Strobist: Nuked with one Vivitar 285HV at 1/16 power placed slightly behind and level with the flower about 3 feet away. Sharpened slightly in photoshop, and fixed the background. It was a velour type material and the light raked it badly.
This was mostly an experiment to try to get the best focus and sharpness out of my kit lens. I’ve been struggling with finding the sweet spot, and I realized that I’m going to have to do a little sharpening in PS to get the results I’m looking for.
Given that I managed to get back into the 365days thing, I thought I would do a more arty type self-portrait.
I’m sitting on the floor with black foam-core behind me. I have one Vivitar 385HV strobe shooting at 1/16 power through a snoot a bit in front of and to the right of the camera, mounted about 4.5 feet high. I did some PS work to get rid of blemishes and try to tone down the shine. I tried using a reflector to bounce light back at me to give me some separation from the background, but either I couldn’t get the angle right, or I really need another light/flash in order to accomplish this.
Yesterday, I suddenly remembered that I have a Canon Elan film SLR around the house. I dug it out and lo and behold there is a 28-90mm lens on it. A kit lens sure, but it’s another lens I can use for my Rebel.
Then today, I was cleaning out my bookshelves and…what’s this I found? Oh, it’s Adobe Photoshop CS2! Given that I was running PS 6 (and CS2 is equivalent to 9.0 I believe) this was a spectacular find. I can only think that I bought it either right before or right after we moved two years ago and promptly tucked it away and forgot about it. And earlier I was bemoaning not having the new healing brush, among other things.
To put the cherry on top, my daughter found $20 in the back yard. Tomorrow maybe I should play the lottery.
I got my strobist gear and I’m already hooked! Here are the two best results from shooting today:
Unfortunately, I managed to amputate a toe on the first one, and I think the lighting works better on the second one. If I could have the first one better composed and with the lighting of the second, I would be thrilled. Overall, I’m very happy with the results and can’t wait to see what I can do with this new gear and information.
Here’s the lighting info: One Vivitar 285HV set at 1/16th power, ceiling height about 6 feet in front and roughly 30 degrees to my left (to the right of the camera). Reflector on my right but not sure it was positioned correctly to bounce enough light back. I wish I had more time to play today, but alas, the in-laws are coming for dinner, so the house must be attended to.
According to the UPS tracker, my Strobist gear I bought from MPEX should be arriving sometime today. It got on the truck at about 7 am. Unfortunately it’s garbage day today, so every time I hear a big sounding truck coming down the street I’m jumping up to check to see if it’s brown and boxy. Given that I have children to pick up from school in a few hours, I want it to get here so I can play! I already have an idea of what I want to try. For my sanity’s sake, lets hope everything works perfectly out of the box.
Disappointingly, it’s not here yet at 1:30 pm. I guess whenever I do get it I’ll have more time to play with it tomorrow. I hope it actually gets here today, at least once before I’ve had an item that was marked “out for delivery” and it didn’t show up until the following day.
Sweet, I got my first of three orders delivered. This may be the least exciting, but it’s definitely the most interesting looking one. It’s my new Gorillapod! I do not have steady hands AT ALL, so this is going to be a handy little addition to my gear. In fact, most of the pictures that I take I wind up having to, at the least, use a tripod and sometimes I have to actually use the timer. It’s also one of those things that the more you try to correct for it the worse it gets, so anything to help steady the camera is a plus in my book.
The last few days have been a frenzy of soaking up knowledge about photography. At times like these my obsessive nature comes out and I get that lazer-beam focus on whatever I’m learning about, and it’s easy to exclude nearly everything else, including eating. I keep checking on when my little softbox kit is getting here and my strobist equipment. I have a feeling that I’ll be adding a second (and a third) strobe in no time.
Unfortunately, I’m starting to realize the utter lack of space I have for this little hobby of mine. Taking pictures of anything larger than a breadbox means a lot of furniture moving (and then returning to its place). Efficient it isn’t, but it gets the job done. I’m fairly certain I’m going to have to make a backdrop stand soon as well. The color of our walls is an earthy green-taupe color. Meaning I have to constantly correct for the resulting pallor.
Tried playing around with lighting a bit yesterday and took this self-portrait:
I’m not thrilled with it, in fact I can point out several things wrong with it (and the model, but that’s another story). I wasn’t using any fancy equipment, in fact it was the brightest room in the house (which means that it wasn’t bright at all, even though the sun was out) and it was a poor-man’s lighting system using a desk lamp and an aluminum baking pan as a reflector. I ordered mini-studio kit from Amazon and a Strobist kit from MPEX, so hopefully the next attempt won’t be so frustrating.
I’m Amy and I’m an amateur photographer.
Taking pictures caught my interest early on. I would get as creative as possible with my first camera, a Kodak Instamatic that actually used flashbulbs. The technical side of photography however, caught my interest fairly recently. I use a Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT SLR, usually with the kit lens, but I also have a 75-300 mm telephoto lens that I use on occasion. In the past year or so I’ve been trying to learn more about the technical aspects of photography, eventually getting to the point where shooting in manual mode is more rewarding than the old “point-and-click” method.
I recently discovered Strobist, and with money yet unspent from my birthday in February, I bought myself some gear. My hope is that my photos will reach the next level. I’m ready to make photography a serious hobby, and my greatest delight in life is learning (and mastering) new things.
Hopefully you enjoy some of the images that I share with you. Most are “safe” as far as subject matter and poses, but I’m looking to push the envelope and see how creative I can become.
The photos on this blog are my favorites, if you would like to see more, my photostream can be viewed on Flickr, username ‘headcase“.
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