ni2sml's Photos

An attempt at a proper, professional style portrait shot for week 2 of the fiftytwo project. Being somewhat lacking in strobes or studio lights right now I opted instead for the halogen-tungsten hotlight approach, to the tune of 1000W total. Key light was to left of camera, bounced off two white walls and the ceiling for lots of diffusion. The backdrop/rim/cross light was provided by the second 500W of light behind me and to my left, shining straight up at my back. There's also a 60W equivalent CFL directly above me, but it's a drop in the ocean compared to the light being bounced off the same area of the ceiling. White balance was tungsten nudged a little toward red. Things I learned: 1. 1000W of light gets hot. Really hot. All that light and heat and I still only got 1/15th at ISO 100 and f/2.8! Continuous light really is inefficient. 2. Reflections in spectacles are a pain in the glutes. 3. I need a proper backdrop. 4. The floor is not the right place for a rim-light to be. It worked, sort of, but not as well as I would have hoped. 5. I had tried using a 3-light lamp with regular CFLs as rimlight. It worked better from a light intensity point of view but the color temperature is very different to the tungsten-halogens. 6. I should probably have popped the in-camera flash at it's lowest setting, with a full CTO gel and some ND gels too, or pointed a low wattage lamp toward me from near camera to get better catchlights than I have here.

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A tree branch with bright orange autumn leaves, backlit by the sun, with blue sky and the treeline behind.

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Fiery yellow autumn foliage in Virginia, slightly backlit by the sun.

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A crescent moon setting toward the treeline, faint orange and blue gradienting sky below it from the earlier sunset. Above the moon, Venus shines brightly in the night sky.

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1 of 52. Television is one way to relax, but sometimes people take it a little too far. Taken for the DPS Assignment 'relax' and the 'fiftytwo' project.

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What's in the bag? A slightly hacked Olympus C4000Z, remote release cable, homebrew off-camera hotshoe, Minolta 1800AF flash, some light modifiers (various gels, a bounce card and a diffuser made out of a 1 pint plastic milk bottle), lots of NiMH AA batteries, a cheap tripod, a Palm Zire running CDoF and some light I captured earlier! Shot for the Digital Photography School assignment What's In Your Bag? Strobist info: Daylight balanced CFL desk lamp at top right of subject, on-camera pop-up flash on 1/16th manual power, SB-800 in bag set to 1/128th, 14mm and optical slave mode.

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Congratulations to our new President-Elect! There is much to put right, but with a leader who inspires and reminds us that American ends in 'I Can', who knows what can be achieved!

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Playing around with zoom blur, or maybe more like psuedo-zoom-blur, since the typical point-and-shoot won't allow zoom changes during exposure. I did it by moving the camera closer to the subject as smoothly as possible. The flash fired at shutter-open to 'freeze' the initial image that the blur lines move out of. Taken straight out of camera.

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Spooky Halloween jack-o-lantern on a blue background. Strobist info: Minolta 1800AF (GN~48@ISO100) with a 10' bounce off ceiling from left of subject. Exposed ambient for illuminated areas of jack-o-lantern with the rest of the scene in darkness. Exposed flash at approximately 2 stops low.

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Spooky Halloween jack-o-lantern, very close-up. Strobist info: Minolta 1800AF (GN~48@ISO100) with bounce card and a 10' bounce off ceiling from left of subject. Exposed ambient for illuminated areas of jack-o-lantern with the rest of the scene in darkness. Exposed flash at about 1.5 stops low.

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Spooky Halloween jack-o-lantern on a black background. Strobist info: Minolta 1800AF (GN~48@ISO100) with bounce card and a 10' bounce off ceiling from left of subject. Exposed ambient for illuminated areas of jack-o-lantern with the rest of the scene in darkness. Exposed flash at about 1.5 stops low.

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Spooky Halloween pumpkin luminary ornaments on a silver and black background. Strobist info: Minolta 1800AF (GN~48@ISO100) with a 12' bounce off ceiling from front left of subject. Exposed ambient for illuminated areas of ornaments with the rest of the scene in near darkness. Exposed flash at about 2 stops low.

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Preparing to take a shot in the dark. My first 'planned' Strobist-style shot, the intent was to get the trees in the background fairlydark, maybe a couple of stops below ambient, and light my face and camera with a single strobe. The strobe had a 1/2 CTB gel, camera white balance was set for daylight plus some bias toward red. But I botched my plan, couldn't get my full-power-only flash far enough away and had to close down the aperture, the light changed too quickly and ended up badly underexposing the ambient, and to add injury to insult, the wind blew over the lightstand resulting in a broken flash hotshoe, then the camera and flash batteries died simultaneously putting an end to it all. I'll be trying this idea again, but with more daylight to spare, better calculations, and maybe a diffused flash closer in. Did what I could in post to save it, and I do like how it turned out, but it sure wasn't what I had in mind!

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Outside it's fall, with turning leaves and pumpkins and crisp cool air. Past the autumn wreath on the door you see inside through decorative glass, to the warmth which beckons you in.

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Taken for the Digital Photography School Assignment: 'Bubbles'

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The Staunton River High School Marching Golden Eagles (Virginia) performing at a recent marching band competition.

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Soft focus, old-school style. Smeared Vaseline onto a skylight filter in a circular motion, heavier toward the edges and feathered to a clear spot in the center. Held it in position in front of the lens as I have no filter thread adapter on my camera, however this allowed me to move the clear section off center a little to suit the composition.

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