Lightning Redux

April in Georgia... storms and lighting are a weekly event. After learning some lessons about how to shoot lighting in the previous week's big storm, I gave the lightning shots another whack -- this time with a bit more spectacular results. After looking at these photos -- it seems that the lightning it coming up from the same place in all 3 photos! Lightning *does* strike twice in the same place....

All are ISO 200, f/5, 6 seconds. I had white balance set to tungsten -- really blued up the clouds...





View this post with Links and Comments

Quick Study in Shifting Tungsten White Balance with CTO Flash

Was thumbing thru Joe McNalley's latest book, noticed that he would shift color balance at times for dramatic effect -- noticed that some of the photos used tungsten white balance and then were counteracted with a flash with some CTO gels covering it.

It's right before dinner, thought I'd give it a quick try....

1) This is the normal outdoor sky at the moment. Big cloudy rainy softbox.



2) This is the cloudy light with my camera set to tungsten white balance.



3) Here is my model, in the sunroom, with only the natural light.



4) Now my model has a action stopping flash, with 2 cuts of CTO gel (I think it is full CTO), and then backed up by the natural light.



I'm certainly going to move forward with these color shifting techniques! All the light could be fiddled with and fine-tuned in a production shot, but for a pre-dinner lesson, not bad! Time to go flip the burgers...

View this post with Links and Comments

Electronic Photo Workflow -- Circa 2009

An Anonymous reader was interested in my setup / workflow for processing photos. This post focuses on how the bits flow through the system. I'll write a followup post on how photos are processed as they go through workflow.


This image of the electronic workflow is also available as a PDF Download.

Phase 1) The studio. The first step of the workflow involves shooting in the studio. When I shoot in studio, it is mostly tethered. I've written a couple of earlier post on the details of setting this up: How to install and shoot tethered with Canon and Mac and Shooting tethered with Lightroom. Briefly, any shot goes to the compact flash card on the camera and into the Mac where I view it in Lightroom. For lot's of different reasons, this workflow on the Mac ends here -- it's only around for shooting support and backup in case something happens to the CF card. I don't even dump the Mac version of the photos to the network and wind up trashing them after awhile. The Mac is a circa summer 2007 iMac.

Phase 2) Main computer. So if I shoot either in studio or outdoors, I wind up with a bunch of CF cards. I use SneakerNet (put on my sneakers and walk to the computer) and load these images up into Lightroom. After editing in Lightroom, Photoshop, and possibly HDR tools (all to be discussed in future post), I have sets of images on local computer for distribution. This machine is an older Dell 9150, I upgraded to Vista (after a 4GB upgrade) and I do have a dual monitor setup, one of them being a 23" Apple Cinema Display. I use ColorEyes Display Pro and the XRite DTP94B puck to keep all my monitors on all machines calibrated. See the related post on monitor calibration to see why I chose these tools for calibration.

Phase 3) Backup. 2 ways this is done. First, I export a catalog of what I worked on during that session and then burn these off to DVD. These go into a safe. The other backup method is an automatic backup process that runs daily that copies all new / changed stuff to a local Network Storage device (a Dlink DNS-323 with 2TB of memory configured for a 1TB RAID). So pretty much when everything runs, I've 4 copies of the photo scattered around different places and drives.

View this post with Links and Comments

Attempt at Lightning Photos

So, had lightning and tornadoes blow through Atlanta last night. Tried my hand at shooting lightning out my front door. Nothing too spectacular here (don't get excited), just practice and lots of lessons learned:

1) Lightning looks fuzzy in the rain and the rain really washes out the contrast. Got to get out of the storm next time (example: last photo)

2) Get yourself and equipment covered.

3) In black night, and if you are out in the country with lightning, you can leave the shutter open a long time with B mode and not pick up stray light. Unfortunately, us city folk need to worry about artificial lights, and are going to need to close the shutter a whole lot earlier -- with or without lightning in the photo.


