Mount Arabia

Britney and I headed east to Mount Arabia early this morning and got there in time to enjoy the frigid 27 degrees and morning sun. These are my favorites because of how the sun is creating a very nice, warm glow to the surroundings and I especially like how it was catching on the dots of the tree. All of these shots had the sun coming from behind the subject. It's hard to see the brighter light on the 8-bit, jpeg, web version of these photos, but trust me, they are bright and full of light.

Is 5 o'clock the new 3 o'clock?

Perhaps. I love finding little bits of light coming through the trees, but it was gone within minutes.




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Connecting the Dots

One of the advantages to waking up early is seeing the sun rising through my windows. It's the only time of day that I really get to have an abundance of sunlight since my windows are facing east. This morning I noticed that the tops of my curtains were forming a really cool circular/dot pattern on the wall in my bedroom and teeny wall in the kitchen area. These are slightly different from the other shot I posted of the tree silhouette and bounced off reflection on the fridge and adjacent wall. They are diffused the same way (through the sheer curtain), but the pattern is different. Hopefully, I'll have some more outdoor natural lighting shots this afternoon because I am going to try and head out to Mt. Arabia for some scouting shots for another class.

Random lighting

My favorite light in my apartment comes from my bathroom at 3 p.m. on the dot. I caught this spilling on my orchid.



This was an outtake from one of our assignments, but I like the idea of it. This bulb is one that I found at Target a few weeks ago. I'm going to work on trying to get an extension cord and string it out my window so I can actually light the bulb. We'll see if it works. Most of the lighting came from a porch light and the moon.




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Hell of a Week

Sorry this is a bit behind. I shot the Main Event V the saturday before last after the last post of mine. The lighting for this event was better than last year. As opposed to just the florescent lights, this time there were a couple of hotlights with gels in them. Unfortunately, there still weren't enough to really illuminate the space so the florescents had to stay on.

Not natural

This was taken last night in the studio. Softbox on right double diffused with a flag behind it to block light from hitting the white wall. Which is causing the wall to be that middle grey. Fill card on left at an angle for the top of his head. He was about 10 ft off the syc wall.

I took this for one of my friends bands the other day.

I really liked the way the bright daylight coming through the door gave the guys a neat walking silhouette.

The Ol' River

For this shot I decided to use the biggest softbox I'd ever possibly find...clouds. It was a nice overcast day on the Chattahoochee River, and a great opportunity to catch nature at its best.

Natural light, yet again.

I don't much in the way of new photographs to offer that are outside of class assignments this week, but here are two (natural light of course) from a camping trip last quarter. Nothing beats morning, fall light filtered through the trees. Nothing.





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Lunar Eclipse

I've always been fond of this picture that I took of my friend during the a lunar eclipse that happened last spring. I had the camera on my tripod and I think that I had the exposure somewhere around 20 or 25 seconds or so. I had him walk towards the camera so that I could get the ghosting effect (as opposed to the last night image I put in that was not planned.. just snap shot). I'm not entirely sure where the green light was coming from, but none of the colors have been changed in photoshop. I just love the moon flare and the colors that were created with such a long exposure in downtown Macon.

Carpe Diem!

The thorn in my side that is Photoshop has now withered away into a mere splinter for the time being as I've finally learned how to convert a smart object picture into a saved jpeg. What was holding me back before is no longer! Apparently .tiff is too big of a file size for this teensy blog. I am now seizing this opportunity to post a gadzillon pictures to make up for my lack there of.

On Friday I went to Bham to visit my new little friend.

Meet baby Rhys (pronounced Reese):


I am a huge fan of natural light, but of course, what photographer isn't? Initially the family offered to flip on the tungsten lights and I am sure you can all imagine the cringing I experienced inside at the idea. They must have seen me gazing longingly at the window because they asked if I'd like to open the blinds instead. Um... does that even need an answer? But I quickly accepted.

One window facing east. It can make all the difference.







More to come...

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Deris & Scott

This picture would be a lot "cooler" if Scott hadn't left his tripod in the way... I like the starburst flare coming out of the light post behind Deris and Scott. I used my speedlite flash to freeze the two of them, on either a 20 or 25 second exposure, and as they eventually moved we got the ghosting effect. I know it's a snapshot, but I'm a fan.

