Category Archives: Photography

Related to Photography and taking or dealing with pictures.

Out at a Horse Farm

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 Sunset on the Farm 

Well, I swear that it is a horse farm. I didn’t really get any pictures of horses that I liked. Oh, well. I was trying to get pictures of the horses when I missed the only real color to the sky. This is all that was left when I finally turned around. Oops.

Once the sun was down we turned to playing around. First up was taking pictures of the moon. This turned out well. The clouds were moving, so they give a spooky / erie feel to the picture.

Erie Moon 

I need a farm house or something below it. Maybe I should try to combine the two shots that you see here. Well, after that we pulled out the speedlights. I first tried to light someone with hard light from both sides, and that did’t quite work. Next up, I had the voice of Hagrid in my head saying “You’re a wizzard Harry.” I was trying to go for the two balls of light in my hands look. I wish we were a little wider, as the light actually gets cut off at the edge of the picture.

Light Orbs

MN Strobist Meet Up

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This Sunday I went to a MN Strobist meet up event. The MN Strobist group is a flickr group that uses small (usually) flashes to light their pictures. This was the first meet up event that I have attended. This event was held at the Jackson Street Roundhouse. It’s a train museum, and I had no idea it was here. I definitely need to bring my kids back here. There are a ton of cars that you can walk through, and see what life on the train would have been like.¬† There are also a bunch of toy train tables to entertain kids if they get bored and you want to wander.

MN Strobist Meetup

Looked like a movie set!

The event was very interesting. I am not sure what I expected, but it was very loose. The location was organized, but once there you are on your own. You need your own equipment, your own vision, and the gumption to grab a model and start taking pictures.

I was a little overwhelmed. I have been using my single flash a little bit, but dropping into an unfamiliar location and coming up with a place to shoot and an idea in my head of what to do was difficult for me. I mostly wandered around and watched others. There are some very good shooters here. There are professional studio photographers, location photographers, and other amateurs here. I was one of the few rookies Sunday.

Michael Breeden on Train

In a sleeping berth.

It seems like a good group. Many people knew each other and formed up little groups right away. Like in most of these situations I don’t tend to jump right in. I am a little more reserved, but I did meet and talk to several people. I did set up a shoot with Jorge Rimblas, and globbed on to a shoot that Ben and Martin had set up. Martin helped me out quite a bit, so thanks! My pictures from that shoot didn’t turn out unfortunately. I really need to pay more attention to the expressions on the model faces, and be more prepared and willing to direct. The pictures of Michael here were from the setup that Jorge and I did.

Michael Breeden

Head shot for Michael

My pictures are definitely not up to what some of the others shot, but I really shouldn’t let that get me down. It seems like many of these people have been to a lot of these things and have quite a bit of experience setting up their equipment. I have a lot to learn, but there seems to be people there that will help me out, especially if I step up and ask.

I’ll be back.

Check out the MN Strobist group on flickr for more of the pictures from the day.

The Look

Available light shot taken while others were working.

Hot Shoe Diaries Review

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Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNallyI am finally finished reading my copy of the Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally. If you want to check out what Joe had to say, here are links to a couple posts from his blog. But don’t forget to come back 🙂

Why did it take so long? Is it that dry? Far from it. It is an awsome book. Joe manages to work in quotes from several movies, including the Princess Bride. That was funny. I like his style of writeing. It might not be for everyone. Joe writes just like I imagine him talking, if he was talking to me. Just one photographer who has been around the block (or globe, really) to another photographer who wants to know more about this whole lighting thing. It feels very personal. You get to step into the shoes and life of someone who has taken shots with 47 Speedlights, or maybe it was 108. Not sure.

The book doesn’t really have seperate chapters per say. Some of the content is grouped into chapters, but the content is really one shoot. So it feels like every 2-4 pages is another chapter. This is good and bad. It’s great because I can read little bits at a time. I can read about one shoot while waiting for my kids to finish something. I can read about another shoot just before bed. You never have to stop in the middle of one of thes sections, because you only ever have a page or so to go. That’s where it got me. I never sat down with the intention of reading the whole thing, or 40 pages at a time. I just read bits and pieces every once in a while. Now that it’s done though, I wish there was more. I will probably start over with the location shoots again. I did with his previous book The Moment it Clicks too.

I found myself stairing at the pictures and rereading the text, trying to figure out where all the lights were hidden. He calls it a game of inches. Some of the lights are set up to just give that extra little flick of light that most wouldn’t notice, but taken all together, make for extrodianary images. I would find myself tyring to figure out the sight lines for the triggers too. How did he manage to fire that SB900 that is outside shooting through the window? With two extension cords from the hotshoe to a MU800 bounced off a reflector? What? Really?

As I am starting to get more and more into using little flashes, I am realizing just how amazing his pictures are. The lighting diagrams that he has in his head are astonishing. How he can look at a scene and know how to light it is still beyond me. Never mind the pulling it off. And yet it tells you how to do it. It’s all there. You just have to go out and give it a try yourself.

Thanks Joe. The book is great. I learned a lot, and expect to learn more as I reread it. I hope you sell a truckload. (To other non photographers that won’t try to put this knowledge to use 😉

Just Visiting Stone Arch Bridge

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Just Visiting Stone Arch

The last of the Just Visiting pictures. This one gets a full view of the stone arch bridge in the background. A minus 2.0 EV and a 2.5 sec exposure at f/8 brought out the color of the lights on the bridge/water.

