2009 September - Lucid Light

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September29th

Wedding: Mara & David

Posted in: Wedding

Pulled an all night-er finishing these up last night (and all of this morning), but dammit I wanted to catch up! Now I’m all caught up. Well, I’m not late for anything anyway. I still have another wedding and a roller derby to do this week!

Mara and David got married at Springstep dance studio and man, what a unique place! I had some giant orange walls to get around but all in all the warm glow of the orange and the diffused daylight from a floor to ceiling window did some nice things for the photos!

This family DANCES, too! Usually I’m done shooting reception dancing after a few songs, but these people really gave me something to work with! It was a great time!

Here’s some favorites. Flickr set here.
September29th

Links!!

Posted in: Links
While I wait for my 2nd wedding to batch re-size, I thought I’d clean out the ton of links I’ve accumilated in the last month or so! I really need to start doing these posts more often.
- Great tips from a hot-shot child photographer here.
- DPS has 7 Excellent Open Courseware Collections for Digital Photographers.
- What The Duck is hilarious, as usual.
- How to make moving pictures (like in Harry Potter) over at Photojojo.
- Patrick Pike made his way into my “inspiration” folder. (Everyone has folders and subfolders organizing their links, right?)
- Keep your eyes to the skies before storm season is over! Photograph lighnting!
- Here is 20 absolutely amazing examples of photo-manipulation.
- Photography 101: crash course on light meters.
- Cool Lightroom plug ins for flickr and facebook!
- Here’s some great info on properly cleaning your lenses. Those puppies aren’t cheap ,treat ‘em right!
- Two photographers show that the best camera is the one in your hands.
- DPS challenges you to introduce children to photography.
- Cool behind-the-photo lighting post, for the strobist dorks out there. (ahem)
- Photojojo’s 1st post in a serious on starting your own photography business. Great advice and questions to ask yourself here.
- Pixsylated has more things not learned in photography school.
- Do you know WHIMS? If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check this out.
- Dana Lane shows the hideout how he lit this badass model.
- I’m a sucker for book lists, here is 26 books every photographer should own, according to popphoto.com and 15 books no photographer should be without according to camera dojo AND 10 books the readers of diy photography think you should have.
- Portrait photography tips from Scott Bourne.
- One of my favorite photographers I found on The Hideout is involved in this beautiful book, check it out!
- Canon Professional Network talks custom functions for wedding photography.
- Amazing photos from a shoot with ASkars. (Have I mentioned my love for True Blood on here?)
- Here is 40 tutorials for using textures and backgrounds in photoshop.
- Think all HD is gross and overdone? Not so! Here are some incredible HDR images. Want to try it yourself? Check this out.
- The Pioneer Woman shows how to make your own storyboards to display your work.
- If panning has left you aggravated and unhappy, try some of these ideas to get all the best parts of panning with less stress!
- Amazing photos of the longest solar eclipse on Boston.com.
- Chase Jarvis gives you 9 ideas to try when you’re feeling your inspiration go stale.
- Do you know the Sunny 16 Rule? You should! It saved my ass last week shooting with a vintage camera which has a broken light meter.
- This is just awesome.
- Make a paper clip into a point and shoot tripod.
- Have you seen fotopedia yet?
- I’m not sold, but here’s a tute on sharpening in Lightroom.
- AWESOME site that tells you whether you can use vintage and older flashes on your DSLR.
- FREE LIGHTING DIAGRAM MAKER. So awesome!
September26th

Wedding: Colleen & Jeremy

Posted in: Wedding

1 of 3 weddings down! Trying to catch up on work and stay on top of school has been crazy!! I have to do 2 shoots tomorrow for class, two family shoots coming up, 2 weddings to edit, one in November and the Providence Roller Derby championship bout to edit! Free time? What free time?

Colleen and Jeremy aren’t strangers to being shown off here, you might remember their engagement session back in the spring. They were the subjects of one of my favorite pictures I’ve taken:

Well, they finally tied the knot on September 12th, 2009. Here’s some favorites: [full set here]

Congratulations Colleen and Jeremy! You guys were so fun and I hope you have a long, happy marriage!
September21st

DIY Light Box

Posted in: DIY Gear, Studio, Tutorial

I’ve been meaning to make one of these since I saw this.

A night on ebay searching out a working film camera since my 2006 Canon decided to stop working just in time for my Photo III class! I ended up scoring a beautiful Canon TX in great condition with 3 Canon lenses (a 50mm 1:1.8 S.C., a 35 mm 1:3.5 S.C., and a 135mm 1:2.5), a flash, 3 filters, shutter cable release and lens cases…

aaaaand an “as is” vintage Kodak.

The vintage Kodak is what pushed me to finally make the lightbox. This thing is beautiful.

I haven’t stopped looking at it since it came Saturday morning. It appears to be fully functional. It’s medium-format, takes 120 film and has four apertures, which from what I’ve read is rare for affordable cameras in the 20s like this one. I read somewhere (and apparently forgot to bookmark the link?) that the Hawk-Eye cameras were originally made by Boston Camera Company, who was bought out, and then bought out again by Eastman Kodak.

I believe the bellows were replaced because they shouldn’t be in such good condition.

ANYWAY! The light box!

