August 18th, 2010
I recently bought two books – both by Joe McNally. First I finished reading ‘The Moment It Clicks’ non-stop in a few days. And then immediately ordered ‘The Hot Shoe Diaries’. Had to go on a trip after reading three quarters of it (and I still am on the trip as I write this), but ran out of space in my bags to carry it (darn airline baggage fees). Not coincidentally, I started reading the strobist blogs as well.
Its hard to stop reading their works. Well, if I can’t read more of what they have to write, maybe I can put some of it into practice. So, here’s my little foray into the world of exploiting the puny hot shoe lights a little better.
Note: All images in this post are straight out of camera (shooting RAW + jpeg) with no adjustments. Only resized to post here. Can’t wait to get home to a calibrated monitor and real photo software.
First is a simple shot of my daughter with the grandpa. Well, the small hot shoe flashes would produce harsh shadows. But I wanted soft light to light them entirely, like the one that comes from big windows, or big soft boxes. but still have some directional quality. So, out comes a white bed sheet, taped to the wall on camera left. One SB 800 with its dome diffuser on it sits on a makeshift stand behind the sheet in SU-4 mode (optical slave). An old SB 28 sits atop the camera wearing Lumiquest 80-20 modifier to send most of the light on to white ceiling. Can’t wait to go home and look at it on my calibrated monitor and process the raw file in Capture NX, but I think I am liking the result.
Next, I tried gel’ing a bit. The weather here in Louisiana is mostly cloudy, right now in August, with thunderstorms. Especially today. With ambient light, it would be mostly flat and blue, not to mention slow shutter speeds with wind blurring the objects. With a gel that comes with SB800 light, its a bit more interesting. Manually zoomed the flash to the max (105mm setting). Used Commander mode on the D300s with the single remote SB800 on TTL and on camera’s puny light a stop below it to fill in some shadows. Tried to “create” the warmth of sunset light with extreme angle in these shots, just for kicks. The frog shot actually was especially boring without the contrast b/w orange light and blue ambient in the reflections on water.
Tags: Hot Shoe Flash
Posted in Photography | No Comments »
August 9th, 2010
After plans to go to another place fizzled out, a quick drive to nearby Rancho San Antonio was fun. Its such a nice place to just walk around and be surrounded by nature.
Here’s a few images from this evening.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
July 12th, 2010
These are from a shoot for actor headshots last weekend. Amit Sharma is an aspiring actor whose brilliant performance I had watched when photographing Naatak’s “Final Solutions” play. He urgently needed headshots within a week and we tried to work around the July 4th long weekend. Our limited time got cut short even more due to the long weekend traffic. Nevertheless, we made the best of the situation.
We tried about eight different setups to get some variety. Here’s a few that came out to our liking.
Tags: Headshot
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
June 2nd, 2010
Taking portraits at home has the advantage of, well, feeling at home. After a few considerations, I decided to have the session in the living room next to french doors and use the natural ‘window light’.
Window light provides a beautiful setting for individual portraits. All you need is a window and daylight, but not direct Sunlight shining through. Often the shadow side of the person is darker than desired. Therefore, a simple reflector for fill is required. I used a 2′ x 4′ white foam core (bought at local Home Depot), hand held by my wife.
Depending on how bright the light is from the window, you may have to bump up the ISO on the camera. I found myself using about ISO 200 most of the time, increasing it to ISO 400 for some shots. I set manual exposure in the beginning and confirmed with the RGB histogram on camera LCD. Because of low shutter speeds with a long lens, I used a tripod.
Here’s a few of my favorites from the session.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
April 17th, 2010
Late Friday afternoon, my friend and I decided to take a quick walk through the local Ulistac Natural Area. We had spotted some Poppy flowers showing up. Although my regular camera, D200, was out for service, I decided to join him with my old D70.
Changing cameras has its moments of agony, especially if one were to take a step back in terms of the ease of use. D200 has so many settings available via control buttons and dials without having to go through the menus. I rarely use the menus on the D200; wireless flash controls being the exception.
Nevertheless, we enjoyed the walk through Ulistac and saw some beautiful Poppies. We also saw some little creatures flying or crawling around. The little red bug was actually afraid of my camera’s shutter clicks. It kept going to the other side of the grass blade after every few clicks. After some shots, I decided to let it enjoy its sunset ride without the camera noise.
Here’s a collection of my favorites from yesterday.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 29th, 2010
Mt. Diablo State Park is a beautiful spot to visit in the San Francisco bay area. It offers a scenic drive and great vistas from the peak. On a clear day you could see the Golden Gate bridge in the distance. Recent trip to the spot with couple of good friends was on one such clear day. Although we didn’t find any wild flowers, we did find beautiful views from up there.
Here are a few favorites from the trip. The wind was a killer for getting a sharp image, especially through a long lens. At times I found myself using the shutter release cord along with high speed continuous shooting mode, in the hopes of getting one of them reasonably sharp. That worked. In fact, it worked better than using the mirror lock up and trying to time the lulls in the wind.
Before we left we came across some members of Mount Diablo Astronomical Society who were out there in mass with telescopes of all sizes. They let us not only view the moon (wasn’t dark enough yet for stars when we had to leave) but also let us attach our dslr’s to one of their telescopes for a picture of the moon.
I will have to go back up there another time to catch wild flowers in bloom. Maybe next season.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 12th, 2010
Went to the nearby Coyote Hills Regional Park in Fremont with a couple of friends. This time we decided we’ll take off early on a weekday and be back in time to go to work. As tempting as it was to keep shooting, we forced ourselves to be back in time so we don’t miss our 10am meetings. The park has interesting photo opportunities for birds, some landscape and also flowers.
We will have to go back there again soon. Here are some images from the place:
Tags: Flower, Nikon D200, Park
Posted in Photography | 3 Comments »
March 7th, 2010
Ulistac Natural Area is so close to home that it is hard to go to most places from home without passing by it. Late Saturday afternoon my daughter and I were figuring out what to do next and we hit upon the idea of walking in Ulistac. It had been a while, and the rains had stopped. My 6 year old sometimes likes to walk around with a camera, just like me. My 7+ years old digital point-and-shoot camera is hers to keep.
While there wasn’t much new to feast on for the camera, we walked around and exercised our photo curiosity for a while. It was still very cloudy. Here are a few of my favorites. And then my favorites of her photos as well.
My Favorites:
Favorites from daughter’s photos:
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
February 15th, 2010
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
January 1st, 2010
Just a quick collection of my favorite images from 2009. I hadn’t been on any photo trips, something I will have to change for 2010. But, there were some opportunities to try somethings that were new to me, like the executive and Mom-to-be portraits. Looking back at the year’s images gives me some ideas for something new to try next year.
I hope you enjoy viewing my 2009 favorite images collection.
Outdoor/Nature:
People/Events:
Posted in Photography | 1 Comment »
