Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! I finally decided to dress up in drag and the result was very scary: I'm the ugly blond in case you couldn't tell! Adina dressed up as me, and I dressed up as her. I think she looked a lot better than me. And here's my favorite baby girl!

Group Shot Grief

I'm not a big fan of taking large group photos, but it's a great way to ensure that you have at least one shot of everyone at an event! This group photo was particularly difficult, because the sun was beating down on us and baseball caps were everywhere. I hate hats, you all know this. I hate them, hate them, hate them. If they were a friendlier bunch and if I was carrying two flashes, I would have set up one on the left and one on the right. I actually tried bracketing and creating an HDR image. Unfortunately, a few of my coworkers moved while I took the shots, so the HDR attempt was a dismal failure.

100th Post!

I created this blog in July and I've already hit the 100th post. When I started this blog, I was committed to writing one post a week. Now I'm writing nearly one post a day! This has been a lot of fun and I've learned a great deal as well.

My first post was a simple close-up of avocados with my point and shoot. I then bought a DSLR and progressed to off-camera lighting, tilt-shift miniatures, HDR, etc. etc. Along the way a flash died, I shot a corgi, I took far too many self-portraits and I learned and relearned many lessons. I look forward to another 100 posts and hopefully many more after that!

Sansome at Night

I saw these cool looking lights along planters in a pedestrian alley while walking down Sansome Street in San Francisco after work. I'm happy to report that I carefully monitored my ISO and other exposure settings. Of course these lights didn't move around, so I didn't have to work fast. Exposure info: 52.5mm focal length, 1/60 sec, f/2, ISO 800, 6:38pm. Post-processing in Lightroom: -1 stop of exposure. I should have shot this at ISO 400, but I was playing around with the ISO and experimenting with different compositions. This happened to be my favorite one of the bunch. I actually walked past these lights and had to force myself to ignore my growling stomach and walk back to snap off some shots. I'm glad I did. More photos here.

It's Alive!

My once dead Vivitar 285HV has returned from the grave, and I've been having lots of fun with it. As I was perusing my collection of photographs yesterday, I came across these test shots I made at the local laundromat. I was stuck at the laundromat with a lot of time on my hands cleaning and refluffing the sleeping bag and jacket that I used on my trip to Heather Lake. I thought, what the heck, I might as well try setting my SB-800 to slave mode. The Vivitar (connected to a wireless remote trigger) acted as the master. That's the beauty of carrying your gear everywhere you go, there's never a dull moment. Now to be honest, I don't usually carry two flashes with me, but in this instance I had taken the Vivitar to the local camera shop to buy a hot shoe to mini plug adapter when I discovered that the Vivitar was alive again. Good times.

Ladder Golf

This past Wednesday, I played Ladder Golf with my friends after work. What's Ladder Golf? I don't know, but check out the first 20 seconds of this video and it will kinda make sense. I wanted to toss the balls around, but I really wanted to just take photos of everyone else. Determined to make the most of the evening, I wrote out a list of things to try out on this shoot. I also tried to apply some of the lessons I've learned in the last few months.

I wanted to experiment with the Creative Lighting System on my DSLR. This system allows my camera's popup flash to communicate with my external flash without wires or third party remote triggers. Unfortunately, I didn't try out this feature from the comfort of my home beforehand, so I ended up just connecting my external flash to my wireless remote trigger. Full disclosure: the flash power was about a stop too high, but I was able to lower it in Lightroom. I'm also happy to report that my aim has improved since I first tried hand holding a flash with my left hand. :-)

I also created a shot list. I didn't want to repeat my usual mistake of missing important shots. I also envisioned a few shots that I thought would look cool. As usual, I didn't take all the shots I wanted, but I'm glad I wrote out a plan and tried to stick to it.

1. Take panning shots of the balls moving through the air. This was an unbridled failure. I overexposed the photo. Also, the balls rotate as they're flying which prevents them from being completely frozen in midair. 2. Take panning shots of arms as they're tossing the balls. Unfortunately, I didn't try this.

