Day 56 – Lighting Wine Bottles

Last Thursday’s lighting class was held in our instructor’s studio and we were to shoot bottles of wine; one shot using diffused and the other using reflected light. We were put in groups of about six, and in my group, I was the first to attempt the assignment. As these sorts of things are a process of seeing what works and what doesn’t, I wasn’t able to get too many shots off (two to be exact) before I had to step away and let another have a go at it.

My shot was just barely okay, and I didn’t get the lighting quite the way I wanted, nor was I able to highlight all the parts of the bottle that I wanted so I knew that I’d have to do the assignment on my own. That’s what I worked on today. Here are the two that made the cut.

Chardonnay lit with diffused light © Carissa Snedeker

Pinot Noir lit by reflected light © Carissa Snedeker

Day 55 – Cloudless Twilight

As I pulled into the driveway tonight I looked west to see this beautiful sky. I had to try and shoot it. I tried to catch the moon with Venus and Jupiter, but to catch this sky required shutter speed too slow to prevent movement of those bodies showing up in the pictures. Still I couldn’t let it go. The blinkies are from our neighbor’s yard. I liked them, so I didn’t crop them out. Shot at 400 ISO, f/25, 30s

I tried to get Venus and Jupiter in this shot, but I wasn’t successful. This was shot at 3200 ISO, so there is a LOT of noise in this one. Shot at 3200 ISO, f/9.0, 1/25s.

Day 54 – Beam

As I have lighting class tonight and then will be returning to work after class to put together binders for a very important client visit tomorrow, and have no idea what time I’ll drag my hind end home, today’s shot is going up now. It is a portion of one of the massive beams that is part of our building’s architecture.

Day 53 – Hanging Light or Abstract Art?

I shot this tonight at our Reno Freethinkers meeting. It was the light hanging from the ceiling illuminating the stairs to the second-floor room we were in. I shot it looking straight up from the stairwell.

Day 52 – Country Gas Station at Night

First day back at work after a three-day weekend, so of course I was busier than usual. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I need to leave early to make it to school by 4pm for my lighting class, so I don’t take a lunch. Tonight was critique night, so I had no chance to shoot anything until after class.

This gas station sits at the crossroads of Highways 50 and 95, the location of our town’s one and only stoplight; a blinking one. Shot at ISO 1600, f/13, 1/60s (hand-held).

About critique night. Our third assignment was to shoot a face lit from six different angles. This was the shot everyone, including our teacher, felt was my best. I’m very happy with this shot. There is always room for improvement, and it’s far from perfect, but for my first foray into the light studio, it came out pretty good. Shot with a diffused light camera right, with a white poster board reflecting the diffuse light to provide some fill for the left side of her face.

Daughter © Carissa Snedeker

Day 51 – Silhouette

More light play.

I shot these in my dark office. Holding my Speedlite 430EXII towards the wall I used manual mode to have the flash go off at a single point during the ten second exposure. I only set the exposure time so long so I could get in place. ISO 100, f/10, 10s.

I would have liked to have been a tad more to my left. I feel like I’m squished a little to close to the right of the frame, though I do like the light around my left arm.

Day 50 – Faded Roses and Budding Pines

I wandered into the yard today with plans to practice with my light meter. I metered and photographed the dogs, the trees, the sleeping vegetable garden and just worked my way around the backyard. It worked swimmingly and with few exceptions, my shots were properly exposed for my intended shots.

Our rose bushes have not been pruned so there are quite a few dead blooms on them. After shooting some of them, I headed out front to check out the Austrian Pines. We planted five of them when we built the house eleven years ago, and at the time they were just about three feet tall. Now they are huge and I noticed today that only one of them has pine cones on it. Odd. All the pines are “budding” though.

Day 49 – Water!

Joanna has inspired me to play with water. This is a travel mug turned upside down in the sink. I let the water run over it and shot it at ISO 100 f/5.6 at 1/200s using flash. In this particular shot, the water was streaming at the back of the cup forcing a small wall of water to spray of from the rim. This was quite fun and as with all experiments, I got a bit of an education. I’ll return to this topic again. Thanks Joanna!