Welcome to RAW the flash journy continues.

Seeing how class is still the freshest thing in my mind, I'll start there this evening.
I couldn't agree more to the point that their was some necessary communication needed so that we are all on the same page, because I've found myself filling in blank spaces with not quite the right answers. Granted I don't think I'm having a hard time finding something newsworthy to take a picture of, but applying these new techniques may be the issue. Also being more translucent in my thought process through out this shoots may lead to more suggestions for improvements. Finally, getting on the same page with filling has been tricky, but I'll refer to my submission sheet and ask questions were needed.

OK, with that out of the way, on to Color Correction and how much I'm already loving RAW. Yes I noticed right away how much space it takes up in a Flash Card, but it is the standard on which the digital negative will be built.

I'm not sure, why I'm in this funk of forgetting to check my ISO every time I turn on my camera. I think part of it was that for such a long time I wasn't aware of it I never made it a habit to check it. However, now I really need to slow down, breath and check the ISO, the color balance, the flash if it is needed.

For this assignment, yes I had to battle the dreaded F-Light, which in Photoshop lives up to its name. However, my location as stated in the diagram really helped with that. I was up against 12 fluorescent tubes, divided in 3 separate overhead fixtures. Granted a North facing storefront in the late afternoon, doesn't give a lot of light, but it does fill some dark spaces for me. The neon beer signs, while do burn hot and give off some light, were either being taken out of my lens' focus or I'd angle around them other ways. The other great supports I had were a totally white wall, and mirror to bounce my flash off of as you'll see in my diagram.

Position 1 was the best for shooting because I had my back to any natural light, plus I could bounce flash off the mirror or white wall depending on the direction of Seth the Barber or his customer. Which was part of the waiting game with this assignment. While Seth gave me all access to his shop, I still felt the need to ask his customers permission to be photographed, some said OK but no names, and others said no. I need to respect that and not hurt his business.

Postion 2 wasn't bad depending on where the Barbers chair was I tried to hid my body behind that and get them to also block my flash. Because the area was cramped I could bounce the flash in the white wal behind me to keep it from showing up badly in the mirror.

Postion 3 wasn't great I could duck down, tried to stand on a spare chair and still had to fight some natural daylight and the F-Lights. Yet RAW is very forgiving.

OK diagram soon to come. Photoshop and the scanner are giving me issues.

Metal and Glass

After my long blog hiatus, lets try this again.

Metal and Glass is defiantly a different beast to photograph, mainly because basically are taking a picture of either a reflection or something that is invisible so some studio tricks must be implored to bring the form and image to life. The biggest thing going into this assignment was the idea, and really being able to map something out before I attempted it. The images in class did give me plenty of good ideas, such as a field knife through a Kansas license plate, or a bullet shell casing with “Your Name” in graved on it. However setting those up would require a lot more time and money then I had to deal with. Plus, it wasn’t until after I said I would take Metal and let Andrea shoot glass that I thought a pint of “Guinness” with white line lighting, and a green gel used on the head of the “beer” would make a great shoot for St. Patty’s.
However, I digress from what I did shoot. I like the idea of showing the detail of a golf club, and it’s features such as the grooves in the club face, and thanks to Andrea the previous ball markings which I thought I should clean off but she convinced me it gave the club character. I was also inspired from a few examples in class that used motion/ animation to give the picture movement. Hence, I used this shot of the balls bouncing in the picture (special thanks to Will who was early for his shoot but gave me a extra pair of hands). It did take several takes for the time we had available, but I love that I could get the balls at this moment to give me a nice “V” shape and add to the use of triangles. The white line on the club, shaft was really controlled by the soft box in front of it, I tried moving the angle of the box a couple of times, yet in the end I like that it isn’t uniform because it adds more roundness of the shaft in the photo. I really didn’t want to use a lot of wattage in the lights because the reflection would be much more difficult to control, so I’m quite happy that I back it down to 800 watts on the soft box, and got rid of the snoot that was supposed to highlight the ball on the table. One other thing looking back I’d like to have done is slow the shutter speed a bit from 250 so I could get a little more blur and action of the bouncing balls. Yet one of the problems that we had to work around was dead battery in the light meter, so I metered and bracketed off my camera. Another special thanks to the MU photo dept for having the artificial green turf on hand, that made the shoot a lot better than green poster board would have.
Andrea, was such a big help to me, and I hope I was as equally helpful to her and her ideas towards a reversal of nature and bee’s and honey. The concept is very creative, plus getting the white boxes from behind and under the table to line up to avoid as much of a gray horizon as possible was very tricky. Yet after a some trial and error I think she was very successful.