Category Archives: Photography - Page 12

On the subject of Jelly Beans

Posted by Steve on February 15, 2012 No comments

The other day Sarah was out at an event with some friends while I gleefully stayed home and slept of played video games. Sometimes we do this. Well, when she came home she was loaded down with various food stuffs that were excess from the event. Some very evil person sent her home with a jar of Jelly Belly brand jelly beans.

O_O

Yes, the most amazing jelly bean on the planet. It is taking all of my willpower to not devour the whole jar in one sitting (it’s a big jar too). To combat my desire to “eat all the things”, I decided to set up a little photo shoot. Below are the results:

No one likes the black jelly beans!

As you can see from this chart, we show 100% Deliciousness.

Both of these shots were done with my SB600 strobe mounted on the Gorilla pod stand, positioned about 2 feet away and the Lightsphere about 1 ½ feet above the subject. (Triggered remotely)

MINI Photoshoot

Posted by Steve on February 6, 2012 No comments

This last Saturday we scheduled some time with the MINI club (DC Metro MINI’s) to get a bunch of us out for a photo shoot. Turns out a lot of the MINI folks are really into photography as well! One of the folks found a really nice parking garage and we line up about 15 MINI’s to start taking pictures. After we spent about 3 hours shooting in the garage we headed out to Wolf Trap in Northern VA for some outside shots. Unfortunately it started to rain so I ended up putting my D5100 away (no weather sealing). Thankfully some of the others had the right equipment and we got some great shots.

You can see all of the shots at these flickr links, below is just a few of the shots:

Fun Filters!

Posted by Steve on February 3, 2012 No comments

Inspired by an interesting Reddit post I thought I would try out a new technique. In the post, they talking about forgetting your lens cap and just using a cut off water bottle to hold you over till you can get a new one. Some of the posters thought it would make for an interesting shot if you forgot to take it off before shooting.

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

Well, Kind of. Actually, using the bottom of the bottle turns out a really crappy shot…..

But, the TOP of the bottle, on the other hand. I thought, well if I can see out the center of the bottle, now THAT might make an interesting shot. Sure enough, it did!

This is what the setup was like:

And these are the resulting shots (click to embiggen):

Random Objects

Posted by Steve on February 3, 2012 No comments

In my quest to take more pictures I have decided to go with a theme. Random Objects. Just some things you may pass every day and not take notice of. For the past few weeks I have made it a point to climb to the top of our 6 floor stairwell just to get some stairs into my daily routine. In doing so I pass by these pipes every day. This one caught a very nice shadow and looked interesting:

TARDIS Long Exposure pictures

Posted by Steve on January 28, 2012 No comments

Using the same technique I was talking about in my last post, I decided to take a good subject out to a good location and try again. This time I went to one of the local Battlefield areas and found a great hill that provided an amazing view. L st night the weather was nice and clear so there were some good stars out as well.

I opted for two styles of picture, the straight long exposure that I turned in a good B/W shot, and a colorful light painting shot. For the subject, I used my ½ scale TARDIS that my son and I built. The light painting was actually done with Sonic Screwdrivers as my son and his friend ran wildly around the TARDIS.

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Overall I am happy with the results. They aren’t HDR, this is just a single shot taken between 2-3 min long. I fired the strobe once or twice on the outside of the TARDIS to give detail and then twice inside to give the light. (Click for Flickr Link)

Long Exposure lessons from the fail book.

Posted by Steve on January 26, 2012 1 comment

Last night I decided to try out a neat technique using long exposure and strobe highlights. in a good environment, this can be used to highlight areas and paint light into dark spots. Unfortunately, if you don’t have the right subject, it just doesn’t come out right.

The plan was to set up the camera on a tripod, up on the deck of my back yard, overlooking the trees in the yard. I set up a shot for F-16, ISO200, and decided on around 2-3min exposure. Then I took my SB-600 out into the yard and flashed various parts of the yard and the trees to highlight them.

(Important side note, wear shoes you don’t care about if you own a dog that typically uses the back yard as his restroom)

The end result was not what I was expecting at all, and not in a good way. The final picture looked like a picture of my back yard with spotlights on the trees:

The sky was very overcast, the angle was wrong, the subject of the trees just wasn’t that interesting. The only thing this shot had going for it was the concept. I understand the concept better now, it’s just a matter of finding the right subject. I’ll certainly revisit this idea again in the future after a scouting trip to find a good shot.

Interestingly enough, one of the shots you can just make out a ghostly figure of myself in the distance.

Chili

Posted by Steve on January 24, 2012 No comments

Decided I really need to step back up my picture taking so my goal is to try and get a good shot in at least once a week. This doesn’t include the shots I take for Sarah’s food/craft blog.

Click to embiggen.

Malware sucks!

Posted by Steve on January 10, 2012 No comments

Well, not sure if anyone noticed, (given that I probably only have like 3 people that read this) but my main site came under attack recently. Apparently there was a wordpress exploit that someone got a hold of and it set up all kind of weird re-directs in my site and in Sarah’s food blog. This cause some posts/pages to browse to some Russian malware site. So, yea, huge apologies for that screw up. BlueHost (my hosting company) help me clean out the junk and get things updated and fixed.

I took this opportunity to clean things up around the site and try out a new theme/look. This only affects the main site, not my Tumblr site (which usually has the same posts).

As per usual, I am going to try and do some more posting with the new year. So far 2012 looks like it’s going to be a busy/crazy year. That is, if I can get off my butt and not play Star Wars: The Old Republic so much. I’ll see if I can get a post up about that in the coming few days.

As per usual, Stay Tuned! (and sorry for that Malware thing, really….you may want to see a Doctor and get checked out)

Snow!!!

Posted by Steve on January 9, 2012 No comments

We had a very small snow storm take the area by surprise today. This was the first time I got to drive the MINI in the snow. Not too much to report there, traffic still sucked.

When I got home I realized that after cleaning out the cooler this weekend, I forgot all the drinks out on the deck. Then this happened:

Well, at least they are still cold right?

New Years 2012

Posted by Steve on January 3, 2012 No comments

Woah, I think someone has been tampering with my time machine. I don’t remember how the heck we got here but it’s 2012 already! Sarah and I rang in the new year with our friends Caleb and Diz at the Kennedy Center. They do a special evening event for New Years and any engagement at the center gets you access. We did it up right too. I bought a Tux and Sarah got all dolled up. The whole night was a blur, but I guess that means we did t right. Enjoy the Pics and lets get 2012 started!

Select pictures below, the rest can be found at: https://www.wizzersworld.com/zen/Special%20Events/New%20Years%202012/