Project 365 - Day 7 - They're BACK!

The inspiration for this shot came from the news that the NHL is back this year.  Although a lot of people thought that the season was over and done with, and many of those were not really upset at that, the NHLPA and Board of Governors came to a tentative agreement.

So I broke out the old Macro and took a shot of one of my favourite players.  Mark Messier is captured in fine form here taking a face off.  I love the expression on this guy.  This is one of my McFarlane figures, one of the old ones before he had permission to put the actual team logo on the jersey.

Here's the shot.

The white part behind him is actually a scale replica of the hockey boards.  The circles behind are lights in our front window.  F3.2 at 1/40 of a second to get the background lights.  ISO400, 60mm Macro lens.

Project 365 - Day 6 - Got Milk??

Trying to be creative on a day to day basis is going to be hard, so when you get an idea you have to act.  I have a plan for snowflake pictures, but since it was not snowing today I had to go with a classic.  The milk drop.

There are rigs that you can get to get this shot perfect, but I just used the old fashioned fire-camera-when-you-think-the-time-is-right method.  Worked out pretty well.  I had to keep adjusting my angle to get the proper look, then I put a 1/2 cut of green gel on the speedlight I was using to get some texture on the milk.  Worked out pretty well for an hour worth of prep and shooting.

No, I was not using continuous shooting on this.  I had to focus manually using a tea bag wrapper for the centre of the milk, and I used a 1/4 teaspoon to drop the milk into the dish.

60mm lens again, at f11 and 1/5000 shutter.   Post was limited to cloning out a little splash dot and also cropping and leveling.  Got it mostly right in camera.

Here's the setup shot.

 

2nd speedlight off to the side was being used, but I took it out of the setup as it wasn't adding anything.  

I'm not done with experimenting with this kind of setup.  I need to get something a little more stable rigged up, but for now I got the shot I was looking for.

Project 365 - Day 5 - A family get together...

BUSY day yesterday.  We had the final Christmas dinner of the season.  Years ago, Sonia's whole family would get together on Christmas day.  Since the family is growing in leaps and bounds, this is no longer feasible unless we rent a hall or something like that to house everyone.  So we started the "Cousin's Christmas".

Each year, someone hosts and everyone comes over.  The crowd size changes from year to year.  This year, we had a lot of people confirmed, but many quickly dropped off due to illness or other problems - such as a broken furnace.

Here's the shot.  Unfortunately this was the only shot I got yesterday.   There is not a really good room in this house to get everyone properly without posing, and I didn't want to have everyone line up against the wall.  I like the casualness of this photo.

Project 365 - Day 4 - Trying to get a good shot of Brodie

As some of you know, Brodie is our Golden Retriever.  He is 12 going on 13 years old.   He has cataracts that cover most of his eyes, so he is basically blind.  He started going blind at a very young age, and for the past couple of years he has had no clear sight more or less.  He does fine in our house when you don't move things, but when people come over and you move stuff around he can get kind of confused.  Luckily he takes this in stride.

Brodie has had quite the Christmas season this year.  There were lots of visitors, and he especially likes the little visitors that want nothing more than to sit and pet him all day.  This, coupled with the fact that I have been off for the past three days, has tired Brodie out. 


So I wanted to test out my 24-70 lens.  Haven't taken a shot with it yet, and I was itching to do a portrait of some kind.  But I have no models.  Enter Brodie.  Now, I mentioned the cataracts previously for a reason.  Any bright light refracts on the cataracts and appears to be a blinding flash to Brodie.  This includes bright light coming in from the back window, lightning at night, and also the flash from a speedlight.

So what to do?  Use ambeint light of course.  But Brodie knows the sound of the camera, and that it usually comes with a flash, so as soon as you turn it on he hightails it for his bed.

The answer, ultimately, is to wait til he's asleep and sneak up on him.  I had to handhold this shot at ISO800 and F4 at 1/5 of a second.  Got off 20 shots before he opened his eyes and glared at me with that all knowing dog stare.  But I did get a shot... :-)

Project 365 - Day 3 - Happy (early) birthday to me!

My favourite lens these days is my 60mm Macro.  It's a Nikon and has an f stop of 2.8.  It's a very nice piece of glass.  All of the pics posted thus far this year have been from that lens.  But no more.

