If you're reading this...

... it's been a year. :)

2011-04-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

Same topic. Kind of. It's a project post... but it isn't really about photography. It IS a little about art (?). Sometime even before the Bears were doing the Super Bowl shuffle, my dad and I made a pinewood derby cars. One of the later models was a metallic blue corvette with silver windows. It's the one on the right. :)

Now I don't mean any disrespect by saying this, but in the first ten attributes I would list about my dad... "crafty" isn't on the list. Maybe if you meant "cunning" it would make the top thirty??? But as far as making stuff from scratch, that's just not his thing. Every year, though, when it came time to make a pinewood derby car, he'd take me to the Dahlenberg Barn across from Jansma's Bakery (if you thought of chocolate donuts and started drooling a little, raise your hand... mmmmmmm), where my grandpa Boss worked making wood toys. My grandpa always smoked Pall Mall cigarettes... even while engaged in making sawdust in a variety of ways. I remember wondering how it was possible that he hadn't burned the place down.

After the car was cut and shaped, though, the sanding and painting was all me and my dad. He'd set up the ladder in the garage, and we'd go over the nuances of not too close and not too far away... not too slow, but not too fast. The pressure when you finally had the can in your hand was almost too much for a kid! What if it drips? What if it pools? What if I don't get ENOUGH paint on it? But my dad always came through, and the cars always seemed to turn out awesome...

So now as a dad, I have this chance with Wyatt. My last post was about a home made macro studio and a pinewood derby car. I shot these pics the same way, but the post is really about the car... and art.

I had a LOT of fun making this car with Wyatt. He said he wanted to make a corvette. I didn't steer that at all. He said he wanted it to be blue. He even picked the color at Meijer. I asked what color he thought the windows should be. He said, "I think silver." I have no idea if he was intentionally replicating my pinewood derby experience... but I certainly didn't fight it. He did a ton of work on it (way more than it looks like) and I basically worked behind him to "refine" things a little. Here is the finished product.

He won "Best in Show" and took third overall in speed. He took home two trophies, and I was stupid proud of him. This is where the art part comes in. I was REALLY motivated to finish this project with him. It allowed me to be creative WITH him, and because it was something we both WANTED to do, it didn't feel like a lot of effort to finish it.

The other project that I finished recently (yesterday) is one that I can't say that about. It was a three week project that I managed to finish over a period of about four months. Here it is:

I spent more time not doing this project than doing it, and I really struggled with it. I WASN'T at ALL motivated to get it done while doing it. Even though the result was EXACTLY what I'd hoped it would be, it really made me reflect on how different the two projects felt.

I really only made progress on the laundry room when I just made it a set of tasks that had to be done and did them. The "art" of it was done about a minute after I sketched it. I think I tried to rely on inspiration to carry me through... but there was nothing "inspirational" about it. To get it done well, I just had to do what needed to be done next.

And so I think that's it. Sometimes you can tap into what you feel, and it produces the exact results you hoped for. Other times, though, you have to stop waiting for what you feel to line up with doing what you know needs to be done. You don't have to "feel" the next step... you just have to do it.

In the end, I'm really proud of how both projects turned out. The mudroom is next, and I'm back in creative mode on it. Benches an cubbies. Hopefully this post will remind me that in a week, if it's not done, I probably just need a list. :)

...it's a project two-fer.

2010-03-10T19:06:00.000-08:00

Wyatt is in cadets. Cadets get to build little cars out of blocks of pine that they race down a slotted track. Dads get to help. Super-yay! We made a car. It looks like this:

This also gave me the perfect opportunity to use something I've had lying around the storage room for far too long. I made a DIY macro studio about six months ago. It's a cardboard box with the sides cut out and then replaced with white silky fabric. I say "silky" because real silk was absurdly expensive. Allegedly, it creates a nice soft, even light source for photographing small objects with minimal shadows.

