Jo Ann and My New Lighthing Set-up

Tonight I got to practice with my new lighting set-up that came yesterday from B&H. I'm still trying to learn what I'm doing right or wrong. If you have any suggestions, let know....

My test subject was my friend Jo Ann.

Jo Ann, thanks for being a great subject and willing to try all different poses and being patient with me when I was adjusting "things."

My favorite standing on a stool and look down shot...love Jo Ann's eyes in this one:

I Got My Lighthing Goods! Woo Hoo!

I'm officially a "strobist" girl! LOL! I got my lighting goods today from B&H!

With Mike's help I officially fired the first test shots tonight with my new SB800s! Yee ha!

I still don't know what I'm doing but, heck, who does the first time you do something? Well, I guess I could read all of the books and articles I want but nothing beats just opening everything up, having someone help you set everything, and just "doing."

Yes, I'm one of those people... "directions? what are directions?"

Sometimes it makes life harder but that seems to be the only way I learn.... just jump right in and try things out. I don't think it's a bad way to be...sometimes you extend your learning curve a bit but it's fun just testing things and learning as you go.

I still have some more things to get Sunday when I drive into the city to go to B&H in person (and lose myself for hours) but once I get the rest of what I need I should be "good to go" for easy, portable, lighting!

Great suggestion by Mike! Thanks for your help!

Here they are!



Lucas got bored of my lighting excitement very quickly and decided to get up on the couch and take a nap. *LOL*







I know...blurry...darn P&S...shoulda put it on Macro...but you get the idea.


More regarding the lights can be seen HERE and HERE.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas!

My family Christmas:

What would a photographer be without their camera during the holidays...well it wouldn't be me!

These are my favorites from Christmas day. I shot them with the SB800 flash (mostly) pointed straight at the ceiling. What a great light it creates in the room when you bounce the flash!!


I love this one of my Mom:



My Cousin (he loves to make this face for photos):



My Aunt:



My Aunt & my Cousin (her son):



My Mom and the "gravy" (yeah, we're Italian...we call tomato sauce "gravy"):



My hubby & his Dad:



One of my favorites of the day... My Grandpa who we got to smile/laugh.
The pic of him I took before this one...looked like quite the grumpy gramps.



My Brother-in-law and his Fiancé:



And of course...every year I make the family pose for a group shot (thank goodness for a tripod and a remote shutter release!):



And then when everyone cleared out I asked my husband to let me take a couple of us "since the tripod was already set up!" :D I love that my dog joined in the shot!!

Dreary Day

Well, today was my last day off from work and it was totally DREARY! Rainy and foggy and such a chill in the air.



If I knew it was going to be a terrible rainy day I would have saved the vacation day for another day or taken it last week...but what can you do? At least I got to catch up on some photos.

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After I worked on my Christmas tree for a little while I decided that i wanted to try some ideas with multiple exposures and shooting low lights shots to create more HDRs.


My tree before the garland:


With the garland:



Once I put the ornaments on tomorrow I will take a shot of the complete tree and add it so you can see the results.

I'll also be shooting the tree outside through the bay window (just thought of that idea tonight). :)


The angel on top:


Close up on the lights:


A snowman gord (light) I have (this is the light in his belly):


So, it turned out to be an interesting photo day after all....I guess if you get bored enough on a "dreary" day you can come up with lots of great things to experiement with and photograph! :)

Article I Read

Just wanted to share an article I just read on Understanding Light. To read it click HERE.

Giving Thanks

Today was Thanksgiving and we were blessed with beautiful weather (66 degrees).

We got together at my mother's house for Turkey dinner. I decided to take my camera (of course) and I also brought along my tripod and new Gary Fong Lightsphere.

I thought it would be nice (especially with the nice weather) to take some portraits of my family (including myself). Everyone was up for the idea so we took them right when I arrived at my mom's.

We found a nice spot outside her house and I set up the tripod, etc and joined the group for photos. The thing that made it very easy was the remote control shutter release. I could get everyone set up through the view finder and then join them with ease and snap the photo.

I made sure I tried to find a little shade but we were limited where we could take the photos where my mom lives. I used the flash (with the lightsphere) like everyone suggested and it worked really well.

We got some great shots and some fun ones too! My sister and her husband didn't arrive until it was dark so they weren't able to join in the pics but I got some nice ones of my grandfather, my aunt, my, my husband and my mom.

Check out a few below:







This was tonemapped in Photomatrix. I wanted to make it look "funky":

More Wedding Snaps

Here are few favorites of shots from the wedding. Unfortunately it was a bit dark in the ballroom so I had to bump up the ISO. I only had the on-camera flash (which did pretty well considering) because I didn't want to bring the external flash with me.

Bumping up the ISO left some of the further away shots grainey so I worked with the photos in Photoshop on some filters and coloring to enhance them the best I could.





The crowd around the bride and groom was very distracting so I duplicated the layer, applied a gaussian blur (around 40? I think...can't remember) and then I used the eraser tool to erase the bride and groom so that they were the only area that was clear.







I'm working on the photoshoot mentioned in a previous post which can be read by clicking HERE. Trying to catch up....(which will never happen).

For this photo I spent a lot of time burning & dodging. It was a simple color shot of the fenceline. I converted to B&W using the black & white feature in CS3, worked with the levels, shadows & highlights, and then went to work burning & dodging the light and dark areas. I applied an unsharp mask twice and then for some reason I decided to start to burn the edges. It created a feeling (in my opinion) if looking at this scene throgh and old window where that glass has become cloudy on the edges. I really love how it came out. Hope you like it:



This is a color shot of the same farm with a few sheep out in the pasture. It was such a strage day...some parts of the sky blue some parts of the sky white. I had such a tough time with every shot that day. I did a lot of burning to the sky to try to bring out the clouds...not sure if it looks unrealistic but I like it no matter what. I used the hue & saturation tool in photoshop to individually saturate the reds, the yellows, and the greens.



For this shot I took a basic scene of a bale of hay and some farm land and converted it to B&W, used the history brush to color the bale of hay, and then worked with "burning" to make the sky more defined. Before I worked on the sky it was almost cloudless.

Wedding Night

We attended our friends wedding tonight...our friend Joanna took this photo of me and my husband with my Nikon D80. I think it came out really well:



I'll add more shots of the wedding later....

Lunch Snaps and Shots Along the Way Home

During lunch I stopped a local park near my work that my co-worker suggested to me. The sky was really bad today but I don't think these photos came out bad at all.

They gave me a some "almost fall" shots to work with:

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When I was walking back to the car I spotted this window on an apartment building. The thing that caught my eye was the little tiny pumpkin on the windowsill. Something about it just told me to snap a shot:

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On the way home after work I stopped for a few minutes at this cemetery I pass. I was specifically looking for signs of fall at the cemetery. I particularly like these 2 signs of fall in this peaceful place:

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Close to the cemetery is a church that I love love the steeple on. I noticed there were some fall colors on the surrounding trees so I took some photos of the scene:

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