3. Foreground: balls on ladder. Background: people out of focus. It would have helped if my lens had a shallower depth of focus. I could have stepped in closer to the ladder, so the background would have been more defocused, but I was very scared of getting hit by the balls!

4. Balls dangling from side of person, frame the shot from the waist down to knees, and shoot from behind. I like these photos even though the framing isn't what I originally envisioned.

5. Shoot everybody twice. I made sure to shoot my buddy Debbie multiple times, but I wasn't able to do that for everyone. Hopefully I'll have better luck next time.

6. Group shot. This shot's okay. I didn't know most of the people there, so I didn't feel comfortable asking everyone to line up for a group portrait. Also, it seemed a bit cheesy. Looking back, I wish I had asked them anyway.

You can see all the photos here.

San Francisco at 6400

Last Tuesday night on my walk back home from work to the train station, I set my camera to ISO 6400 and just started shooting. Some shots I stopped and took the time to compose, others I just blindly pressed the shutter release. This was really fun and cost me very little time. Some of the shots turned out very interesting and have inspired me to look at San Francisco in a whole new way. Exposure info (both photos): 52.5mm focal length, 1/200 sec, f/5, ISO 6400, 7:12pm. You can see all the photos here.

Not So Pinhole Photography

According to photo.net pinhole photography is "lensless photography. A tiny hole replaces the lens." Before rushing out the door for work, I poked a small hole (which I think turned out to be too big) in a small piece of black cardboard. I then placed the cardboard over my lens and shot my neighbor's house. The result doesn't look impressive, it just looks like I shot my camera through a hole...which is what I did. I also didn't center the hole properly. I definitely want to try this again, but next time I want to try some true pinhole photography by drilling a tiny hole in my camera's body cap, and replacing the lens with it.

Lesson Learned: Hats Are Still Bad

Once again, hats got the better of me. The very attractive girl on the right is almost totally shadowed by the brim of her hat. If it wasn't for Lightroom, her face would have been completely dark. That would have been a shame. I should have asked her to take off her hat. Better yet, I should have taken a cue from all the professional photographers around me and stuck my flash on the hotshoe to provide some on-axis fill light.

More Memory Equals More Freedom

I'm really happy that I bought more memory cards. It's nice shooting without having to worry about whether or not I should save space for future shots. At the Red Bull Soapbox Race, there was a constant parade of parents who wanted to have their kids taken in the racer. I knew I had plenty of space on my cards left, so I was able to accommodate everyone. Raw space is not the only benefit. Often, I'll replace the memory card in my camera with a fresh one even when the card isn't full. I do this because I don't want to be in a position where I have five shots left on a card and then a great opportunity opens up for me and I start shooting. Then five shots later, my card is full, so I have to stop shooting and waste time putting in a fresh card. I like to swap cards when there is a lull in the action, even if the card has 50 shots left (my cards can each hold about 250). Of course this wastes precious space, but I'm willing to do that if it means that I don't waste an opportunity to capture a great moment.

Panning, Part 2

At the Red Bull Soapbox Race, it was very crowded and I only had one opportunity to take an action shot of a soapbox racer. I decided to try panning again. I only had one chance and I blew it. The fire truck came down a blind corner, so I had to anticipate its arrival based on the cheering of the crowd. This proved to be very difficult. Even worse, I forgot to prefocus. Oh well, hopefully the race will come back to San Francisco next year, so I can devote more time for action shots.

I Still Wish I Had A Wider Lens

Last month I wished I had a wider lens, this month during the Red Bull Soapbox Race I again wished I had a wider lens. I usually "zoom with my feet", but there were so many people that I could not always back up as far as I wanted. Even if I could back up, there was a constant stream of people walking between my lens and my subject.

