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.

Day 34 – Indoors and Out

I got tired of fiddling with this:

So I went outside. How I love it that while the gardeners keep the lawn mowed and the leaves blown, they pretty much leave the wild vegetation in a natural state. Otherwise they would have weed-whacked this lovely away.

Day 33 – 2nd Floor Stairwell, Church Fine Arts Building, UNR

Tonight was critique night for our first assignment. I had misgivings about the photo I ultimately chose to show, but had also printed two others photographs as back-up, just in case. I let myself get talked into presenting my more “contrast-y” photo, and the instructor found a couple of things wrong with it. But he didn’t point them out. He asked me to tell him where I’d gone wrong. And I was able to do so. At the break I showed Jeff (instructor) my other two shots and he liked them a lot better. Fortunately, we were allowed to turn in our alternates if we chose, and he let me know that if I turned in one of my alternates I was likely to get a better grade. Well, my momma didn’t raise a stupid child. And as Mark, our lab assistant said to me, “Go with your gut. You’re the artist. It’s your work.” Indeed.

Anyway, it was such a crazy, busy day that I didn’t get a chance to shoot until after class ended at six-thirty. Fortunately, the building’s stairwell provided me with plenty of inspiration. What do you expect to happen in a building full of artists? I love this stairwell. It is truly live art. The students are constantly adding to it and you never know what will change from day-to-day.

The challenge was shooting with only the light that came from the two fluorescent ballasts on at each landing. I will likely return to this subject. As my post title indicates, this is just the second floor

Looking down the stairs. © Carissa Snedeker

Second floor landing. © Carissa Snedeker

Wall opposite second floor landing. © Carissa Snedeker

Detail of wall. © Carissa Snedeker

Day 32 – Assignment

I made a month! Woohoo! This weekend, yesterday and today I’ve been working on my first assignment for our lighting class. It seems simple enough: shoot a white cube, sphere and cylinder against a white background using a single light source. Simple, yes. Easy? No! Here’s the catch: Nothing can bleed into anything else. All planes must be distinct, including the backdrop and the table top. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, photographically speaking. And at some point I had to stop, because I still have to get over to the print lab on campus and print one black and white photo. And the lab hours haven’t been posted yet, and did I mention I live an hour out of Reno, and that I have a full-time job that I will have to leave early to print before class starts at 4pm? So, yeah, I am freaking out. But then again, I always do when it comes to class. Ask my ART 141 instructor. Heck, ask my husband.

Anyway, at some point I had to commit, so it’s down to these two. I hope I don’t get my ass handed to me.

On review, I doubt the it will be the second photo. Not enough distinction between the top of the cylinder and the shadow along it’s length. Back to my files…

Day 31 – Color and Light

I’m sorry I’m so late posting this. I had class tonight and I’ve spent the evening working on my first assignment. And no, I’m still not satisfied, but my battery just about ran out of juice, so I had to stop. As is typical on a work and school day, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to shoot, so I returned to the same park where I shot the bridge on Day 18. While I did take a few pictures of the bridge, what really caught my eye was how the late afternoon sun was playing on the sparse vegetation. I even found a little color in our drab northern Nevada winter.

Now, off to bed.

Day 30 – Auto Controls

After a less than successful day with my camera, I jumped in my car to head home. I pulled my camera out of the bag and started shooting the various dials and controls in my car. I shot this at 1600 ISO, normally far too high for my taste, but in this case the grainy-ness seems to fit the subject.

Day 29 – Playing with HDR

I’ve been hearing a lot about HDR and wondering if I might start incorporating it into some of my photography. From what I can see, HDR is an effective tool when you are dealing with wildly different exposed areas in a photograph. In northern Nevada it is quite easy to blow out the sky when trying to shoot a landscape. Anyway, I experimented a bit today. First I did a quick bit of research on the intertubes, just to figure out the mechanics of it in Photoshop, and then I went out into the front yard and took photos. Using a tripod, I set my f-stop to 22, ISO to 100 and took multiple shots adjusting shutter speed each time to properly expose for the sky, the mountains, foreground, etc. I also did the same thing looking out through our front door. Here are the results.

Normally to get this kind of definition in the colorless landscape I would have to blow out the sky, so I kind of like how the sky looks here.

I really like the sky in this one.

Finally, I shot this in our living room looking out on our front yard through our storm door (I live in the desert…we only have lawn in the backyard). Shots like this are really where HDR appears to provide the greatest assist. In order to get any blue from the sky and still properly expose the interior of the house, HDR is a nice tool. I am not that happy with this particular photo, but I wanted to share it anyway.