? I don't know. Maybe if you were shooting someone wearing an Oakland A's uniform. Indoors.

Today, image editing programs like Photoshop allow you to run hundreds (nay, thousands) of possible color filter combinations over your color file before locking it in to b&w. You don't necessarily need to know the difference between what a yellow filter does as opposed to a red or green filter when converting a black and white image -- a couple of adjustment sliders will display an infinite number of variations -- just pick the one that looks good to you and you're good to go.

This image of gingko leaves was shot as a color RAW file. In Photoshop, the image was converted to black and white by way of two Hue & Saturation adjustment layers. One changed the color image to b&w, the other acted as the filter that enhanced tones. Below, you can see the difference that filtering makes.

On the left is a straight grayscale conversion of the color image file. On the right is the "filtered" version. The tones across the leaves are smoother and richer and there is more detail in the shadow areas.



I finished the photo at the top of this post by adding a slight Orton effect and then applying a green color filter at 25 percent strength to add a silver gelatin print effect to the image.

Can't wait to have another go at the gallery stuff.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Borrrrrn Freeeeee!

Karaoke cat sings his theme song.

A zoo is not the ideal place for animal photography. Of course, given the cost of a safari to Africa, they're the next best alternative for me.

Most zoos are designed for the living space of the creatures (at least the newer or recently refurbished ones are). The best ones integrate an "up close and personal" viewing experience. But even those don't seem to take into account the needs of photography. Glass with all manner of glare and reflections, wire mesh barriers, and living areas that, while they provide lots of room for the inhabitants, also increase the distance from the camera, making life challenging for a photographer.

Here are some tips on how I do things at the zoo.

Zoom, baby. At a minimum, I have a 200mm lens on at all times. I also use a 2x teleconverter to double the zoom. The tradeoff -- an exposure that's slow as molasses. The teleconverter takes away a stop of light from an already sluggish lens. This lion was shot at ISO 800 at an exposure of 1/1250 at a "wide open" effective f-stop of f8. This was OK for animals in the early morning sunlight. Animals in the shadows, not so much. The benefits -- you can get some great "in your face" shots that help disguise the fact that you were shooting in an artificial environment. You also can shoot right through mesh barriers without them registering in your shot. Just be sure you're shooting through an area of mesh that is not in direct sunlight. You also have a better chance of avoiding reflections when shooting through glass.

Patience is a virtue. Zoo animals have all the time in the world. You necessarily don't. But spend some time watching the critters. You might pick up a pattern of movement that you can use to your advantage. I watched a pair of lions pacing and positioned myself to catch them as they made their turns. I caught the young male above as he turned his head, making him apear as if he might be roaring or at least belting out his favorite song.

I also observe the rule of shooting early or late in the day. If I have to be there in the middle of the day, I'll try to catch animals in shady areas to avoid harsh shadows and the bluish light of the midday sun. I'll also change my white balance to "flash" or "cloudy" to warm up the tones in my shots.

Got your own zoo tips? Successes? Failures? Let me know.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Here comes the sun

And I say it's alright.

Gotta give a shout out to Sandy, who kindly steered the readers of her two blogs here yesterday. Thanks, all, for the kind words about my pictures. Glad you like.

I'm finishing off the series of foggy woods photos with this one taken at the Burnidge Forest Preserve in Kane County, Illinois, not too long after the shots posted yesterday and the day before. By then, the sun was quickly burning off the fog and making its presence known. Just a few minutes after taking this image, the magic had disappeared.

Fog presents an interesting challenge to a digital camera. The automatic focus mechanism struggles to latch onto something solid and the auto exposure can be fooled into making the fog too light and/or everything else too dark.

Tip: Use your camera's spot metering function (I don't use anything else) and place it on an object that you are featuring in your photo -- in the case of the last two photos, I used the trunk of the foreground tree and grass/reeds in the middle ground -- then push your shutter button halfway to lock the exposure, recompose, then click. Check to be sure you haven't blown out any large areas -- if your camera has a highlights feature for the LCD, which causes pure white areas in an image to flash, use it; it's a life saver. Make exposure adjustments if needed and try again. For the record, I metered on the area midway between the sunburst and the ground in the photo above.

By the way, do you have a song stuck in your head now? If not, maybe this will do the trick:

Pondering

Another in my series of self portraits taken of my back (which many would consider my best side).

The clouds were moody and so was I on the last day of June. Another month come and gone, a new one about to begin. Progress being made on my quest to build a viable photography business. Photo assignments coming in, but slower than I'd like.

Do those clouds suggest a coming storm or does the scant shade of blue showing through a narrow gap suggest that things are going to clear up shortly?

Time will tell.

Photo tips: Catching some fireworks this weekend? Don't forget your camera! I've posted 8 tips for better fireworks photos on my photography advice blog, Ready, Aim, Click.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Don't know much about bugs ...

