April 2008 - Posts
Believe it or not, tonight was the very first time we shot our daughter Satori in our studio! I hope to just get better and better, adding backgrounds/props.
We had our heater on full blast, you can see her goosebumps. So her hair was flying all over the place, and I quickly edited it out, could've done a better job on that, oops.
For our first week's assignment, we needed to get a literal portrait at a large aperture.
I lucked out in finding this Corvette speeding past this pond and snow-capped mountain background!
This week I have a tough assignment. Flowers backlit in the rain, or using a Bogen Super Clamp on my bike to get a motion-based shot.
Tammi blogged a bit about her class - butterfly, Rembrandt, etc... lighting for portrait photographers, and I had no clue. My husband kept pushing this book at me, so finally last night I started reading it.
I can tell that I will be referring to this book hundreds of times as I setup my portrait studio. While all the lighting setups were explained in depth, and I no longer am as clueless, at least I kinda know the "lingo" know.
HOWEVER, the book was overwhelming at first crack, I read half of it and skimmed the rest. It made me tired just knowing that I have sooo much to learn!
Right now I have 2 strobe Lights with stands and umbrellas, a few other lights that came with my light tent (which I never use), the background, and light meter, which is a good start to my studio. I would like to get a few soft boxes next. I have a realistic mannequin with realistic hair to "practice" on until I understand the basics of lighting. I'm sure as I study I'll learn all these other things that I will "need".
Hopefully I'll post more photos soon, but the goal was to get panning pics for my assignment this week. (You may see more of those as well!)
I shot at a slow shutter speed (1/30s) and panned along every single time she flew by, and this one turned out the best.
Shooting tethered has many advantages. Instead of viewing your photos on your camera's tiny LCD screen, only to find out later they were blurry (well that still happens to me sometimes), you can view your photo large as life on your monitor!
Here I have a 24" monitor and I downloaded a free 30 day trial software called Camera Control Pro. A quick google about "tethering" brought up Scott Kelby's blog. Doh, should've known he's got a blog! Followed his instructions, and here you have it!
Camera Control Pro let me set my camera's setting from the computer, and with the click of a button it would Focus and Shoot!
Coincidentally, my first try, my camera was pointed at a stack of photography exposure books. :)
When I setup my photography studio, I will definitely be "shooting tethered" for portraits!
Below is one of my shots that I did a screen capture so you can see the setup. To view the original large file, head to my photo gallery and "Download" the photo!
http://www.dslrcommunity.com/media/p/1553.aspx
After confirming my fears that my new hobby will prove to be very expensive for me, I figured eventually I'll have to earn some money to have it pay for itself! Since we already have a photography studio that I've been seriously underusing, and it has everything we need, I figured by next year I should be capable of taking portraits.
So I ordered a ton of portraiture books. I hope to review them by next month.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/ays?view=ut;portraiture&viewType=coverlist&asin=&viewShared=0&targetCustomerId=AR206PEX8SJFX&searchTerms=&sortCol=dateAcquired&sortDir=desc
Hopefully you all know that I will be awarding a 4 week photography class (valued at $195) at The Perfect Picture School of Photography! There are some great instructors in this class, including Bryan Peterson of "Understanding Exposure"!
How to win - it's going to be half based on your participation, half based on subjectivity (who needs it, who will get most use out of it)...
Of course you will have to be an active DSC member, share some of your photos (you don't necessarily need to use your photo gallery), post on your DSC blog (looking for at least 1 blog post), active in forums...
Check out the wonderful courses:
http://www.ppsop.com/courses.aspx
I woke up at 6am to take this shot.
Back in the valley behind our house is Rollins' Pass, and on the other side lies Winter Park ski area. But it was snowy and cold in this valley, and as the sun peeked over the horizon, it warmed up this yellow building and made it glow out of the darkness...
A DSC member posted this in our forums, thought I would share!
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/blog-power-why-you-should-consider-setting-up-a-photoblog/
Here at Digital SLR Community (DSC), you can have your very own free blog!
Blogging on a regular basis is a tool that will help your photography skills grow, and you can see your progress. Others can subscribe to your blog and make suggestions to improve as well as boost your confidence and motivation!
Here's a few blogs on our site, which is only a little over a week old, we hope to get more photo bloggers soon!
Angela's Photo Blog: http://www.dslrcommunity.com/blogs/angela/
Tammi's Photo Blog: http://www.dslrcommunity.com/blogs/tammi/
Heather's Photo Blog: http://www.dslrcommunity.com/blogs/heathergw/
See how you can easily change the look by choosing different "themes". There are many blog themes to choose from, you can customize the theme yourself, and I will add more this spring!
Panning is the capturing of motion while following the moving object so that the background is blurry, but you can see the moving object.
Shutter speed is crucial here. Here on this bright sunny day, I was able to use ISO 100, and after experimenting, I found a shutter speed of about a half a second to be the sweet spot! With those two down (shutter speed and ISO), I used my light meter to come up with f/29.
We love to run around on this Boulder field in Nederland. Our Golden Retriever runs, Satori runs, and my DH I try to get to run.
Going to try to post one photo a day...
Also, for my online photography class we had to shoot a silhouette. Light meter for the sky, so the foreground turns black.
I had a hard time as it was snowy and cloudy here in the mountains all week, but the thing about the mountains, is a short drive and you can find almost any kind of weather! Here's a peek through the clouds at a look out east with a tree in the foreground.
I just cracked open this book and I hope to review it when I'm done.
Released October 2007, it already has 63 great Amazon reviews, so I'm psyched. Scott is so convinced about this system that he has applied for a patent.
He's taking me through 21 lessons where we take a photo and turn it from flast to fantastic in just minutes Woohoo!
I'm compiling a list of our favorite photography books. Being a web programmer, I can make this much more interactive by using the Amazon API and show reviews, photos, links, but here's a quickie for now. ONGOING compilation, just a start! General...
Okay, so nothing will replaced a full-fledged Photoshop, but if you need to do some basic photo editing or are not on your main Photoshop computer, the brand new Photoshop Express (in Beta) will save you!
https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
I just signed up for an account, and hope to review it over the week as I try it out. :)
Testing out a blog "page" mostly. This is paraphrased from memory out of "Understanding Exposure" book. Has your camera's manual mode intimidated you? Lets just try it so you can take your first full manual photo! Now I'm not...
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