Week Five

Week 5 and I'm still here.  Not sure if anyone is still checking out the Blog, but I'm still posting.  Lots of hockey this last week 4 games in 7 days, so the amount of time for taking pictures was down a bit.

Picture #1 is of Keep the cat.  Keep is about 14 years old and was found in a box in an alley, along with his brothers and sisters.  The box was taken to my vet, who was working on her retirement planning by offering me this kitten.  He has gotten a little weird in his old age and likes to yell at you to feed him and turn on the tap to drink water.  If he is not getting enough attention, he will stick out a paw with a claw, and gently try and get your attention (as per the picture below).

Picture #2 is a fairly typical evening meal.  You can see Jimbo the clown (the surrogate brother that Carolyn has, since Mom and Dad aren't going to give her a real one) sitting beside Carolyn at the table.  Carolyn and Cyndy are reading a book about princesses while eating supper.

Picture #3 - This was a Satruday morning shopping for groceries at Safeway.  Dad and Carolyn don't get invited very often for grocery shopping, but manage to make things more exciting when we do get to come along.  Carolyn is helping Cyndy load things in the cart.

Picture #4 - It turns out that if you come grocery shopping, that Mom will buy you a Thomas ballon.  Here we are sitting at a table at the Starbucks in Safeway.

Picture #5 - This is my favorite picture of the week.  This was taken at a place called "Coffee and Scream".  A coffee place with a kids play area attached (inside) with slides, balls and cars. 

All the pictures above were taken with natural/indoor lighting (no studio lights or flashes).  I was using a new lens 28mm F1.8 which takes great pictures in available light.  The next two pictures were taken using a single soft box.

Picture #6 - This is a picture of Grandma and Carolyn.  It turns out the Carolyn is losing her patience for pictures, so it is hard to get her to pose for any. 

Picture #7 -  My Dad was helping me with the lighting tests prior to the Grandma Carolyn picture above.  I think this one turned out as a great portrait of him.

I'm still trying to figure out using a single soft box light source how to get the Rembrandt lighting effect.  I like the looks of the single light photos, but still haven't got things quite right yet.  Here is a link to what I am striving for and hopefully I will get this effect in weeks to come.   

http://web.me.com/joelgrimes/Joel_Grimes_Photography/Rembrant_Lighting.html

Week 4

Wow, week 4 already.  This week went much better in the volume of picture taking.  Leaving it until the weekend right before the deadline raises my stress level.  Come to think of it, my Mom tried to tell me the same thing about school.  I am thinking more about what may make nice photos and I am making myself go out and shoot.  My wife is also encouraging me to take more pictures.  The weather this week co-operated and provided some foggy days and some hoar frost.

The first picture is taken at the local car wash.  I was waiting in line for about 20 minutes along with everyone else after 10 days of Chinook in Calgary.  I tried various different pictures (time delay of cars being sprayed by the automatic wahser)  they all turned out boring.  I then took this picture of the car in front of me sitting in the wash shooting through the plastic door.  The camera was moved during the exposure.

Picture #2 was taken about 10pm at night in the fog.  The sodium vapor lamp gives everything a yellow/orange color.

Picture #3 is taken in a park near our house.  You can see the leaves still on the branches of this tree.  Calgary had a bizarre fall, where is was +30 C in late September, and then it froze hard in early October.  Many leaves never did turn their fall colors.  The went from green to dead on the trees and many have still not fallen off.

I have been looking at the internet for inspiration and ideas on different things to photograph.  One of the blog sites that I have come across is called The Family Photo Journalist.  They have an interesting approach of taking black and white pictures of their family doing every day things, not looking at the camera.  They also process their pictures in black and white to lessen distractions and focus your eyes on the action taking place.   I thought I would give their concept a try and see how things turned out.  If you want to check out the blog site it is  http://www.thefamilyphotojournalist.blogspot.com/ (FPJ)

Picture #4 - (FPJ) is of Cyndy and Carolyn making a butter tart pie.  Carolyn loves to help her Mom in the kitchen and who better to run the mixer than the 2.5 year old.  (Just kidding the mixer was off).  There is some blur in the photo but I liked the moment that it shows.

Picture #5 - (FPJ) is Carolyn at the breakfast table doing Cinderella stickers while wearing her Cinderella dress.

Everything up to now has been with no added flashes or studio lights.  My father in law was over for dinner on Saturday and had requested that I take some pictures for him.  He has been involved with the Masons and the Shriners for many years and needed a picture to put up in his Mason hall. 

Picture #6 - A picture of Jim taken with a single softbox mounted camera right.

Picture #7 - Jim brought along his Mason outfit, complete with hammer.  I have various shots with him holding the hammer in front of him, but this action shot stands out.  This was taken with an octabox camera left, a parabolic umbrella for fill camera right and a gridded light pointing at the back ground.

A better week for me, than week 3.  I managed to always have a memory card in the camera when I left the house.  I'm going to try and do 1 or 2 Family Photojournalist (FPJ) shots per week for awhile.

If any friends/family have any photography requests drop me a line or give me a call and I will try and accomodate you. 

Week 3

Week 3 was not as easy as Week 1 and 2.  It was Saturday (5 days in to the week) before I even took my first photograph.  I was struggling with some photo ideas but managed to come up with some shots on Saturday. 

The weather in Calgary was warm and sunny again.  Carson was willing to sit in the park behing our house enjoying the sunshine and whatever smells were floating through the air.  This photo is all natural light.

Saturday was a good day for a family walk.  Carolyn can't understand why we don't just open all the mail boxes in the neighborhood. (all natural light).