I had my camera on a tripod, and was triggering on a cord holding my SB800 with diffuser on, out to the right. Next time I am going to bring the umbrella and see if I can get better light.

Had to do some white balance/color correction to remove a lot of blue color in the concrete from the Guthrie’s lighting in Aperture.

Just Visiting Sunset

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Just Visiting Sunset 

Here is another of the “just visiting” shots of my father. This one was less about the buildings and more about the sunset. This image was underexposed -3EV to really bring out the sky. The colors were all there, but I did pull them up a bit in Aperture. I then hit him with the flash, a SB800 with the diffuser.

Now, after getting into Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries a bit, I wish I had tried something that he has done, which is to take the diffuser off and zoom in the flash. Maybe try a snoot. Something that would focus the light on the person and control the amount of light that hits the railing, which is kind of ugly.

Happy Earth Day

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I set out this morning to take this picture, but forgot that they would be closed. Didn’t look very good. Took these a little while before posting them this evening. I started with my 50mm f/1.8, but ended up using the 70-200 f/2.8 racked out to 200. The working distance was nice, but couldn’t get quite as close as I would like. Still, turned out pretty well.

Earth Day Crocus

Just Visiting

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Just Visiting My father was visiting from Winnipeg. I used the oportunity to take a picture with off camera flash. The camera is triggered by a friend, I am holding a SB800 just out of frame at about 45deg from him. There is also a street lamp to his right.

I think I should have hit him with a bit more light. Maybe tried from the other side. Still getting used to this off camera flash deal. I think I need to try brighter than I think works in the viewfinder in these night shots.

Also, I am going to try bringing my umbrella with me and getting much closer to my subject next time. This one is just with the diffuser, and I am a little too far away.

Guthrie Silhouettes

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Art House Ghosts

I was out shooting in Downtown Minneapolis with some friends on friday night last week, and we decided to go have a look from the Guthrie’s overlook. None of us had been up there. Very cool overlook, and I will have pictures from that later, but here are a couple I took as we were on our way there.

There was this great big long glowing red wall. Very cool. At first I was just setting up for some geometric shots, but then some people cam by, and I think that made the shot. It is more interresting with the people in it, even if they are “ghosting” through the frame. I’ve got to remember that everything doesn’t always need to be sharp in a frame.

Then I set up for a self portrait of sorts. I was going to use a wireless trigger, but I got Rich to take the shot for me. I also tried a shot with a flash fired directly across from me, but that just made a weird shadow, and having one part of the picture show up (me from the flash) looked odd. The silhouette looked much better.

Silhouette On Red

Studio Strobes vs Speedlights

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Scott Kelby has a post up where he compares studio strobes and speedlights. This is somthing that I have had going on in my head for quite some time now.

I took a studio lighting class, and the instructor was pretty anti speedlight. Maybe he just hasn’t use them much. I sure wouldn’t want to tell Joe McNally and David Hobby that small off camera flashes don’t put out good light. So, I decided that I would start small. Leave the studio strobes for some later time. Let me be able to say that I can do everything that is possible with one light.

So what did I buy? Well, I had an SB800 before the price lept off the insanity board. I figure you need a hotshoe flash no matter what, so it wouldn’t be a wasted light purchase. I now use it all the time. So what other gear¬†I purchased was a strobist kit from mpex (without the flash). See this post from a couple of days ago. I still intend to post more about the kit, but¬†I took these pics recently with that kit and that mini softbox from the friday post

I have to say that you can get quite different pricing than Scott got. Not on the same equipment, but how “pro” do you want to go? Mpex has one light¬†strobist kits for $219 that includes a flash! Yes, I know that it isn’t as powerful or feature rich as the SB-900, but hey, the price of entry is pretty cheap.

Then there are the alien bee’s studio strobes. The AB800 is $279. That is quite a bit cheaper than the Elinchrom BXRI 500s. ($625 at B&H, but out of stock) So are the AB800’s second fiddle? I haven’t seen enough lights to know. I do know that there are several people that have appeared on Scott’s guest blog that use Alien Bee’s lights, including Zack Arias and Dustin Snipes. I also used the ABR Ring Flash¬†at my class which I loved. So… when I get around to it, I am leaning to the bees.

But for now, I have a lot of learning to do. I have the Nikon CLS video¬†waiting to be watched, and I have wanted to order the Strobist Workshop DVD’s¬†if not attend a workshop myself. I think it would also be cool to attend a One Light Workshop with Zack Arias. ¬†I have read Joe McNally’s The Moment it Clicks, and right now I am reading The Hot Shoe Diaries.

That’s a lot of material to master. I figure I might add another speedlight, or LumoPro LP120¬†from mpex or two in a little while, but maybe I will wait until I can pull of this group shot with a single SB26 manual flash.

New Born and Family Shoot

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One the weekend, I got to take pictures of my first newborn. Other than my kids that is. I also got to take pictures of the rest of the family, and use my new LightDome XS. For the whole family shot I used a shoot through umbrella. Things worked out pretty well considering it was the first time with the LightDome, but I think I could have moved my light closer. It wasn’t really a good time to experiment, as I was trying to “get the shot”. Anyway, here are some of the pictures. I took over 200, and felt that 80 were pretty good. Here are just a few.

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mike_kelly_family

Thanks Mike, Kelly, Adilyn and Emma for letting me take your pictures. I had a lot of fun.

If you are in the Minneapolis / St. Paul / Twin Cities area and would like pictures taken of your family, please contact me at photography@cyberward.net.