Creative Light

Busted! Chewing on the new Christmas presents!

Well, She was set up. I have a local grocery store foil-lined reusable cold food bag that was just itching to have a strobe in it. I set the bag on it's side, stuck the strobe in it (near the opening) and set it to 1/16 power that's as low as it will go.

I like the effect, it's a little soft on the edge, but hard enough to define the subject crisply. This is probably too much for the average $100 point and shoot, but if you have a hot shoe (flash mount) you could pull it off with an external flash.

Here's a quick shot of the "Flash in a bag"
You can see I used the PC cable to fire the flash.




Many thanks to David Hobby who helped me understand this concept.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Despite the coming rain and ice, and the many things to take care of we will take the time to remember the wonder of Christmas. Remember who it was that Mary laid in a feeding trough for animals - God in human wrappings came near.







How did I do it?

I didn't take a set up shot for this, but here's how it worked. The flash was on a cable stuck in the back of the stable, a Lumiquest softbox/bouncecard was used on the flash. I took the flash all the way down to the lowest setting 1/16 power, ISO 6, F1.6, I ramped up the shutter speed to somewhere around 1/640. Keep the baby interested in what she needs to be looking at, she tried to eat sheep a few times. I set up the shot in about 5 minutes and placed the baby in the frame and within 3 minutes we moved on to the next picture. We did a little cleaning of the background in GIMP 2.6. If you have a really good point and shoot, you may be able to do this, you'll need some light in the stable, a desk lamp or something to make it work.

Projects

I've been thinking about some ideas that may help students understand the Bible better. Up to 100 years ago we were agrarian based society. Our modern kids have very little understanding of an agrarian society and little understanding of the parables and Bible stories about agrarian society. With that thought in mind, I would like to combine video (if possible) and stills to illustrate and help our understanding of the parables. I would like to start with the parable of the sower. If our kids can understand the way seeds grow and by where the seeds fell and what happened to them in a real world environment I think that they will understand the parable better. There is a deeper level to the parable the kids today can't grasp, unless they live on a farm.

In the beginning

Another photo blog? There are some great blogs out there, but they are not work, family, kid safe. What will be in here is the good and the bad pictures (not content) that helps even budding 10 year old photographers learn how to do it better. I am going to use a digital point and shoot camera quite a bit and show you how to get the most out of your camera, whether it's a dSLR or a point and shoot or even film (yes, there are still a few around).
One of the photography blogs that I like to follow is that of David Hobby. Not everything he posts is work and family safe, but he knows how to do some pretty amazing stuff with light. What I've learned from him is how to make the flash do what I want. One feature that I like on his site is the set-up shot. So at the end of this post is the set up shot for the opening picture.

Genesis 1:3 - 4
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.

God is the one who gave us photography. In only the third verse, He turned on the studio lights for the universe. Since God made the light and said it was good, then I as photographer should use it for good and not to twist it into darkness.
Here's the set up, a black piece of cloth, with low shine (don't ask what it is, I'm not a tailor), a black piece of fun foam, SB24 on a flash cord. Nikon D50, f/8, 1/4000, ISO is probably 1600, 24mm zoom. I purposely set the lens to manual focus and then defocused the camera. Sorry, I forgot to switch back for the set-up shot. It's a little blurry.