It was Gymboree day again and this time I took a faster lens to try and get some better pictures in the low light of play area.  Carolyn is getting ready to stand up and jump off an inflated tube that is about 4 feet in the air.  (No flash, window light and flourescent lights, I remembered the gray card to help with white balance).

The next two pictures are of Daisy, who is now retired.  Daisy worked as a member PALS visiting sick kids at the Childrens Hospital and older people in long term care facilities.

The lighting set up for these shots of Daisy and Mezzo is as follows:

 beauty dish as the key light camera right, a parabolic silver umbrella for fill on the left, and a gridded light pointed at the background.

Mezzo is a very large Bernese Mountain Dog.  He has a great temperment and if he was human, he would have a great career as a Walmart Greeter.

The whole photography thing was a little boring for Mezzo.

It looks like a need some more practice in planning, I went out on Sunday to take pictures using a tripod and left the base plate that attaches the tripod to my camera at home.  I then took the camera out today with no memory card.  See you again in one weeks time.

Week 2

Good news, it looks like my New Years Resolution has made it past the first week of the new year.  Writing this Blog is definitely making me take more pictures.  It is teaching me that the photos taken in natural light with moving objects (mainly a 2.5 year old that never stops moving) is the biggest challenge.  It is tough to nail exposure and focus on a moving subject.

The Christmas tree came down this last week.  But not before taking one last photo of it.  This was taken with my point and shoot camera (Canon G9) with a 1 second exposure.  I carefully traced the exact shape of a santa hat in the air with the result as follows ;)  (Picture #1)

The next image is the one that I spent the most time on set up and trial and error this week.  I have been trying to think of different ideas for photographs and figured that my hand lit with light sweeping from the side would show texture and would be interesting.  I ended up having to add a second light to the other side, and blocking the light spilling in to the background so that I could have this on pure black.  I then added the 3 left over mandarin oranges that we have in the house. (Picture #2) 

My Dad came over to babysit on Friday night so that Cyndy and I could go watch the Flames play hockey.  It was a good chance to get a picture of Grandpa and Carolyn together.  Carolyn managed to make sure Pooh bear and her blanket made it in to the shot.  I'm happy with how it turned out, since Carolyn jumps off the chair and races over to the camera to see what it looks like on the little screen after every shot.  Lighting information is octabox camera left, beauty dish  above camera and background light with 20 degree grid spot.  Grey background. (Picture #3)

The next shot was a request by my wife.  She needed a head shot of herself for a work thing.  She thought I should just crop one of the photos I took of her at Christmas, but I managed to talk her in to sitting down and having a few pictures taken.  Same set up as Granpa and Carolyn above. (Picture #4)

Saturday was Gymboree day which is organized Chaos for 2.5 - 3 year olds.  You go to this strip mall that has an area set aside with padded mats, ramps, slides, ladders, inner tubes, tunnels, etc.  A young lady tells stories, and tries to organize an overall theme, which sometimes interests the kids. The rest of the time the kids race around, slide down things, jump off platforms and have a great time.   Most of my photos that I took at this event were blurry and not of very good quality.  The one below has a bit of motion blur, but is one of the better ones.  (Natural light and overhead flourescents). (Picture #5)

We had beautiful warm weather in Calgary this last weekend, with both days getting above 0 C.  Sunday we went to the Zoo to see the animals and Carolyn's favorite the Hippos.  This is a picture of Carolyn sitting on a bench in the recently renovated Enmax Conservatory.  Natural light mostly from camera left. (Picture #6)

While in the hippo building at the zoo.  Sunlight was shining in to the Meerkat enclosure, and the Meerkats were taking turns standing up in the sunlight.   (Picture #7)

Thanks to everyone who is posting comments, or sending emails.

The 2 things I learned the most this week is to carry a gray card with me so that I can get the white balance correct in different lighting situations, and to make sure my histogram is shifted as far right as possible (but not blowing out the highlights) especially when shooting at high ISOs. 

7 Pictures per week

Jan 4, 2010

In order to improve my skills at photography, I've decided that I need to spend more time shooting pictures and less time reading about and looking at other people's great pictures. Many people do a picture a day for 365 days which is amazing. I am taking a slightly easier route, but with the same number of total shots.

Picture #1

My daughter loves helping with lighting tests and will hold the gray card for her Dad. Sometimes it even points towards the camera.

Lighting info for this shot is as follows;

AB800 with medium soft box camera left

AB800 with beauty dish and sock camera right

AB400 with 30 degree grid camera right pointing at background

Picture #2

One of my wife's work friends came over for some family pictures and this is one of her daughter.

Natural light coming through a window at camera right.

Shot with Canon 70-200mm lens with a 2.8 aperture.

Picture #3

Family portrait of my Neices Nieces (thx Di) and Nephews.

Lighting info for this is as follows;

AB800 camera left in Octabox.

AB400 camera right in beauty dish with sock.

AB400 with 30degree grid camera left pointed at background.

Picture #4
The next photograph is the son of family friends.  This is taken with window light coming in from camera right.  It was shot with a 24-105mm at 100mm at f4.0.

Picture #5

This is picture of Carson the dog.  It is shot at 150mm f8.0.  Large Octabox camera left and beauty dish with no sock camera right.  Octabox is key light.

Picture #6

Carson the dog again.  This time shot at 200mm f8.0 same lighting as number 5.

Picture #7

Asia the cat was bribed in to modelling for a shot through the use of cat toys.  Main light is AB400 with no sock just right of camera.  Octabox with AB800 for fill to camera left.

It looks like taking 7 pics per week is going to be a good challenge.  I am trying to post good quality pictures that have some variety.  Hopefully this can be achieved.  It definitely has me thinking of other pictures to take since my pets will probably tire of me chasing after them with my camera.