For a very long time I have coveted the Nikon 24-70 Lens.  I love the images it produces, the sharpness is incredible.  When I went to Banff in Feb of 2012, I rented this lens from Vistek.  Well worth the money.  I have been watching the sales, and I noticed that it went on sale at Henry's earlier this week.  On a whim, I checked Vistek, and they were almost $100 cheaper.  The Vistek price was the lowest I had seen since I started wishing for this lens.  So I pulled the trigger after agonizing over it for a number of days, and basically driving Sonia nuts by almost constantly talking abou it.  But I must say, all the pro/con lists (only con was the price), all the back and forth, checking the web site daily - it was worth it. 

I now own the Nikon 24-70 f2.8 lens.  Yay me!  :-)  And thank you Sonia in advance for my brithday presents for the next 10 years or so ... :-)

But you might guess that I will post a picture with that lens today?  Well, you are partially right ...

 

But I must say, it's really a sobering thought when you consider that I have now blown my entire 2013 photography budget on a single purchase, and only 3 days into the year.  Oh well, lots of time to figure out what to do with next year's allotment!  

Project 365 - Day 2 - Coin Collecting

So far so good.  Today was a crazy day schedule wise, and I only had a little time to work on the photo of the day.  I was trying to get a shot of a poinsettia that is nearing it's end of life - and not really happy with the results.  After the Raptor game tonight, I came home and emptied the change from my pocket - and found a Grey Cup loonie in there.

This got me thinking of all the "special" coins of late, and how the Canadian Mint seems to be releasing some every month.  I can't help thinking that I should be saving these coins, that one day they may be worth something.  Of course, I know very well that the only coins that are ever worth money are non-circulated coins, but this does not stop me.

When I see one of these coins, I put it aside.  I don't put it in a special place, it just goes beside the alarm clock in our bedroom and ultimately Sonia collects these coins and puts them back into the coin cup that we keep in the closet until there are enough to roll and take to the bank.  So, tonight I went to the coin cup and pulled out all the "special" coins that are in there.  There weren't a lot of special ones in there, a testament to other like minded people who are keeping these coins.

This is what I came up with.

I could have polished the Grey Cup loonie, but I think it makes a statement about the actual worth of the coin - $1.  It's a circulated coin, so it won't likely end up going up in value.

And as per usual, here's my setup.  I love off camera flash.  This flash is just bouncing off the ceiling and back down again.  This time my shutter speed was slower, so I am using the tripod for support as well.  This is my old Manfrotto tripod, not the one that reaches in.  I had it leaning on the counter for support.

Project 365. Day One - January 1 2013

Project 365? Maybe....

So I have been motivated to start project 365 - a project whereby I post an image per day.  Right now, I am planning on shooting one image per day and posting it on this blog.  So far, so good.  Day 1, image #1.  Let's see how far this goes.

Here's the final image.  I tried to capture the fear that Rudolph was feeling when he meets the Bumble in the cave.  Using hard lighting and a black background, I attempted to capture the moment.  I think it's pretty good.

No, it probably won't win any awards, but I was sitting at dinner tonight looking at this statue and thinking of what I could do with it.  A couple of flashes mounted off camera and a home made snoot, and voila.  It's a start.

Here's the process.  I got it all set up using the following setup.

At first, I was using one light and lighting the whole setup.  I used F18 at ISO400 to totally remove the ambient light - thus removing the chairs from the background.

The camera is mounted on a tripod for repeatability.  Theshutter speed is 1/250 so it can be handheld, but it's better this way.  Also, framing using liveview on a larger aperture was very handy.

That allowed me to see Rudolph and the Bumble.  But it was not a good clear shot of Rudolph.  Because of the way he is facing the Bumble, you can't see his face or his red nose.  So I took the second flash, off to the right, and put a home made snoot on it and aimed it right at his nose.


Here you can see how I lit Rudolph from the side to get his nose.  This light was set to -2 stops so as to only light the nose and part of the face.

The snoot on the flash above is made using a single sheet of 8X14 paper folded into a cone and held on using scotch tape.  (well, dollar store brand not scotch brand tape).  Quick, easy and cheap.  I used my gorillapod to raise the flash as well.

Side by side, the first image without the lit nose and then the second image with the second light.  With the snoot, I was able to get the nose lit to the right level without adding too much light to the overall image.  I did end up opening up the shadows on the Bumble's belly, but it did not take much away from the shot.

 

So there you go.   Day one done.  Now, I just hope I can keep this up.  I see that my last post was April of 2012.  That's far too long.