You’ll need:
A 12x12x12 box
Tracing or gift tissue paper (white). You could chop up a shower curtain, too.
Masking or gaffer’s tape
Box cutter
First Aid (just in case)

These photos should make the process pretty easy on you. You’re basically tipping the box (with the bottom tapes and the top flaps open) on it’s side, open end facing you. Cut off the top and bottom flap so only the left and right remain. These will be used to keep the light from spilling into your lens.

Now cut a large window into the top and left and right side of the box. Tape the diffuser material you chose (tracing paper, etc) over the windows. Finally, hang a piece of cut posterboard (cut it to fit your box) from the top to make a seamless background.

Now you can use daylight, flash (off camera), or simple lamps (but be sure to set your white balance to the bulb temperature, or shoot RAW) to play with the direction of light. Experiment with different colored backdrops and sliding black posterboard window-blockers on one side to get a dramatic side light with no reflection.

If you look at these two photos, you can see the difference moving the light makes:

Side lit:

Top lit:

For my knitting readers (waves), your stash and projects look great in these, and it can be done outside in the sun with a point and shoot camera (turn the flash off, set to sun/daylight).

Etsy sellers, collectors, ebayers…all have a great excuse to use one of these so give it a shot! And if you do, leave me a comment so I can see how you made out!
September21st

Sunset over Battleship Cove

Posted in: City, Landscape

Enjoyed some “photoshop for fun” time after my wedding edit session tonight. I’m really pleased with this one.
September9th

School – Week One

Posted in: Studio, Tutorial

Well, it’s that time again and I’ve FINALLY gotten my “foundation” art courses mostly done…done enough to finally be allowed to start my photography courses! I’m still stuck in a painting course and have two more crappy drawing classes to slog through of course, but it is so nice to finally be enjoying school again.

My Photo III class assigned color film work for the first project. I had to dig out my Canon Rebel K2 and blow the dust off of it, only to find out something’s wrong with it. It keeps powering off and blaming the brand new batteries…very irritating. Now I own 5 non-working film SLRs.

Anyway, our first assignment is playing with complimentary, analogous and tertiary color combinations. We looked at some examples in class and talked about what the colors conveyed in each image. I was thinking about the nudes that Annie Leibovitz did under those video lights. They made the skin look somewhat grotesque. I thought I’d play with the idea of unattractive skin lighting and think I got some OK stuff. I will post when I get my negatives scanned (assuming my camera malfunctions don’t earn me back some blank rolls.) I did some shots of my limbs under a gross green gelled flash against a deep red backdrop.

For my 2nd roll of film I wanted to do soothing colors and again broke out the flash gels and whipped together a tabletop studio. Here’s a couple test digital shots with lighting diagrams. I snooted my flash with my DIY snoot (made of cardboard and duct tape…FANCY) and put on a light green gel from my Rosco sample pack, I also took a custom white balance reading so the camera wouldn’t warm up the cool light.

Today we had to do a group assignment, each group taking a color and shooting it with it’s complimentary color and analagous color and then an example of it in a monochromatic shot. My group shot for a while on campus and then went home with one third of the assignment a piece to make a few extra images. This was my favorite for mine (I had complimentary).

And two others:

(Another complementary)

(monochromatic)

Now that the fun homework is done, I’m off to read text books. Blerg.
September7th

Julie & Alexis

Posted in: People, Portraits

My friend Julie has had an 8×10 frame hanging on her wall featuring a smiling family for some time now. Unfortunately the smiling family was not hers…or anyone she knows. They are the model family that comes in the frame. We took a quick trip down the road to Battleship Cover here is “lovely” Fall River to get her a nice photo of her and her daughter. These are my two favorites:

Few more here, I’m still editing a few others.
September4th

Roller Derby!

Posted in: Sports & Action

I love roller derby. I failed miserably at being a roller girl (broken tail bone, rolled ankle, shin splits…you name it) I decided to become another enthusiastic and less likely to frequent the ER fan. Send me to a bout with my camera and I’m in my glory. Oh, and there’s beer. Heaven.

First bout was Providence’s Killah Beez vs New Hampshire’s Skate Free or Die. The Beez crushed NH with 150 points to their 50. 100 point win? Pretty awesome, Beez! No wonder I was drunk by halftime.

Some favorites:

(These are from the Sunday, August 16, 2009 Bout!)

More here.

Next up was the Providence all-star team the Rhode Island Riveters vs Detroit, sadly for the home team…Detroit cleaned up. End score: Detroit 149, Providece 69. Some favorites:

This one hurts to look at, Crazy Dukes took a mean hit!

More here.

I’ll be at the championship bout (The Old Money Honeys vs The Rats) on September 25th, keep an eye out for pictures! For more info on Providence Roller Derby head here.
September4th

Giveaway Winner!

Posted in: Giveaways & Contests

Random number generator pulled out #3, and that’s Jacky! Jacky makes these adorable sock monstahs, all by hand and often for charity. You can check her site out here: http://sockmonstahs.com/ She plans to use her postcards to promote her monstahs!

Stay tuned for more giveaways from UPrinting!
September4th

Wedding: Jessica and Matt

Posted in: Wedding

Whew! Took me a week longer than normal to finish these up…school and work and kids all at once make for much less editing time! Anyway, Jess and Matt were married about three weeks ago and had a really beautiful ceremony and fun reception. The sun was bright, right overhead in a cloudless sky and it must have been in the mid-90s temperature-wise…tough lighting conditions but I managed (thank you fill flash).

Here’s some favorites, full set here.

Thanks for letting me photograph your wedding Jess and Matt! Congratulations!