More 'product' photography

What a full day! You'd think I would have taken a photo of something Thanksgivingy, but I was more involved in watching the Macy's parade and pitching in with dinner, and didn't even think to pick up my camera. We rested a bit after dinner, watched the Westminster dog show (I liked the Bulldog out of the final seven, personally), then piled back in the truck to make the drive home. I'm so exhausted that I was THIIIIIISSS tempted to post the sunset photo I took last night, but it would need more tweaking than I'm allowing myself for NaBloPoMoPHOTO.

I know this one looks like the previous two, but I used an on-camera speedlight bounced off the wall behind rather than a CFL/umbrella to the side. Also used a much wider/higher angle. It's two tubes of mascara, a thing of eyeshadow, and nailpolish (some of the makeup for a water sprite).

Tomorrow I will post a photo that does not involve small items on a piece of posterboard, I promise!

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 250
Focal Length: 80.0 mm
Flash: On-camera speedlight (bounced)
White Balance: Auto

Stacy G: Who's Coming for Dinner?

From today...not the sharpest picture (still having issues with natural light) but I love the comp of the picture.

ISO - 160
f/1.8
1/60 sec
50mm

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Photo Phlop

The travel muses are conspiring against me.

Knowing I wouldn't have time later in the day, this morning I set up my mini 'studio' from last night and took some photos of my vintage Sekonic light meter. Hooked up my camera to the computer, downloaded the photos and cleared my CF card.

And got distracted with getting the family out the door to the in-laws. I remembered the unpublished photo only after we were in the car. No problem, right? I have my camera, I'll just take another photo. Got a decent photo of a beautiful sunset.

Yep. Except that the Internet is unavailabe at the in-laws, and my phone just is not up to the job. So I'm gonna have to edit this post tomorrow to add my photo.

Have a blessed day of thanks!

EDIT: Here's my original photo for the day. I love that you can see the reflection of the umbrella and side table lights in the dome.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

Cheap ribbon saves the day

Realized twenty minutes ago that I'd not touched my camera all day. I've been working on processing photos from Friday, Saturday, and Monday. So I frantically set up a piece of posterboard against my headboard, dug out my tripod and clamped a CFL/Uumbrella fixture to it, then pointed it at the posterboard. And was stuck. What to photograph? I wandered around the house, picking things up and turning them over in my hands, looking for an interesting angle. Nothing worth the pixels. Then I spied a box of Target Dollar Spot ribbon on the shelf over my craft table. Aha!

My white balance target is still in the back of my truck from yesterday, and I was too lazy to go get it. So I did cheat a bit and tweak the white balance in ACR.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 85.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Tweaked

Bare-naked toesies

This guy refused to wear his boots for the family portrait, but it was so cute. I almost suggested that they ALL go barefoot, but there were fire ant piles around. And as any good Texan knows, the more barefoot people, the greater the chance somebody's gonna get chomped.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 122.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

Lazy day

Low-key, lazy day. The trampoline springs provided an interesting texture. (We bought it second-hand for a ridiculously low price, and a safety net new for a not-so-low price. With the net sewn to the edge of the mat, we never bought replacement spring pads.)

Aperture: f/6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 41.0 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto

The magic of a tiny arachnid

Played event photographer today for the first time in 15 years. A friend asked me to come to the courthouse to serve as photographer while the family gathered to adopt their youngest child (today is National Adoption Day). Brought my daughter with me to photograph also, using the 'little camera' (the Rebel XT). I was using my 50D with speedlite flash in manual mode. Looking through the photos, they're... okay. Not fabulous, not bad. I'll have to fix a few (shot RAW), but overall, the fact that I was able to recognize problems with exposure and fix them immediately is huge for me.

Anyway, by the time the photo below was taken, it was past nap time for the little ones, who'd also had to get up early. They were cranky and fussy, and didn't want to sit for photos with family members. My friend started singing the ABC Song to no avail, so I suggested The Itsy Bitsy Spider--it worked wonders for my kids when they were little. There we were in the hallway outside the courtroom, probably a dozen total adults singing the spider song, drawing curious stares from people down the hall. And the little ones were mesmerized. It was magic.

