Day 64 – At the pond

I had a breakfast meeting and then needed to go shoot my friend for my lighting class assignment, but I had a few moments to myself between both appointments so I stopped by the pond near Nevada Power. The weather was gorgeous. If we’re not going to get winter, then I’ll settle for this!

Day 63 – Shooting for a magazine – Practice!

Our next assignment for our lighting class is to shoot a photo that could be submitted to Edible Reno-Tahoe magazine. The magazine “celebrates the local food culture, season by season.” Published quarterly, the magazine focuses on local restaurants, organic farms, bakeries, etc. I have a friend who is an amazing cook and is going into business with a friend of hers to produce savory preserves and confits under the label, Edible R&D. She has agreed to let me photograph her and her product for this project, so today I practiced one of my photo ideas so that I wouldn’t be fumbling around tomorrow. I grabbed a jar of apple butter from the fridge and got to work.

All photos were shot in our living room using diffused daylight from the large windows directly behind the camera. The idea with these shots was to focus on the product, yet have someone in the shot “pitching” the product so to speak, but not be the focus of the shot. Therefore, the person (in this case, me) is deliberately behind the focal plane of the product. I’ve included several photos to show where I went wrong as well as where I think I went right.

First I set up the product and made sure my camera was exposed properly:

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/50s © Carissa Snedeker

I then added myself to the picture, but you don’t get to see the early shots. Why? (A) no make-up, and (B) rumpled shirt. However, the shots sans make-up gave me important information, so I ran and changed my shirt and threw on some make-up and got down to it.

Posted in order taken. I like this one, even though the product isn’t straight, but I’m not too happy with how crunched my shoulder looks.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

This one…same shoulder crunch and my blouse is distorted on the right (showing the outline of my pacemaker).

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

I really like this shot, and think it may be my favorite. For one thing, it obeys the rule of thirds (which one shouldn’t always get locked into, but should always be mindful of). My face is in the upper third of the photo and to the right, the apple butter pretty much in the middle third and by being to the left helps balance my face, with the foreground making up the bottom third of the picture.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60x © Carissa Snedeker

This one is okay, but I’m not too crazy on how centered I am.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

And finally, beware of the disembodied hand. Because I chose to drop my left arm from the portrait and the way I’m holding the jar with my right hand, it doesn’t look like the hand holding the jar even belongs to me. Huge mistake, but I wanted to post it. I’ve actually seen ads in magazines that have mistakes like this, but it is usually the result of Photoshop manipulation gone awry. This one is just a straight up photo boo-boo.

ISO 400, f/6.3, 1/60s © Carissa Snedeker

Day 62 – Now that the drugs have kicked in . . .

I had to visit my periodontist today for two gum grafts. Needless to say, I’m not on top of the world. But I’ve got drugs.

Taken before the fun began, I couldn’t help but notice this syringe looked like it had been around for a while. Hey, if it still does the job (and it did), why not keep it around as long as it’s useful? Hmm…I think I just said something profound (or it’s just the drugs talking).

Off to take a nap now.

Day 61 – Cooperative Kitteh

Busy day! No chance to shoot anything worthy of posting here. Luckily I have critters!

We had a guest speaker tonight in our lighting class. He gave a rapid fire presentation on Speedlite flash photography and my brain is reeling. It will take me some time to absorb what he told us, but I did latch on to a couple of concepts and had to try to apply them when I got home.

I learned the difference between TTL mode and manual mode and how to lessen the intensity of the flash so I experimented with stopping down the flash so that it wasn’t as intense.

This is Maya. She was resting on the back of the sofa about an arm’s length from me. Shot at 100 ISO, f 9.0, 1/160s. Manual flash at 1/4 which I learned tonight (a) how to do and (b) is not one-fourth of intensity but rather 2 stops down. Thank goodness she puts up with me!

Day 60 – Experiment

I was experimenting with movement today. I kind of like this. I think I’ll keep playing with it.

Winter Grass and Pine Trees © Carissa Snedeker

Branches and Sky © Carissa Snedeker

And in case those don’t strike your fancy: Ducks! Shot at 5pm, in low light. I’ll keep working on this too.

Day 59 – Snow Caps and Spring

The sun is out and it’s all quite gorgeous, so I took a quick look-see outside my office window.

Snow bonnets:

It is far too early to be seeing green sprouts. Or is it?

Day 58 – Dreary Day

It snowed all day. The sky remained a white-gray so the light didn’t make an optimal day for taking pictures.

The temps hovered in the mid-30s all day and as such it was just warm enough to prevent any accumulation. This view from my office window remained unchanged from 8am until 5pm.

Nonetheless, I ventured out to try to capture the snow on the bench outside the employee entrance. With no wind, and flakes that were delicate and tiny, the snow clung to every tree branch regardless of size, every blade of grass, and every ridge no matter how slight. It was quite lovely and in this shot I tried to catch how the snow accumulated on the ridges of the bench. Unfortunately, it just didn’t come out the way I’d hoped. Oh well, can’t win’em all.

Day 57 – Fun with Still Life

As mentioned in my previous post, our next lighting assignment is to recreate an Old Master’s still life. I picked Vincent Van Gogh’s “Still Life with Earthenware and Bottles.” Why, you ask? No fruit and no greenery (difficult to get at this time of year); not to mention that Van Gogh’s painting had items that bore some resemblance to items I actually had around the house.

The bottles were reasonably easy as we are a wine drinking household. I had a bowl similar to the one on the right, a clay vase like the one in the background and a small dutch oven similar to the one in the center. And who doesn’t have a wooden spoon? My only difficulty prop-wise was the two small white cups at the left, so I had to improvise. Challenges: my wine bottles are taller than those above, and my dutch oven is a bit smaller and a different color. No handles on my vase. (Yes, our names on it – as well as our wedding date – it was a gift from a friend when we got married).

My set up was a bit more squished than the one above as I shot it on two wooden t.v. trays.

Mostly I was looking to repeat the set up and the lighting. And the lighting was definitely a challenge. I shot many, many photos. Here’s the one that comes as close as I could get at this point.

I’m posting the photograph, followed by the photograph with a dry brush filter.