March 2009
58 posts
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What can you do with 2 pieces of paper and a...
You can light a car.
Yes it helps to have a black gloss piano surface, a lightstand, a musicstand, a black robe, a ruler to hang the robe on, 2 hands, a Phottix N8 remote, and a camera (on a stand). Click here for the setup.
And then you can light a car.
Note to self: Must wipe down the piano before a shoot, otherwise I wind up doing a lot of clone-stamping in Photoshop to remove dust....
February 2009
44 posts
1 tag
Drunk strobist
As a tribute to Strobist (aka Mr. David Hobby), I decided to make my own version of this shot:
Now lemme tell you. This was not an easy shot to pull off. Looking directly into the strobe’s reflection off the screen made me almost puke after 40 or so test flashes. Furthermore, getting the right angle where the strobe “paints” the back of the laptop was no easy task. I would...
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Jamaican me thirsty!
Well actually it’s not Jamaican, it’s Macallan 18 year old Scotch from Scotland. I was doing a strobist exercise and needed something reflective to reveal specular highlights. You can actually see the reflection of the umbrella (about 45 degrees camerai uppper left) in the bottle. Then all I needed was some light to separate the bottle from the background. For this I held a...
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I got published!
Well kinda… not really. Someone was writing an article online about eating disorders and likely went onto flickr and queried “eating disorder” and found a picture of mine. They asked me if they could use it in their article and I said, “sure”.
Truth be told, my “picture” really isn’t a picture. It’s a freaking screenshot of my nutrition/food...
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DIY beauty dish in action!
Reading up online, I stumbled across a few DIY beauty dishes in action. Here were the parts (in no particular order) that I acquired for this simple production:
1x foam board from Walmart 3x zip ties from home 1x salad bowl from Walmart 1x downspout connector for rain gutters from Home Depot 1x 3.75” convex mirror for bicycles from Walmart 1x can of flat white spray paint from Home Depot 3x...
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Lighting at the baby grand...
I spend a lot of time on the piano and I figured why not try a strobist shot with the baby grand. This was highly experimental and one of the few times I have used more than 1 strobe. This is actually the first time I’ve had this many Nikon CLS strobes to work with as well.
I started with the side angle 30 degree camera upper left with DIY beauty dish to produce the fill lighting:
Then I...
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The Speedlight Family
Today I retrieved my Nikon SB-800 from Nikon in El Segundo, CA. I was extremely fortunate that the repair work was done under warranty and was of no charge to me. In my previous post, I mentioned I kicked the lightstand the SB-800 was mounted on, causing the flash to make fall onto the hardwood floor head first. Afterwards, the unit would no longer fire. For a while, I thought I was out $400 until...
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Entertaining the guys revisited
My buddy came over and I showed him the making of this shot but this time added some background color to make it different. The funny thing is that I only remember shooting the background with 2 different gelled strobes, but there are 3 different colors in the picture. Might have been the 45 degree bare bulb SB-800…
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Bloody brilliant!
I’ve always wondered how a traffic light knew I was waiting for it to turn green. I always suspected it was some weight trigger but it turns out it’s not!
Read this to find out how it works.
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Fish pedicures make a splash!
Check it out! Pay to have fish eat your feet!
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Goodbye Pioneer Kuro...
Pioneer shutters it’s Plasma TV line…
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BSG coming to the big screen???
Could it be? Battlestar Galactica The Movie?
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No posts until Sunday night...
Going to Vegas tonight :) See you there!
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Kicking it with The Guys
I found a whole box of these little suckers in a closet. They belong to my brother and were supposed to be gifts. There are probably a 100 of them in the box. Well. I figured I’d make them useful!
SB-800 upper camera left at about 45 degrees shooting through a white umbrella at about 1/128 power on a black piano with black background. ISO 1600 1/250 f/6.3 at 70mm with Nikkor 24-70mm.
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*sigh, first the Cadbury Bunny and now...
Cadbury Bunny
Bet you didn’t know this but apparently Paddington lays eggs for a little extra income! :)
So I found these eggs in the closet and as I was about to throw them away I had a looney idea to use them with Paddington. The shot started out simple but then became slightly complicated since I only had 1 flash. I put the SB-800 with red gel behind Paddington (you can see the flash...
“Today, I went bowling with my mom and she payed for 2 games. By the 6th frame of...”
– fmylife.com. Check this site out… it’s hilarious. (via larrychi)
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The Art of Storytelling
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Do you believe in magic?
It’s ironic.
I break my 2nd flash, find out my 3rd flash doesn’t even work with my Nikon CLS (lighting system), and finally FINALLY I figure out why I need more than 1 flash.
Funny isn’t it?
So while I’m waiting for my flash to be repaired (and waiting to receive 2 new ones), I decided to have some fun with my 1 flash.
The things you can do with just 1 flash…
...
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Bears should not stand on furniture...
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Chris Brown hit Rihanna after she told him she had...
My brother found this on Digg… the comments are hilarious!
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Paddington Comes to Visit
Insipired by Surreal Bunnies
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TGIFing Strobist Style
Ever since I found strobist.com I’ve been experimenting with lighting. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve been a little more intelligent and successful with my results. For example, I’ve been wanting to create a shot like this for a long time but haven’t been able to. Now that I understand lighting better, here are my results:
Hahaha and no the cigar is not...
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25 Ways to Jump Start Photography Inspiration →
Very very very cool ideas!
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Where are you taking me?
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Inspired by Marisa Miller and a Harley - Strobist...
I was flipping through the pages of Cigar Aficionado this morning and saw this:
Awestruck by the beauty of the lighting I thought, “I wonder if I could do that?” It looks like just one light straight down maybe camera upper-right.
So I grabbed my Panoz Esperante GT-R and took a few shots. I must admit, there’s something fulfilling about seeing that reflection of the subject...
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The Right of Way
Our right, his left…
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Callaway Warbird (I broke an SB-800)
While I was taking pictures of my hummers the other day, I knocked over my SB-800 on the Manfrotto strobe tripod. The head came crashing down onto the hardwood floor and although everything else about it still works, it won’t fire.
Today, I came home from playing 9 holes inspired to take pictures of a golf ball that I had found the other day. To my surprise I didn’t lose it today,...
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It's Raining Hummingbirds!
Well actually it’s not… it’s raining and then there are hummingbirds. The low pressure system brings rain and lower temperatures. Lower temperatures means that my hummers are feeding more frequently sometimes once a minute (different birds). The birds have been battling for ownership over my feeder and one particular Anna’s Hummingbird is the champion.
I’ve been...
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“Tyler: All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you...”
– Great Tyler Durden quotes from Fight Club
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I'm trying to turn my PS3 into a Media Center...
With TVersity but I’m still trying to figure out why some of my files are visible and some of them are not…
Skydiver describes in-air death of instructor →
Crazy shit!