Honestly, I had a little trouble with getting the exposure close. I either blasted it to bright white, or lost the detail. I'm actually okay with how these came out, though, because the white stripes don't disappear into the white background.

The other thing I fought was depth of field. I couldn't really get to a point that I got the whole car crisply. I understand that it's a function of aperture... but I should have dialed up the flashes and tried that.

I also did a couple shots on black to be "artsy".

Even if I still have a lot to learn about the nuances of the macro studio, I had a BLAST making this car with Wyatt. Spring is almost here, and I can't wait to get back to outdoor portraits. Maybe I'll top my current pace of a post a month (or so) when the weather breaks. :)

...you're SUPER patient. :)

2010-02-19T13:46:00.000-08:00

Yeah... it's been since before Christmas. So here's THAT collection!

I got an umbrella (the kind you shoot light through... not the kind that keeps you dry), and I used it for this one. Because things have been REALLY busy, I haven't done a lot with it, but I like soft light for other people's portraits, and I think I'll be able to do a lot of cool things with it once I put in the time.

I used off-camera flash a lot. This picture of my sister's cookies was actually lit through a kleenex from a lower angle than the on-camera flash to show the texture of the napkins and highlight the smooth yumminess of the cookies. She drew those holly leaves on there with a toothpick or something. Crazy artsy. The cookies... not the picture.

I also got a lot of nice pictures of people. This is just one that I like, but I think I'll probably be using the technique more. I shot into the natural light and filled it with flash from the front.

I thought it came out nice with the sunlight highlighting the edges of Jackie's hair and keeping the picture bright, but still keeping shadows off of their faces. Another virtually shadow-free picture was this one:

I basically blasted away from across the room zoomed in with a bounce off of the ceiling and the left wall. It still gave a little of the "off camera" look, and it didn't drop an annoying shadow on the wall behind him. Derek Zoolander would be SOOOO proud!

The last one of this set is from the Museum of Science and Industry. They have this HUGE train layout. I was fiddling with depth of field and got this shot:

I like the way that shooting without a flash let the shutter be open long enough to blur the passing train the background. It added more of a feeling of motion than I thought it would. Just for perspective, the horse and rider are probably about the size of a dime and I shot the picture from probably 15 feet or so away.

Probably not what a Christmas collection should be, but there were like 2,000 to choose from, so I basically decided not to. :) I just went with a few that I shot on purpose. Hopefully things will settle down a bit, and I'll get back to something more frequent than once a quarter.

...this is probably as dark as it gets.

2009-12-11T19:45:00.000-08:00

I decided kids may not make the best subjects for the hard, shadowy look I've been fiddling with lately. I'll try to keep them well-lit in primary colors from now on. I still wanted to go down the road I was on last time with off-camera flash, though. I also wanted to know where the road "ends" for that type of picture... how far you can take it... and I think this is it:

This post may seem a little self-indulgent, seeing as how they're all pictures of me, but I was the only one with a goatee at the time. I think a goatee helps with these kind of pictures.

I actually started off with the one below, but from what I've seen from other photographers, the 90 degree light has been overdone. It was cool the first six or eight times I saw it, but it's losing its luster for me. I don't know why. Maybe it's just too generic.

Notice the SWEET minimalist "arm-shelf"! What better place to rest a chin? Mock all you want. I'm new to photography and even newer to male modelling (although I HAVE seen Zoolander... and that counts for something, I'm sure!).

The hard light can be really unforgiving, so I wouldn't exactly recommend looking at these much closer... unless you have dreams of becoming a dermatologist or something. My point is that I can't imagine getting a nice, flattering photo of anyone but a guy this way. Bags under the eyes, shadows from every blemish, wrinkles that look like canyons. Nice if you want the "weathered" look. Not great if you're going for "pretty" or "young".

There was one other in the set that I thought was cool. It was luck. Like when you chip in a golf shot. With a bucket full of balls, maybe you could do it once more... maybe not.

