iPhone + Camera App = Fun!

I finally upgraded my not-so-smart phone to an iPhone 4 a week after Christmas. I have to say it's an incredible device and I have had a lot of fun using it. What I didn't expect was how much I would love using the camera.



There are a plenty of iPhone camera apps to choose from buy currently my two favourites Instagram and Hipstamatic. Of the two I use Instagram the most. It's a really fun and simple way to grab some great frames on-the-fly and post them to your favourite social media sites.

With my iPhone I now have a good camera on my person nearly all the time and because of this I have found myself making even more pictures. And I think even more important is that I am not worrying about ensuring everything is just perfect before grabbing the frame. Instead, I am focused on getting the picture and that is a very good thing.

Like Chase Jarvis says, "the best camera is the one that's with you".



Keep shooting.

Woah! What Happened to January??

Back on January 4th I posted to my blog that I was going to use the month to post a series of personal for the New Year and beyond. I liked the idea of calling them "intentions" rather than "resolutions" as the latter seem to carry of stigma of never being met. Well, looks like my intentions fell off the rails too as my last post was January 5th.

I'm really not sure where January and most of February have gone. Was I caught in some kind of winter doldrum? Perhaps. Or was I simply lazy? Maybe. Either way I'm back with renewed energy and just in time to drop another intention for this year. So without further a do I bring you intention number two: clean as you go. OK. Good. Now what does that mean? Well, by clean as you go I mean keep up with proper management of images. For the latter half of 2010 as my 365 project came to a close I found myself getting really lazy editing and deleting unwanted shots after a shoot. After a few months of neglect a reasonably simple task became a daunting one and with that it was easy to put off.



So, going forward, the intention is simple - clean as you go. After a shoot, offload the pictures, back them up and immediately cull the bad ones and tag and rate the good ones. Pretty simple and a *huge* time saver in the long run if you're disciplined enough to stick with the plan.

I have not been sticking with the plan so I have a lot of work to do. Until next time, keep shooting.

A Good Run...

My 365 project for 2010 ended a couple of days ago but I am still finding myself yearning to create a daily image, so I have been doing just that. Although there were countless times when I struggled to create *something* and the project felt almost like a burden, I find now that I just want to keep it going.

I think I will just keep on making pictures and see where it goes. It's been a good run.



Keep shooting.

Happy New Year!

For some the new year will be "just a zero becoming a one" and to others it will have much greater meaning. I lie somewhere in between. The rolling of the digits is not a big deal to me but I do view it as a time to do a bit of an audit in one's life and see what can be adjusted to make improvements. Since this is a photography themed blog I am going to keep my "improvements" relevant and I am not going to call them "resolutions" but rather "intentions". Calling them "resolutions" seems like I am just dooming them to failure right from the get go.

Throughout January I will post a bunch of personal intentions for my photography throughout this shiny new year and hopefully beyond. So, here we go, intention number one.

A Little Behind...

I am nearing the end of my 365 project for 2010. Tonight's image was 362 of 365. The last few images of my project all had one thing in common. The light was coming from behind the subject.



In the first image of the tea cup, the single light source was directly behind the subject and above, just out of the frame. For the tea cup image a piece of white foam core board was used to reflect just a touch of light to remove some of the mystery. The second shot with the female subject the light is behind the subject but more so to camera right rather than directly behind. And in this third image, the light is again directly behind the subject just like in the first image with the tea cup. However, in this case the shutter was slowed quite a bit to bring in some of the ambient from the candle.



It was fun to experiment a bit moving the light behind the subject to see what different looks, moods and imagery I could create.

Keep shooting.

Proof of Concept

I met a couple of guys for the first time today for the purpose of checking out a location and doing some "proof of concept" shots for some future work. It was great to hang with fellow photogs who share a passion for the craft and enjoy experimenting.

We set up just a couple of lights on stands and occasionally used another handheld flash. Cactus V4 triggers tripped the flashes today - something I had never worked with before but they worked really well. We even had a Nikon flash in there too! The cool thing about the Nikon flashes that Canon should pick up on is that the Nikon flashes can be used as an optical slave. Canon flashes can only trigger other Canon flashes.

Today was great fun and I even managed to grab a pretty good frame along the way.



Keep shooting.

Fun With Christmas Lights...

I have been experimenting for the past week with LED Christmas lights and managed to get quite a few interesting shots. I started with simple, still shots such as the one below.



And then I built up to longer exposures with the LEDs moving in the background like this next one.



That shot was a four-second exposure to give the LED lights time to paint the background and then at the end of the exposure a small flash was popped to expose the subject. The same technique was used for this portrait.



The only subtle difference between the two exposures is that in the first shot the lights are hanging from a C-stand on one end and just before the exposure begins they are stretched away from the C-stand, raised up as high as they can go and then released. As you can see in the result they just paint diagonally across the background. In the second example, the chain of lights is being held by a person on either side of the background and they are raising and lowering the whole stand, somewhat in unison. The effect is more like a fountain, which I thought was pretty cool. I suppose there is no limit to the ways to move the lights with each one creating a unique effect.

Tonight, I went back to still life and shot a close-up shot of an eye, which was lit with only a handful of LED lights taped in place very close to the subject. Again, it produced a very interesting effect, catch lights and almost a make-up look on the face. Pretty neat.



Keep experimenting and keep shooting.