My friend Katy has just put some hand spinning kits up for sale on Piddleloop. They are perfect as a last minute gift (or a not-so-last minute gift) for that ambitious knitter on your list.
(Photo there is not by me, but I like it)
This lovely image was created under some rather unlikely circumstances. While at the KPFA Craft Fair last weekend, I was hired to do a product shoot for Frederic J Null, a stone scupltor. He makes amazing products, although being stone and steel, they’re incredibly heavy.
So we shot his booth, and then got his muscle to move some pieces a little bit, and threw a grey cloth over what we didn`t want to see. I shot a piece, and the muscle took it away and disassembled it. Some of the larger pieces (like the one shown above) they disassembled, and then moved. These things can weigh over four hundred pounds.
So, I’m doing a product shoot as quickly as I can, and from terribly close to the product. I wanted to be shooting with my fast 50mm, 15 feet away. Nope, I had to shoot from about 5 feet away with a 24-50mm lens to keep the other pieces out of the shot. I think it turned out, but I feel like the images look a little more dramatic than they really need to.
Anyway, here’s the above image before Steph Daniels photoshopped out the background: 
You can see the whole proofs gallery here.
I’m working on a rather lengthy article about a photographic system I’ve found out about for doing really high quality images of theatre lighting.
As a sneak preview, here’s a simulated image you’d get with your average DSLR:
And with the fancy camera:
It’s quite cool. You can actually capture almost the entire dynamic range the eye can see, digitally.
More images to come.
I’ve been doing a few sunsets recently. I have a plan to launch a line of Alameda, CA postcards. This is one of the test shots leading up to that. The weather has been excellent the last few days– completely clear and cool, which does not make for spectacular sunsets, but makes for very predicable results about 30-45 minutes after the sun goes down.
This was taken adjacent to the Alameda-Oakland Ferry Terminal. I’m looking almost due west at San Francisco, with the Port of Oakland to the right. The old boat in the left of the frame and the grass in front of the camera is lit with a flash just camera right. I didn’t want the boat to show up in silhouette, like the pier does, so I hit it with a warm color-corrected flash. The boat also managed to block the brightest part of the sunset, letting me expose up and catch the colors over the city without completely blowing out that part of the sky.
However beautiful, I’m not thrilled with the composition. Cropped from an earlier shot, here`s the composition I want to get closer to:
This one is further back, and shot with a longer lens. It brings the city much closer to you, and crops out the cranes (which are not necessary to the image).
So I think this is the shot, but I’ll reshoot this one (lighting from A, composition from B) the next time the weather gets around to this.
I really like this tea. It’s a little hard to find. I found it in 80-count boxes at CostPlus World Markets, but they were recently out. We found it on Amazon
I had this shot in my mind for a few days, and finally implemented it. This is shot in my home mini-studio, with the coffee backdrop draped over a folding table. I think it turned out to be a nice shot, tells the story.
It’s lit entirely with hard light– there’s a large strobe camera right at about the same level as the top of the boxes, there’s a smaller strobe clamped to the pipe the drape is hanging from as a backlight. Both are dialed way down, they’re just quite close to the subject.
I really don’t know if I like or dislike the shadow from the boxes in the back across the backdrop, but it helps to see the steam coming off the tea.