Shots from this Week

I had some high hopes going into this fairly simple shot. I was planning on using a 250watt hot light to mess around with before I checked out some "real" lighting. I got everything set up and when I turned on the light, the bulb blew out. I didn't let this keep me from shooting, though. Instead, I decided to use a 100watt clear light bulb that I had in a desk lamp. I had the light on the right side of the product--you can see that it is creating the highlight in the upper right hand corner. There was a white card on the left side of the product to sort of give it some definition. This is the best that I could do with the one light bulb I had, which obviously doesn't do the best job in lighting up the background. Sometimes you just have to make do.
I plan on re-shooting this with better lighting & I was going to throw a karo syrup mix on it to make it look like it's awesome and has been in a shower.

Natural Light

I was up early a lot this week and this is what greeted me one morning. The sun was being diffused by my curtains and made a cool shadow that was on my wall and refrigerator, which looks like it served as a "bouncing" mechanism in order for there to be a nice reflection on the wall. In the other picture I just love the amber color and the shadow of the tree.

I'm not sure if it was the alcohol resonating through my blood stream or a blazing sun that woke me to believe that i liked the way morning light shined in. Either way i liked it and you have to look at it.

Tabletop Inspiration

Here are some of the images we looked at in class for inspiration...






These are great examples of images that will get you work as a photographer. Don't re-setup these shots. Be inspired and come up with your own twist.

Stupid Mistake

Here is an unedited version of my dumb mistake I made earlier today.

See it?  Guess my lighting set up.

I was just standing outside and thought was pretty cool.

Here is a test shot of the lighting set up I made this Saturday.  Used the V-flat that Moxley showed us.  A little Velum paper, some Home Depot utility lights, a couple speedlights, bunch of foam core board, and a dirty old Beer glass. 

The Below pictures where shot with the camera set at Adobe RGB...used ProPhoto RGB in PS Camera Raw....I guess the internet converts automatically to SRGB. which explains the low saturation ugliness.  I guess I have some to learn about color management.  wrong blog I guess.

not enough light

Here are some test shots for our editorial assn for our other class.  I went in just to take some snap shots knowing I would be re-shooting.  I had to crank my camera to ISO 800 to even get a reasonable shutter speed.  There were fluorescent  lights lining the ceiling, and mirrors everywhere.  So, the re-shoot will take some planning as far as light goes.

The Intrigue Fashion Show

So far this weekend, I've shot a fashion show in Auburn, Alabama. Honestly, I saved the producer's ass because, knowing nothing about lighting, he wasn't going to have any part of the runway or platform lit. Not only would pictures not turn out, no one would have been able to see anything. So, using two mono heads and umbrella and repositioning the lights in the bar, I lit everything. And then shot the afterparty with a flash being bounced off of the ceiling

Natural mountain sunlight

Hey these are a few snapshots outside my condo in the mountains gorgeous day can't wait to get some good ones today! I found that snow is extremely hard to capture properly. It's either real grey with detail or blown out. Which in turn leaves no color in the sky. I'm going to bracket so I can use the layer mask technique, if I can figure it out.  

Boru O'Brien O'connell

Aspire to do this...

Well, not literally. I found this photographer on the I heart photograph blog this morning. This guy is a mad man! Great lighting and an intriguing mix of portraits and still life. Notice how he uses the family of angles to intentionally produce direct reflection of the light source in his subjects glasses. His reflections are carefully placed so they add another graphic element to the images without causing distraction or tension. At first thought you might think that understanding the family of angles would help you keep the reflection of the light off the subject's glasses. I can remember struggling with this when I was starting out. However, use can use the family of angles to break the rules as well and create some really interesting images. Check him out http://boruobrien.com/

Life Magazine photo archive

The Life magazine photo archive is online now. Take a few hours to peruse just a fraction of the images both published and non published available. http://images.google.com/hosted/life
Here's a sample...

I took this first image two days ago. I love the lighting. I love the way the pink contrasts with the blue sky. I know half of her face is in a shadow so I wonder what everyone thinks about it. I took it at around 11am. The other two images I took during lunch today at the Westin, I noticed how cool the lighting looked through the window.