The eyes have it

Day 30

Meet Kaa. He's a patient at work. He's a big, beautiful Diamond Python, but right now he's not feeling too good.

Today was an OK day. I had a bad start - could not get my xray factors to work. I was getting a little agitated as our oxygen delivery was late, and we were running low on gas for the anaesthetic machine. All the while no matter what factors I used, I could not get a decent exposure. Finally the server on the digital xray developer crashed, and I was then able to get one plate through with good exposures. They happened to be the first factors I used, funny. Or not.

I just assumed my run of bad days was continuing :) But then we had a lull in consults, and Kaa piped up and volunteered to model for me.

Shot with EF 35mm f/2 set at f/6.3, 1/200s iso2000! 580EXII on-board, bounced to ceiling, with FEC +2 from memory. Oh, and 31mm of extension tubes in behind the lens :)

You can see my hand, and camera, in the reflection, as well as Robyn, my nurse. I was holding my camera in one hand, using live-view to focus by moving the camera in and out. My left hand was holding Kaa near his head, and Robyn was holding the remaining 2 metres of him!

Welcome to the 'hood

Day 29

Uhuh. One of those days.

Actually the day wasn't too bad. I just could not get anything to work on my PAD today. I think I need to get some serious sleep. Bad pics for a few days in a row.

I think this is the last self portrait while I am not pulling a stupid face. From now on it will be stupid face or no face.

Smoke was from smoke machine - too late in the night to be using chainsaws. Softbox 10 and 2, brolly at 7:00. Outside at 10pm. In the dark. With spideys.

Day 28

Isn't she cute? This is a bad photo of Vids. I am having a bad day.

You know how whatever Midas touched turned to gold? Today, whatever I touch turns to shit. Maybe instead of Midas I can call myself My-ass... cos that's where it looks like my pics came from today.

I was meant to get to a Hindu wedding this morning to cover the ceremony, just to get some "refresher" experience in how things progressed, the best angles, where the action is etc. Our wedding was 12 years ago :) We got there just as they were about to take the "seven steps" or Saptapadi. That means we were REALLY late.

Awesome.


Anyway, things went downhill from there as my attempts at establishing myself as an "authorised" photographer were getting nowhere, and I had seriously, just given up. As I had not really touched base with the Bride, and had not even met the groom, I could not really get the rapport, or "bond" I feel is important to get the right attention from the couple... you know, the occasional glance at the camera and a smile etc when you hover in front of them ... this was not happening. It was all crap. And because I was a late comer, establishing myself in the "unlce and aunts with a good camera" pecking order list was not happening either.


I managed to get a few crap, high iso images before tossing the camera back into the bag, eating, saying hi to the bride, and leaving.


Upon arriving home, Vids requested I take a pic of her in her Sari. She had just gotten the blouse made during our recent trip to India. So, both tired and cranky, we went to the garden to try getting a nice pic. I was not thinking, and not in the mood to play. Nor was I going to force Vids to stand in the sun while I played numbuts with my camera. I wanted shallow DOF, but could not be arsed going inside to get a ND filter. So what we have here is a crap pic of a lovely gal in a lovely sari. One can only dream if I had put an ND filter on and kept the background from blowing out, and used my flash for fill, we could have had a nice pic.


85mm f/2 at f/3.2, 1/125s, iso100, 580EXII held off-camera for fill. And that just goes to show you again how little I was thinking - I should have gone to 1/250s to cut things back by 1 stop. I was having a bad day :(


I could have used High Speed Shutter sync (HSS) for my flash, but I don't like using HSS flash unless I can avoid it, as it often really reduces the effective range/distance the flash can work in, and with an 85mm lens I was quite a way back. Better to stick to the x-sync speed or below and use ND filters if needed. I know it sounds odd, but it is true (trust me, as you can see, I know WTF I am talking about! ha ha haaaaaa).

My lesson for today... THINK before you push that button. And, once again, half arsed efforts get half arsed results... or more pleasantly, "what ye sow, so shall ye reap". In programmers terms, garbage in, garbage out.

Day 27

Day 27

Today was our social outing at one of the clinics I work at. This is my fave clinic and the Team are just awesome. They can make a bad, bad, bad day pass with only a mild headache. It's a shame one of the Team is leaving, for hopefully greener pastures. Victoria, second from left, will be trotting off to Melbourne, for much nicer Lattes, much nicer Vego tucker, and hopefully some new career prospects now she has finished her studies. It will be sad to see her go :(

We had just finished a few games of action packed, breath taking, adrenaline pumping.. croquet. Yup. Oh, and they had also finished a few drinks and were enjoying it just the same.

This pic was taken quite late, well after sunset. I had the iso at 2500, so there's a LOT of noise. Shot at f/4, 1/25s, with a 580EXII as slave, handheld at camera left, triggered by onboard flash in eTTL mode. The ambient was some rather dull "floodlights" on the croquet green. I guess I could have gotten a nicer pic by dropping the iso a bit, and using a flash ratio instead of both at 1:1, but it was kinds run and gun and my mind was more focused on the my 4yo who was bored to the point I thought he was going to break something.

Poor kid was bored because the moment we got there, the dragon hostess of the Club loudly announced "no kids on the court" and "children can't play". Immediately the bottom lip quivered and he sat down arms folded and wanted to go home. She could have let him use the "practice" pitch around the back. Hag.

Anyways, he managed to resurrect his mood, and had a decent time. Such a good kid sometimes.

We had some BBQ tucker, played another game, then some dessert, and came home.

Here's the Team in a more natural pose.

Gear P@rn

Day 26

I have often wondered why my bag is so heavy. Today I decided to totally empty it to see why it felt like my shoulder was about to fall off after walking for 10 minutes carrying it.

This was a simple set-up, with a single exposure. I was going to be all arsey and do a double exposure, using some of this gear to shoot the pic, then replacing it and shooting it again, then combining the two images.... Nah.

This was all shot using a Canon SX120IS. This is just a point and shoot camera, which is not a bad little PnS at that. I tend to use it in manual, with manual flash control etc. As you do. This pic was iso200, 1/200s, f/6.3. I used the flash on minimum just enough to set off an optical trigger. I had the optical trigger under an OLD Canon 299T flash. Now this is an awesome bit of kit. It was designed for the old T model Film Canon cameras I think. It is essentially useless to use modern day automatic gizmo wielding kids. The big upside of this flash is that it has a built in light meter, so it can actually meter it's own exposure for you, if you know how to set it up. So essentially it can run in "auto" mode, if you put the right settings (F.no and iso) in to it. Quite a clever thing for $30 on eBay... and at 30yrs old it aint too bad. It is not in my everyday bag as it is too big, and because it only has a few settings that I don't find any more convenient than my YN460II's, so they get space priority.

