Kids Will Be Kids
May 31, 2009 | Filed Under family, headshots, kids | 1 Comment
Today my 7-year old daughter Keely, tried her hand at doing face painting … on my 2-year old son, Henry.
I happened to be setting up for headshots I’m doing on Tuesday, and my daughter decided now that she has mastered the art of painting on faces, to try her hand at doing photography. She gave Henry explicit directions on how to pose (which of course went on deaf ears), and then manned the camera (with my careful eyes on her making sure she wouldn’t break anyting) and snapped off a few shots. I was able to salvage a few somewhat usable images. I think it’s time for me to spend some time now educating Keely on the art of photography. I think she is showing a liking to it.
Lose The Diffuser — Outdoors
May 3, 2009 | Filed Under Photo Tips | 5 Comments
The flash diffusers such as the Stofen omni-bounce, Gary Fong Lightsphere and the like, are great little gadgets that can help create soft light in a small room, or a room with a low ceiling.
The fact is, these plastic devices that you attach to the end of your flash are not softening the light coming out of your flash.
Light itself is neither hard or soft. It’s photons flying through the air in a straight line. The only way to create softer shadows is to make the apparent size of the light source in relation to your subject larger. This can be done, for example with soft boxes and umbrellas placed near your subject. Another method, if you are indoors, is by bouncing the light up into the ceiling or into a wall, which will bounce back much larger light source than the small size of your on-camera flash.
You can also use these plastic flash diffusers to aid in softening the light indoors. What these attachments do, is send the light spraying out in all directions, which in turn, bounce off everything, causing light to fall upon your subject from many directions to produce the look of softer light.
Now, are you heading outside to shoot with on-camera flash? The first thing you should do is take your plastic diffuser off (if it’s attached), and shove it in your pocket, camera bag, or wherever else you feel like shoving it.
Contrary to popular belief, a piece of translucent plastic that scatters light in all directions without nearby surfaces to reflect the scattered light back into the scene, will not soften the light. A diffuser outdoors — a large majority of the time — simply wastes light, reduces range, slows recycle times and eats batteries.
The light that will hit your subject will be the light that starts at your flash and heads straight at your subject. All the other light spreading out in all other directions will not have anything to bounce back from and will just go to waste. If you think that bouncing off the clouds is worth a try, fahgettaboutit, that’s a lesson in futility.
Outdoors, use your on-camera flash as fill, and shoot direct. Your mileage may vary, but by setting your flash to ETTL mode with a FEC of -1 1/3 to -2, should yield some very nice results.
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Tires Ain’t Pretty
May 1, 2009 | Filed Under everyday life | Leave a Comment
Today I awoke to a gray, dreary, rainy day and thought, “I think today I’ll buy a new set of tires.”
I’ve owned my Honda Element for just over three years now, and have 66,155 miles on it. I’ve been driving on the original tires, rotating them twice over the years. The tread was getting almost non-existent on the edges, so it was time to head on over to BJ’s, crack open the wallet and help the economy (and my safety) buy purchasing four new tires.
BJ’s is a great place to get tires, for as you are waiting the 35-45 minutes for your tires to be installed, you can browse around the store (and spend more money), rather than sit in a boring waiting room, reading magazines that are months old.
Tires ain’t pretty, but boy what a great feeling driving on brand new rubber. It’s at this time you realize the difference between tires with 60K miles on them, and tires that still have those little rubber spikie things still attached to them.
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