Week 16 of 52 Theme: “Cookies”

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#LPTG13WK16, 2013, Ant, Ants, bite, bug, bugs, camera, camera controls, Camera Mode, close up Ant, Cookie, Cookies, crumb, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, dessert, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, Extension tube, Extension tubes, focusing, Food, Food closeup, Food Macro, ground, handheld, Handheld HDR, HDR, Howard Jackman, Insect, insects, jaws, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, Low angle, LPTG, LPTG 52 challenge, LPTG.com 52 week Challenge, LPTG52, LPTG52.com, Macro, Macro Ant, Macro bug, Macro extension tubes, Macro food, macro with extension tube, Nature HDR, Nature Macro, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon HDR, Photography, Photomatix, Photoshop, Salt Lake City, Shooting Mode, Still Life, sugar, sumoetx, Theme:Cookies, treat, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, week 16 of 52

Hello my name is Howard and I’m a cookie-holic! That’s the first step right? Well here’s the thing, I don’t want to stop, that’s right I’m addicted to cookies and I don’t care what you say I’m going to just keep on eating them. So when this weeks theme was revealed I was excited not only because I was going to photograph one of my favorite foods, but because I was going to eat them afterwards.

The first shot I had envisioned was going to include my favorite Sesame Street character, that sugar induced quivering blue mass of fur known as Cookie Monster, but someone else in the group made a shot with him in it first so I decided to go macro and involve some friends from the front yard.

If Ants dreamed I think they would dream of something like this…
50mm f/1.8 with 12mm+36mm extension tubes @ f/11 1/250 sec.

This was a painful shoot for me, not because I was lying down next to hundreds of scurrying ants that crawled all over my arms, no it was because this was a cookie that my daughter and I had lovingly made just minutes before and then had purposely dropped on the ground all for the sake of a photograph, what is wrong with me?

Going for the chocolate!

This little crumb seemed to frustrate this guy as he kept dropping it (maybe he was just sneaking a few bites)

On the other hand this guy was all “Go Big Or Go Home!”

Like climbing Mt Everest
3 shot HDR @ 2EV handhled

Mine!!

Hey Carl, after we take apart this mountain of heavenly goodness how about we go get that dried up worm on the sidewalk?”

Ok so I might have gotten a little carried away with that last caption…

Although I had to sacrifice a cookie for these shots rest assured that the rest of the batch was dunked in milk and eaten in tribute to their fallen Brother.

Thanks as always for stopping by.

Happy Shooting!

Howard

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

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52 week challenge, Benro, Benro A298M8 Tripod, Cactus V5, Cactus wireless trigger, camera, camera controls, Camera Mode, Cookies, Cookies and Milk, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 strobe, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, DSLR Modes, Flickr, focusing, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, LensProToGo.com, LensProToGo.com 52 week challenge, Macro, Macro still life, Milk, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Benro Tripod, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Off Camer flash, Photography, Shooting Mode, Still Life, strobist, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah, YN560, YN560 flashm, Your Favorite Thing

“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

Christmas 2011 – some snapshots to remember

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Barbie, Benro, Benro A298M8 Tripod, camera, camera controls, Camera Mode, Christmas, Christmas Cookies, Christmas HDR, Christmas Presents, Christmas tree, Cookies, D7000, D7000 Blog, D7000 HDR, D7000 Promote COntrol, Digital Camera, Digital Photography, Disney Christmas, Goofy, HDR, Learning D7000 controls.Camera Controls, New D7000 user, new DSLR, Nikon, Nikon Blog, Nikon D7000, Nikon D7000 Benro Tripod, Nikon D7000 Controls, Nikon D7000 From Snapshots to great shots, Nikon HDR, Ornaments, Photography, Promote Control, Santa, Snoopy, Tree, Using a Nikon D7000, Utah

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