New Year, Old Idea

A couple months ago, a close friend suggested that I start this blog in order to expand and grow as a photographer. I thought it was a great idea, but (as usual) I was "too busy" to pursue the idea at the moment. Procrastination is a curse and as the days turned into weeks, the idea was pushed farther back in my mind.

Then came the end of my first semester at college and the welcome break that followed.

Immediately after finals ended, I got on a bus and traveled to the barren wasteland beautiful state of North Dakota to take senior photos for a friend. While shooting in -50F is somewhat of a challenge, the photos turned out as some of the best I've ever taken. Every day after shooting we came in, sat in front of a warm fire and edited what we'd captured.

It was then that the idea of a 365 blog came back to me. It had been a while since I had shot and edit so many photos in such a short amount of time. Lately, I was more focused on other things; school, work, a certain girl, living in a new state...than I was on photography. Being entirely focused on photography the better part of 3 days got me thinking about that idea of the 365 blog. I really loved going through the whole process of planning, shooting, and editing all in the same day. When I first thought about the 365 blog, I didn't really realize how gratifying it would be to have an idea in the morning, and by that night have a finished product. It would be a lot of work to have a finished and polished photo done every day, but that would be part of the experience.

This isn't going to be a "post a photo a day" blogs. Every day I'm going to take a meaningful and thought out photo. No snapshots or photos pulled from the week before. In addition to photo, I'll have a explanation of how I took the photo. Camera setting, lighting, and summary of Lr and Ps work will all be included in each post. As will any thoughts on photography in general I have that day. This blog is as much for myself as it is for everyone who may read it.

So I'll be honest, I'm already going to break my own rules on the first day. This 365 project started yesterday, the 1st day of 2014. I wasn't procrastinating, I just hadn't set up the blog yet to post...
Anyway, yesterday was New Years Day and a family outing to Orcas Island, Washington. We decided to do some family photos while we were there and together as a family. The first photos we took was on top of Mt. Constitution, the highest point in the San Juan Islands, overlooking Mt. Baker.

From left: Me, Emma (twin sister), Mom, Cleo, Dad

When I began to set up the lights, my sister was already nagging me about how long it was going to take. So fifteen minutes later I had all the lights set up and setting dialed in...and a increasingly impatient twin. After we got a few photos in (I used a radio trigger hidden in my lap), I got up to check how they were turning out. That's when my dog decided that the squirrel in the trees behind us was more important than taking a photo. We finally got her back with some well practiced dog chasing skills, and sat down for another round of photos. We ended taking close to twenty photos, but I actually liked the very first one we took, which is the one I included in this post.

Technically, this was a pretty simple and straight forward set up. Camera settings are as follows: Shutter of 1/125th of a second, f5.6, ISO 100. I used a Canon 7D with Canon 50mm 1.4 USM glass. There are two Yongnou 560 EX III strobes set up camera left and camera right at the standard 45/45 angles. They're both bounced off umbrellas and at 1/2 power. I wanted to emulate the soft light of the cloudy day without overexposing the beautiful landscape behind us. I exposed for the background and then added in light from the strobes to illuminate us. Clouds have even lighting therefor equal power on the strobes. Off behind me and to the right is a Canon 270ex II set up as a rim light/kicker. I decided it was too boring to have soft light from the "clouds," so maybe there was a little sun beam shining down just on us. That 270ex II was in a 6x7 (ish) soft box to tone it down a bit both in quantity and quality of light. The 270 was triggered by a Yongnuo RF-602TX and a Yongnuo RF-602RX (TX=trigger, RX=receiver.) The 560s were triggered by RF-602C.

I imported to Light Room where I darkened the sky, enhanced the eyes, and brightened us and the rock just a tad. In hindsight I should have had the 560s at +.7 or even up to 1/1.

So that was photo 1 of 365, taken on January 1st, 2014. Here's photo 2 of 365, taken on January 2nd, 2014.

This photo is part of ad I'm going to post for a mid 1990s Nordic Track Fitness bike. I have no use for the bike and being a starving college student I could use the cash.  I originally was going to post the cover photo for the ad, a standard profile shot of the bike, but I realized I actually liked this photo better. The geometry of it really captures my attention. It reminds me of, well, a bike. The triangles all over the place with smaller circles attached to pivots with some moving parts here and there. There's almost nothing I know better than bikes, I could list every part on this bike and how to strip it bare then put it back together. This kind of macro shot caught my eye because it captured the simplicity yet complexity of a bike.

The lighting set up for this is almost identical to my family portrait. Two 560s with umbrellas and a 270 with a soft box off the side. Same camera and lens. Settings were: 560s at 1/4 and 1/8 (I think those were the settings... point is one was more of a key and the other a fill), camera at ISO 100, f2.2, 1/80th. Nothing really spectacular about it. Fairly even lighting with the 270 to add some extra pop in the highlights.

In Lr I upped the clarity a bit and that was about it. This is basically straight out of the camera.

Well that's all for tonight. Happy New Year and see you tomorrow.