4) These were shot at f/4 to f/5.6, ranging from 4-8 seconds. Next time, I would shoot with B mode, and leave the shutter upon until ambient levels get too high, or there is a strike. A fixed time possibly allows a lot of "off-in-the-distance" lightning to light up the sky and decrease the contrast. (This is what was going on in the first photo).

5) I took about a hundred shots -- thank goodness for digital. 5 were shots that actually had some sort of visible lightning in them.

6) Absolutely need tripod -- remote switch highly recommended.

7) Next time, I am going to need to get out of storm and find a good cloud to ground storm. A lot of last night's lightning was cloud to cloud (2nd photo is good example), which is not as spectacular.


View this post with Links and Comments

Making the Rod and Cone more useful: Your turn

Looking back over the last year or so, this blog is basically what Seth Godin would call a "me" blog. I've been pretty good about showing you the good and the bad as I learn about photography. The blog helps me focus and on occasion I do post an interesting tidbit that a lot of people find beneficial. But at the end of the day, it's more of a diary than a resource for folks.

So, I want to make it more useful to you. I've been collecting statistics on the blog for over a year, and it seems that the "technical" entries get a lot more hits than the photos. That's because they are lengthy writeups of some little problem I had to solve -- a problem that other folks have as well and they come here to learn more. For example, there is probably no where else on the internet you are going to find a more extensive writeup on the Hosemaster Turbofilter or see a way to do Off Camera 2nd Curtain Sync with a Canon (yes it can be done to a certain degree).

I'm asking you folks to pony up some technical problems you have, and maybe I can help. It will probably be best to have me look into problems & issues that involve lighting and studio equipment -- shit like sync speeds - rear curtain sync - power output of strobes, etc. Don't ask me to evaluate photos 'cause I can't even do that with my own stuff.

It's sort of a win-win for all of us. You get a photographer to do some technical research. I get training. You might get an answer (no guarantees). The readers get an extra nugget in their inboxes every once and a while. Seems like these entries might be a lot more interesting than Kewpie Dolls (don't worry, I'm still going to post Kewpie Doll and other photos).

Who's up first? What's your question or problem? I'm going to link to this post from my top 10 pages -- so I'm guessing that a random reader will ask a question before one of my regular readers does. Just drop a question in the comments below (preferred) or you can shoot me an email too.

View this post with Links and Comments

Kickboxing Tourney at Unit 2 Fitness -- Atlanta

Not often I go to watch kickboxing. Well, actually have never been. Had last minute opportunity to hook up with Frank at Atlanta Photography Exhibit who set up a workshop in conjunction with the Strength and Honor tournament held at Unit 2 Fitness. We ponied up some funds to support charity, and did some photos for the fighters and gym -- if you are fighter in one of these photos -- I'd be happy to send you a file or print. Drop me a line at bjw @ mindspring.com.

Couple of technical notes: The light was typically dark in the gym. Was saved by having the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 with IS. I had to shoot at 1/80s, ISO 800, f/2.8, and the pictures were still a stop or so underexposed. Bumped exposure up a stop to a stop-and-a-half in Lightroom, and also ran photos through Noise Ninja. Photo above shows a fellow photographer using the same lens I was using.

I'm also really happy with the colors out of the 1DS III. The newer version of Lightroom has camera color calibration presets now -- automatically detects the camera you used and has calibration settings to really true-up the color.

I

As for the sport of kickboxing, I really enjoyed it. Put down the camera at times and enjoyed the tourney -- would like to shoot this sport again. As for the kicking part of kickboxing, there was some of of that and I did get some photos, but it was sort of uneventful kicking -- I guess I was expecting leaping in the air and flying kicks -- just like I see in the cartoons. I guess real life is a little more down to earth.

View this post with Links and Comments

Artsy Nude Kewpie Doll on a Bearskin Rug

I really worked the lighting to bring out the strange little body ridges. Shot with Canon 580 EX in a mini softbox, 1/32 power, camera right and up.

Maybe I can become the Enoch Bolles of Kewpie Dolls!

View this post with Links and Comments