Point and Shoots Can Serve a Purpose

I didn't have a chance to create a post yesterday, because I was out with some of my lovely friends. As much as I hate missing a day blogging, I couldn't resist hanging out with these ladies. You can't blame me though. Though I had my DSLR, I left it in the bag and pulled out my point and shoot instead. Point and shoots have many disadvantages, but they have some very compelling advantages: 1. Easy to carry 2. Simple to operate 3. Non-threatening Because a point and shoot is easy to carry, I can take it anywhere. Because it is simple to operate, I'm more likely to use it, especially when I'm inebriated. I'm also more likely to ask someone to help take a photo with me in it. Because it is non-threatening (compared to a DLSR), I can take photos with it around people without them being suspicious of me. In certain situations, e.g. hanging out in a crowded bar, I definitely prefer having a point and shoot over a DSLR.

Red Bull Soapbox Race

This past Saturday I attended the Red Bull Soapbox Race in San Francisco. I was cheering on my friends who entered as team Eat My Sawdust. Here's a photo of their racer after its run. Notice the damage sustained by the front wheel. Viven, the driver, wasn't hurt. ;-) Tens of thousands of spectators descended upon Dolores Park to watch the races. It was breathtaking looking over this sea of humanity. I have more photos and more things I've learned coming in the next few days.

Lesson Learned: Watch the ISO

Ugh, I keep forgetting to keep track of the ISO. I don't set my camera on auto ISO, because I like to be in control as much as possible. Sometimes that's not good: Exposure info: 52.5mm focal length, 1/50 sec, f/2, ISO 100, 1:15 pm. Trying to capture nine people seated along a large table in a dark room with a long exposure time, large aperture, and high ISO was not a good idea. I don't have steady hands and people were moving, so along with long exposure time some of the people appear blurry. The large aperture also meant the depth of field was shallow, which didn't help the focus issue. If I had raised the ISO, then I could have decreased the exposure time and/or stopped down the aperture.

Practice is Good

At the Ocean Beach Cleanup, I wanted to capture my buddies hard at work on the laptop. Unfortunately, the ambient light level was very high, but their faces were deeply shadowed. I also wanted to dial down the sky to give the photo a dark and moody look for the heck of it. I've practiced with setting up my flash many times now and it's beginning to be second nature to me. That's good because my subjects were not happy to have the flash hitting their faces! Flash info: Bare flash at 1/2 or full power, 50mm zoom, 7:00 camera left, 4 feet away from subject.

Exhausting Week

The last few days have been exhausting. 814 shots, 11.4 GB of data, and three days later, I'm back at home struggling to finish this post before I poop out. In this short period I went to the Ocean Beach Cleanup volunteer event with Hotwire, had a very filling lunch with coworkers at Jeanty at Jack's in San Francisco, and attended the Red Bull Soapbox Race at Dolores Park in the Mission district of San Francisco. This coming week I will be posting photos and my thoughts from the past few days. As always there are hero and zero shots and I'll talk about them. I'll also discuss new lessons I've learned and some lessons I've had to relearn.

Unexpected Shots

I like to take shots to gauge the exposure or examine the composition before I take the "final" shot. I also like to mess around for the heck of it. Sometimes an unexpectedly interesting shot appears out of the blue. In the above photo, my autofocus had trouble locking onto my shirt, so I stuck my hand in front of the lens to see if it would lock on to it. It did and the resulting photo intrigued me. It led me to create this one, which I like even more. I love how I never know exactly what I'm going to get when I press the shutter release!

Sequoia National Park: HDR vs. Original Image

I like the above HDR photo of Heather Lake. It has an otherworldy feel to it. Unfortunately, it isn't an accurate representation of what I saw. I've been getting a lot of questions from people about what non-HDR photos of the lake actually looked like. No one thought that the HDR looked realistic and I definitely agree. I dug up the third photo of the five that I combined to create the HDR. This photo looks much closer to reality. In Lightroom I increased the contrast by 45% and the vibrance by 60%.

Have Fun

I think the more fun I'm having, the more my subjects relax and get silly. This makes for some very interesting pictures!

