For me, it’s this little person.
Nothing surprises me more sometimes than seeing my daughter, who is always on the move, stopped in her tracks. It’s only when she’s still that I can really see her many facets. Go outside and take pictures of the ones that you love…it’ll make your day bright.
There’s a lot of stuff going on right now with folks seeming to scramble over a move to video from still cameras. I think I’ll go the other way.
With video cameras from film to Hi8 having been around for more than a year or two, it just doesn’t make sense to me. I saw a link from a friend not too long ago about a stop motion type movie that a photographer had put together combining images from a DSLR. My $5 video camera from 1989 could do that; “so what” was basically my response.
I wonder when or if, after saturation with all things ephemeral and power dependent, there will be a shift back to things that are more permanent – paper and film. I once got a negative in the mail, a 4×5, that was from a photo that was taken in the late 30s. My great aunt sent it to me and asked me to see what I could do. The negative had been kept in a sleeve and was in great shape, so I pulled on the white gloves, put it in a frame and contact printed it onto some RC paper that I had in the darkroom. It looked amazing after 70 years! I sent it back to her and she was floored – she said that she hadn’t seen images of the people who were photographed since she was a child.
I’m not against or down on digital, but I think that I’ve made a mental shift in considering it as the main way to do things these days and may begin to use digital as a polaroid back for 4×5 or MF images.
This one was bumped around a little bit in Lightroom. Exposure +2.76, clarity -57, Black +14, Vibrance +31, Saturation -52, cropped with crop angle change, and added clarity and sharpness back to the eyes with the paint brush.
I wanted to keep a little bit of the pink and get rid of the yellow/green stuff in the background.
I had my first shot at shooting a house that is up for sale not too long ago and it appears to have turned out ok. People want to see the house and seem interested. It’ll be interesting to see if the photos will translate into offers, but in the price range that the house is in, pixelated point and shoot images are the norm.
Recently, I found the help portrait idea in a post on one of my LinkedIn groups. It seems like a great thing to do, but I’m a little unsure about the logistics of it since by the day it comes around, I expect to be living in a different city. I’m sure that it’ll all work out – although I did post the idea in two other groups on flickr and only heard crickets chirping.
A friend and mentor is opening his own studio in town soon. I wish him well and look forward to renting some time in the studio for my own portrait work very soon. Daron, the photographer behind the studio, is a good guy and I’d trust him with everything I own. Check out his work and the new spot: http://www.302southpark.com
On the past couple of cycling events, I’ve been playing with different flash methods to see what I come up with. A month ago, I tried a speedlite speedtrap of sorts and most recently, I tried panning at my little XT’s max sync speed (1/250) and a little over that on manual. I managed to get a few things, but had plenty of motion blur. When I moved above max sync, I got a lot of daylight and nothing from the flashes. After sweating a while out by the roadside, I decided to give in to the “H” button on my 430EX.
I’ve been snooping around on “teh interwebs” to see what I could come up with and found a whole lot of Nikon FP this or SB CLS that, but nothing really that I could use for Canons….until this morning. M.D. Welch and Syl Arena have covered it quite nicely and show the results of what they’re discussing. (Thanks for the lesson fellas!)
The results from hitting the H button were immediate. I was sitting just off of the edge of the pavement, so panning as they passed was a little tough. Once I moved up to 1/1250, the blur disappeared and I was, well, off to the races.
Today was the 2nd round of the Lerua’s Picacho TT that’s put on by Saguaro Velo. It was a beautiful morning to be outside and the sparse traffic on the frontage road was nice. The photos of the 20k, 40k, and team TT will be up shortly on the “order prints” page. Here’s a sample of what I shot today.
I was digging around yesterday and this image flashed by in the Lightroom filmstrip I was looking through. It’s just about perfect as far as I’m concerned and shows the funky and free little person she is.
This is the type of calm personal image that I like to make. If I had to put her in a fancy dress and under a modeling light, the result would be far different and it wouldn’t really show who she is.
Above is an older photo of my favorite little subject. I had just received my poverty wizard radio triggers in the mail and she was keeping herself entertained with the fan that was in the room on the floor. (it’s a vornado fan, and they’re good for hair blowing) I pointed a flash at her and one at the wall behind to try and blow it out completely white; you can still see some of the mauve color at the top. The part that cracks me up is her tongue. It goes out like this when she’s really into whatever she’s doing at the time.
