A week or two ago (yeah yeah I’m way late to report this) I received some mail that stayed on my kitchen counter for a few days before I picked it up again. While going through some old mail I noticed a particular envelope from some company called, Serbin Communications. I assumed it was just junk mail and was about to trash it but at the last second I decided to open it just in case.

To my surprise it was notification of the fact that one of my photographs is a finalist in Photographer’s Forum Magazine’s 28th Annual Spring Photography Contest. I suppose it was a good thing I opened the envelope after all.

I had actually entirely forgotten about this contest I entered sometime before April of this year. Of 11 photographs I entered, the following has been picked as a finalist.



The contest’s web site states the actual winner’s and honorable mentions will be notified by August 15, a few days away. Although I have doubts my photo will earn 1st prize, it would be nice to have the distiction as well as a new camera. I’m happy with honorable mention at this point in my career.

More to come soon...

A couple of weeks ago I sold my Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L lens on eBay. I believe I got around $1100 for it which was what I was hoping I’d get for it. When I decided to sell the lens I thought I could use the money to buy the Canon 180mm macro lens, a lens I’ve been wanting for a while now, or buy some lighting gear and other miscellaneous things. In the end I decided to buy some lighting gear.

Last week I received a couple of collpsable softboxes from Alien Bees. They are 24x36” which should be plenty for portraits and still lifes. I also bought another Dell LCD display as my 21” Apple monitor saw its last days a few months ago. And I’ve grown accustomed to using two monitors.

At the moment I’m not sure what to do with the remaining money. I’m thinking of getting two pocket wizards so I can control my Alien Bees strobes and get rid of the 20 or 30 foot sync cord. I have 2 already but I ‘d like to have one for each Alien Bee and one for my Canon speedlight in case I want to use all 3 together.

Anyway, here is a few photos I took with the new softboxes.


I wanted to two highlights on the apple with the smaller being narrow and next to a spot of black. I used a sheet of black foam core to block one of the softboxes, which gives the small band highlight in the upper right hand side of the apple, and provides the dark shadow next to the small highlight. The background is a sheet of diffusion plastic from a lighting tent. The sheet and apple are on top of a cheap tv stand. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the table’s fake wood grain is seen through the diffusion sheet. Something I didn’t want but later thought it added some color and mood to the background (bright shiney apple on top of a white-brown background).


Self portrait. Taking self portraits is interesting as it requires some luck in compenstion but it allows me to keep trying depending if I feel up to it. But I don’t have to deal with others being impatient or losing interest.


Close up of my hollow body Ibanez electric guitar.


Another close up of my hollow body Ibanez electric guitar.

Tags: softbox, lighting, gear

My photograph, "Parsec" was returned to me by the Center of Fine Art Photography earlier this week. That means it didn't sell but that's cool with me. I'm sure it'll happen eventually and I'm happy just to have it on display.

My next show is in June (6/1-6/25) at the Infusion Gallery in downtown LA. 4 photographs instead of 1!

At the moment I updated my portfolio (check it out by clicking on the link on the right) and I'm trying to make a nice fancy CD of my portfolio so I can have it reviewed by other galleries and anyone else. But I'm having trouble with the "fancy" part. At least on the Mac OS, I want to CD to auto open its main window which it does but also reveal the custom layout that I've spent too much time on. It looks great on the system I created the CD on but not on my powerbook. Very frustrating indeed. Once I have it figured out I plan on mailing it to several galleries for review in hopes they like my work.

Also, I want to contact the people at the Infusion Gallery to see if they would be cool with me having several books of my work available at the gallery during the time my work will be on display. Since I'm not in a solo show, they may not like the idea but on the other hand the books may help sell my photos so they may like it. The books are cheap books you get through Aperture and iPhoto and I plan on having around 50 pages per book of 50 or so of my photographs inside. Basically a cheap promo piece. If I get a few people to at least just visit my web site after thumbing through the pages, then I say they're successful. I may also have the CDs available too but I thought the book would be better because books don't have additional requirements (gotta have a computer to view the contents of the CD) to view them and thus people get instantaneous viewing.

Tags: gallery, fine art, promotion, exhibit

This post is all about a sampling of images I've taken in the past week. This week and last week I was on vacation and had planned to devote it to photography and particularly studio lighting.

During these past 2 weeks I've learned quite a bit about studio lighting but I am by no means an expert or even a vet. I still need to work on creating a good sweep, lighting the background so that the light is evenly spread (this seems easy and probably is but for some reason was rather challenging for me), pocket wizards are great (hope to buy another soon), learned how to make a cardboard grid which seems to work better than my cardboard snoot at giving me a spot light, I should start shooting tethered to my computer and I should also review my work on my computer before moving on and I'm sure far more but that's enough for now.

Here's some of what I've shot this past week:




I need to find a good white 2'x2' or so surface to shoot my drinks on. My wife and I received this tray as a wedding gift and I finally found a use for it. I think it'll be good in the future but just to get me started I don't want any distracting elements such as the tray's wood trim and handle getting in the picture. I went to Home Depot a few days ago but couldn't find anyway that fit my requirements. I think I'll try another hardware store that either sells custom counter tops or maybe will sell just the laminate to me. Still looking...








