I really haven’t photographed food before–not in any serious fashion–so when I found myself confronted with a silver platter of chocolate-covered potato chips yesterday at the Candy Factory in Columbia, Mo., I was thrown for a loop.

There was no chance I would use existing light: it was a mix of daylight and tungsten, and exposing for the chips coated in which chocolate would have meant underexposing the others significantly.  So I set up two lights bouncing into umbrellas at either end of the silver tray.  It took me a while for all that I learned about photographing metal–and look how little of it wound up in the final frame!–and its family of angles to come back to me (about 50 chimped frames) but once the reflections were under control, it just became a matter of the ratio between the key and the fill lights.

Ultimately, the SB-80-DX, on camera left, was fired at a third stop under 1/2 power, and the 550EX on camera right was fired at 1/16 power.  Could I have balanced those a bit?  Probably.  The shadows cast by the milk chocolate potato chips bother me a bit.  I’ll file that in the “next time” category.

Canon 5D II and 70-200mm f/4 L IS lens @100mm with 25mm extension tube; exposed 1/160 sec. @ f/11, ISO 200.

Tags: food, light, lighting, lit, strobe, Strobist, studio
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I have finally had a chance to go over all of my images from the Tour de Missouri, as well as my other shoots from the week, and found three images that I thought were particularly interesting but were unpublished–they did not find their way into the Columbia Missourian, or my Blog, for that matter–until now!

Old Courthouse reflection, St. Louis, Mo. Canon 5D II and 24-70mm f/2.8 L @ 70mm; exposed 1/500 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 100

I saw this composition with the imperfect reflections of office buildings and the Old Court House as I was walking to the downtown Hilton to pick up my press credentials for the first stage of the Tour of Missouri.  This is cropped fairly heavily, so I do wish that I had switched lenses to the 70-200mm f/4 I L IS, but I was in a rush to get to the race before it started without me!

More after the jump!

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Tags: Columbia Missourian, lighting, outtakes, photography, photojournalism, portraits
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Patterns in the sand along the shore of the Great Salt Lake, Saltair, Utah. Canon 5D Mark II and 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens; exposed 1/125 sec. @ f/9, ISO 1000 Copyright 2009.

One of the photographic conditions that I never had too great an appreciation for before I switched to digital capture in 2003 is the classic, cloudy day.  Overcast skies can yield striking images because the light is delightfully even, not “flat” as too many casually dismiss it.  Working to minimize shadows by photographing on sun angle (with the sun 180 degrees from your lens) or on a cloudy day does not mean that you’ll be working without shadows.  However, it certainly lets you study the shadowed areas much more closely, and the gradation between dark and light tones becomes far greater.

It’s the reason people love the “Shadow/Highlight” tool in Photoshop, or the “Fill Light” slider in Camera RAW / Lightroom: we like shadow detail.  So, consider how much more shadow detail you get on an overcast day, and reconsider any bias against the giant diffusers in the sky known as clouds.

In this case, along the shoreline of the Great Salt Lake in Saltair, Utah, I was actually photographing on a brilliantly sunny day, and the light was about as harsh as can be.  I achieved the soft light by using my body as a gobo, and I photographed in my own shadow. It’s a useful technique that I had forgotten about until I saw Artie Morris using it in the Galapagos to photograph a Lava Lizard.

Tags: lighting, nature, photography, techniques
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I’ve been battling a cold ever since grad school got out for summer–a great way to celebrate the end of the year, but at least it didn’t strike during the week before when projects were due!–but yesterday, for the first time since getting home, I felt like making some images.  The bird activity at home has been really great, although I picked a slow day to photograph (less likely to disturb the migrating species, though!).  The suet feeder has been getting a lot of activity from our resident, nesting pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers and our Downy Woodpecker, but it was really the nuthatch that let me get a good look at him.

Three flash units were set up on stands, combined with the late-afternoon sun, made for a four-light setup, albeit back-lit.  I was trying to get some rim-lighting, and between the sun and another strobe back and to the right, I figured I would get quite a bit.  I certainly got some, but not quite what I wanted.  My key light was backed up quite a bit, and I had a fill on the left, which is casting the nuthatch’s shadow that you can see on the suet feeder.

More after the jump…

White-breasted Nuthatch on suet feeder, Racine, Wis.

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Tags: birds, light, lighting, lit, photography, wildlife
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Romantic ghosts of prom past on the MKT Trail, Columbia, Mo.

For a group project for Advanced Techniques, Vivian Esparza, Charles Ludeke, Lesley Freeman, and I met up at the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial along the MKT Trail in Columbia, Mo. to make a long time exposure with added light–also called “painting with light” for its surreal effect.

Charles friend, Michelle, agreed to be a model for us on the bridge. After thinking on it for a bit, we decided that we should include a male figure in the photo, and Charles volunteered that he had a yellow tux (rental) in his car from a social gathering a on Friday night.

The background trees were lit with a Nikon SB-900 gelled green. I fired it off at 1/4 power for the nearer trees, and worked my way up to 1:1 for the background trees (knowing that they would be far too dark otherwise). Vivian did a great job of painting the bridge blue (an SB-900 with a blue gel), and Lesley walked along the bridge once with a flashlight aimed downward (on the ground, along the railing). Lesley then used a different flashlight, gelled red, to paint the post and upper railing of the bridge.

Finally, Charles and Michelle would pose on the bridge, and I used my Canon 550EX with the Panera straw-grid, dialed at 1/2 power, to “freeze” our ghosts in the frame.

All told, the exposure came to 5.7 minutes @ f/8, ISO 200 using a Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4 IS lens @ 81mm…and a couple hours of experimentation. It was a great collaboration….and I think we might go back in a week to do something a little bit different ( but not in time for class).

Tags: Advanced Techniques, light, lighting, lit, painting with light, photography, strobe
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Everyone in Advanced Techniques was asked to create a photojournalistic image using second curtain (or “rear curtain”) snyc with their strobes. I actually haven’t used the technique much in the past, largely because it’s inordinately difficult to do so with the Canon flash system. Comparatively, the Nikon system of switching the flash mode from “normal,” skipping over “red eye reduction,” and landing on “rear” is all that has to be done. It’s stupid simple. More stupid for Canon…..c’est la vie. (But cameras that start with the letter “N” do seem to have strange white balance………)

Click on the diagram for a larger version.

For the simple reason that second curtain sync is easy to achieve with Nikon, I borrowed a D700 and an SB-900 from the photo department. I only took out the 24-70mm, knowing that 90% of what I had planned could be done with that one lens. First, I went to the Hulett House mixed martial-arts gym, the subject of a longer-term group project, to practice with the technique. I set up one light on a stand, gelled CTO, and bounced if off of the ceiling.

After only a few frames, I captured this image, which is one of my favorites from the evening:

Kevin Croom tries to place Kristin Rambo into a headlock during a sparring match at the Hulett House Gym on April 22, 2009, in Columbia, Mo. Croom, who is yet undefeated in his mixed-martial arts career, is helping to get Rambo ready for her first Midwest Fight League contest on May 25.

Two more images after the jump…
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Tags: Advanced Techniques, light, lighting, lit, photography, photojournalism, rear curtain, second curtain sync
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