Day 246 (Cars Photoshoot Take 2)

Yesterday, I decided to take another shot at photographing Liam's toys in an effort to create some artwork for his room. I don't consider this to be the last final attempt. I feel that I got really close, but I still need to tweak some details.

For this attempt, I hauled out my lighting kit with shoot-through umbrellas, remote flashes on light stands, tripod, and extension tubes. I shot the cars on a large piece of poster board on the table and used my 85mm lens pre-focused @f/11. The shutter speed was about 200th of a second and the ISO was 100.

Day 245

Izzy was quite emphatic today at the dinner table when we asked her how big she was.

Canon 30D w/50mm 1.8 lens
1/30sec
f/2.8
ISO 800

Day 244

Our 3 little blessings. God is good.

Canon 30D w/50mm 1.8
f/2.8
1/1600sec
ISO 400

Day 243

Took out the old 50mm 1.8 lens for a spin with my extension tubes to see what kind of Macro shots I could get with it. These are some of Liam's toys that I found pretty fun to shoot. These should make some nice wall art for him some day.

Canon 30D w/50mm 1.8 Lens (w/Extension Tube)
1/2 sec
f/8
ISO 800

Our budding little photographer

One of the joys of teaching students about photography, is to see their passion and abilities come out. It is even more exciting to see this in my own kids. Imagine the pride I had seeing my little girl not only wielding an SLR camera, but also taking some killer shots with it. Here are a few that I took of her in action.

Day 242

Believe it or not, despite my lack of posts lately, I am actually enjoying this photo project. Shooting professionally can easily drain you and make you want to put the camera down. But this side project allows me some room to create a separate space of photography that's pretty much whatever I want it to be. I think that outlets like this are important. I've recently read that part of growing as an artist can sometimes be enhanced the the "side projects" and can keep you going where others tend to burn out from it. Side projects are good.



Canon 30D w/50mm 1.8
1/50sec
f/1.8
ISO 1000

Day 241

Trying out a new lens. It only took a few minutes for me to figure out that this is definitely a future investment target.

Canon 30D w/30mm 1.4 lens
1/100sec
f/1.4
ISO 800

Day 240

Our family went for a walk in Overlook Park here in Lancaster, and happened upon this Llama on a small farm near the park. He seemed genuinely curious about us and came close up to the fence...



...However, when I asked him to sign a model release so that I could use this photo on the blog, he was really shy...



...just kidding, but he was a very friendly Llama.

Canon 30D w/18-55mm IS lens @35mm
1/100sec
f/4.5
ISO 100

Day 239

Shot with the iPhone 4

Day 238

Shot with the iPhone 4

Day 237

Shot with the iphone4

Day 236

I feel withdrawal when I go too long without taking photos of our kids. I guess I know that eventually it will be harder to photograph Izzy actually holding still, so I'm working to get what I can. All of these photos, except the first one, were shot by bouncing two flashes remotely at various angles towards the ceiling. They allowed me to get proper exposures and add better definition to the shadows. I also was able to shoot at ISO 200 rather than ISO 1600, which yielded much less image noise.

Canon 30D w/85mm 1.8 lens
Various exposure settings
2 flashes off-camera at 1/4 power (bounced) and fired remotely.

Day 235

Shot this recently during an Advanced Photography class. We went outdoors around the school campus to photograph our theme assignment for the day. I found one of my students crouched in an area with some interesting light and, with permission to take the photo, I got this. Posted with his permission, of course.

Canon 30D w/70-200mm F4 L @135mm
1/500sec
f/4
ISO 400

Day 234

I shot this photo a while ago when I was bored waiting for somebody. The goal was to make as interesting of a photo as I could with my iphone camera without moving anything or myself from my chair. This is what came out.

Shot with the iPhone4