This came about as a test shot. Just so happens I really like it. Maybe not a good "drink" shot from a commercial / editorial standpoint, but definitely enjoyable to look at.


This as well as the next two shows me playing with the "shooting through" technique as well as using several color filters on flowers. The idea of changing the flowers' colors using filters has intrigued me for a while. It turns out I really like the blending of the natural and fake colors together that I want to continue exploring the idea.






After stumbling across another photographer's work and seeing him use flowers submerged in water and then freezing the water, I thought it would be cool to try introducing air bubbles to the flower (obviously had to submerged the flower in water first). Instead of water droplets on the petals, why not air bubbles? I tried my first attempt at this a few months ago but was stuck by not knowing how to control the flower so it stands still and didn't know how to put air bubbles on the petals.

The only way I know of to get air to stick to a flower is to dunk it in the water very quickly. The problem is the water will be rushed into the bloom forcing the petals to move out and possibly break off the stem. Getting the flower to stand still was solved by using a McClamp which was holding the stem and the other end was connected to a light stand.

You can also see some rather large air bubbles in the picture as well. I decided to kill the air bubbles on the petals idea and introduce bubbles moving by the flower. You can see something similar in the below picture as well. I used a straw to force air into the water using my mouth to blow into the straw. The problem with that is 1. I get out of breath and 2. unable to control the flow and size of the bubbles.


I decided to go to the pet store and buy the cheapest air pump they had. I actually bought the 2nd cheapest pump as the cheapest was battery powered and I didn't want to bother with even more batteries (I have enough stuff on battery power as it is). I went through a few nearby isles just to see what they had and ran across some fancy do-dad that will break the air up into smaller bubbles. That do-dad worked out perfectly for what I wanted.

How did I get the flow to move in a diagonal? I moved the tube back and forth below the flower and tripped the shutter several times before I ended up with this picture.

Do I like this? Eh, not really. Although I'm glad I explored the idea, I don't think its all that interesting to look at. However, I still like the idea of having bubbles cling on to the flowers' petals. I just need to find a way to get lots of bubbles on the petals without destroying the flower and frustrating me.







This is basically a combination of studio magic and the use of Photoshop's clone tool. I cut the lemon in half and stuck two bobby pins (I think that's what they are called. My wife uses them to control here hair) to force them to stay in place. I would have used toothpicks and actually would have preferred toothpicks but I also wanted to get this picture without having to go to the store. The pins acted as braces to prop the lemon halfs up. I then cloned the pins out of the shot making the lemons appear standing on their own (well I hope they do anyway). Perhaps not the greatest picture, but I was rather proud of myself for coming up with the idea, the use of the pins idea, and for the execution of the picture itself.


This thing is a floating bridge and it belongs on my hollow body guitar. See the chrome thingy on top? Notice there isn't much light hitting the front of it?


So I placed some hand made reflectors (cardboard bent in half to as a support for two pieces of white paper taped to the cardboard) which gives it not only light up front but also a nice white reflection in the chrome. Quite happy that I realized the need for that and was able to figure out how to do it. That "whole family of angles" concept at play here for sure.



In a previous posting I mentioned a DIY cardboard grid for speedlights. The above and the next shot use this grid. See the blue highlights in the top thingy? That's the grid with a blue filter hard at work.


Here, I placed a light from below to help light the chrome as well as the bottom. We can see the bottom of the bridge by its reflection in the plexiglass. I think it helps to define the bridge's overall shape. Without it, there would likely just be black and you'd think the entire black was all solid wood. As you can see, its not as there is a bit of a curvature to it.




My cardboard grid working hard again. If you look closely, you'll see I have two wine glasses in a row. The 2nd is hidden behind the 1st glass. And if you look even closer you'll see the base of the 2nd glass in the stem of the first. Something I didn't notice until I review the images on my computer (which is why I should be shooting tethering and regularly reviewing my work on a monitor).

Tags: studio, lighting, glass

For those with a do-it-yourself attitude, here's a couple links that will help you along...

http://strobist.blogspot.com/
This one is also a great lighting resource and idea generator.

http://www.diyphotography.net/

Today I made a cardboard grid for a speedlight that actually turned out very good. Although I constructed mine a bit differently. Instead of using glue, I used scotch tape because I don't have any glue in my entire apartment (surprised me). To help reinforce it and minimize any twisting, I placed a small piece of cardboard on each ends (the ends that have the cuts). I then placed a long strip of cardboard on the same sides which allows me to attach the grid to the speedlight using velco straps. The connection isn't the most secure, but after a few hours of using it, it seems to work very well.





Several years ago when I bought my 100mm Macro lens (continues to be my favorite lens btw) I tried to construct a very simple table top studio using an old TV shelf, white foam core, and a few clamps that have suction cups attached to them. I haven't seen these clamps mentioned anywhere on the net (sites that have to do with photography and DIY) so I thought I'd mention them here. The clamp looks very similar to those used on the McClamp.

