Day 20, 365 Day Project.

I spent the afternoon doing a private consultation for one of my students for a shoot she was doing for her swim club. She had a concept and an idea for how to do it but needed help in executing it. I thought the idea was pretty good so I shot two images of the set-up to share as my image for today.

The idea involved a head and shoulder portrait of each swimmer (we did 75+ in 2 hours) with the team logo projected behind them. A Larson 48 x 18 inch soft box on my Balcar head was used to light the subject's and feathered across to keep spill from falling on the background. A reflector was added to the opposite side for fill. A second Balcar with a 20 degree grid was used to light the cookie which was cut out with the team logo and a blue gel was place over the head. The Balcar Mini Z's I have are capable of zooming the tube thus allowing to focus the light on the background. The first image shows the set up and what the athlete's saw (we had to dim the modeling light on the background as it was to hot with the grid overtop). The second shows what the result looks like with the logo. I am not showing a finished result as these were her clients and it is not appropriate for me to do so. However the set up was one I wanted to share.

Day 19, 365 Day Project.

Photographed the lovely Breanna at the end of my Basic Lighting class this evening. Today was Low Key lighting and we were working with a more dramatic light on this set up. I really loved the loop lighting created here.

Technical details: 2 Alien Bee lights, Main light 800 ws with a 30 degree grid spot, Hair light 1600 ws with a 20 degree spot and set one stop higher then main. Shooting aperture @ f5.6, 1/125 sec., 100 ISO. Slight fill from reflector on right hand side. Canon 7D with the 24-70 f2.8 lens.

Day 18, 365 Day Project.

Well the cold weather finally broke and it is a sunny day and -5C outside this afternoon. While waiting for the father of one of Cool's classmates to arrive so we could walk over to pick the boy's up I saw some lovely light on the neighbours garage. Balancing Luke on my shoulder's I stepped into the snow drift and pulled out my handy, dandy iPod Touch, switched to camera mode and shot a few images. Once we returned home from the 2km round trip walk I went in to the Instagram app, selected this image ands choose the X-Pro II filter and made the conversion. I felt this kept a fairly true rendition of the color of the bricks while giving it an extra bump.

Day 17, 365 Day Project.

As I was getting ready to do my daily walk on the treadmill today I noticed the late afternoon sun coming through the basement window and light the leaves of the ivy plant that my wife has downstairs. So to the office I dashed and grabbed the trusty Canon 40D and started shooting. I loved the backlight and the way the leaves were illuminated. I choose the top image as today's selection as I also like the patterns of the shadows that were being cast by other leaves.

Technical data: Canon 40D, 24-70 f2.8 lens @ f5.6 at 70 mm and manual focus as the scene through the window gave the auto a bit of trouble. I loved the shallow depth of field here. Shutter speed of 1/200 sec at 100ISO.

On a side note I received a call from the Camera Store and my 7D is back from Canon after some warranty repair. Only took 2 weeks. I’m very happy with the turnaround time.

Day 16, 365 Day Project

Looking to try something a little different and decided to try some abstract images using the camera in the iPod touch. While the boy's were playing with the bubbles in the bath tub I asked them to try some motion to see what I could capture. This was my favorite as there was some sense of flow as the hands pushed back and forth through the water. The light was just a standard wall mount bath room fixture and thus it was fairly dark. The camera is OK in low light but the noise is very pronounced. I don't mind it much as it adds to the abstract quality of the image. Did some color correction in photoshop but again did not want to do to much in keeping with the theme.

Day 15, 365 Day Project

So one of my followers commented that I should get out of the house a little bit more after viewing my earlier posts. I responded that I would when it was no loner -stupid degrees out with wind-chill of crazy. However today I had my wedding photography class at SAIT and on my way home I saw this nice sunset by Confederation Park. Since I had my camera with me I parked the car and jumped out for a bit of a walk till I found something interesting. I liked the silhouette of the trees against the sky and shot this image with the Canon 40D, 24-70 f2.8 @ f16, 1/125 sec at 800 ISO.

Day 14, 365 Day Project

My wife saw these gold flowers and leaves at Canadian tire and thought they loked good. Then she found the vase at Winners and thus we have a decoration for our house. I decided to use them for today's image. Shot with the Canon 40D, 24-70 f2.8 @ f14, shutter speed is 1 second at 100 ISO. Light source was a Balcar with extra small Chimera soft box 1 ft away from the right as the stobe and the modeling light from the other Balcar through the Chimera small strip soft box on to the background to give it a warm tone.