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 640
Focal Length: 33.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: On-camera speedlight bounced off (high) ceiling
White Balance: Auto

Grandparents Day

I had a loooooooong day at the elementary school doing Grandparents' Day portraits. Last year it was a sunny day, so I had ample light coming through the huge wall of windows and I didn't need to use any other lights. Today it was rainy, and the light coming in the windows depended on how thick the cloud cover was at any given moment. I had to use a strobe in a 2'x3' softbox and continuous light w/ shoot-thru umbrella, and a reflector, and sometimes even an on-camera speedlight, to get good lighting. Even still, I'm going to have to adjust the lighting on about 30% of them in photoshop. Dangit.

Anyway, below is one of the photos where the lighting was fairly decent (just a hair dark, though). This one was not chosen for a portrait package, but it might be my favorite of the day. I love the way Grandma and Grandpa are blurred just a smidge, laughing at Mr. J, who is being silly.

Aperture: f/4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/25
ISO: 400
Focal Length: 47.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: Strobe w/ softbox
White Balance: Custom (not sure what happened--that's actually a gray background)

An awesome camera and a studio

I'm LOVING LOVING LOVING the 50D. I did a photo shoot with my good friend Courtney today (in an actual studio--I'll tell you about that in a minute...), and just sat down to look through the images. WOW! They are wonderful! I mean, Courtney is beautiful anyway, but the images are so crisp and fabulous, I could upload half of them directly to Mpix without touching them at all.

Check this out (be sure to click to see it bigger). Straight off the camera.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 41.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: Studio strobes
White Balance: Auto

The studio we used was courtesy of David Whatley of The Covenant Studio. He's a member of StudioSpace Arlington, and graciously let me try it out during his time slot. Great place and great guy! I don't have the budget to become a member myself yet, but will definitely be using the space on a per-hour basis in the future.

Click here to see the final images from this shoot.

Such a handsome man

Okay, kinda fudging a bit. The purpose of my own NaBloPoMo challenge is to post good photos straight out of the camera. The first photo is straight out of the camera, but 'good' is debatable. This is a handsome little man I met today. He sat so patiently in his carseat while his mom helped with PTA stuff.

Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 47.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto


However... the color balance is way off, the overhead incandescents offered very little int the way of lighting, so the photo is more snapshot than photograph in my opinion. And since I'm a portrait photographer, I have a hard time posting photos of people that aren't fabulous.

So I spent two minutes in ACR and Photoshop and kicked it up a notch:

Lame

This one is really lame, I know. The new camera arrived at about 3:45 this afternoon, and I love it, I do... It's just going to take a bit of getting used to. It's kind of frustrating because I think it came with a bad battery--it charged for three hours and ran out of juice after 10 minutes. So I may be headed to Arlington camera to get a spare tomorrow so I can exchange this one with Adorama. Didn't get to take many photos, but I promise I'll do better tomorrow.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 90.0 mm
Lens: EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto

Proud member of DSA

That's Dye Sniffers Anonymous for you non-sniffers :) I love the smell of steaming hot RIT dye.

In this photo, I think the custom WB really made the colors amazing--I was even tempted to take the saturation down just a smidge (but resisted of course!). These are a four of the five backgrounds I've hand-dyed in the last week. I'm really loving the brown one, but all of them turned out better than I'd hoped.

Aperture: f/4
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 35.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: none
White Balance: Custom

One-Light Louie

On Friday, I drove up to IKEA in Frisco and stopped by Cowboy Studio Lighting in Dallas on the way. Picked up a couple new shoot-through umbrella and continuous light fixture, among other things. Before we headed out to parents' house this afternoon, I tossed a light stand, CL fixture, and umbrella into the back of my truck, hoping I'd have time to shoot some basic portraits of this guy before we lost all window light. Yeah... that didn't happen.

But I forged ahead anyway, stubborn as I am. This is with that one light set up in a room that currently has no light fixtures (they just had the ceiling fixed), and it was just after dusk, so the light coming in through the big windows was pretty much useless. Had to go with a higher ISO than I would ever normally use for portraits, and it shows. The umbrella is about even with his head, about six inches to the right (you can see it reflected in his glasses). He's also holding a piece of white posterboard as a reflector on the other side of his face. I wish I'd had at least one more light with me, preferably one of my strobe & softboxes. Anyway. Be sure to click to see it a bit bigger--the blogger compression really did a doozy on this one. This one is totally untouched by the way. I'll clean it up a little before I let him use it for a profile picture :)

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/40
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 56.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto (forgot to tuck the WB target into my camera bag)