In the other two, I'm one-eyed. This one had an angle where the light caught both eyes. I think if I hadn't been grinning, the chubby part of my left cheek (your right) might have hidden in the shadow, too. Regardless, I like the bright eye in the otherwise shadowy half of the face.

My next pictures will likely be from Christmas celebrations, so this will probably be the last of the "dark side" of my experimentation for a while.

...you might like things that bounce.

2009-11-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

I get the "bounce the flash off the ceiling to soften the light" thing. Big white-ish light overhead = familiar. Ummm... yeah... unless you live in Michigan in November through May... but that's another story. I've been fiddling around with some tips from David Hobby, who writes this blog. The dude is awesome for a bunch of reasons. First and foremost, he shares. He doesn't hide his techniques. Quite the contrary. He actually challenges people to go out and TRY them! These pictures are a direct result of that.

In my last post, I tried to impress one or both of you with big words like "specular highlight". These pictures are all about that. At the American Girl Doll Store last weekend (pictures to be shown in a post about white balance, perhaps?), I saw backdrops in the photo booth that had a bright spot in the middle, and more color near the edges. I think what they were trying to replicate with those backgrounds is this technique... but they cheated their way into it unnecessarily. Maybe it was because they're used to giant professional lights at nice even angles or they always use flashes (gasp) ON the camera. Who knows. I did it with a flash hanging from a Gorilla Pod hanging from a curtain rod in my kitchen.

To get it done, you just point light at/near the person with a flash that is set up in a way that will cause a reflection of that flash on the wall behind them. Then you put the person between the camera and that reflection.

No offense to Cheyanne, but Kelly is a much better model at this point. She will move an inch if I ask her to. Cheyanne will either not move or move four feet. She thinks it's cute. I'm still deciding. But to show off the skills of the "months-old" photographer, Kelly is a better bet. You can either go for the halo effect like the top picture, or go for something a little more unbalanced and "contrasty"... like this:

Jackie's not a big fan of dark pictures. I'm fighting it, but I like harder shadows and a little less exposure. There's something deeper about that look that makes me want to look at it longer. Just me? Maybe I just don't have the skills yet to do things subtly. We'll see. Either way, I love the fiddling that goes with getting the flash off the camera.

... you may be seeing me beginning to see the light.

2009-11-17T17:31:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking that the answer may be light. Not really like a lack of heft, or a scarcity of seriousness. I mean the actual thing that makes the picture.

Sitting alone for hours at a time is an amazing experience. It's hard to believe that hunters are not all philosophers. For the past few weeks, I've been hunting. I haven't been killing a lot of deer (1), but I HAVE been thinking a lot. Watching a sunrise without having had coffee brings you to strange, inescapable conclusions... like the fact that you aren't really seeing the things that are there. What you are seeing is the light that is bouncing off of the things that are there. No light... no see.

I think this may be what eventually moves me from taking pictures to making photographs. You can make the light do what you want it to do. I've had a LOT of fun doing it, too. In addition to clicking the shutter, I've been clicking a mouse in search of skill development. One concept that is in a lot of places is getting the flash off of the camera. The way this changes your pictures is... well... day and night.

And hats. Hats help. :) But really. The light in that picture of Kelly is from a speedlight with a homemade softbox. That's a look I like. I love the balance that the specular highlight in each eye adds, even though the shadow creates an asymmetrical contrast across her face. (Like I said, I've been reading things on the internet. Heheh...)

Mood, too. By underexposing a pouting subject, you can make the picture... I dunno... pouty? I took this one with the same flash-in-a-softbox sitting on my fridge. The flash was on the fridge. I was in a chair. Anyway, I fiddled around with the aperture and eventually got this.

I'll never compete with the super-cool depth-of-field stuff Ashley does with natural light. I admire that as an art... she captures it. I don't even think she lugs a flash around with her. I really think I'm headed more in the direction of making the light do what I need, though, rather than trying to work with the light that's there. It's like "building" a picture instead of taking it. Fun.