Esentially what you see in the pic, I carry most days. Sometimes I carry the YN460IIs in another bag, other times I jam them into the top of my LowePro Stealth Reporter 650 bag. If I  add my mac-book pro, it all weighs a ton! This pics obviously does not include memory cards, spare batteries, lens filters, flash gels, camera straps etc, all of which ARE in the bag too :)

The 350D (Middle Row, Right) does not focus accurately any more. It may be a simple fix, but these days I don't have the time nor the mindset to play with unreliable toys. If I am doing a job for someone (paid or not) I cannot have gear that lets me down. I am going to have to get a new camera body to replace it soon.

I am falling in love (again) with prime lenses. This time I think I have keepers. My primes now are the 35mm f/2, 85mm f/1.8,  135mm f/2L and an old Asahi Pentax m42 mount 55mm f/1.8 lens (total manual control) These are all great creative lenses. The 35mm seems to be on my 60D most the time these days, seconded by the 85mm, then my 24-105mm zoom.

Anyways, 5 to midnight, time to hit the sack.

Aussie Aussie Aussie - Oi Oi Oi

Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi

Day 25

Today is January 26th. Australia Day. This is an interesting day. Generally speaking, Aussies are not overly patriotic. Actually, Aussies are not overly anything. Today we celebrate being Aussie. Now this opens a can of worms I am not going to discuss here. But I think it is sad when I see the words "Aussie Pride" and the Southern Cross used by "patriotic" people to excuse racist behavior. Call me weird, but to me, that is very un-Aussie.

Moving on.

Today's pic is not quite what I had in mind, but I sort of like this one - as much as I can ever like a self-portrait!

Softbox 9:00 and 3:00, reflective umbrella 6:00 high, bare flash 12:00 low with blue gel. 35mm f/2 set at f/6.3 I think, iso100 1/200s. Triggered cammera via YN602. I think my batteries in my camera or my wireless are going flat - 1/250s gave me not a full x-sync :( Shot with EF35mm f/2 lens - rapidly becoming one of my fave lenses!

PS: The beer is from Belgium, the flags and sunnies are made in China. I think the singlet is too, and I know for sure the flashes, wireless transmitters and backdrop are. The Camera is Japanese made, and so are the lenses.

Now that's being Aussie!

Dr Fred

Day 24

This is Fred. I work with Fred at the Animal Welfare League hospital. Fred is an amazing bloke, and a great colleague. As you can see in the photo, he really enjoys life. An inspiration and an amazing person to work with. Here he is speying yet another dog. This is probably his 10th for the morning. He's very quick, something I can only dream to emulate :)

I snapped this pic through the glass window in the wall that separates the two operating theatres. The red hue you can see on Fred's scrub is actually my reflection. No flashes, no crazy light set-ups. Just some fluro tubes above and the tungsten from the surgery light. A bit of photoshop to bring out some charactor in the shadows, but that's it.

I thought I'd occasionally add just an "everyday pic".. of everyday things in my life, and the things in my life I like a lot, or have some character, or both.

Day 23

This is Vidya, my wife. She agreed to be my model today, even though we're both more than ready to hit the sack.After work today we met a uni mate for dinner. We had planned to meet in Castle Towers, which is basically across the other side of town. For us, all the action seems to happen across town! We live South West of Sydney, just east of Liverpool, and all of our mates are either in "town" proper, or in the Hills. So we spend a lot of time traveling. To make it even better, Vids works in Camden, I work in Penrith and Kemps Creek. We spend a LOT of time in the car.

Today I was toying with "clam-shell" type set-ups. to see what I could come up with. I learned a lot from these pics. To get less shadow I need to have been between the umbrellas - here I was ever so slightly to the right of the umbrellas. This caused the shadow on the left side (ride side of photo) of  the models face, which, for clam-shell is a big no no. Also I should have pulled the fill up to the same power as the main. There's no real rules for clam-shell, but I guess ideally there would be little shadow and mostly flat, even lighting.

60" umbrella at 7:00 high, 42" umbrella 7:00 low, softboxes at 10:00 and 2:00, blue gelled flash at wall (drowned out by umbrellas).

Played with tones in Photoshop, smoothed skin a little. Otherwise very little work (2 minutes max) in Photoshop.

Smokin Hearts

Day 22

Back at work today after one day off. Was a steady day, one or two moments of craziness and frustrations... but on the whole not a bad day. Today's pic I was hoping to take a photo of some guests, but by the time I got home an showered after work, they were waling out the door. So I had to do another improvised indoor shoot.

So I'm just playin' today. I decided to see how hard/easy it was to shoot smoke... it'd be nice to have some lovely curls of smoke to compose into photos, or at least the ability to create them if I wanted to :)

So today's pic is just that - smoke. The smoke has come from one of those scented smoke cone thingies - I didn't crop it out so it looked more believable. This is a freaky shot - I put a red gel on my flash, and I had a blue gel on the wall behind. I focused on the cone, and then snapped a few shots to see how it looked, and this is what I got. I DID cut the blue out by reducing the blue channel output, as it looks better on black. But the smoke itself is 100% SOOC, honest to goodness.

Splish Splash

Day 21

Today was a great day. A bit of a sleep in (no work!!! yippeee!) and a fairly leisurely get ready to go out. I say fairly leisurely because we had a time limit and a 4yo to get ready, AND I was trying to take a bit of gear that needed tearing down and packing up. In the midst of all this we had our friends pop over with their son to play for a while, so it was almost a miracle we got out the door before midday.

We then headed up to a little caravan park near Sackville. I don't know the exact locality, all I know is we took a little putt putt ferry and got there. I have been there a few times. It is set on the banks of the Hawkesbury, I believe. Very pretty, a lot like the farm we had when I was a kid. My Aunt and Uncle  have a van up there, and they stay there occasionally. They have been going "up the river" for well over 30 years. Their van is aptly called "Updariva". I love them a lot, they are a great couple and it's such a great thing they are my Aunt and Uncle :) They have both had their rough trots, and they smile and keep on battling on. My Aunt you can see in the background with the umbrella - she has had at least ten malignant melanomas removed, and undergone countless surgeries to have lymph nodes and other bits removed. She's a real battler and a real inspiration.

Today we had a nice chat over lunch, then a splash in the river. It has just rained so the water is a muddy brown.

