Fatherhood Friday 14: Back From The Snowy Mountain.
Emily and I got back from the “Snowy Mountain” on Tuesday after having many adventures and narrowly missing being snowed in for a couple of days by only 6 hours.
Emily:
She got to play with her two cousins Ben and Harry and go sledging, have snowball fights and generally romp round being a kid in snow.
Grandma and granddad were both impressed with her fearlessness in the snow considering she has never seen it before and she only got a bit scared when she got snow down her coat and didn’t like the cold.
She was very sad to leave and spent most of the two plane rides saying that she missed Grandma and granddad. To make things even more exciting our flight from Queenstown was late and they had to delay our flight from Christchurch in order for us to catch it.
Dad:
Oh and I got to go skiing for a day! First time back on skis in something like 13 years… It was awesome… 10 years of race training hadn’t gone to waste although much fitness had…I was hard pressed to keep up with my Dad who skis 70 days a year, although I think I gave him a run for his money on our last run… Was a pity I didn’t get to ski with my brother, although things might have got a bit competitive (and he would have lost) 🙂
Snow Angels on hard packed snow don’t work very well… Especially if they are in the middle of a ski run.
Emily Skiing with Uncle Jeff
Samantha:
Had a good weekend with just Amanda having some 1 on 1 time and even slept in til 8am one morning while we were away (this is pretty much unheard of).
On Thursday she came down with something and after a couple of hours of not wanting to be put down we took her to the doctor where she immediately perked up and started playing with the toys in the waiting room. By the time we got to see the doctor she way pretty much fine and he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. So of course as soon as we got home (like 30 seconds after we got in the door) she threw up all over Amanda.
Today she seems back to herself but has passed it on to her sister (and possibly me).
I’m on a Log
Shooting Seals (But in a Good Way… With Cameras not Guns)
Fergus getting a shot of a seal at Red Rocks, Wellington
Yes the horizon is crooked 🙂
Nikon F5, 50mm f1.8 Lens.
Dragon Stilt Girl
Seen at Cuba Street Carnival, Wellington
I went to the street carnival initially shooting with my 80-200mm lens but gave up the tele lens and swapped to my 50mm after taking this one shot. I havent use my tele for street shooting since. Wish Id swapped lenses before I took this image.
I like the eye contact in this image.
Nikon F5, 80-200mm f2.8 lens, Ilford Delta 400 ISO Film
Fatherhood Friday 12:
Still inundated with colds… Emily is now on antibiotics and it sounds like we are a house full of smokers… a coughing symphony if you will.
Emily and I are going skiing in a couple of weeks (yes I have already worked out what camera equipment I am going to take) and Grandma and Grandad sent Emily up some mittens and goggles hence the photo. Thank you Grandma and Grandad! We are both looking forward to coming down to see you.
Samantha: Seems to be the most healthy one here and is getting into as many things as possible while the rest of us are being a bit slow to react.
Both pictures from this morning
Nikon D70s, 50mm f1.8 Lens, ISO 200. f1.8 at 1/200th of a second.
Great Beards
If you want to see some great beards you should go hang round and wait for an ACDC stadium concert to get out.
These types of pics are why I love Delta 3200 film. Flash would have detracted from these images even well positioned flash and you can be a lot more stealthy without it.
These two guys were waiting for friends and heckling me pretty much every time I went to take a photo (I did miss a few shots because I was laughing so much). It made for a pretty amusing time.
Nikon F5, 50mm f1.8 Ilford Delta 3200 ISO film. f1.8 at 1/80th second
How it was Done 2
Here goes another “How it was Done” Post
This is the setup for the image that I use for the header of my page. I took this middle of last year and hopefully it again shows how you can get good results without much of a studio or too much equipment.
Equipment Used: Portable Backdrop Kit x 1, 500W Electra Compact Flash with barn doors x 1, Superclamp x 1, Nikon SB80DX Speedlite x 1, Nikon D70s with 18-70mm Lens x 1, Remote shutter release x 1, Tripod x 1.
Shot 1: This is my lounge complete couches, bookcases and even folded washing stacked randomly around. I did move one couch so I had enough room to set up the portable backdrop kit across the room so i could hang the studio light off it pointing directly down and then used the barn doors to create a circle of light on the floor.
With shots like this I usually use something like a chair to act as a reference for focusing the camera.
Lens at 28mm f3.5 at 1/8 second without flash going off.
Shot 2: Same shot as before but with the camera lens shut down to f18 and at 1/125th of a second. Using a reasonably fast shutter speed with studio or speedlites means that anything not in the direct light will be much darker. Even though you can see some of the surrounding things in the room these will be easy to remove in Photoshop later.
Shot 3:
Enter the model (me). Using the remote shutter control with the camera set to 2 second delay I fired off a couple of shots to see how the lighting looked. I was pretty unhappy with the result since it left no light in the face when I had the hood up. Apart from this the general feel of the spotlight effect was pretty good.
Shot 4: I added a speedlite to the shot which was set off by the main strobe and set it to half power. This fixed the problem with their being no light on the face while still maintaining the spotlight effect.
Shot 5: After checking the lighting on my computer I decided it was “Go Time”. Since this was a dark and dramatic lighting situation I tried to put as much tension into the pose as possible (the way the shoulders are held and the was the hands are clasped). The remote is palmed in my left hand so you cant see it and the speedlite held in place by my feet and legs. It wasnt the most comfortable pose that’s for sure, with any movement making the speedlite move and have to be repositioned.
