Dan Perovich's Cyberfront Property

I have two confessions to make about today’s picture. First, the picture was actually taken on 5-30, but at 12:00:05 am! So I’m bending the rules, but only slightly. You see, I did start this session well before midnight. It just happens that the best picture came towards the end of the session and on the wrong side of midnight. The reason it took me so long to get the shot that I liked leads me to my second confession.

On the way home from work I dropped by Ace Photo. I had intended to pick up two hot shoe to PC sync adaptors and a long PC cord so that I could begin working with off camera flash. Let’s just say it didn’t take long for the owner of the store to convince me that the setup I had intended on purchasing today was more or less a gum and tape solution for the Xsi and 430EXII Speedlite I intended to use it on. To make a long story short, I walked out of Ace Photo with the PocketWizard rig I have been lusting over.

Being that I haven’t used off camera flash before, never mind manual flash and manual mode on the Xsi (I almost onlys shoot in aperature priority mode and switch to shutter priority mode when I need the speed), it took me a while to find the best positioning for the flash and power of the strobe to achieve the picture I desired. Although I was unable to remove the shadow of the candle and its holder from the areas behind it, I do think it created a neat effect. It’s almost as if the buddha is sitting in a cave or dark room with a single light source.

By the way, the owner of Ace Photo said they are very close to opening up their ecommerce web site. They are taking a final in-store inventory and making sure the web site and in-store computers are both in sync with available stock. Apparently, Adorama and B&H don’t have the inventories of their brick and mortar stores tied to their in-store inventories. Anyways, if you’re in the Loudoun County, VA area, be sure to look up Ace Photo and drop by. Not only are they EXTREMELY helpful, they have just about every gizmo and do-dad I’ve read about on various blogs over the past few months.