This photos was taken with my GoPro Hero2. I used the FishEye Hemi Photoshop plug-in to reduce the fisheye a bit, adjusted levels and sharpened a bit. I love this little camera. One large light up high at about 5:00 position I think, judging from the shadows. Full power :)

Noir

Day 20

Today I thought I would try black on black. I have never really tried this, and I was keen to see how it would go. However, I had to first unpack my bicycle, which I had only half unpacked after I returned to Sydney from Hong Kong 13 months ago. It still had no pedals, and I had packed hard foam-rubber around the tubes to protect it, and they were still on it. I had also gaffer taped cardboard to the frame. I learned the hard way, gaffer tape comes off real easy in the first day or so, but 12 months later it is not so agreeable. So I spent the next 45 minutes cleaning gaffer residue off my head-tube and carbon seat-post, as well as off the top-tube, all the while trying not to scratch the black metallic (soft!) finish. Finally we have a bike with pedals, mostly clean finish, and most the bits found.. except the cover for the rear flasher, you can see the batteries in the pic :)

The end photo is ok. A little bit of levels in Photoshop. I'd like to have more specular light off the tubes but I had limited room for my softboxes, so the ideal angle was not possible. If I turned them toward the bike, the backdrop became visible. So this was the best I could do today.

Softbox (gridded) at 8:45 and 4:00 at 1/2 power, handheld snooted flash on a stand held at 12:00 at 1/32 power to get specular off top-tube. I like the possibilites here.

Day 19 - flop

Day 19

Today's pic is not as great as I had hoped. Actually, it's a complete flop. I am not happy with it at all.

To rub salt in the wound I did have the chance to take some pics of some mates where we had dinner, however I did not think they wanted to be my models, and it was not until we were leaving with a bratty tired 4yo boy that we both realised we both wanted to do the pics, but both thought the other was not keen... open channels next time?? I feel so stupid. And this photo just rubs it in.

Softbox at 2:00, bare flash at 9:00, two flashes in box with smoke machine. Crap PS to put some sand in. Crap.

Tidy my gear and bed. Better luck tomoz? I hope so.

woohooo

Day 18

Yeah. It has been one of those days. Where you feel like a flat tyre but have to appear like everything is just fine and dandy thank you very much...

I actually think my wife has more of these days than me. She somehow manages to raise a kid, do some Lab research for her PhD, work part-time as a vet, look after me, AND look after her parents. Some days you can see little cracks in her amazing resolve, but other times she seems a lot like the yobbo in the photo - some half crazed "yeah baby, all is rockin' here"... hmmmm....

Today was just a long day at work, after I had spent until 2:30am looking through old photos, realising I had deleted a lot of important ones :) AND keeping a LOT of junk. Gotta find an easy way of keeping this under control. I thought LightRoom would help, but sadly it interferes too much with my RAW workflow... maybe Bridge? Never really used it..

Anyway, the yobbo is me (as you know). I seem to do better at stupid poses than "normal" ones. Says a lot about me huh? Softbox at 10 and 2, silver reflective umbrella at 6pm above camera. Bare flash at wall behind me with green gel on front. I seem to be getting to the point I haven't used a light meter to set my flashes since about day 3, so for easy set-ups like this I am just guessing the settings pretty much ok. I learned a lot of this and the basics on how to eyeball your settings by knowing your gear and the logic behind it all from Wizwow. This was shot at f/7.1 with my 35mm f/2 lens. Gotta say I am loving my 35mm and 85mm primes a lot more than I expected to - I reach for them before I even consider my 24-105mm f/4L. Maybe just a passing fad?

Speed Demon

Speedin' on the freeway...

Day 17

We'd given up on the young fellas old bike. It was a "Hip Kids" bike, which was supposed to convert from a pedal-less push bike to a pedaled cycle. I bought it new from the company on the net. It was an awesome concept, with an amazingly bad design. To attach the pedal mechanism was pretty easy, but getting the chain, training wheels etc to go in place (and more importantly, stay in place), was just a nightmare. And I am sort of OK with tools, thanks. I gave it good time and even carried tools when we used it, which became rarely, then never. It is now sitting on the side of the road, if anyone wants it.

So today we challenged ourselves to buying a new one. I used to cycle a fair bit and have gone through the cheap and nasty bikes all the way to custom frame with Campagnolo Centaur groupset and Vento rims, which is gorgeously adorning our garage floor and gathering dust. I know a bit about bikes, although after walking throughout the bike shop I realized in the 4 years I have not been cycling, things have developed at warp speed, with funky spacey carbon frames being the norm. My steel frame will look vintage when I take it out in the next week or so. I can just imagine the conversations at traffic lights... "wow, a Classic Vintage steel bike, you must have looked after that well"...

Anyway, I was sort of appalled at the masses of crap bearings and general crap on the budget bikes, so we ended up spending a lot more than I would have expected on a kids bike. But it is so big it should last him a few years, and it doesn't look too dorky once you remove the mud guards and the pads, so I'm sure it won't be too much of an embarrassment for said kid to ride to the shops and school in a few years. Sure, he'll have to lose the training wheels :)

I remember learning to ride on one of those kids bikes that weren't quite the 27" wheel but bigger than a BMX - I think 24". I think it was even in the days before BMX were mainstream. Wow. I used to hang onto the side of the house or the fence, and climb up, then push off. I never had the training wheels. for better or for worse. My brother who had already been through training wheels and left his bike under the car, and was given one of those high-bar dragster things with back-pedal brakes to replace it. My sister got a pink bike with training wheels, also with back pedal brakes. I got the second-hand big bike with no brakes. I really should have taken the hint from my parents then - but I was too thick, I now realize.

Anyways, so now the young fella has a brand new Trek. My first "nice" bike was a Trek, but I was 23 at the time and had intended to buy a car, but (wisely) decided to spend a grand on a nice bike instead. Back then $1000 on a bike was a lot of money. My wife, who I had just met back then, thought I was a nutter for spending so much on a bike, but she supported my decision. I think she thought any young bloke who wants a bicycle instead of a car is either really nuts, or really has put some thought into it.

I'd like to think I am the latter :)

The pic was a rush pic. I have to do some searching through old pics today to give a portfolio to a friend of a friend for a possible job... lots of work to do!!

Ciao 'til tomoz.

Star light, star bright..

Day 16

What a day! It's 11:15pm. I have just sat down, after all but giving up on today's pic. The young fella has has been calling me into his room non-stop since he went to bed... an hour late. At 10:45 he did me the favor of falling asleep. I had been trying to get some self portraits with the dog, but she was not co-operating and I was distracted trying to listen out for the young fella. His mum has gone out to gallivant meet up with some old school mates for dinner, and he was not happy about that at all. Whenever he disobeyed and I raised my voice, he'd then mope and start saying his mantra "I want my mummy"..

