Playing In The Driveway

I finally dusted off my camera for some photos today. I let the girls play in the driveway and used the asphalt as a backdrop. This shooting angle is new to me, but I like it. I'll be sure to get the step ladder out more often!

I'd like to introduce you to...

I'd like to introduce you to our latest family member, Remington. His mom is an AKC registered Rottweiler and his dad is most likely a lab. The woman we adopted him from isn't sure. She was given the litter of puppies to find a new home for.

52 Self Portraits: Week 8

At the rate I'm going, I won't be done with this project for 3 years!

Here's my latest installment. I was excited to finally be able to play with my camera outside. The weather was nice with little breeze.

Some things that are wrong with this picture are:

• Flash not balanced with the natural light. I need to get some gels.
• I wanted the background to go darker than this.. It looked the way I wanted on the camera's LCD.

As always, comments and criticisms are very welcome!

52 Self Portraits: Week 7 (Catching Up)

These photos are much closer to what I was trying to achieve. What I'm missing in my arsenal is the ability to color my lights better and keep my light pattern tight. I didn't have as much control over the difference in the background and foreground lighting that I want. Either too much light from the foreground spilled onto the background, or the long exposure time due to hot, continuous lighting in the foreground allowed too much through in the background.

I made great use out of my "Stick-in-a-Cans". See my set up shot here.

My wife took our mop in to get converted back into a dog today, so keep an eye out for a session with her (the dog) soon.

52 Self Portraits: Week 6

I think I'm about two weeks late for this one. I had so much to do around the house the last couple of weeks, I couldn't spend the time I needed to get some photos.

I had an idea for this photo that I found on the Ikea website. Unfortunately I'm not able to find it. It was is a photo with a chair in the foreground lit by a lamp just behind it. The photo was white balanced for the tungsten bulb in the lamp, blue color cast on the background. I wasn't able to achieve it with this photo, so, this week's photo (Week 7) is another attempt at it.

A friend from Church had called to ask if I'd meet him for breakfast the next morning while I was working on my self portrait project for the week. I thought it would a perfect opportunity to get some "candid" shots of myself, as if that's possible.... At least, I wasn't concentrating as much on posing as I was talking on the phone. I certainly wouldn't pick up the phone and pretend to be on it!

Keep an eye out for Week 7 very shortly (next day or so). I'm closer to what I wanted to achieve with that one, but not quite.

UPDATE: Here are the images I was inspired by. I suspect I'll need a tighter light pattern from my CTO'd flash in order to accomplish the look I'm going for. My gold reflective umbrella spills too much light onto the background making it difficult to control the lighting in that area. One of my next purchases will likely be the Lumiquest FXtra gel holder for each of my flashes. I may even spring for a Soft Box III.

Finally Some Scenics!

I wouldn't ever quite my day job to become a tour guide! I met with Beau this morning to go out shooting photos together. It was a great time and if I hadn't taken any pictures, the trip would have been worthwhile, but the locations I selected were less than ideal. We started out at Pratt's Falls only to find out the park isn't open until 10am. We were there around 8am. So, we went out to Chittenango Falls State Park where the main trail through the gorge was closed. We weren't able to get down below the waterfalls for some good photos. We wandered around there for a little over an hour though and then decided to head over to Onondaga Lake Park.

Here are a few photos from the trip that I thought were at least decent.

Next time, I'm letting Beau decide where to go!

52 Self Portraits: Week 5

Here we are on week 5 of my "52 Self Portraits" project and I'm still stuck on the black backdrop. I've been enjoying using it, but I'm hoping next week to get outside and do my portrait or switch to a white sheet for a while. We'll see how it goes... Now that I finally have both flashes off camera, I have a little more flexibility in my set ups.

This shot, I had a bare flash directed toward the black sheet from an angle in order to add some dimension to the backdrop. To my left is a silver reflector and my right is a flash bounced in a gold umbrella.

Additional Shots...

Feel free to leave your comments here or on Steve Paxton's forum.