Dan Perovich's Cyberfront Property

1/200 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 200, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)  I have come to the realization that my dogs need more training.  Mela (pictured) does exceptionally well with the house training.  Leila, is another story in that department, but she has gotten much better recently.  But I am actually writing about other training.  Take for example the command “SIT”.  Both girls will gladly sit when asked, as long as you have treats in your hand.  Otherwise, no such luck.

How does this relate to today’s photo?  It is tough enough to photograph a subject in a dark room so that the focus is spot on.  Ccouple that with an ever moving subject who will not stay still for longer than 5 seconds and you have my photo shoot from tonight.

Luckily, Mela “listened” to my final sit command plea and laid down.  I know, I know…I asked her to sit and not lay down, but to her credit, she laid there for a good 2 or 3 minutes.  Just long enough for me to get a few really nice photographs of her.

The setup for the shot had the 430EX II on the light stand aimed at the shoot-through umbrella.  It was pointed downwards at a forty-five degree angle at camera right and was tripped by the 580EX II in my camera’s hotshoe.

1/200 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)  I got my inspiration for today’s photograph after looking at some other peoples’ work on Flickr tonight.  I learned something tonight about when I shoot strictly with flash and no ambient light.  I tend to underexpose all my photographs.  I figured this out during the shoot tonight by taking several frames using the exposure and flash settings that I normally would for this type of shot.  Then, I slowly walked the aperture down, letting more and more light from the flash hit the sensor.  As I did this, I realized that I was getting a much more vivid color pallet in the camera.  In the past, I would usually have to do some post processing to get the bright colors out of my Strobist-style shots.  However, this time, the vividness was captured right in camera, simply by letting more of the light from the flash expose the scene.  It is a delicate balance though.  One stop more light in this photograph resulted in the background showing up instead of the smooth black background.

1/200 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 100, 40 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)  At first I did not like the piece of artwork my fiancée showed me at the store a few months back.  It  did not look like something that belonged on the wall of our kitchen sitting room.  Ultimately though, it made its way back home and onto the wall.  It is now one of my favorite pieces in the entire house.

For this photograph, I set up the 430EX II flash with the shoot-through umbrella on the light stand and raised it up to be level with the wall art.  I tripped it by using the wireless flash system built into the 580EX II flash which was mounted in the camera’s hotshoe.  I had the 580EX II set to 1/128 power and pointed striaght up with the fill card extended so that a kiss of light would be sent up behind the raised tiles.

Typically, I would have framed this shot so that the artwork was straight in the camera and later adjusted it in Lightroom.  However, tonight I decided to play with the composition in camera.  After a slight increase in exposure and the application of an out-of-the-box Lightroom preset, I arrived at the finished photograph.

1/60 sec @ f/1.8, ISO 200, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)  Tonight I decided to shoot another idea I have had for the last few weeks.  The concept was light emitting from a closed door.  In my head, I had envisioned a shot seen in many movies where a bright light shines through a closed door as if there is another world on the other side.

I set the shot up by hooking the 580EX II strobe and my XSi to the PocketWizards, gelling the strobe blue, and then putting the soup cup omnibounce I made on Sunday on top.  I set the flash in the bathroom and closed the door just about all the way.  I tested my flash using the button on the PocketWizard mounted in my hot shoe and was ready to go.

Or so I thought.  I took a few shots without looking at the LCD.  I had a suspicion that something was not right.  In fact, it was…sort off.  The strobe was not firing in the bathroom.  After double checking all the PocketWizard settings on both ends and the flash itself, I was convinced the problem had to do with the radio interference output by the 580EX II.  I have read about this exact problem in numerous reviews of the latest PocketWizards but had never experienced it myself since I always shot with a 430EX II. 

The solution to my problem was to swap out the flash in the bathroom for the 430EX II currently mounted on the light stand.  This process only took a couple of minutes and then I was on my way shooting with a working remote flash.

1/200 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)  Tonight I did some portrait practice using the umbrella light modifier and an inanimate object.  I have been meaning to take a picture of the gum ball machine for a while now.  However, I was always intimidated by the glare I would get on the glass globe.  As you can see in the photo, I was able to significantly reduce the presence of glare by using the umbrella as a large light source.  However, instead of a flash glare from a bare strobe, I got a reflection of the umbrella in the globe.  I tried my hardest to find an angle to shoot at which would reduce or eliminate the reflection.  During the process, I found myself laying on my back and shooting up at the gum ball machine.  At first, I took the picture straight on.  Then I started moving myself off axis from the front of the machine.  Eventually, I wound up with today’s photograph.  It reminds me of pictures I have seen taken of CEO’s in Money magazine.  The upward angle usually is an attempt to convey the subject’s power.

1/60 sec @ f/4.5, ISO 400, 200 mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM)  I talk a short photowalk around the neighborhood tonight to find something interesting to make a picture with.  I stumbled upon several spiders setting up shop on the pool house lamps tonight.  The size of this particular spider was intriguing.  To put it into perspective, if you put this spider on top of a quarter, at least 1/3 of each leg would be hanging off the edge.

I made the shot using my tripod-mounted XSi and 580EX II flash mounted in the hot shoe.  I used the overhang of the roof to bounce the flash back down onto the spider.  I also threw on a full CTO gel onto the flash so that the light from the strobe would match the color of the pool house light at camera right.  This marked the first time that I actually used the gels to match the strobe produced light to the ambient light.  Since the the picture is cropped so tightly, I am not sure that I would have been able to notice the difference in light colors if I had not used the gel, but at least I feel good in knowing that I technically shot the picture properly.

1/200 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 100, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)  Tonight was another “Oh shoot, what am I going to take a picture of” night.  I have this fancy new light stand and umbrella, so I figured I would try and use them again.  I had tried to take a picture of these two mugs a few weeks ago with direct flash and bounced flash.  But the resulting glare on the mugs was too distracting.  I had a bit more luck this time around using the shoot through umbrella.  The trick was to get the umbrella as close as I possibly could to the mugs without having it show up in the frame.  If I remember correctly, the lens of the camera was actually up against the umbrella for this shot.  The umbrella was positioned camera right, sightly above the mugs but pointed down, and roughly 5 inches away from them.

The mugs were given to me by my mother after my father passed away.  They are from one of the infamous Playboy Clubs from back in the day (not the current Playboy Club in Las Vegas at the Palms).  I will have to talk to my mother to get the whole story about the several pieces of Playboy Club drinkware which was in the house when I was growing up.