Week 4 of 52 – Self Portrait

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The theme for week 4 of the LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge is “Self Portrait.” If you read my introduction to the 52 week challenge here you’ll remember that one of the reasons I’m not doing a 365 challenge is that I do not like taking self portraits! So the irony of this weeks theme is not lost on me, with that in mind I had an image in mind that would satisfy the requirement of the theme and my distaste of seeing myself on screen.

All I needed was a clear sunset, a brick wall, and some slight trickery in post production. (And as it turns out an assistant-my wife- to make triggering the camera much – much easier than doing it alone)

The Unseen Photographer!

This was around 3:30pm so we were starting to get near the golden hour, with a nice low angle Sun, and a brick wall of a nearby school. All the elements were in place but as I walked along the wall looking for the best spot I saw this shadow of a tree on the wall and thought it would be a good subject for my shadow to be focused on, and would balance the image.

I took off my coat, and using my old Olympus OM-1 SLR as a prop (which is not nearly as impressive as if I had been able to hold my D7000, the OM-1 is so small in comparison) I posed a few different ways holding the camera in different ways but liked this pose the best. Then the tricky part came, I had to take off my shoes without moving them and then I had to prop up my back shoe which I wanted to have in a more dynamic pose besides just sitting on the ground (that’s too easy) and although this isn’t quite as impressive as I had hoped, I like it and I’ve got more ideas for future images that would improve upon it. I propped up the back shoe with a small knock off gorillapod.

Behind the Scenes - Shooting the shoes

I had to work fast as the Sun moves pretty quick the closer it gets to the horizon and I didn’t want to have to work too hard in post!

After these shots we walked over to the playground and we found this shadow on the wall of a relocatable classroom and I thought “hey that would be a good shadow shot as well” and I love having a backup shot so I set up and took these shots.

Jump Shot! Check out that follow through!

In my dreams!

Luckily the weather was decent this weekend and I was able to shoot this idea, if it had not been so nice I had a few alternatives in mind that were more conventional  in nature but luckily you were spared that option.

Next week is a challenging theme as well “I left my heart in… (favorite place)”

So who has my ticket to Italy?…

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 3 of 52 Week Challenge – “Your Favorite Thing”

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“Your Favorite Thing” Well there’s a wide open theme for you. My favorite thing? Well there’s thousands of them, it all depends on the time of day, year,week, my mood, my health, my schedule, location etc… Really how do you shoot your favorite thing when my favorite thing right now will not be my favorite thing in 10 minutes?

Ok I’m not schizo or anything I’m just saying that trying to nail down one thing was a tough call for me this week, as from my previous rant you see I have many favorite things, so I looked at what might be obvious and since this is a challenge I wanted to avoid those and go for something I haven’t tried before, so after thinking about it and listing some ideas I thought of an off camera flash with a macro subject that’s moving. That’s challenging! One of my many favorite things happens to fit that bill pretty well.

Milk and Cookies - Yum!!

I set up in the kitchen as it faces south so I could get good sunlight (not much though as it’s been cloudy/stormy all week) I placed a glass of milk near the edge of the table on top of a white poster board to give a clean base and a plate of cookies in the background. My first shots were using the 18-200mm set around 100mm and I composed the scene as straight on level with the cups rim, I had my son dunk a couple cookies as I shot away. I was using one off camera bare YN560 flash at 1/4 power about 12 inches away from the glass triggered with my Cactus V5 triggers.

The shots are OK, but the composition wasn’t! So I switched to my 50mm f/1.8 and used a 12mm extension tube so I could get in close, I recomposed to the right and a little higher and shot down into the milk so I could hopefully get some droplet action. I can see why this type of shooting becomes addicting to so many people but also why you have to take so many shots, I have a ton of early and late shots as far as capturing the “action” goes. By now my son was full of eating the “subjects” – They get soggy after repeated dunking’s – so I took over since I was now close enough that I could dunk the cookies myself while triggering the camera with my shutter release cable. I ended up moving the flash over to camera right and zoomed it to about 75mm at 1/4 power to stop the droplets.

