Light Painting

Day 45

First of all, Happy 40th Birthday, Vijay! I know you don't read my blog, but I am saying it here anyway :) Hope it's been a good day. I have just given you the best Birthday present ever - I kept your sister in Sydney so you could enjoy your day in peace. You are welcome, however, I am sort of regretting not sending her over.. permanently tee he heeeee...

Today's photo - I wanted to do a black on black again, but thought I would try light painting. I have heard some awesome stories, and seen some awesome pics from light painting. It's a shame I can't emulate them! The image above was shot with my 60D, with a Hoya 3-stop ND filter, f/16, iso 100, 30s exposure. I hand held a YN460II at 1/32 power and flashed it at the camera, at varying angles and distances, to get  the light coverage I wanted. The hardest part was getting the 5D and MarkII to show up properly yet not blow out that part of the camera. I had tried it with an LED MagLite but it was just not powerful enough, and I was getting too much ambient if I increase the iso.

So here is a light painting of my new toy (which I am proudly telling those that have no idea what a 5D MkII is, that it is worth more than my car). I am hoping either tomorrow or Friday to stick my 135mm f/2 on this little beasty and see what sort of Bokeh we can conjure up.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.