I had almost given up, when I walked out for a breath of fresh air, looked up and saw (what I assume is) Betelgeuse and the belt of Orion. Hmm. I have never photographed the stars before... or the moon for that matter!

So I set my camera on a tripod, with remote shutter release (an old YN602 with shutter cable), opened my 35mm f/2 to f/2, and iso at 200. I set shutter speed to 20s. And here you have it! JPEG with minimal levels adjustment in PS. I was impressed :) at 30s the star trails were remarkable but the sky was too messy/hazy. Even at 20s the trails are still visible. Awesome. Makes me keen to try out those image stacker software.. but apart from the one or two times I might try this sort of thing, I can't see it being of much use. Besides, I sold my fisheye lens :)

So that's today for ya.

Time to watch a DVD and hit the sack.

Everyone needs a HERO

Day 15

And I reckon everyone could do with one of these little beauties too. I'm not one to give praise a lot, but these dudes rock :)

Today was an exhausting day at work - just a lot of emotional and mental drainage. Coming home I was wondering how I was going to summon the strength to do my photo today on top of everything else. Luckily today was "left overs" day. Left over food, left over plonk. Yum :) I felt a million times better after that.

Todays pic is of a GoPro Hero2. This item found its way into my gadget bag after I sold a Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lens to finance it in December last year. I wasn't overly impressed with the Rokinon/Samyang/Bowers/Pro-Optics/insert-distributor-label-here 8mm lens. I had it for maybe 2 months. It was ok. But I actually think the daylight images from the GoPro Hero2 give that lens a big run for it's money.

The Hero2 has it's limitations. Available light only, no manual settings, no LCD screen. But I find if it is used with these limitations in mind, they don't become limitations, rather just "traits" of the camera. Used properly one can easily judge roughly what will be picked up by the lens... a LOT!!

Anyway, today this photo was shot using my EF 85mm f/1.8, set at f/10, with 2 YN460IIs. The flash above the Hero2 was set at minimum power, and was in a beer holder snoot with a small cheap grid shoved in the end. The flash on the wall behind was gelled with red gel, through a small grid, at about 1/32 power. The set up shot is below.

To get the circle around the Hero2 to be small, I had to bring the grid in real close. It was only just out of frame. It also meant I had to have as little power as possible, and decrease the aperture a bit.

The resulting image was essentially straight out of camera (SOOC). I adjusted the levels to show the red a bit, that's about it.

I know it is sort of similar to yesterdays pic, but it is really a whole different shoot all together :)

I took the GoPro Hero2 on our trip overseas, with the Wrist Housing. It was great fun in the pool and in the surf taking photos and video of the family. I was hoping to use it through India and Hong Kong too, however I gave the wrist housing to my brother in law, as he fell in love with the Hero2 and we bought him one for his Birthday. The store we ordered it from did not have (and could not reliably get) the wrist housing into Singapore in time for his snorkeling trip, so I left mine with him. I did not really want to risk dropping/scratching my Hero2 without the housing, so it spent the next 3 weeks in bubbles wrap! I had intended to get a new one in Hong Kong on the way through, but we ran amazingly short of time. Needless to say I grabbed a new wrist housing pronto when I returned to Sydney... which has of course, sat in it's box ever since :)

and, in the red corner...

Day 14, 15th January 2012

These shiny, new looking weights are far from new. I have had them for about 7 years, and they have traveled to and from Hong Kong at least 3 times.. ie from HK to Sydney, then back to HK and back to Sydney. It all sounds silly, but I have moved back and forth on at least 3 occasions, and I have a feeling another bout is to come in the next 2yrs. As my family was still in Sydney for 2 of those moves, I made a trip back to Sydney to see them at least every 8 weeks. This meant I could carry odds and sods to and fro... like 20kg of weights :)

These little fellas helped me thru rehab of a dislocated shoulder I got after being knocked off my motorbike by one of HK's infamous minibuses. I was going to need surgery but decided I would try rehab and physio first, and touch wood, it seems to be ok. But now, 5 years on, I have lost all tone and it is really time to get back into things. So I decided firstly to unbox them, then photograph them in a dramatic light. The idea was sort of like a spotlight in a boxing ring etc. Sort of "meet thine enemy".

Taken with 35mm f/2 at f/8, iso200, 1/250s. One YN 460II in a beer holder snoot with an el-cheapo grid in the end to focus the light. A puff of fog from my little fog machine, then some levels adjustment and silly stuff in PS to make it look a little gritty. Nothing fancy. I made a few silly errors here, eg overlapping the boards on the floor as you can see behind the weights. Not pretty. I could pretend I did it to look like the edge of the boxing ring, but that would only be kidding myself. Another boo-boo is a reflection off the weights on the board down low in the middle. Not sure how I could have avoided that, maybe a better angle or polarizing filter? I do like the star-like specular reflection on the top of the weights on the left though :) No PS there, just blind dumb luck!

neighborly chef - Day 13

This is Sarva. He's a good mate and a neighbor. Today we had the pleasure of his company, along with the company of his family.  Our boys get on real well, so having these guys over is a treat for us all. Sarva is an awesome guest, and he loves to cook. And boy he can cook some nice tucker. This photo I managed to get some OCF gear into the kitchen, take about 4 pics, then bail out. Sarva cooks without recipes, and purely by his nose. Some of his dishes are heavenly. The rest are damn wonderful.

Softbox 10:00, softbox 4:00, bare flash bounced off roof at 2:00. This was taken after 3 glasses of wine, so image-stabiliser was working overtime :)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS at f/8 I think. Some PS to bring up light in background and sharpen details a bit. Tried a bit of a comical "super-real" effect here. Like it :)

Day 12 - What a smartie

Or rather, an "m".. not sure why they are called M&M's when they're either just an "m", or lots of m's...

either way, here they are. Today I was just messin with an EF35mm f/2 lens, and stuck 31mm extension tube behind it too see how close I could get. The lens is basically resting on the plate here. No idea what the effective aperture of this set up is, though this is shot at f/8 on the lens. I think it is close to f/16 as far as light transmission goes. The extension tubes have no glass in them, just a tube, but they add a lot of length to the lens. Their purpose is to drastically reduce the minimum focal distance of the lens.