The challenge of this simple looking shot was that I had to arrange background elements to ensure a clean image, I had to use flash and I shot in manual adjusting the aperture and flash to get the proper exposure while freezing the droplets and staying within my flash’s sync speed. Not to mention I had to keep the camera and lens dry (not getting too excited while dunking was the key) and eating all those cookies was tough as well!

I had a few other shots in mind as backups, but I’ve only processed one and I’ll share that here for the “Aahh sweet” factor

I love holding my wife's hand!

She hates the look of her fingers, and resisted mightily, but just as I talked her into marrying me over 16 years ago I also talked her into posing for the shot! One of my truly favorite things is holding her hand, it has a great comforting feel to it and when we do all is right in the world.

We shot that resting on my 5 in 1 reflectors silver side, natural light with a white board reflector to fill in the shadows, and my son tripped the shutter. I converted it using Silver Effex Pro 2.

This weeks up coming challenge is “Self Portrait” – Oh No!!

Happy Shooting!

Howard

Week 2 – 52 Week Challenge – Front Door

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So week 2 of the LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge was “Front Door” I know exciting right? Well I took that as a challenge to think a little bit outside of a wide angle of my front door, it’s not a very good looking door like some others might have, in fact it’s down right plain and boring. Other than a welcome sign and ever rotating seasonal greetings it’s just a plain ‘ol white front door. The one feature that I like however is its peephole, I love those things, primarily because I’m a firm believer in only answering your door if/when you feel like it. (The same goes for the telephone – that’s why caller ID was invented) So I concentrated on the fisheye peephole, but shooting a scene through it from the inside seemed a bit boring not to mention the front yard and street are hardly awe inspiring, so that left the outside view…

Someone's coming...

I wanted an air of mystery, some color, and a close up of the peephole itself, and what the hey a reflection (or 5) never hurts either!

So I used the 50mm f/1.8 at F/16 with a 20mm extension tube, I set the Promote Control to capture 9 exposures at 1Ev spacing and using myself as the “mysterious figure” I stepped outside and had my wife push the start button on the Promote Control.

I also tried a few shots with me closer to and knocking at the door but I prefer the shot above so that’s my entry this week.

Christmas 2011 – some snapshots to remember

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Being sick during the holidays is a real downer, Christmas week I started to get sick with what has turned out to be a very tenacious head cold, by the time Christmas rolled around I was in full blown misery, so this year I didn’t get as many Christmas related shots as I would have liked especially as this was my first Christmas with my D7000. That being said I did get a few shots and wanted to share some of them with you:

Some of the coolest ornaments ever! These belong to my team leader at work.

Goofy - 9 exp HDR

This is one of my favorite ornaments, I just love Goofy! I could have used this as a Self Portrait for my 52 week challenge instead of Taz as I’m definitely clumsy and dorky.

Snoopy Santa and his Woodstock Reindeer

It’s not all guy decorations either, believe me my daughter gets plenty of girlie stuff up on there too.

Barbie has several ornaments and there's more than enough pink on the tree.

Making Santa's cookies on Christmas Eve

Christmas cookies always taste so good, must be something magical about them - Yummy DoF, love the 50mm f/1.8!

At our family Christmas Party this year my sister gave each of the Grandkids a special packet containing a Christmas Eve “Sleeping Potion” that was supposed to help them sleep that night…

How this much sugar is supposed to help you sleep is beyond me

Says it all, right?!

Actually they let us sleep in until 8am, a new record! Maybe a sugar coma is the answer…

Dear Santa...

Santa came! 9 exp HDR

Looks like he enjoyed the cookies

So although it’s 2 weeks past I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, only 50 weeks to go until the next one… If I’m lucky maybe I’ll feel better by then.

Happy Shooting!

Howard