Coloring The Background With Flash

I've long wanted to experiment with changing the color of a background using flash shot through a translucent colored object. I finally found an opportunity to try it out, because Jakey had just eaten, so I knew he and his mom would be glued to the couch for awhile. I shot the background flash through my sister's clear blue water bottle so the formerly white wall in the background became bluish. I don't know if the blue helps or hurts the photo above, but I look forward to trying this again with different colors and in different settings.

Imitating Window Light

I love the way light from a window wraps around a person's face. Recently I've been experimenting with firing a hot shoe flash through a translucent disc to imitate the diffused and directional source of light that a window provides. I could have use one of my umbrellas too, but this time around it was simpler to bust out the reflector instead of opening an umbrella and attaching it to a light stand. Either way would have worked in the photo above. The setup was very simple. I attached a wireless receiver to a hot shoe flash and aimed it through a translucent disc. I could have made the apparent size of the light even larger had I put some more distance between the flash and the reflector, but my goal was to just shoot Jakey, so the apparent size of the light was big enough to provide soft directional wrap around light on his face. To avoid having too much light spill from the top of the flash, bounce off the ceiling, and light the top of Jakey, I placed a plastic case on top of the flash (it acted like a gobo/flag).

Shooting JPEG instead of RAW?!!

I haven't picked up my camera much lately, as you can tell by the recent dearth of blog postings. There are a few factors at play that have discouraged me from shooting: 1. Work has kept me very busy. 2. My right arm is starting to progress from tendonitis to full blown carpal tunnel syndrome. 3. My computer has probably caught a virus or two (for the umpteenth time!) which has slowed it down considerably. Copying images off a CF card takes 2-3 times longer than before...and let's not talk about trying to open Photoshop! To combat the last two factors, in the last few weeks I've begun to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode. By saving my shots in this way I can upload the JPEG's to Flickr right away without having to post-process the RAW files first. I save the RAW files for future tweaking after I buy a faster computer and hopefully after my arm heals. If you follow baby fisheye, you know that this is sacrilegious because I prefer shooting in RAW over JPEG. But given the choice between sitting on my hands and doing nothing, and shooting in JPEG, well, there's really no choice. Shooting in JPEG and uploading the images without post-processing present some unique challenges: 1. The white balance needs to be set correctly in the camera. I cheat and use Auto :-) 2. No cropping means I must pay extra attention while composing each shot. 3. The lighting has to be close to perfect as possible, since I can't tweak the exposure after the shot. I think this whole shooting in JPEG business has been a blessing in disguise. It's made me much more aware of how I compose and light my shots. I can no longer take shots on autopilot and rely on Lightroom/Photoshop to fix my problems.

One Year of baby fisheye!

It's been one year since I started baby fisheye! It's been a fun year of photography and the time has passed by so quickly. So what should I write about? More self-portraits? Nah, I'll do that later. Since a gaggle of babies was born in the last 12 months (and a bunch grew a year older), I'll commemorate my first year anniversary with some of my favorite baby pictures. Fear not, more technical posts are coming soon!