From memory the theory goes the longer the lens, the less effect extension tubes will have. I think there is a ratio going on, ie ratio of lens focal length to lens plus extension tube length. I think 31mm on a 35mm lens is a lot, but the same tube on a 135mm lens may make only a small difference in minimum focal distance. I will try it out one day, because really, 35mm is too close for macro - the lens is almost touching the subject here.

This was shot at iso160, f/8, 1/250s with a 60x90cm softbox held over camera. The shadow yo can see in the refeletion of the softbox on the orange m&m in pic is the camera :)

Just playin' today.

Day 11

 

 

Today has been another long day! After work I dashed home to see the boy before he went to bed, then I had to pick up my mates family from the airport. I was hoping to take some "crowd" pics at the airport, but felt a little self conscious and was worried the AFP would want to see my SD card :)

This is yet another self portrait. Toying with rim lighting and also toying with making a room look darker than it is. Shot 1/250s f/8 iso100 with 1 softboxes at 10 and 2 as rim. some levels adjustment in PS.

Day 10

Today my wife and boy returned from their trip. They left in November, and spent most of December in Singapore. I traveled to Singapore via a 2 day break in Hong Kong in Mid December, and together we went to India via a 2 day stopover in Hong Kong again (we had Cathay tickets to use). I was back home on 29th December, but these two remained in India for another 11 days, only just coming home today. They both had a great trip, but were missing their own routine a little.

This pic I snapped of the young fella watching Cars 2. I was able to set up a white muslin cloth backdrop behind him, and put some white board on the floor, set the speedlights up on stands with umbrellas, and then pick him and his chair up, and plonk him on the board. His eyes remained glued to the TV the entire time, and the only time he looked away was to give me this "eat me" face when I told him to stop smiling like a baboon.. I haven't really seen a baboon smile...

Two YN460IIs aimed at back drop into reflective silver umbrella, two YN460IIs one at 7:00 as main, at 1/2 power into shoot-through brolly, the other at 1/8 power down low at 4:00 into STU. Some white paint in PS as I snapped this before the key had time to fully recharge. We're all on the verge of falling asleep so this was pretty good all considered :)

Day 9

10th January, 2012

Yup it's a Lizard. A Bluetongue at that. I was hoping she'd strike a pose with her tongue out. I managed to get one pic with the tongue, will post it below...

This was shot at work (recognise the table?? This is the consult table top). The lizzy is a WIRES rescue lizard we are treating, I think it is ok to give to wires to release now. You can see she is missing toes on her front leg. Most of the lizzys we get are attacked by dogs, cats, lawn mowers or cars, and occasionally brainless kids.

This Bluetongue was quite nice, more hiss than bite, and once you picked her up she just sat there poking her big blue tongue out. Cute!

In this pic you can sort of see the tongue. They're huge and flat and blue.

I was taking these pics to test the DOF of my 85mm f/1.8, wide open. As you can see in both photos, at 1m the Depth-of-Field (DOF) is VERY thin. You can see a line of "in focus" area on the table top. DOF less than 1 inch? Not much room for error there. However, the lens is quite remarkable even wide open. Sure, it's not going to win any prizes or out resolve my 60D, but it is more than capable of producing an image sharp enough for A4 prints, wide open. Even more capable at f/2.2-2.5

I have read a lot of people on the net say things like "once I got my La La La (insert whatever) zoom, I have never used my 85mm f/1.8 ever again. All I can say is, I can't see myself putting this lens away in a hurry. I have 24-105mm f/4L zoom, and 70-200 f/4L zoom, and they both produce images much sharper than a lot of cheaper zooms, but they not in the same league as the fast primes. Youhave to try real hard to get this limited DOF in one of those f/4 zooms. Even at f/2.8 the DOF is larger and the bokeh harsher.

It's not a deal breaker. The convenience of a zoom cannot be underestimated. But it is almost like saying "ever since I got my Subaru Forrester my Porsche and my Land Cruiser have never left the garage. Different tools for different jobs. The one that does them both, does neither job the best.


Just my thoughts.

I have to tidy the house and get some rest. Tomorrow my family returns from India - I can hardly wait. The house has been grimly quiet. It does mean less time for P365 - I hope it all still pans out!

These were shot 85mm f/1.8 on a 60D, iso100, 1/80s, flash on ETTL triggered by YN ST-E2. I had forgotten my manual flashes so had to use my 420EX.

Day 8

Burn for you...

Another quicky today. Long day at work, followed by a visit to a mates place for a few (too many) beers.

Today was once again fully booked at work. Having a fun team makes the day go fast, and today was a fun team again. At lunch I managed to squeeze in a trip to JB Hi-Fi to grab a a Mac Mini. Now, for those of you are neither Mac "fans", nor fans of JB Hi-Fi, you don't know what you are missing :) Ok, the former is subjective, and though JB is just a chain store, I find all you have to do to get a good price is ask. I have gotten so many good prices on Canon L series lenses, as well as TV's and now a Mac Mini. Ok, the price on the mac Mini he could not drop, but the price of my MS Office was definitely a saving - lets say it was not much more then the student edition. Add to that interest free terms on the purchase, using my HSBC Visa Card, it was a sealed deal in 15 minutes of walking into the store.

After work I barely managed to make my way home without falling asleep driving (becoming habitual, sadly) and then ran to a mates place for some awesome grub and nice cold beer.

Todays pic - shot with candle light only, duh. EF85mm f/1.8, 1/1000s, iso200.

Oooooopsss

Day 7, 8th January 2012

There's only one way for sinners, and gear that does not work. 350D, you are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Uhuh, it's a cliche. So is the photo.

I am playing with this idea a bit, I might do some with me or someone else in it instead. I just wanted to see how easy it would be to do this, and it aint too hard.

Today is/was Sunday. I had a baby shoot lined up, and got up at 6am to be ready for it. My instructions were "baby feeds for 1 hr anytime from 8-10, then sleeps solid after the morning feed. So I was up at 6, car packed, gear had been charged/formatted/dogpiss-washed-off last night. Had breakfast and coffee, and was aimlessly cleaning ang checking my phone every minute to see if the "I am feeding baby" message to come. I think it came at 9:57am. I could have had 2 hours more sleep! So I made my way there to arrive after the 1hr feeding time.

On arrival, the bubs was not happy to not be in her bed, and not wrapped and comfy for her sleep, so after 2hrs of trying to get her to sleep and/or pose, we decided to can the session, and I packed up and left. I think I got one pic I will send to the parents, but nothing really worth keeping.

