Friday, February 22, 2008

February Challenge - Blue week


Blue sky
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

This month I'm participating in February Challenge: Color Theory. The idea is to focus on one color each of the five weeks. I chose blue for this week's color.

This image was taken on a relatively clear day between storms. I was in my backyard, letting our hibernating rose garden frame the gate, looking towards the mountains. One of the reasons I took this picture was because the sky was pretty flat. I wanted to show my wife how to use layering with selective effects to take a blah image and make it more presentable. This was the result.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

February Challenge - Green week


Green cup
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

This month I'm participating in February Challenge: Color Theory. The idea is to focus on one color each of the five weeks. I chose green for this week's color.

I received this mug for my birthday from people at my first programming job and it still sees daily use. It enumerates a bunch of "laws" of programming. One of my favorites is Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you'll find out programmers cannot write in English. It's amazing how relevant most of these are over twenty years later.

Hmm. You know you're getting old when you're using a coffee mug older than some of your co-workers.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Backlit self-portrait


20/52 Backlit
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

This self-portrait was inspired by a scene in a movie I saw recently. (I don't remember which one; it was something based on one of Jane Austin's works.) It took a bit more work than I expected; here's what it took.

I knew I only needed one light and a dark background. I had my backdrop setup to use the white side so I set a moderately high aperture of f/13, turned off all the ambient lights and set the chair about 8 feet from the backdrop. This made the white canvas appear black. I already had the monolight setup with a soft-box from some previous work and started by setting it directly in front of me.

A test shot resulted in the whole front of my face being lit. It was a nice effect with some potential but not what I envisioned for this shot. There was too much light and the falloff from light to dark was more gradual than I wanted. The soft-box was doing it's job and giving me a nice soft light. So I took the soft-box off and blinded myself with a bare flash.

The shadows changed from soft to hard, eliminating the gradual drop-off from light to dark. But I still had more light on the front of my face than I wanted. Next I moved the light back next to the backdrop pointing towards the chair.

Test shots with this setup produced a light on me close to what I wanted. But it lit the background enough that it changed from black to grey and introduced lens flair. I grabbed the barn doors and put them on the light. I adjusted the vertical doors to have a very narrow window, lighting only the chair and eliminating the light on the camera and backdrop.

This setup, with a bit of tweaking light power, was what produced the final shot.

Here's a diagram of the final setup (produced using the online tool at http://www.sdgphoto.com/lightingstudio/.
20/52 Backlit setup

Sunday, February 10, 2008

February Challenge - Red week


Open neon
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

This month I'm participating in February Challenge: Color Theory. The idea is to focus on one color each of the five weeks. I chose red for this week's color. It's amazing how many things related to fire are red: signs, extinguishers, alarm pulls, siren boxes, fire lanes. I wonder if this is a cultural association or more universal. This is one of the few things I saw (and shot) this week that was red but not related to fire.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

February Challenge - Yellow week

Yellow flower
This month I'm participating in February Challenge: Color Theory. The idea is to focus on one color each of the five weeks. With only two days, this week is short, but I'm starting off with eight shots of yellow.