Day 79 – Stop-Motion Dogs

The other half of my lighting class assignment: photograph a moving subject without blur.

We tried shooting in the house. No go. So after work tonight we gave it another go in the yard. I don’t know if I will use either of these for my class, but I wanted to share my learning curve with you. I’d like to try shooting this in better sunlight, but I likely won’t get the chance as I’m off to Washington D.C. on Thursday and won’t be back until Tuesday (therefore no daytime dog photography before the project is due in class). I may have opportunities in D.C. to try to shoot other photos though.

The first photo below is a “without blur” version of Nina racing around with her toy (see Day 77). It’s quite interesting how different this one looks. While she was moving just as fast, look how still she looks. The only visual cues to her motion are her flapping ears, her feet off the ground, and her flying dog tag.

Here is Buddy leaping to catch his “Toy.” And by his “Toy” I mean that it is his only toy. It’s not for lack of trying to introduce other toys to him. He loves this toy and only this toy. It is several years old now and it’s been through the washer a number of times. The squeaker has long since died, but Buddy has never chewed a hole in it. It stays in the house and every time Buddy comes in he has to find it and loll it about in his mouth. If he can’t he gets really, really nervous and runs around until he does find it. Anyway, he’s gotten quite good at catching it in mid-air. Like Nina, he is frozen in time, but his off-the-ground feet and his upside-down dog tag indicate his leap.

Day 73 – Fun with flash and motion

Tonight in class we learned how to use our flashes with ambient light, second curtain sync to create motion blur, and experimented with using more than one strobe exposure in a shot. Lots of fun!

Second (rear) curtain sync with ambient light. © Carissa Snedeker

Second (rear) curtain sync with ambient light © Carissa Snedeker

Double flash exposure with ambient light. © Carissa Snedeker

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 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.

My version of "Still Life with Earthenware and Bottles" - Photo © Carissa Snedeker

My version of "Still Life with Earthenware and Bottles" - Photo with Dry Brush filter © Carissa Snedeker

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 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.

Day 47 – Lighting class “quick fire” challenge

Our instructor was out tonight, but our lab assistant was there and between him and Jeff, they had an assignment for us for the night. The exercise we were given was adapted from Photo Workout: Flex Your Photographic Skills at Digital Photography Magazine online.

Light is critical to photography. Without light, you can’t take pictures! One of the keys to becoming a better photographer is to “see: the light and understand what it is doing within an image. The camera only sees the light and emphasized that light, even it it’s not flattering or beneficial for the subject. It is the job of the photographer to understand and properly utilize light for the desired effect.

ASSIGNMENT: Create an image using light as a creative or technical component to your composition. Illustrate how your light effectively interact with or within the composition (Does it affect the subject? Is it the subject? Does it provide movement? Does it increase or decrease the contrast Does it enhance the composition, if so, how?) You may use: natural, artificial, continuous, flash or any combination of them all. Your image must be shot in class time. Print one copy of your image, black and white or color. HAVE FUN!

Tips: Using the techniques that you have learned so far, find, create and/or use light in an interesting manner! Pay attention to both the quality and quantity of the light, and the effect it is having or producing. Look for spots of light, colored light, edge light, light contrasting with shadow or shadows themselves (as shadows are as much a part of light as the light itself). Look at the light, and what it is doing in your photograph. See how the light might be interesting in and of itself. Look at how light and shadows are interacting throughout the image.

So…

We were given an hour to go out and shoot, and then we were to come back to the lab to process and print one photo. We grabbed our cameras and out we headed out. I shot a lot of photos, and some of them su-u-u-cked, but I managed to shoot a few of interesting shots.

A light on the wall in Knowledge Center:

Palms near the windows in the Knowledge Center with sun shining through their leaves.

Outside the Starbucks located in “The Joe” (Joe Crowley Student Union) I saw a table stacked on another. The shadow the leg cast on the brick wall captured my attention for a bit.

Finally, I headed back to class and as I started to walk back through the Knowledge Center, these ceiling lights caught my eye:

So which picture did I choose to print? And did I choose color or black & white? And will I change my mind before Tuesday?

Day 35 – My “Light Studio”

Project #2 is the same as Project #1, but with two sources of light. Here is my makeshift light studio. I’ve been working on this assignment all afternoon. The most frustrating part of this are the lights that won’t stay put. Especially the one on the left. Fortunately, we picked up a second one of the type on the right and I’m going to give up on the cheap Home Depot shop lamp. I also realized that we had a spare tripod, so on my next go-round I’ll be able to place the light with greater precision than I’ve been able to so far.

I am now off to review my RAW photos.