This shot was the best of the ones I took. All up with the test shots I took around 140 images.
Shot 6: Ok I now have the image I want so its off to process in Lightroom.
Corrections Made: Sharpening, Noise Reduction, Vignette (to remove more of the background), Desaturation and Black Clipping (again mostly to remove the background).
As you can see this still isn’t perfect, especially with the light stand in the right of the frame.
Shot 7: Final Image.
From Lightroom into Photoshop to remove the last few bits of background and generally tidy things up and then a quick crop and Done!
Final Image Nikon D70s with 18-70mm lens. f18 at 1/125 second
Enjoy
How it was Done
After good feedback from the last post about how it was done, here goes details about how the shots I put up yesterday were captured:
Hopefully this shows that you dont need lots of fancy equipment and a studio to get reasonable images.
Equipment Used: 1 x 10 metre power cable, 1 x multi plug box, 2 x light stands, 2 x 500W Studio lights with 150W modelling lamps, 1x softbox umbrella, 1 x barn doors, 1 x tripod, 1 x Nikon D70s with 18-70mm Lens, 1 x 1GB CF card and 1 x Nikon ML3 wireless camera remote. This effect would be easy to replicate using a couple of house lamps in a dark room with a bit of ingenuity.
Shot 1: Overview of the garage that was turned into a studio. Had to run 10 metre power cable from the house to run the lights.
Shot 2: Set the light with the barn doors pointing at the back wall to control the amount of light that was falling on the wall and the light with the umbrella about 2 metres away from the back wall pointing across the shot to avoid shadows falling on the back wall and creating a heavy side lighting effect. Both lights were set to full power but the strobes were turned off.
Shot 3: First test shot with camera set at f3.8 at 1/125 sec 800 ISO this was with the garage door open which let in more light than I wanted as well as the bluish colour cast at the bottom of the image. I also didn’t like the shadow in the upper right of the frame and so adjusted the barn doors to take this out.
Shot 4: After closing the garage door and setting the camera focus to about 1.5 metres as well as adjusting the camera to f5.6 at 1/60th second I took the first shot with me in it. With self portraits its always difficult to pinpoint where you are supposed to stand, most of the time it’s just trial and error… I sometimes put a light stand in the shot to get the centre and to use as a reference for focus… This time I just guessed and was off centre which I liked anyway. After looking at this shot on a computer I liked the way the light on the wall darkened at the right and the light on me darkened on the left. I knew there would be enough information to make it easy to add more drama in Lightroom and Photoshop.
Shot 5: Props and Action! Yes I did give myself a Mohawk for the day just for the heck of it (its gone now) This is shot no. 23 Unprocessed straight off the camera in Raw. I have to say its the weirdest feeling using studio lights and setting off the camera with none of the usual loud popping noise that accompanies strobes going off.
Shot 6: Final Rendition. Image has been recropped and Lighroom adjustments have been made to make it darker and more dramatic (Direct Positive, Vignette and Exposure decrease). I have a tendency to make stuff darker rather than lighter since that seems to be my base aesthetic.
If people keep showing a continued interest in this type of post then I will try and make it a more ongoing subject of this blog.
Let me know.
Si
Goggles?
Ok this is what happens when I get in the proper headspace for photography and then a couple of friends happen to come along.
I had been thinking of using my garage as a studio (albeit a small one) but had always had problems with doing it because my 500W studio lights only have half and full power so getting them powered down enough to use in a small space is kinda problematic.
The workaround for this was just using the modelling lights and bumping up the ISO to round 800 (which using a D70s means noise galore). I kept the white balance on the camera set to Daylight to get the golden light which fitted this shoot.
Yes its a Self Portrait
A very Angry Frog
Red Kris
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 800 f5.6 at 1/60th Second. Lighting from Modelling lights of Electra 500W Compact Lights… Last image has red gel over background light.
Motorcycle Protest Rally
A couple of months ago there was a big protest about the government putting the ACC levy up for motorcyclists.
I thought this would be a good time to go snap off some shots although when I got there it was a bit intimidating to say the least.
When I asked the guy on the left said cool but the guy on right wasnt in to it so I snapped the shot and left quickly. I especially liked all the gun club badges on the jackets… Possibly not people to mess with.
Really bad lighting on this one but once again I asked and one of them said cool. After I had taken the shot they asked me which paper I was working for 🙂 . Sometimes my Nikon F5 gives me some serious street cred.
Mostly I just liked this guys helmet which looked alot more fashionable than protective, also cool bike.
All images shot on Nikon F5 with 50mm f1.8 between f8 and f11 with Ilford Delta 400 ISO film. Sunlight was directly overhead with no clouds which made for very contrasty images.
More Painting with Light
Up above the Terrace in Wellington.
Experimenting with alternate portrait techniques
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens, ISO 200. f22 at 25 seconds with 10W bike light… Subject moved after 10 seconds
Fatherhood Friday
Amanda and Emily
They both have the knack of saying things unintentionally that make me laugh my ass off
Amandas best this week: Lip Waash instead of whiplash
Emilys best this week: ” That necklass looks really pretty mum. When you die can I have it?”
Samantha
Had a hard week teething. 1 top tooth down 1 to go!
Darkhalide Photography 
Recent Comments