… but I am getting better at photographing them. If Darth Vader could be a bug, he’d probably look a lot like this bug. This guy was found perched on a leaf at the Hawthorne Hills Nature Center in Elgin, Illinois. I can’t ID the species (still Googling), so if any entomologists are reading this, let me know what I’ve photographed here.

The weird thing is, when I’m out making bug pictures, I don’t know what I’ve photographed until I get home and begin to look through the images on the memory card. There is so much concentration involved in getting into position, not scaring the bug away (for some reason bugs get nervous when a huge object comes within a fraction of an inch away – go figure), then working to get the focus just right –the only way to adjust is to slowly move the camera closer or farther from the subject a smidgeon at a time – and then I’m only concentrating on the bug’s eyes – if I have them in focus, then I figure the rest of the picture follows. All I know at the time is that I’ve got some good images of bug eyes. I have no idea what the rest of the bug looks like until I study my shots later.

Bug photo tip: it’s very tempting to shoot down at a bug. Don’t do it if you can help it. Do whatever you can to come at the bug from the side (I look for insects on foliage that’s between waist and shoulder height to make the task easier). For one thing, coming in from the side is less scary for the bug (they have feelings too, you know), the second thing is that you’ll get a nice profile shot with the subject separated from whatever it’s perched upon.

Making the ranks Chase Jarvis reports on one organization’s attempt to ascertain the top 20 photography blogs on the interwebs. He links to the organization's site which compiled the rankings along with various Top 50 lists in twenty metrics-related categories.

Interesting that Points of Light cracks the Top 50 numbers-wise (but is not listed) in seven of the twenty categories. Makes me wonder how they categorized photography blogs and how accurate the counters are (both theirs and mine).

At any rate, there are some very good photo blogs listed, many that I visit on occasion. Check them out.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Sweating the small stuff

There's an alternate universe right under our noses that doesn't often get our attention. Yeah, there's the bigness of outer space. As Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe put it,

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

But space goes on infinitely in both directions. If you turn in the opposite way, you encounter a world of bigness on a small scale. Fantastic, exotic creatures and landscapes are everywhere, disguised as ordinary plants and insects.

I've been messing about with macro photography over the past week and had some limited success with using closeup filters on a lens zoomed at 200mm. But that's just peanuts compared to what I came up with yesterday. Lens reversal. I had experimented with it before and gotten some OK results, but abandoned it because it's tough to use the technique in available light.

Yesterday the thought occurred to me to combine lens reversal with flash. So ... I put a 50mm prime lens on my Nikon DSLR, then placed another 50mm prime lens on the first lens with the rear element facing out then taped the lenses securely together. A half-inch area now becomes a 10 megapixel image, with sharpness across nearly the entire image plane.

I attached a flash, outfitted with a reflector and diffuser, onto a bracket grip, then oriented everything to rain soft light down toward the end of the lens, which must be placed a fraction of an inch from the subject (which is why shooting available light is so tough -- the lens blocks most of the light). I opened the reversed lens to full aperture and set the normally mounted lens to f/16. Shutter speed was dialed to to 1/125th, camera set to ISO 400 and I set off to explore the world of small.

This photo was taken while walking through a local forest preserve. The bug was standing on the tassels of some grass. I moved in with the camera very slowly and fired as the bug's head came into focus. If anyone can help me ID this insect (and subsequent insects yet to be posted) I'd appreciate it.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Make a wish

This shot was tacked onto the end of a photo session. I had just finished some family backlit/shade poses when inspiration hit as I spied some dandelions close by. Not just little run-of-the-mill dandelion seed heads, but big huge puffy ones, ripe and ready to fly.

I don't normally advocate shooting in open sunlight at midday (or even propagating the spread of pesky weeds) but this was too good to pass up. I knew that the only way to capture the flying tufts would be in bright sunlight against a shaded background. A willing volunteer provided the wind power. Post processing with shadow lightening helped cut the contrast to an acceptable level.

This is definitely something I have to include for every family portrait shoot from now on. Or maybe soap bubbles. Yeah, bubbles. Note to self: Buy small bottles of bubbles to keep in camera bag.

If you try this at home, use a long lens/zoom in. Set your aperture wide open to throw the background out of focus, which will also increase the shutter speed to help freeze the action, although I like the slight motion blur of the seeds in this shot. Then make a wish.

It just might come true.

Working on that smile

One of the things I'm struggling with at the moment is deciding whether to mix my personal photos on this blog with my professional photos. When I first started Points of Light four years ago this month, there was no issue mixing professional shots with my personal shots. There were no professional shots at that time. I was shooting for the pure enjoyment of learning and improving my craft.

I've gotten to the point where people are willing to part with some money to have me do my thing. On one hand, it's a different type of photography than shooting whatever happens to interest me at the moment. On the other hand, it's a part of my life as a photographer. I have another blog that's strictly business. Should I also have one that strictly personal?



After seeing how photos of Benjamin and his mom, Melissa turned out, I couldn't resist the urge to post them here. Melissa was part of a quartet of longtime female friends who had gone their separate ways to begin families. They decided to reunite for a weekend in Chicago earlier this month and searched for a local photographer to take some portraits of the group and individual mommy/baby combos (thanks, Google!).