Beware Eyeglasses

Eyeglasses present a special challenge for photographers. They reflect a lot of light which obscures the wearer's eyes and therefore ruin the shot. This is made worse when the subject wears reflective metal glasses like mine. Check out this photo of me taken with the onboard flash on my point-and-shoot in the middle of Times Square in New York City. I look like Elton John! In my previous post, I was pleasantly surprised that there was no significant reflection off my glasses. This is due to the fact that the key light is high above me, therefore the light that hits my glasses glances off towards the ground and not right back at the camera. If I needed another reason to take the flash off the camera, this is it. Just for fun, I angled my glasses so that the key light reflected back into the camera. :-) In conclusion, if you're taking photos of eyeglass wearers, have them take it off, or make sure that your flash is positioned in such a way that the light from it doesn't reflect back into the camera lens. The easiest way to do this is to take the flash off the camera.

Step By Step: Faking Platon

Grab a cup of coffee and nestle into your favorite chair. This is going to be a long post. On Monday, Strobist posted an interview of Platon, and it reminded me how much I like his work. He's famous for his unique portraits of powerful people. A couple that stand out are his portraits of Putin and Eliot Spitzer. My Vivitar 285HV flash mysteriously rose from the dead, so I was eager to try out some two flash setups. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so I wanted to see if I could mimic Platon's work. The results are so-so, but the effort was very rewarding. It was so fun that I provided a step by step guide to how I created these photos. None of the photos on display have been post-processed or cropped. First, here's one of my favorite ones of the lot: So how did I create this photo? Here's the setup: The key light was 5'8" high and angled ~25 degrees towards me. The key light was 16" from the center of the umbrella. The key light was one foot behind the camera. The camera was 2.5 feet away from my face. My head was about four feet off the floor and 2.5 feet away from the background flash. The background flash was 3.5 feet high, angled up 30 degrees, and one foot away from the bathroom door. How did I come up with this setup? Trial and error, see below. 1. Find a relatively clean background. My studio cottage is tiny with lots of windows, so I had to settle on my bathroom door. 2. Sit on the chair and keep snapping and examining the photos until I figure out where my head should be. The ambient light is low, so the exposure is set at ISO 100, 1/10 sec @ f/2. I don't want to jack up the ISO, because I tend to forget to reset it when I need to. 3. Place the background flash and keep snapping and examining the photos until the light looks good next to my head. I settle on 1/16 power at the widest zoom of the Vivitar 285HV. 4. Now that the body position and background light are determined, set up the key light. I set the flash high and reflect it off my umbrella. I typically use my umbrella in shoot-through mode, but my house is so small, that the reflection on the flash side might bounce off the wall behind it and perhaps light up the whole room. 5. Set the aperture to f/5.6 because it offers a decent amount of depth of field, so my entire face will be in focus. Set the exposure time to 1/320 sec to reduce the impact of the ambient light. 6. Turn off the ambient light (my television and laptop are left on, but they are very dim). It turns out that my exposure settings capture so little light that it doesn't matter whether or not I leave the ambient light on. 7. Sit down, snap a shot, adjust the power of the key light, examine the photo, and repeat until my face is properly exposed. Having a remote shutter release helps. Key light @ 1/16 power: Key light @ 1/4 power: Key light @ 1/2 power: Key light @ full power: I like the way my face is exposed with the key light at full power. 8. Play around and try out different expressions! This is the fun part. 9. Take what I've learned and inflict in on others! It's not the exact ISO, exposure time, aperture, or flash settings that matter. What's important is the logic that was applied to create these images. Lessons learned: 1. Need a second light stand. My background flash was always in danger of falling off the roll of toilet paper! 2. Need a bigger flat background so that the fall off of the background flash could be seen. Or maybe reduce the power of the flash. Unfortunately the Vivitar flash was already at its minimum level of 1/16. The door frame on the sides looked kinda cool and helped to frame my face, but it wasn't very "Platonesque". 3. The key light contaminated the background, so I didn't have a clean separation of the background with the foreground. More distance between the key light and background would have helped. Or I could have turned the power of the key light down and moved it closer to my face. 4. Gelling the background flash might have added some interest, especially since my white shirt looked too much like my white door. 5. I should have feathered the key light in a way that would darken my neck and upper body. 6. I need a haircut. You can see more photos from this session on flickr.