Painting with Light

This assignment was a challenge but I definitely think that I learned a lot. It felt very different than almost every other assignment I've had in photo-j. The idea of creating rather than documenting was fun but also challenging; I was responsible for every little detail and speck of light. Carefulness and attention to detail are definitely not my biggest strengths as a photographer, but this assignment help me to be more meticulous and methodical in my work.

8 minutes and 17 seconds at f/9, ISO 200
The exposure consisted of three flashes from Colleen's strobe and three drawings with a LED flashlight with different gels on it. It took a long time to get the process down; any light from Colleen's strobe that didn't fall directly on me would hit the wall and overpower the other flashes, making me look transparent. In the end I think that we were successful, thanks mainly to Colleen's uncanny ability to perfectly aim a strobe and put up with my spasticity.

Single Flash

I had an interesting time with this assignment. I'm glad that I stumbled my way through it in manual flash mode the whole time because now I think that I have a lot better understanding of ratios and distances and angles etc etc. I know working in manual is harder to get right and definitely caused me to miss some shots while I was fumbling around with my camera, but I felt that by the end I had a lot more control over how the flash would affect the composition as a whole.

p.s. don't let your strobe fall out of your bag or you will have to buy a new one.

Direct:

f/11, 1/50, ISO 400

I was experimenting with blending the flash and available light, and I think that it turned out pretty well(aside from the chunk missing out of his arm from the sky overpowering the flash)

Bounce Bounce: f/4, 1/125, ISO200

As soon as I got the whole bounce thing down, I had nowhere to use it. Bouncing off the movie projection screen was easy enough, I just feel like there's something missing in this shot.

Metal and Glass

I had the glass half of this assignment. I think that both Sara and I had good results with this project. It was a good experience to work with another photographer on a shoot and talk through different problems we came across.

In my final setup I had five upside-down pint glasses with martini glasses on top of them, with a different fruit on top of each of them. I had two regular strobes to light the glasses, one behind the table and one below it, bouncing off a white reflector on the ground. I also had two snoots aimed across the top of the fruit in an effort to light the fruit without reflecting off the glassware. I was shooting at ISO 200 at 1/250. I metered the fruit at 11 and the glass from in front and above at 16, so after some bracketing I ended up with an exposure of 1/320 at f/13.

in the studio 9.27.07