I did a rather long shoot with Rachel Hospodar on Sunday. Here’s a couple of single images from some diptychs. I was at a little bit of a disadvantage because one of the two lights I had brought was on the fritz, so I think the wider one has a little bit of an exposure rake across it– that is, the exposure on the right is a little bit less than the exposure on the left– you can see it in the orange wall behind.

The other pair is vertical, and so was a little easier to pull off with a single light without raking across– I think it turned out lovely. Rachel’s paintings are very textural, so the single light may be better, as it won’t entirely hide the details in the texture. The modeling light, however, was key in figuring out where to put the light so it wouldn’t glare off the paintings. “When I said matte, I really meant semigloss”.

It just hit me how much we’re going to be travelling around this year. Lots of weddings, with some stopovers in nearby cities. Just those that I know about so far:

• February: Steamboat Springs, CO, for a week of blissfully doing nothing (and giant cinnamon buns).
• April: Kansas City, MO, for a wedding and some tasty BBQ.
• June: Mendocino, CA, for a long weekend of hanging out with good friends.
• July: Malibu, CA, for a wedding.
• October: Pittsburgh, PA, for a wedding and probably a side trip to NYC.

Probably some trips to Portland, OR, in there for good measure.  All in all, a busy time, but a good time.

The image in the header was shot specifically for this site and as the new graphic logo for Ben Peoples Photography. It makes a nice case study into how I work.

I wanted a dynamic shot, with nearly netural colors, but some color.

I liked the idea of doing a splash shot, which are fun and technically challenging. The key is that glasses are hard to light (they’re all reflection) and capturing a splash requires a really short flash duration. A flash works by storing up a lot of energy, and then discharging it through ionized xenon. The lower the power setting, the faster the discharge, and the shorter the duration of the flash. So I started with the flashes turned all the way down. I turned the main flash up a little hotter, around 1.5 stops above its bottom setting. My initial idea was to put the glass on a clear acrylic sheet with a sheet of diffusion and a small flash under. The main flash with an 18″ softbox, I positioned level with the glass, to the right. I also tried a black piece of foamcore behind. I ended up with this uninspiring shot.

So, first I moved the softbox up to about four feet above the glass to maximize its reflections, then put a piece of white paper up behind the glass. I was getting pretty rotten reflections from the bottom light, so I needed something black to reflect there. I plopped another piece of foamcore below the glass, and moved part of the diffusion to get a direct shot to the white paper, and still provide a little diffusion into the bottom of the glass (giving it something to reflect).

I did a couple of test shots with water to see how it works, popped those onto my computer to verify focus and exposure. Since that all worked out, I switched to the bourbon and a cherry. You’ll notice, flipping through the unretouched shots, it makes quite a mess. I managed to keep the glass itself relatively clean, but the backdrop was a little too close, and got splattered. There was no risk of the camera getting splattered– I shot this with a 70-300mm zoom lens, all the way at 300mm, the camera is a good 8 or 9 feet away on a tripod, being triggered by an infrared remote.

You can see the whole evolution of the shot in the gallery, here. Questions? Comments? Leave them below.

Some long exposure night photography in Alameda, trying to catch the Orionid Meteor shower, but not actually being up late enough to do so.

I finished the first of 5 softboxes I’m building, the tests with this one are interesting and educational, here’s a series of shots, testing relative exposure:

I’ve also been scanning some old negatives. Right now, this is my favorite shot:

Have a nice weekend!

An old photo I dredged up scanning negatives this weekend. The room is the old drama freshman drafting studio at CMU where we spent way too much time. The tag on there was sort of my mantra getting through it all.

The new freshman drafting studio is much nicer, not buried in the basement of the College of Fine Arts next to the xylophone students who seemed to do the same drills for months. They actually flipped it to the top floor, with a clerestory to let in some nice diffuse natural light. It’s still a mess…

*

(* Color image not by me, uncredited on CMU’s website)

Cable Car Drive System

Back in December, I shot the KPFA Crafts and Music Fair. This is the best, by far, craft fair I have been to, largely I think because it is juried– everybody there is excellent.Today, I finally got around to putting them up on the web– you can find them here on Flickr.

I had a good time–my first event coverage. I initially was shooting with a fast f/1.4 50mm on my Nikon body, which is a bit myopic (35mm film equivalent of 75mm), but led to some nice Artist portraits, you`ll see in that group. Since I was close to everything, I switched to my Tokina 12-24mm, which is woefully slow in low light at f/4, but I think worked out okay. I didn`t have the space to really set up lighting and light each booth and each person as I was shooting, so all of the images are available light.

The Concourse is a great space– an old wooden indoor railroad yard –one person told me that they brought the cars over from Berkeley and Oakland on barges. The central space has a mezzanine level that allows you to get some great overviews of whatever event is going on below, thus the image at the top.

The craft fair was also where I shot Frederic J Null’s stone tables, which has led to some ongoing work.

One of my hobbies is woodworking. I’m not great yet at the fine woodworking, but I really enjoy it. My brother got me a gift certificate for the Japan Woodworker. JW is an awesome store here in Alameda with a mail order catalog, but going and looking at everything makes it all the better.

They have amazing $300 blue steel chisels handmade by a National Treasure of Japan (some of them made by bonding the super-hard blue steel to 100-year-old wrought iron recovered from anchors). They also have $20 white steel chisels, also handmade. The $20 chisels are higher quality than anything you`ll find at the hardware store, although I think the ideal would be the $75 blue steel chisels. They’re a nice compromise in price vs. quality.

Currently, I have four of these chisels. They’re beautiful and a joy to use. So, here’s the new round of tools:

And so I needed a better workbench. My current bench was built more for metalworking, so it’s small and outside. One of the glue joints on the top is about to entirely split, so it`s definitely no good for serious woodworking.

The new workbench is four separate 2×8’s 8` long. There are two 2×4 legs, the cross pieces attach at the back to the studwall framing this part of the basement. The front vise has some very old walnut jaws, which are not as aligned as I want them to be.

The todo list is pretty short. I need to fix the jaws on the vise, drill the dogholes, put some shelves underneath, and move the wood rack that`s above the bench up about 2-3 feet and mount the worklight to that. Next weekend or so, if it doesn`t turn out to be too crazy.

Cleaning out the rack to put in the workbench reminded me how much random lumber I have. The summer before last, me and slowe took apart an upright piano. The piano had been dragged down a hill by a golf cart, and parts of it were already missing. Between dead blow ball peen hammers, sawzalls, and circ saws, we managed to get it into some hunks of lumber. Turns out, pianos (even cheap uprights) are made out of some really nice lumber put together with hide glue. I salvaged 8 very nice pieces of very seasoned cherry, which I`ll be making into some very nice little boxes soon.

Fish Creek Falls in Steamboat, in June– and well flooded. (Enjoy)