On the morning of the shoot, little Benjamin was not feeling well and could only manage a worried looking scowl the entire time the other babies were smiling for the camera. I offered to return after Benjamin was feeling well again to do some retakes. These photos are some of the the results of that session.

Benjamin has a new set of chompers and likes to rub the lowers against the uppers, hence the slightly off kilter alignment of teeth in the top photo. It didn't diminish his cuteness -- or his sparkly eyes.



These photos were shot using the "magic" setting on my camera. Okay, my camera doesn't have a "magic" setting. I have to set it myself. If you're shooting portraits, try these -- aperture priority set at the lowest number setting for shallow depth of field to throw the background out of focus; medium zoom (I used 35mm, which is equivalent to about 55mm given my camera's sensor size); placed subjects in the shade. If I allowed any sun in the shot, I made sure it was either behind or to the side of the subject. I gave the exposure a +1 compensation, focused on the subject's eyes and fired away. And I made sure to keep an eye on the background and repositioned myself as necessary to minimize the distractions that always lurk there.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

The Bean. In the rain. Yesterday.

I stayed up way past my regular bedtime last night to photograph the Roosevelt University Jazz Ensemble at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago (the pictures are still sleeping in my camera). I budgeted an hour and a half to two hours to get downtown from Elgin since I was heading in during rush hour. I got there in a little over an hour. Amazing.

That left me with an extra hour to kill, so I headed over to Millennium Park to photograph the Cloud Gate sculpture, aka The Bean before heading over to the jazz club. The day was cloudy and misty, and I hoped that I could make the best of the atmosphere. Even with the overcast sky, the difference in brightness between the sky and buildings/Bean was too much -- exposing The Bean properly turned patches of the sky completely white. Exposing the sky properly turned The Bean too dark.

I had just finished writing an article this week for Digicamhelp that deals with how to solve the problem (it will be posted in a week or so -- look for it or subscribe to the site's RSS feed). I decided to take my own advice. I switched the camera to RAW format (this technique works with JPEGs, just not as well) and exposed for the sky. Afterward, you can adjust the dark areas with the Shadows and Highlight feature of photo editing programs like Photoshop. Free web-based editing programs like Picasa and Picnik also have this feature that can be used to rescue muddy shadows. Shoot at the lowest ISO rating as you can when you do this; it cuts down on digital noise (graininess) in the final image.

I took this photo a step farther and processed the RAW file into three JPEG files -- one at the same exposure, one at one stop brighter and one at two stops brighter and imported them into Photomatix 3.1, which blended the exposures together to get the result you see above. Photomatix is available as a free download, although the free version places watermarks of the name onto the finished image. A downloadable "key" is available for $99 which disables the watermark.

More of the Bean and my night of Jazz to come.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

A word about lighting hardware

I spent some time yesterday working on my studio lighting techniques. The only problem is that I don't currently own any studio lights. Up until the last few months, I've been a natural light kind of a guy. I've had a few still life photos rejected by iStock because they weren't up to par with photos taken with a bank of lights and soft boxes. Ok, fine.

I came across the blog of a pro photographer who uses some unorthodox (and cheap) lighting methods. He also shoots for some big time clients. And his photos are good. I'm sold.

One trick - he frequents that well-known photography supply store, Home Depot, where he picked up a couple of 4-foot fluorescent light fixtures and some daylight-balanced tubes. Instant studio lights. I did the same, and got a two-light fixture for about nine bucks plus tubes.

For this shot, I set up the fixture vertically to the camera right and took some test shots. The fixture lit the antique camera well (a Kodak Brownie Box Camera from about 1910), but the twin tubes created two streaks of light in the camera's lens, which I found distracting. I have a round five-way reflector (you can get one for as little as $50 at a camera shop that carries them) in which one of the ways is white translucent. I placed that in front of the light fixture to ty to soften the light. Perfect.

A piece of white foam board to the camera's left reflected some light into the shadow side and a flash unit bounced off the ceiling rounded out the lighting for this shot, which is very nearly SOOC (straight out of camera). Just a very small amount of levels adjustment and cleaning up some dust specks on the mirror was all that was needed.

I'll probably be heading to the Photo Home Depot soon for another fixture. Next step, portraits.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

You know you're getting cabin fever when ...

… the road salt stains on your car remind you of alien worlds in space.

Today’s photo tip from the backwater of the interwebs, designed to improve your flash photography:

Snap whatever reddened soured the cap patch also disseminating the reddened feat nervy - this module enable you to intend a inferior disagreeable winkle gist that whatever flashes yield images with. I aforementioned this digit as it pushes the reddened discover from your winkle in digit directions which crapper advance to a more modify reddened kinda than meet disseminating it - a lowercase more sophisticated.

Translation: Use a white card to bounce your camera’s onboard flash off the ceiling.

But wait, there’s more.

Click on picture to enlarge. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.