I decided to break out the soft box tonight while playing ball with Mela.  I was fiddling around with all sorts of angles this evening, trying to get something a little bit different than I captured in the past with Mela and her ball.  I really like how this shot came out.  The catch light in Mela’s eye is perfect at making it look alive.  My mind likes to predict Mela’s facial expression which is hidden behind the ball.  Like the title of the photograph says, “Go on, I Dare Ya”!

Tonight I went back to photographing the Vietnamese doll that my dad brought home from overseas for my mom while he was in the service years ago.  This time around I was using the 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens and a single Speedlite to capture the scene.  The 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens by Canon is quite a good portrait lens in addition to a fabulous macro lens.  The 100mm focal lens is perfect for compressing the backgrounds of portraits and can help capture even the finest of details in objects.  I highly recommend the lens to all Canon shooters.

This is a typical snack for me at night while I am away from home and staying in a hotel.  These vegetable gyoza are relatively healthy and low in calories.  They are also quite colorful.  I decided to try and capture them in a photograph tonight.  I used a single, remotely triggered, flash bouncing into two of the white pillows from the bed to light the scene.

I guess you can tell what was laying around the hotel room tonight?!

I decided to try and catch a water drop mid fall from the deck above on our back patio.  I used a 430EXII flash in the hot shoe of the 7D to stop the action of the drop in the dark lighting conditions.  Since I did not want to go out into the rain with the equipment, I stood in the doorway.  According to the meta data on the photograph, I was zoomed in at 121mm.  Why I was not at the full 200mm is beyond me.  Today’s photograph needed to be heavily cropped to bring the drops front and center as the subjects.

The details surrounding this photography of Leila, our one year old yorkiepin, have escaped me.  By looking at the metadata, I see that I used flash coupled with a shallow depth of field and my 50mm lens.  The background has been blurred so beautifully by the 50mm, its tough for me to even figure out where I took this photograph inside our house!  If I had to venture a guess though, it was taken in the basement/home theater.  How I managed to light Leila with a flash and still shoot at 1/13 of a second with such a sharp result is beyond me.  I like when I surprise myself like this!

The snow is practically coming down sideways tonight.  Right outside of the hotel’s front door it is sticking to the walls.  The light shining straight down from the ceiling created this dynamic lighting on the textured wall.  The snow sticking to it added even more texture.  This was one of those photographs that I knew would come out great no matter how I shot it.  I am learning more and more that good light is everything in photography.

To unwind from a hectic day at work today, I poured myself a small drink to enjoy while my fiancee and I watched some television together.  I brought my camera bag with me down into the basement in case any bright ideas came to me while we were relaxing (no pun intended).  I did not even get to take a sip of my drink yet when I thought of an idea to bottom light the brandy sniffer glass.  The glass coffee table top was finally going to be put to a good use rather than constantly getting dirty.

I whipped out the 430 EX II flash and set it up below the glass table top so that it fired directly up into the base of the drinking glass.  I do not remember if I was using manual mode, or if I was using ETTL with flash compensation.  More recently I have found myself using ETTL to control the power of the strobe for me.  I have found that setting the camera on manual mode and letting the ETTL system set the flash power has resulted in very satisfying images much sooner in my shoots when compared against having to set the flash powers manually.  I plan to continue working in both manual flash and ETTL flash, but I believe it is a good approach to know both methods well.

It has been a very busy few weeks since my last posting.  I have completed my first two official photo shoots for clients and been traveling here, there, and everywhere.  I also ran into an issue with posting to the blog from Flickr.  The issue has since been resolved and now I plan to try and get caught up with the project once again.  Do not fear, I have been taking a picture every day of the project.  I am just incredibly backlogged with editing the photos, uploading them to Flickr, and creating the posts here on the blog.  Without further a-du…

This shot was set up using a single bare bulb strobe.  I bounced the light off of the white-walled kitchen island at camera left.  I really like the details seen in the throw rug and Mela’s fur.

I read a blog post several weeks ago about a fun type of photo which lends itself to being taken in hotels.  The best way to describe these types of photographs is “bed jump” pictures.  It all sounds so simple: set the camera on the timer setting and then time jump on or onto the bed to coincide with the shutter releasing.  This is exactly what I tried to do tonight.  I set the camera up on a tripod and used a bare-bulb flash bounced off of the ceiling.  After each of my first few jumps, I took the time to remake the bed as best as I could.  It did not take me long to grow tired of this routine.  I settled on just touching up the sheets between attempts going forward.  It took me about twenty-five to thirty attempts until I was certain that I had a useable shot in camera.  My 50mm f/1.8 lens limited how much of the scene I could fit into the frame.  However, I like the end result.  I named the photo “Bed Jump: Attempt 1″ because I know, for certain, this will not be the last time I attempt a bed jump type photograph.  As soon as I have a wider lens with me during an overnight hotel stay, I will be bed jumping once again.