It’s been a full day and I didn’t get home until nearly 9 tonight. So I grabbed my camera and flash and snapped a few of the dogs. Though the originals shots were fine, I added a Smudge Stick filter to them in Photoshop, just for fun. It is subtle, but there is more pop and contrast.
Nina. Filter: Smudge Stick
Buddy. Filter: Smudge Stick
Buddy is my sweet boy and he loves to get attention from me and generally sticks close to my side, but when I bring out the camera he gets shy. Getting him to look at the camera can be a challenge, so when I get a couple of good shots of him, I’ve got to share.
Getting this right will mean when I’m shooting people I’ll get it right then too. All of these were shot at ISO 100 with exposure stopped down one or two stops and then fill flash at about 1/4 intensity. I used the LumiQuest 80-20 with the white reflector and no diffuser.
The apples are getting big! I should be able to start harvesting them soon. I hope my co-workers are in the mood for Granny Smiths!
I hope they like grapes too. The vine always gives us far more than we can eat ourselves.
This ant was working the nectar . . .
Out front the bees were going at it.
As some of you may be aware, I collect frogs. I put together some of them tonight. The larger dancing pair is the base of a lamp in our guest room, and honestly, I don’t remember where I got the smaller dancers. They were likely a birthday or Christmas gift many years ago.
It started with an 1880 edition of Ben Hur (not a first edition) and over the years I’ve built up a fair collection. Here are just a few.
On the good side, the Olympics are fun to watch. On the bad side, Dad is back in the hospital and what’s going on is pretty scary. I don’t know if I’ll be hopping a plane soon or not.
Anyway, I played with my new toy in the backyard this morning using the silver reflector and diffuser panel to provide fill light against some pretty bright backgrounds. I used my flash to fill in what otherwise would have been dark shadows cast by the morning sun.
Sweetie left his work gloves in the wheelbarrow and a windstorm blew them out into the yard. We think Nina did this.
Grape leaves against the sky. I love that I didn’t blow out the sky and that the grape leaves in the shade were perfectly exposed.
Buddy is a bit camera-shy sometimes. He’ll sit still, but he doesn’t like to look at me when I’m holding the camera to my face.
Today was an incredibly busy day. I didn’t stop from 6am until I got home at about 10pm, so I turned to my critters for inspiration tonight. I set up the Speedlite, grabbed a reflector card and got Nina to “sit” on her blanket. She did good.
All were shot at 400 ISO, f/5.6, 1/15 sec. Speedlite behind me to camera left, reflector card (white poster board in the vise) very close to Nina on the right and just out of frame.
I love working with very shallow depth of field and when a shot comes out exactly as I planned, well, I just have to share it. I really had hoped to post a non-critter post, but today I set up my soft box light, Maya was on the printer, and I couldn’t resist. She is looking up at the soft box which I had just to camera left and about six feet up and angled down toward Maya. I metered the shot, snapped my fingers so she’d look up, and bingo! Got it! Also, I used the pop-up on my camera at its lowest output (1/128) to provide just a teeny bit of fill.
And, of course, I couldn’t resist a black and white shot.
Carissa Snedeker Photography 