Photo365-20100114 – Bed Jump: Attempt 1, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/250 sec @ f/10, ISO 800, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
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.
Photo365-20091223 – A Christmas Masterpiece, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/2 sec @ f/11, ISO 1600, 20 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)
I am pretty sure this will be the last Christmas tree photo during the project. I am not going to promise anything, but I will try. You never know what opportunities may come when we take down the tree in a week or two. I am hoping that we take the tree down in the next week or two instead of leaving it up until sometime in February or March like we did last year!
With this picture, I wanted to capture the finished masterpiece that my fiancee put together this year for our tree. While last year’s, Virginia Tech themed tree still remains my favorite, this one is a close second. We never were able to figure out why half of a strand of lights completely went out the day after putting the decorations on. We decided to live with it instead of pulling off all the ornaments and stringing a new set of lights.
I used two flashes for this picture. Each one was set up on a flash stand and coupled with a reflective umbrella. I placed one umbrella and strobe combination atfar camera right and one far camera left. Both were set to a height roughly the size of the tree. The umbrellas were then pointed down at about forty-five degrees. If I had to estimate, each rig was about ten to twelve feet away from the base of the tree. I wanted to ensure that the light would spread evenly across all visible parts of the tree. I had to play around with the direction of the umbrellas to eliminate the spectral highlights on the walls of the room as much as possible.
In the end, I was able to produce today’s image. The ISO got a bit higher than I normally like to shoot with. In order to get more light out of my flashes, I was “forced” to raise my ISO so that I could keep the other elements of the photograph as I liked them. For example, I did not want to increase my aperture from f/11. If I allowed more light in by increasing my aperture from f/11 to, say f/8, I would have lost the star-bursting effect on the tree lights. I also did not want to slow my shutter speed down much more than 1/2 second. At 1/2 second, I was able to achieve a believable balance between the white light of the flashes and the yellow-colored light from the tree. If I slowed the shutter down to 1 second, I risked letting the yellow-colored light from the tree contaminate the rest of the light in the room and making it look more artificial.
Photo365-20091219 – Winter Wonderland, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
0.6 sec @ f/8.0, ISO 800, 18 mm (EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)
This was the view tonight out our front door in Leesburg, VA. We got hit with the “Storm of the Century” today. By my last measurement, we had about sixteen inches on the ground. Believe it or not, this is the view of our street after the plows came by twice earlier in the day. It is going to be a lot of fun digging out of this tomorrow!
I used my tripod to take this “long” exposure. I wanted to avoid using an ISO higher than 800 so that I did not have a lot of noise in the picture. All the white snow caused havoc on the 7D’s white balance sensor. I would not say that the 7D auto white balanced turned all the snow gray like many professionals say a DSLR will. Instead, it turned the picture yellowish. This was quickly fixed in Lightroom using the eyedropper white balance tool. I used the mail boxes on the middle left of the frame as my gray point for the tool.
Easy and flexible white balance adjustments are just two more of the many reasons to always shoot in the RAW format on your DSLR. Sure, there is an extra step of converting the RAW format to a JPG to be shared, but it gives you so much more flexibility in post-processing. Many photos that I have shot would have been trash if I had shot them exclusively in JPG format.
Photo365-20091218 – Ginger-yum House, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
25.0 sec @ f/14, ISO 400, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
Today my fiancee and her nephew made a ginger break house together. Upon coming home and seeing it on the dining room table, I knew it was going to be my subject for today. It was practically in the perfect place too, right in front of the tree. In order to get the star bursting effect on the tree lights, I knew I would need a small aperture and a long shutter speed.
I set the camera up on the tripod and placed an Apollo softbox at camera right. I then set up the white disc reflector on camera left to open up the shadows on the left side of the house. I took a few shots to determine the best flash power settings to light the ginger bread house. I quickly determined that I needed to modify the light from the flash with a CTO (color temperature orange) gel to more closely match the ambient light from the tree. After getting the ginger bread house lit to the way I wanted it to look, I started to slow down my shutter speed little by little until the exposure of the tree was spot on.
In hind sight, I should have corrected the white balance during post processing. It seems that there is an abundance of yellow in the final picture. My guess is that the 7D auto white balance chose a flash setting instead of a tungsten setting. I should have manually set the white balance to match the color of my gelled flash to avoiding having to make an adjustment during post.
Photo365-20091217 – Portrait Practice, originally uploaded by HokiePerogi.
1/250 sec @ f/6.3, ISO 200, 70 mm (EF70-200mm f/4L IS USM)
Today I wanted to put the new gear to the real test. I decided to add a background and reflector to my gear so that I can use them to take corporate head shots for my company in February. I left myself plenty of lead time to iron out any kinks in the setup or my technique.
I set up the background and paced off eight feet to where I would be standing for the portrait. I placed one of my light stands on the spot to mark it for the time being. I then paced off eight more feed and set up the tripod. I used the light stand place holder as a focusing point. Next, I placed the background light on a small table a foot behind where I would be standing. The Apollo softbox was then placed at camera left and in close. The last piece of the puzzle was setup up the new reflector and stand. Once it was all hooked up and angled properly, the reflector was placed camera right and in close. (I have included a setup shot at the end of the post.)
For the first few frames, I had the circular reflector with its white side exposed to the softbox. The result from this setup was a heavy shadow on the subject’s left side. Mid-shoot, I flipped the reflector over to expose its silver side and reflect more light back into the shadows.
I like the way the final images came out of the camera. I did, however, open up the exposure a bit more in Lightroom during post processing. The next time I practice these shots, I have to remember to open up the exposure more in camera. What looked great on the back of the camera turned out to be a bit too dark on the computer screen.
13.0 sec @ f/16, ISO 800, 50 mm (EF50mm f/1.8 II)
Yup, you betcha’. Here is another Christmas tree photograph. ‘Tis the season, right? This time, I set up the camera on a tripod as close to the floor as I could get it while still mounted on my tripod. I used my “fast” 50mm lens in attempt to get the picture as sharp as possible at f/16. I have not actually confirmed my hypothesis, but I think the 50mm f/1.8 should be sharper at f/16 than the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS is at f/16.
Using the 50mm lens had its draw backs though. From the perspective that I was going after, looking up at the tree from a young child’s point of view, the 50mm lens was not able to get the entire base of the tree. When I moved the camera and tripod back further from the subject, I lost the tall tree effect that I wanted to capture.
Just like a few days ago, I used a wide aperture to make the lights on the tree burst with the star shaped flares. In post-processing, I lightening up the tree topper a bit and brought the green back into the tree by decreasing the saturation and luminance of the yellow colors.
A self-proclaimed tech-geek, I enjoy anything powered by batteries or electricity. I'm not happy until I understand the full potential of any new gadget I get my hands on....
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