Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1950, 1960, 365 project, 40d, 50, 550ex, 580ex, artistic, brady bunch, camera, canon, catalog, columbus, contest, dslr, grammy, grandmother, grass roots video, hassler, hawaii, infinity, kevin randolph, limbo, ohio, photo challenge, photography, product shot, seamless, strobist, tiki
I again wanted to take a picture using flash, but I also wanted to only use one flash to accomplish something that usually requires at least 2 flashes if not more. I decided on a faux catalog shoot of a tiki statue that had belonged to my wife’s grandmother. She acquired it on a vacation to Hawaii in the 1950’s or 1960’s. And it appears to be a hand carved out of real wood – as opposed to cast from plastic as are his buddies down in our Tiki Bar.
So I took out the scrap paper from a large background roll that I had cut down. It’s about 2 feet wide and several yards long. I draped it over the kitchen table and taped it to the wall. No background stand needed. then I placed the camera on the tripod, made sure my vertical on the camera was the same as Mr. Tiki’s (lest he appear intoxicated), and fired away with one flash on camera.
It worked pretty well except for there was a dicernable shadow falling behind and to camera left of Mr. Tiki. I’m sure for most purposes this would be fine, but I wanted that floating in limbo look. So back to the camera bag.
I got my TTL cord so that the flash could be moved off camera and still be controlled by the camera. I then held the flash in position right behind the lens and bounced the flash off the ceiling. Perfect!!… except now the recesses in the carving went too dark and were filled with shadow. So back to the camera bag.
This time I got one of my Honl bounce cards and placed it on the flash to throw some light straight forward while the majority of the light still shot up to the ceiling. BINGO! I now had the shot I was looking for, constructed in about 10 minutes with only one flash.
Now I do have to admit that I did edit the pic at the top of this post with Photoshop. But it was literally a 1-click edit. To even out the slight tonal variations in the white background caused by not completely clearing off the kitchen table before shooting, I filled in the background with one solid color of white. Here’s the original for comparison.
As always please feel free to comment on the pictures and to offer your sugestions for tomorrows pic. Constructive criticism is always welcome.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 07/05/09, 365 project, 40d, 550ex, 580ex, 7/5/9, artistic, backyard games, bean bag, camera, canon, columbus, contest, corn, Cornhole, cornhole boards, dslr, flash, grass roots video, july, july 5th, kevin randolph, ohio, photo challenge, photography, strobist, toss
I haven’t used my flash(es) in a couple of days and thought I should get back in the habit. But what to take a picture of? Well, after I mowed the yard today I spent the better part of the afternoon staining and sealing a pair of Cornhole boards. For the uninitiated Cornhole- sometimes called Soft Horseshoes – is basically a game of beanbag toss that’s played a lot like Horseshoes. There are two boards place 20 feet apart and there’s a six in hole cut out of each board. The goal is to throw a 1 pound bag of corn kernels from one set of boards to the other and make it through the hole.
Back to the photography… After playing a bit of Cornhole today I thought it might be nice to capture some the the “action” during a game, but everyone else was done playing well before I got my camera out. So after some thought and waiting for the sun to go down, I convinced my wife to throw a few bags in the backyard. There is a setting on my flash that I haven’t found a good use for until now called “Multi.” It causes the flash to go off multiple times during an exposure at a frequency that you can set. I set up the camera, tested the flash setting, had Jessica toss four bags while I tweaked things, and then on the second toss of the second set of four it all came together in the picture you see above.
I found this image to be a bit different and a good use of this specialized flash setting. I’m not sure if this type of picture is what was intended for this setting, but it worked exceptionally well. My next thought for this setting is to take a picture of one of our dogs running across the yard. I just hope I can make that one happen some time this month.
Please feel free to comment back with suggestions and ideas for future photographs, or to critique what I’ve posted thus far. There’s nothing better than good, thoughtful, constructive feedback.
