Christmas card photos

I have been waiting a while to post this information about our Christmas card photos. We put our tree up two days after Thanksgiving, and the next day I did our photos with baby in front of the tree. I thought about for a moment but realized, it would be easy to light.
I needed two lights sources- one for the tree behind baby, and one for baby herself.

The strobe on camera left was a bounce umbrella at 1/2 power. Looking back I should have raised that to full power just to see the difference.

The strobe on camera right was a shoot through umbrella on camera right for lighting baby, 1/4 or 1/8 power depending on the lens used. I used my 17-40 f/4 and my 50mm f/1.8 as different depths of focus were attempted.

Over all I was pretty pleased with the results. Next year I am gonna try something different, just not sure what yet!

Fun with long exposures

Fun with long exposures
Originally uploaded by Phil Romans

So it has been raining here for about four days straight. A classic Nor'easter. It stopped raining finally this morning. Perfect time to head out for some waterfall photos along the Gunpowder. I knew the side streams would be raging and the overcast clouds would provide perfect shading for longer exposures.
At last second, I grabbed my strobe- thinking I could practice some 'painting' of objects with strobing on it. I really wasn't sure what I could do, but better to have it than not.

I tried the one idea and it failed horribly, painting a rock with strobe light. Then I got this idea to light my face with the strobe. I set the exposure at 2.5 seconds, time delayed trigger. The shutter opened and I popped the strobe two/three times at 1/4 power- hence the blur of my hands.

The long exposure allowed the stream flow to even out... and the strobe light on my face highlighted me. Kind of cool.

New DIY grid spot

About a year ago I had made a grid spot based on a David Hobby suggestion- black straws are free. I spent a couple weeks collecting free clean black straws based on this theory... Cutting all the straws up was a pain but I finally glued it all up, and had at it. It worked great. I even used the existing half side of Velcro on my strobe to help keep the grid spot on. (also used to help keep gels on for common lighting conditions)

Then about two months ago, the straws started to drop out. Seems the glue I had used was not consistently applied.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

I had liked the used of this device and wanted to NOT spend a bucket load on other devices like the Honl line. Good products but not good for my wallet. I tried to find coroplast at local hobby stores, no luck, and at office supply stores, also no luck. Yikes.

Then I located a store on line via Amazon. However my buddy John pointed me to a cheaper option from Beacon Graphics. Alright! I could get several sheets of coroplast for less than the cost of one Honl grid spot. I can get more cardboard for free and the gaffers tape I have will last forever.

I got the shipment Monday and had some time this evening to whip up the new version.

Great!

I even used an old FedEx express shipping box to surround the new grids. It was WAY much easier to put together. I followed, roughly, the instructions I found at the DIY Photography site. The resulting test shots were telling.


My old straw based grid spot:

My new coroplast based grid spot:

Seems the channels of the coroplast are more squared and the resulting pattern is a reflection of that. No HUGE problem, but something to be aware of when snapping.

I think I am also going to make a shorter grid spot. The current one is 2 inches deep from front of the grid to the back. The next one is either going to be 1 inch or less. Maybe... lets see how much use this one gets first. Any longer and it just becomes a snoot.

Speedlite

When I finally decided to get a flash for photography, I broke a barrier I had set for myself. I was very happy with just available light. I didn't have to do much else other than checking to see the image was bright enough. Even that could have been tweaked slightly. I was trying to get away with not doing much with as little as possible. Often that meant cranking up the ISO to a high, and usually unacceptable, level.

The break through was seeing what people were able to do with their lighting. Photos with additional light was entirely different. With and without photos of extra light made me a believer. Even short movie clips of people showing what they could do with extra light finally convinced me. Available light was not enough, and most likely would never be. I had to come to that conclusion.