Upon coming home I had to run and do a few errands, try to find a Mac Mini or some decent PC of similar pricing in store. No luck with that, I will go to an Apple store tomorrow at lunch (I hope). I am shopping for a desktop for my wife. I want something of decent build but not too costly, and I don't really want to pay for an LCD/keyboard we wont use (ie no cheap laptops). Most desktop PC's I have looked at in the last week don't have wireless built in - why is this? Does every house have ethernet cables out of every wall? Or are people happy to trip over cables? Or is it just expected we will fork out more for the wireless? Take up a USB hub with a wireless dongle?

Bah! Mac Mini has built in. And it looks so cool :)

Then I returned home, and was hoping to try some outdoor pics of plants with water drops, but the skies opened fully, so I gave up on that too.

The resulting image - shot with canon 60D, 85mm f/1.8, shot at f/2.8 I think, with 580EXII on-board, bounced behind me.

Crash.Boom.Bang

Knock knock

Day 6, January 7th 2012

Today's pic was a bit of a rush job. I had planned to use a photo I took of a baby possum at work, but it was a little pink and rude... hairless and amorphous.. very cute, but not.. a PAD :)

Today was flat out at work - Saturday full of consults with (luckily) a 45 minute break. I was on duty with 2 cool nurses, so the day went awesomely, for a work day.

Today's post is going to be short. I have to get my gear (and mind)ready for a baby shoot tomorrow - I have never had the pleasure of doing one, and this bub is 1 week old. One of my uni mates just had her first bub. The shoot will likely be early in the morning, depending on bub. So I have to be ready to scat at call. I'm stuffed. Last few days, a mixture of bad sleeping (going to bed at 1 or 2 am, still in Indian time!) and getting over my gut and chest bugs, I have been almost nodding off on the drive home - not good. I'm going to exit stage right, right now, tidy up my gear and my head, and sleep.

OCF info - Single YN460II in small grid directly at my back, at 1/2 power.  Camera settings ios800, f/11, 1/250s, Canon 60D, 24-105mm f/4L at 24mm I'd guess. Some photoshop to make it look like an old print, sort of. Slack arse here left crap on the floor.

Oh, and this shot was one of only 2 I got before the smoke alarm above my head went off... so in answer to anyones questions, yes, fog machines set of smoke alarms, but ONLY if you are stupid enough to point them directly under the smoke alarm.. not that I know anyone THAT stupid :p

Lesson for today: we can never be too attentive to detail (but we can too easily be too sloppy).

Day 5

Day 5, January 6th 2012

Yeah, it's a bit of a pose, and a boring self portrait. Been a long day.

I'm actually very averse to my own photographs. I don't photograph well. This makes me much more comfortable behind the camera, and much I am better behind the camera too.

This self portrait was done as a last resort for today. I was going to try something comical or interesting, but got tired very quickly. I had a late finish at work. Late finishes make me tired, and cranky. And hungry. So I pedaled my little toy-ota home feeling tired, cranky and hungry, as well as self loathing. I know you can't see it in the photo (duh) but I am half deaf. It can make even the most ordinary interaction a big thing. It makes every conversation a struggle. And I do anything from 5 to 30 consults in a day, and it makes me tired. This year, being my year for projects, I am going to learn Auslan and reach out to others like me (look out!).

Anyway, days like today when I hit the tired slump I don't have the energy to strain to hear. So I just stand there, looking stupid, wishing there was some shell I could crawl into, or some way I could disapparate to somewhere else. This happens often, but is worse when I am tired. It takes so much energy to understand conversation!

So, I got home, ate some junk food crap, and then set my lights up. Much to my delight Jilly (scruffy model from day 2) had pissed all over my grey backdrop whilst I was out. I had walked her in the morning, and I was no *extremely* late home. I was pissed off! Not with her as much as myself - the thought of her pissing or crapping on my muslin backdrop came across my mind just as I walked out the door this morning, but Mr Lazy decided it would not happen, and he would cross that obstacle if it did. And it did indeed. Now I have to wash it, and dry it. And I am sure half of the dye will come out. Yippee.

Not.

Anyway, after all this I tried a few faux cranky, angry, and then some emotional expressions, but they were all stuffed and moronic, so I just glared at the camera instead, and it seemed more normal for me.

Ignore the blubber. It wasn't there 10 years ago.

Set-up for today - Softboxes at 10 and 1, beauty dish at 7, umbrella at 4, down low as fill. 580EXII with green gels aimed at backdrop at full zoom. I think you can guess the light ratios from the specular, main light and the fill in the shadows. I'm too tired to write the obvious in tonight :)

Now its time to tidy the house and wash the dog wee off my backdrop. My wife and boy come home in a few days, and it is going to take me that long to make the house clean before they come. They'll have been away 6 weeks when they return, that's a long time for a girl and a 4yo boy. I'm really looking forward to them coming back, the house is too quiet. Another bonus is 2 new models for P365 :)

Spideys beware...

Day 4, 5th January 2012

Today was my day "off". Thursday. While everyone else is working, I have Thursday off. Great day for catching up on things, in theory...

Today I had to buy some more DVD's to burn, because they wanted enough to share in a large family, so I needed to burn 3 more and drop them off tonight.

Well, I thought, lets have some fun, and work todays photo into the drive.

While we were away over Christmas the house became a spider and ant breeding ground, and I also believe a flea market too :) So I had been to Bunnings earlier this week and bought some Insect Bombs, you know the aerosols that lock open and you have to leave the house for a few hours and they're supposed to magically get rid of all your woes? Yeah those. I tell my clients to use them, so I decided I might as well practice what I preach... for the first time ever.

Now this is the photo idea.. War on Spideys. Spidey Skirmish. I wanted to create a somewhat comical scene of me persuing spideys with an Insect Bomb and the pressure sprayer I use to spray outside the house, a bit like a WWII mustard gas scene. It needs a gas mask! This is where I had decided to use the drive to deliver the DVD's to my advantage. I had lent that ghastly mask you see in the picture to one of my vet nurses. She is pregnant, and I told her to either be very diligent with the anaesthetic gas scavenge systems, or wear the mask. She is on leave, so I decided it would make a fitting photo of the day. So on the way to deliver the discs, I dropped off at the clinic, and grabbed the mask.

This was shot on a gross grey patchy muslin backdrop. Two softboxes behind at 10:00 and 2:00, a bare flash with 1 + Green and 1/2 + Green gels on them, and a beauty dish at 7:00. The soft boxes served as a rim light, as well as lighting up the smoke/fog. They were grided to control the spill a bit. Photoshop was minimal - just to add some pop. No cloning, small amount of masking. I metered the softboxes for f/8 each, with combined f/9. The beauty dish was metered at f/4.5, I think I shot at f/7.1, iso 400.

