Shooting in the dark

Man, the planetarium was dark.

"I can turn the lights up a little bit," Scott said.

Which led us to the end result. I put the camera on a tripod to allow for a long enough exposure to let the existing light bleed through (the red area in the background). I lit the subject with one shoe mount flash in an umbrella and one with a blue gel on the projector.

I really wasn't expecting much, and was pleasantly suprised with end result. I won't show the out of focus ones, though.

Fashion stuff

I threw a couple of these up on my Flickr page and thought I would add some here, too. These are a couple of recent fashion shoots I did for a local magazine.

The first shot was taken in downtown Conway, using the wall of a building that was shaded from the sun. The building next to it - bathed in full sun - had a white wall, which was a really cool reflector for the model. It really made for some great lighting.

The next shot was taken at a strip mall, which didn't necessarily lend itself to a great background for the shot. But, I backed off and used a long lens to compress the shops, and let the lighting coming in from behind the model and bounce off the glass surfaces. It really seemed to help the shot.

The models really made the shots, though. They both seemed to know what I wanted to accomplish and did really well in helping me capture that.

Snow day!

The kids were happy to be home from school, but Sarah was a little disappointed that the snow was too dry to make a snowman. It didn't stop her from making a snow angel, though.

After that, we did decide that the snow held together well enough for a snowball fight. We ducked behind the cars and chased each other around our little front yard until I lobbed one at her, and scored a direct hit to her head.

We pretty much were done with the snow after that. It had stopped falling by that point, anyway. With typical Arkansas weather patterns, the white stuff will probably be gone by the end of the day, anyway. This after seeing temperatures in the 70s over the weekend, to boot.

Got one more shot, this time of the snow that had accumulated on my wife's Mustang. I thought it was kinda neat.


EDIT: Mission accomplished! When the snow began to melt, it made for much better snowman making.

The secret life of beekeepers

I had almost forgotten about this image, which was taken last year for a "Work and Play" feature we do for our magazine. This is a professor whose hobby is beekeeping. The writer on our team accompanied me for this assignment, and we did the photos following the interview. The writer had the honor of doubling as a lightstand for this photo, holding a shoe-mount flash off to my left while I stood above the subject and took the shot. I actually had to add a section to the hive in Photoshop to conceal a plastic container used for the photo to make the hive taller. It can't all be done in camera (although I prefer to do it that way).

Iron sharpens iron

I went out for a shoot with Lisa, a photographer friend of mine (she's linked on my blog - check her out!) who was shooting an engagement portrait for a couple. She was trying to be introduced to the wonderful world of Pocket Wizard usage with small flashes. I was along to be monkey boy and show her a thing or two about using the flashes.

I ended up getting a couple of shots I was pleased with:


We found a great red corrugated tin wall that we used for a few shots of the couple together. It went really well with his shirt (same color), and it just made for some nice textures.

The wall was in a furniture warehouse that was downtown, so we had to do a little persauding of the business owners before we took the shots, but they were okay with it and we got what we were looking for.

While we were kicking around setting up lights, I scoured out another location that I thought would like pretty cool. It had some craggy brick walls, exposed lumber, and some really neat light coming through behind the couple. We ended up with this:


All in all, it was fun working with somebody else who can keep you sharp and on your toes. She had way more stamina than me, too. I had to duck out early and she was still shooting.

Katie's first volleyball tournament

Katie has decided that she wants to take up volleyball. She's learning it pretty well and had her first tournament this past weekend in Memphis. I took the camera and got some photos of her team, but the one I'm proudest of is this:
Good, solid hit. She's making strides in her game, and I'm trying to be supportive and not obnoxious.

But, she doesn't read my blog, so I can be obnoxious here, right?

WOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! GOOD JOB, KIDDO!

I'm lazy

I haven't gotten around to posting anything recently, and really haven't been shooting a whole lot of new stuff, either. But, yesterday I brought a hand-held work light to the office to do some photos. I tried a couple of self portraits, but it turns out I'm an ugly sucker, so I decided to spare the world with that horror. Instead, my supervisor stuck his head in to see what I was up to. He unwittingly became the model:

I thought it turned out okay. I wasn't quite as edgy as I had hoped for, but I shot it pretty down and dirty, too. It may take a little more experimentation to get that one right.