Boys And Their Toys

Of course there are no toys in this shot, at least none that the viewer can see. The "toys" are mine. Santa brought me a couple of new pieces of photo gear and I finally got a chance to try them out today.

First was a Honl 1/4" Speed Grid. A speed grid is an attachment that goes on the front of a speedlight strobe and looks somewhat like a honeycomb. The light passing through the honeycomb grid forms a circular light with soft fall off around the edges. In this shot, the speed grid is positioned to the far right of the subject and you can see how his face and upper torso are evenly lit, with the light level softly tapering off from his arms and downward.

The second toy is a Wescott Apollo 28 soft box. In this case the soft box is positioned to the immediate left of camera and providing fill for the main light coming from the speed grid.

Both have a distinct advantage over umbrellas by way of controlling light spill. Where as umbrellas tend to throw light all over the place, both the speed grid and the Apollo 28 softbox provide much more directional control and the ability to feather the edge of the light where you want. In this shot for instance, I have my lens bumped right up against the edge of the soft box in order to get it as near to on-axis as possible. I could never do that with an umbrella because it would end up spilling light and flaring into the lens.

I'm looking forward to doing a whole lot more shooting with these in the next few weeks.
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There's No Place Like Home For The Holidays

My wife and I are pretty much empty nesters now. The oldest lives with his wife and new baby in Lawrence, KS. The younger two are in college about 7 hours away. One graduates this spring and both have many post-college prospects and plans so I don't expect to see much of them after school is done. So holiday time is a blessing for us since it's about the only time we get them all together in one place now.

I planned this shot using Strobist David Hobby's tutorial on holiday lights. After looking at the shots I realized I didn't get the sky line above the house so I missed out on some of that deep blue action you get by setting the white balance on the camera to tungsten.

With the WB set on tungsten, I had to color correct the flashes so they didn't turn the kids blue. The main light, which is in a shoot through umbrella to camera left, has a full CTO orange gel on it that turns it to the same color as tungsten light. The rim light to rear camera right also has a gel - generic amber since I didn't have another CTO gel.
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Christmas Was Made For Children

What a joyous Christmas this year! My precious little grandson, Hudson, is celebrating his first Christmas. He and my daughter-in-law have come home a few days ahead of my son. The "cute baby in front of the tree with the Santa cap" shot is, of course, probably one of the most overdone cliches in all of photography. But when it's your own grandson, there's simply no resisting the temptation.
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The Evening Watch

It's not often you see a deserted beach in Florida. But drop the temperature down to about 48 degrees and crank the wind up a little bit, and none but the hardiest souls endure.

There have been several times in the last few weeks that I've come out of work near the end of the day, and kicked myself for not being in the right place at the right time with my camera. During these fall and winter months, the sunsets can get pretty spectacular. For starters, it's the only time of year that the sun sets over the water. Since we are on the northern Gulf coast, most of the time the sun is going doing right over the beach itself, or farther inland during the summer months as the sun moves into more northerly latitudes.

The other contributing factor is the atmospherics. I don't know all of the meteorological conditions that must be present, but the high stratus clouds that we get this time of year make for outstanding shooting opportunities.

I've taken lately to keeping a very close eye on the sky during the day and if conditions seem favorable, I try to make sure I have my camera in the car with me as the end of the day approaches.

Today was just such a day. Got to the beach about 30 minutes before sunset. I took a whole bunch of pretty typical sunset on the water pictures. And then this guy showed up. These herons that hang around our beaches and docks are pretty accustomed to people and if you move slowly you can get pretty close to them.

Fortunately I had my entire gear bag with me so I pulled out a flash unit, fitted with a Cybersync remote radio trigger, and held it in my left hand at full arms length. Took a few shots to dial in on just the right balance of flash/ambient and a good aim point. But this gentleman was very patient and cooperative, letting me shoot for about 15 minutes without hardly moving a feather.
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For Unto Us A Child Is Born

"For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given...and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." Isaiah 9:6

I guess no photographer worthy of the title can let the Christmas season pass without the obligatory photo of something in front of the bokehed Christmas tree and lights. I chose our family nativity set for my first attempt.

I was somewhat stumped in trying to get the look I wanted. Due to the width of the tree, the size of the set, the available shooting distance front-to-back, and lack of a really wide aperture lens, I really couldn't get the background out of focus the way envisioned. In order have the tree fill the background of the nativity set I had to arrange items and select a zoom length on my lens that would only let me stop down to 5.6. I'm holding our for 2.8 from Santa this year!

To get the bokeh effect, I used the Lens Blur filter in Photoshop. This is the first time I've tried this and while the purists may turn up their noses, I think it's just fine for this particular shot and certainly a vast improvement over the out-of-camera composition that had the background in much more focus.

Lighting set up was a Canon 430EX II flash in a shoot thru umbrella to camera left to illuminate the nativity. The tree was far enough back that it got very little spill from the key light so I added a second 430EX II in a shoot through to far camera right, dialed down a couple of stops and aimed at the tree for some background fill. Every thing is topped off with a bare LP120 high and behind the subject to camera left to give some rim/backlight illumination.

May the love of Christ richly bless you and your family this Christmas season!
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