So you can see above this is the set up shot. The green gelled flash was on the shaft of the stand holding the 70x90cm box, held on by a manfrotto superclamp.

I guess I could have added some orange to the foreground, but I am pleasantly surprised by this image. I took a bit of time to think about how it was all going to come together, and I would like to know how to do some more fancy photoshop on it, but for today I am quite happy with this.

The fog machine is a generic branded fog machine I picked up today from Jaycar. It has "Rave" branded on it, but they're all the same design from the same factory in China I think. This one is 700w. I always thought they'd be a crap to use, and they'd need to sit and warm up just when things got moving. Uhuh. That's right. Might be best to have 2? It's great if you plant the shoot and have everything exactly as you want it, and know how the fog is going to flow in the room. It took a few goes, and often if I left it going too long the fog filled the room so the photo was obscured by a smoke cloud lit up by flashes :) I think when using these you need to plan, and be prepared to sit, wait, then jump to action. A lot of time is spent waiting for the machine to warm up, or the room to clear, or both.

But I LOVE the avenues this opens up. could do great for some creepy photos :)

It's Bokeh, okay?

So we're back again. Today I managed to drag my lazy hide from under the comfort of the doona well before "rush-time", and haul my backside to the Post-office before work. I was on late-shift for my second job, which means I start at 10:00am at a clinic that is 35 minutes drive from home, instead of my usual 8:30am start, 1 hour drive from home. I had to get to the post-office to grab a parcel I had been waiting on, that had arrived while I was away. Luckily for me the PO was not too upset that the 14 day period had been exceeded by 5 days.. I guess the silly season even makes the beurocrats a little more complacent for a few days.

Anyway, my parcel contained 2 DIYPhotography double flash brackets, which I hope to be able to use to mount between 2-4 flashes in my soft boxes. we will see how we go.These brackets  are a simple way of attaching more than one flash to your stand/modifier without screws and unweildy looking brackets. They also get the head of the head of the flash close to middle of the softbox/umbrella etc. I am looking forward to seeing how these go.

Work was extremely busy, with some surgeries having to be carried over until tomorrow.

After work I had to deliver a DVD to some family friends, then head home. I had shot a (bad quality) video of a family friends Sangeet. I was disappointed in the shoot because 1 I am a still photographer, not a videographer (yet), and 2 I was caught unawares when the action started and only had 1 camera on a tripod, and that camera was unmanned.  However the family seems to like the shoot, so now I have to make more copies and hand deliver them by tomorrow, so they can fly to India and display it at the Wedding.

I finally got home to let Jilly (Scruffy model from yesterday) and Gypsy cat out to wee. I then I dashed to a good mates place down the road for a few drinks. I had held him off while I was morbidly ill, but had to relent today. He had some nice plonk and cooked a nice simple rice/egg curry which went ok with my still sick guts. We had a few good laughs, but I had to push for my leave at 11:40pm as I still had not taken my pic for the day. I had decided I would do a cliche, but I needed to run home and get the gear set-up.

So the resulting image is what I call a cliche. These days you see so many of these on the net, however I have never done one :) I do love bokeh. Sort of cute isn't it?

Cliches... They are images that are done over and over, in the never ending pursuit of photographic nirvana.

I am going to do them. But not to show I can or cannot, but to learn from them. Why do some look cheesy, some look good? Why are they Cliches? Do they really look good?

So, today's image.. this elephant toy was bought for me by my wife. I have NO idea why she bought it for me and not for our (then) 3yo boy. But I  LOVE it, and today it served the exact purpose I envisaged it serving. Being a model. It is such a baby toy. It clicks when you move the legs and trunk, and it is just oh so silly. But I LOVE it.

She needs a name.

Now, putting my serious cap back on... bokeh.... such a funny word. I dunno what it means. Well I do, but it's a funny word. It's a Japanese word apparently. It basically means the blurry, out of focus area of a photo. The perceived "niceness" of bokeh depends on how dreamy, large and smooth the out of focus (OOF) circles are. The bigger circles seem to generate the biggest ooohs and aaaahs.. I think that means nice bokeh....

How is "nice, big, smooth" bokeh achieved??? With nice, big, wide open apertures, which often equates to nice big dents in the budget.

Bokeh is dependent not only on the aperture (more open is bigger bokeh) but also on how close the subject is to the camera, and what the lens focal length is. Generally speaking a "fast" mid to long telephoto lens will render a pleasing bokeh quite easily, however a wide lens of the same aperture will not render the same bokeh at all. Then the qualities of the lens come into play (aperture/iris blades etc). Great stuff.

It all has to do with "circles of confusion", but that is getting too geeky and theoretical to be of any real interest to most people. I have a decent grasp of this, but it's yawn material for most of us.

To me, if it looks nice, it is nice.

I understand the factors that will make a larger and nicer bokeh. Others will detract from it. Those factors that make it, are often not entirely possible, thus a compromise is found - the best focal length and aperture to fit the subjects/scene,  AND yield the best bokeh if desired. There's no strict rules, but there's often compromise.

Today's photo, squeezed in at 11:58pm, was shot at 85mm f/1.8 on a Canon 60D. 70x90cm softbox 5:00 slightly above subject, behind camera, It was a challenge to balance the lights with the flash - I think I had the YN460II at lowest setting (1/64??) about 6ft away in a softbox to allow enough light to hit the subject, yet to also allow me to get the exposure of the background without camera shake. The "bokeh" was formed by Christmas lights on a house about 50m away. I think this was shot at ISO 1000, 1/40s f/1.8. This shot is SOOC - Straight out of camera - from SD card to blogger, no photoshop or editing.. Just the way it should be :)

What I love about this shot is a few things... 1 it got me my pic for the day, 2 it has an ok bokeh :) 3 it really shows how shallow the depth of field (DOF) is on this lens, this close to the camera. You can see I focused on one eye, and the other parts of the photo that are more than a few millimetres closer or further from the focal plane are out of focus. To me the bokeh is soft, and smooth, and just..  hmmmmm

Sadly, one would rarely get such a bokeh with a portrait - the camera to subject istance would be larger, thus the bokeh smaller, and not as dreamy :( Any pic that has such large OOF circles and a decent portrait is likely a composite, though I guess there must be a "dream" lens that has the perfect combo of focal length and aperture to achieve awesome bokeh. I would think for portraits the 85mm f/1.8 or 135mm f/2 would be as good as one could get? There might be a project in that....

Thanks for dropping by.