... do not adjust your monitor.

2009-11-06T17:18:00.000-08:00

Style. Should you chase it or just let it come to you? I'm not talking about no-pleat, flat-front euro pants or the thankfully brief resurgence of the cardigan sweater. What I'm asking is do you aspire to master a particular style, or does your work eventually become your style? If it does, how does it?

If you like the way something looks, do you just tend to do more of it? If you do so much more of it that you do less of other things, does it just "become" distinctively YOUR work? Is it eventually a level of comfort that makes a photographer's work recognizable? I hope not. I hope I never chase a style... or settle for one. If you see me getting into a technique rut... please, please stop me. I never looked good in cardigans.

More after this jump... heheh... jump.

If you can't crack yourself up, what good is a virtually readerless blog? :) Back to the picture in question. I LOVE this effect. Before we got a new camera and I started fiddling with it rather intentionally, the ability to take this style of picture eluded me. Now, I know how the shutter and the aperture work together to make an exposure, and how you can tweak one or the other (or both) to get what you want out of it.

I think I like it so much because it's a still picture that suggests movement. Sometimes you just need things to live a little more than they do in the two dimensions you're given. Here's another...

Not only do you get the point that Kelly is imaginative enough to make a fall-figure-rollerblader-outfit with leaves and safety pins... but she skates around in it. It lets her move through the background instead of on it. (Aside: If you know a simple way to horizontally flip pictures, I'd love to hear it. I think I'd like this even more if she went from left to right.)

And then there's what I talked about last time (snapshot-photographs) combined with this technique. If you can freeze a moment while it moves... that's the stuff. That's what I want my pictures to look like... like this:

Maybe I just like pictures of my kids and people who love each other. That's entirely possible.

...maybe you know the difference between snapshots and photographs.

2009-11-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

I'm guessing it's about $10 a print or $1000 in equipment, whichever comes first. It's odd, though, that when I think about what kind of photographs I want to take, I inevitably wind up hoping for something that looks like a snapshot. Here is an example... It's one of my all-time favorites. It's a snapshot.

How about this one, though?

We were getting our picture taken for the purpose of having a picture of what we were doing that was a lot of fun. Is that a photograph? (I have to admit that I didn't take either of those gems... nice work, Jackie!)

Soooo... it gets more complex. What if instead of the picture for the moment, you make a moment for the picture... like this one:

I think that's a really, really cool picture. It's purposefully done, but has some extra people/legs in the background. Does that move it from photograph back to snapshot?

How much of a role does editing play? If you crop a snapshot to make it something that seems to be "better"... does THAT make it a photograph? This one is some of that:

The reason I ask is because I don't have a style. I'm new at this. Historically, had you asked me I would have said that this was a GREAT picture:

Now... so what??? It's a boat. Does it invoke any feeling for me? No. None. It's a boat. It makes me feel like looking at another picture. Jackie taught me this... pictures need people. People have stories. For me, I think that's what it might come down to. Are snapshots photographs, as long as they can tell a story effectively? I feel like to be serious about telling stories through pictures, I should be working on making great photographs instead of hoping for good snapshots.

I don't expect to be good at it yet... but I'm hoping that watching it come together over time will be fun. If you have anything you'd like to teach me, about photography or anything else, I'd love to learn from you.

... you're one step ahead of me.

2009-10-28T15:34:00.000-07:00

The idea of starting a blog has been bouncing around for a while. I guess the suggestion of posting pictures is what pushed me over the edge. I've been having a LOT of fun with that the past few weeks.

Honestly, though, I've admired all of the Blogs in Jackie's family for a while. I even hijacked Juanito's for a while. :) I don't assume anyone will really read it, or anything... but if you're reading this, apparently you are.

The only real thought I have about the whole thing is that I really, really hope that it goes better than my foray into Facebook. I've been (accurately) accused of being a FBFailure.