Psychedelic sea of chairs

Had lunch at Rosa's Café today. Honestly I love the interior of the restaurant more than I love the food. Of course I had my camera with me, so I got a few shots to go along with my enchiladas. This first pic is my official photo of the day. I did crop out the top 1/4 of the frame--chose to do that rather than climb on top of the table to get the composition perfect in the camera :)

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 38.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: none
White Balance: Auto



This is what I THOUGHT would be my pic of the day. I got four different shots of these frogs that were hanging on the wall (picture me with my camera pressed up against the bricks with my camera pointed up, and picture the lunch crowd staring). Unfortunately the ones with the good exposure settings were at an odd angle and cut off too much of the front frog. This one was great composition-wise, but was underexposed in my camera. But I liked it enough to share, so adjusted the exposure and whatnot in Photoshop.

Stacy G: Brutus on the Edge, Take 2

Ok, here is the attempt with the flash....a little better...Getting there!!

ISO 100

F/1.8

1/60 sec

50mm

Librophile, logophile, photophile

I haven't played with bounce flash in a while. I generally eschew on-camera fill-flash (patooey!), and when I'm out and about, I normally don't carry a shoe-mount flash with me. Even for portraits, I prefer to use natural light and a reflector or two. I can honestly admit now (*uncomfortable cough*) that my negligence of my strobes and shoe-mount is largely because I haven't been comfortable with the manual settings on my camera (sadly whatever mastery I gained in Sgt. Pratschler's photography class circa 1989 was neglected and disused upon the purchase of my first wonderfully automatic Canon SLR).

I wish I'd knocked myself upside the head and done this manual-immersion challenge years ago. *shaking head ruefully*

My photo of the day is of a very small selection of books in my front room/office. It's just a hair underexposed, IMO, which I didn't see until I opened it in Adobe Camera Raw. Resisted the urge to fix it with a quick slide of the exposure control bar. But the colors actually look better here than they do in real life.

Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 41.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: Kodak shoe mount bounced off white ceiling
White Balance: Auto

Stacy G: Baylee the Wiggle Butt

Stacy says: A little dark, but great picture if I may say so myself!!

AV mode - nice setting - really like it (try it)

100 ISO

f/1.8

50mm focal length

1/8000 sec

Stacey says: What a beautiful baby!

Pizza for four, table six!

I'm a doofus. It was so loud and hectic that I didn't even think about ISO. It was the monthly school fundraiser night at a local pizza hangout, and we hadn't been yet this year. Everything in this place is dominated by the color red it seems. We sat at a red table that had reddish lights overhead. Got a pic of the red cups all lined up on the red table. Shoulda turned the cups so they were all different directions, I know. Shoulda increased the ISO, too, yadda yadda yadda. The table was my tripod.

Aperture: f/4.0
Shutter Speed: 1/6
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 28.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Auto







On a fabulously exciting note, I ordered a new camera (a Canon 50D--nearly twice the resolution of my XT!) and actual digital image stabilized lens today from Adorama!!! I'm giddy, and can't wait to get it in my hands. I hope hope hope it gets here by Wednesday, because Thursday I've been invited to shoot with another local photographer, Friday I have a school gig, Saturday I have an adoption party gig, and on Monday I've got a portrait session for a family of eight. I'd love to use my new toys for every single one :)

One of the other items I bought was backordered, so I called to see if I could substitute a similar item. Talked to a very helpful customer service rep named Lucie, who has the cutest New York accent and sense of humor. Adorama is where I got my XT body three years ago, and various accessories and doodads since then.

Stacy G: Brutus on the Edge

Stacy says: Here is my picture of the day...Straight off the camera... I had the vision of the picture in my head and it did not come out...oh well...keep practicing!!

f/5.6
Shutter 1/30
Focal length 65mm
ISO 160










And here are a few more pics she sent that I didn't get posted last night. She says:

I am very happy with the one with the Tuba...I love that I caught the cheerleaders in the tuba!

From Pitt Cheer Day that my daughter was a part of.

Forget Ambrosia...

...THIS is the nectar of the gods...

I need to invest in a better lens. I'm still using my old analog lenses, and this particular one came with my EOS Elan 7e when that one was first released. The aperture limitation made this pic just a tad dark, IMO.

Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/30
ISO: 1600
Focal Length: 79.0 mm
Lens: 28-90 mm
Flash: None
White Balance: Custom