Day 2, 3rd January 2012

Pin-Up Pooch

Today began with a bad start - running late - I despise running late and the stress it causes. So I ran out the door with my camera bag badly packed, and it wasn't until I was well and truly on the way to work that I realised I had not put any light stands in the car or manual strobes in my bag. Bugger. Oh well, I'll find something.

Upon getting to work I realised the day was quite busy up until lunch - no chances to day dream about today's pic.

It was then that one of my net nurses told me some good news - the wildlife rescue pink-tongue lizard had just had a mass of babies over the weekend! They are so cute! Being quite new to this reptile practice I had never seen them, and giggled like a little school girl... only marginally less than the nurses goo-goo ga ga-ed... So there was a project photo waiting to happen. In lulls between consults and surgeries I tried many different ways of catching a decent photo, but it just did not come together. I either could not get the perspective right, or the little things just moved too fast!

This is one photo I managed to get. It's a very nothing photo, and the rest were not any better - they just move so fast!

And this one, above. If I had managed to catch the end of the tail it may have been passible...

So I finished the day, still feeling pretty cr*p from the bugs I picked up from our o/s trip. I had one client so lovingly ask me if I had a big night. I had red eyes from conjunctivitis and was feeling very under the weather. But I mean, what ruddy hide these guys have thinking they can assume their vet turns up to work after being on the turps - and to have the audacity to say it? Of course, as with the rest of the stuff we just have to absorb, I smiled, politely answered, and laughed and let it go.

Coming home I was feeling somewhat dejected, wondering how I was going to scrape up the energy to take some more pics. Luckily Mr Lazy had left his softboxes up in the living room, with YN flashes and radiotriggers all set to go... I had dropped off at Bunnings on the way home and picked up some white laminated board, and figured, why not try it out?

Model?? I don't feel like a self portrait today, and the family is still in Chennai... Oh Scruffy hound, where are you? The photo is of Jilly. Jilly is a 4-5yo Terrier cross bred thing.. I am guessing fox terrier, jack russell or whatever. We adopted her as a stray about 3yrs ago. She's a very patient dog, but not a very good model. If I raise my voice or move a light stand, she is gone quicker than I can blink. Somehow I managed to get her to hold still for 30s and was able to pop off a few frames.

Photo Info: OCF - YN460II in 60x90cm Softbox camera left and above. YN460II in silver umbrella aimed at white backdrop, camera right. I was tired and sloppy, so I had to paint some white in the background of this photo - not happy. I was battling, trying to not clip the highlights in Jilly's coat yet make the background and laminate white. I gave up, and this was the  best pic I had.

Message to self: You want a white backdrop, do it properly so there's less to 'shop.I should have had two flashes set-ups on the backdrop, not one.

Lesson for the day - half arsed efforts => half arsed results.

Woah, ok, here we go...

Day 1, January 2nd 2012

So, as the New Year has just come, we're all thinking of our New Year Resolutions... right? Well, I actually didn't have any.. mine are all tomorrow's resolutions... tomorrow never seems to come, as you know..

Anyway, I'm one of *those* people trying to get a private photography business up off the ground, around working 2 jobs and being a daddy/hubby. My wife is extremely supportive, only because she can see photography is the only topic that brings any animation into my generally middle of line persona :)

So today, whilst still recovering from travels bugs (a respiratory infection from Mumbai, as well as gastro from the same place.. the latter meaning I had to stop my meds for the former) I decided to give this a kick along.

So here we are.

I have no idea what I am doing!

I guess this is where I let the world know who I am?

I'm Mick.

I've been dabbling in photography for a few years now, but never really had the balls to totally immerse myself in it. I pretty much taught myself what (little) I know about photography through reading books, and from the net. Here I gleaned knowledge on all the technical things I think I need to know, and I'm quite comfortable with most of the theory. But alas, it's getting those ideas into photographs that you can't quite learn from merely looking  (enviously) at others work, or reading "how to" guides, f-stops, inverse square laws, rule-of-thirds and all that (very useful) malarkey.

As those guys on that website say, lighten up and shoot. ie, get out and do it, stop having intellectual discussion on flickr forums. So there. That was my drive.

My toy box up until recently consisted of only a 350D, a 420EX Speedlight, a kit 18-55mm zoom, and a 75-300mm kit zoom. About Oct 2009 I bought a EF-S 60mm Macro, and soon discovered what good quality glass could do to even a basic camera. It was also then that I moved back to Hong Kong, and found a lot of cheap Off Camera Flash (OCF) gear, and I became hooked on that. It has taken me time to get my head around the world of OCF, but I finally think I am ready to take the next step and actually start taking photos! Now my toy box still holds the 350D, but the focus all of a sudden became unreliable, on every lens I tried. Now I have a 60D, 135mm f/2L, 85mm f/1.8, 35mm f/2, 24-105mm f/4L, 70-200 f/4L, 580EXII, 420EX, 4 x Yongnuo 460II and Phottix Strato triggers, as well as a YN ST-E2, and several light stands, umbrellas and Phottix clones of the Wescott Apollo. My prime lenses are only 1 week old. I also occasionally toy with a 1972 model Asahi Pentax 55mm f/1.8 screwed onto my 60D. Nice little lens.

This brings me, finally, back onto topic - Day 1.

I wanted to have a fantastic mind blowing photograph to start the year off. I wanted to have a photo that was symbolic of the journey I was about to take, and the position I was in when I was embarking on this journey. Alas, the mind blowing bit was just not there. I do think there is some symbolism. I kinda feel this is where I am... sitting on a dinky trike, trying to get out in the mainstream traffic. I'm smiling (insanely?), because, with God by my side, I am going to smile through whatever I can. I've done enough frowning now!

I know the image is obviously composited - No way I would sit in traffic like that for real... and I am just learning my way through composite images, so it is a bit rougher than I had hoped. I may redo this at a later date.The trike and work boots as well as the "real" cycling gear are a message... to me... you don't need the best gear and all the matching bits and bobs to take a nice photo. Get out there and shoot!

So, sit back and watch my project unfold. I will take a picture every day, and post them as often as I can.

OCF info: YN 460II 1/2 power in 60x90cm gridded Phottix Box at 10:00, YN 460II in 70x70cm gridded Phottix Box at 4:00, YN 460II in Speedlight ProKit Beauty Dish above camera slightly to R, 1/2 power. Shot on black background and composited onto street image.


PS: I know a lot of people use the term "Strobist" for OCF set-ups, but I will tend to stray from using this term, sorry David H. It is David's patented name, and to be honest, it has little meaning to me - a strobe is what flashes on the tail of a plane, not what I use to light my photos. OCF it is.