In the past two weeks I've used these clamps more than I've ever used them in the last 3-4 years I've owned them. I realized they are great providing a quick and easy way to attaching a black card or a reflector to a light stand, holding my backgrounds up on the wall (my wall is partial wall, partial window), and of course just holding things together for whatever purpose. I bought mine at Home Depot. I went there this past week in Redwood City, CA and couldn't find any more. But they may be out at this particular Home Depot location. They are made by a company named, Wolfcraft. After looking at their site, they no longer list this particular clamp (don't see any with a suction cup). But they appear to offer a similar clamp, just no suction cup. The reason I think they are so cool is they are small, light weight, don't put too much clamp force which is good in case you are dealing with delicate stuff, and I've found several uses for them in the studio.



I'm not entirely sure where to get the velco strips/straps I'm using. I was given 4 or 5 of them at work to tie up network cables. During the 4-5 years I had them I don't think I ever used them. They work great at holding my DIY grid and color filters my Canon speedlight and since they have no glue, they aren't permeant and thus they are reusable. I would guess you can find something similar at a office supply store, hardware store, or maybe a computer/electronics store.

Tags: studio, lighting, DIY

All last week I had the week off from my day job so I spent as much time as I could shooting in my tiny studio. I haven't had a camera in my hands as much as I would like and I wanted to learn some lighting techniques. Some of the pictures didn't turn out great, but I think it was a great learning experience for me. It just so happens I have next week off as well.

After reading an online article, I decided to construct a box that allows me to light from the bottom. It works very well and have enjoyed using it. It would be nice to construct something similar but more durable.

One of the things I struggle with is getting a sweep or background evenly lit. I tend to get the light at the wrong spot or too bright. Unfortunately I wasn't catching before I continued shooting. I definitely need to shoot tethered and start taking test shots before proceeding.

Before my two week vacation I purchased a few items. 1. McClamp. Its basically an articulated arm that allows you to hold things such as reflectors or sticks or flowers, or whatever out of the way. I've found they are very useful in the studio to hold up whatever I may need wherever I may need. 2. Color filters for strobes. I bought a package of 12 12x12" filters of various colors. I really enjoy mixing colors and allowing me to get other backgrounds other than white or black. Plus, I can cut about 3" off of a side to use with my speedlights and still have enough left over for the strobes. 3. Pocket Wizards. They are pricey, but man they are nice. I only got two and can't wait to get one maybe two more. One less wire is very welcomed.

This coming week I plan on shooting "drinks". Seems like a fun thing to shoot that hopefully doesn't require too much prep time like food photography. I plan on shooting using window light to get that classic food photography look as well as with some strobes and speedlights. I may get some lemons and limes to add to the shot. I may also add some splashes in with the drink motif as well.

I don't have an exact total but I guess I've taken 2000-3000 pictures last week. Having that much time to shot is just wonderful to say the least. Here's a few samples...

Tags: studio, glass, lighting, flowers

In my bio (About John), I mention I have picked up an interest in Impressionism as a result of my style of photography. Some time this year I realized I also have in interest in Pictorial photography for the same reason as Pictorialism in some ways mirrors Impressionistic paintings.

Anyway, this photographic movement seems rather lost in time as not many people are aware of it or it they do they prefer the f/64 group view on photography (everything must be rendered sharp). I watched a few segments of a multi-segmented documentary on photography by the BBC and while they were talking about the time period just before Pictorialism they completely skip over it and head straight into war-time photojournalism. I was rather shocked. Love it or hate it, the movement has a profound influence on much of the photography we see today in just about every magazine. If it weren't for Pictorialism, there would be nothing for the members of the f/64 group to rebel against.

I recently picked up a couple books on the movement. My favorite is the book on Europe's take (see Impressionist Camera). The pictures in this book are soooo cool!

I would love to join a local, regional, or even national pictorial photo club/group. If anyone knows of one or wants to create one, please contact me ASAP.

Tags: Pictorialism, books

On Saturday I tried to shoot glass, attempting to get rid of all reflections and achieve a nice professional look.

I borrowed a shooting tent which I thought might help me get good diffused light on the glass as I don't have softboxes and was told umbrellas probably won't do the trick. However, from my own experience the tent is not for glass (although that doesn't mean it can't be done). My attempts with the tent made be frustrated and I decided to take a break and come back to it later. After a 4 hour break, I quickly gave up on the tent and decided to try using two strobes very close together acting as a single light source and a big circular diffusor (probably 36" in diameter). I then placed some black felt down the middle of the diffusor which will give me black glass with white out lines (that's the goal anyway).

Much to my surprise my first attempt with this particular set up worked immediately. Nice distinct lines and absolutely no reflections, awesome! I played around with the distance the subject was from the light source which does have an affect of the thickness of the white lines on the glass. I then tried adding some newly purchased color filters on the strobes (one red, the other blue). The filters really spiced up the glass with red lines on one side and blue lines on the other.

I then tried to make just the opposite: white glass with black lines. In order to do this, you basically reverse the setup. Place the black whatever (felt in my case) on the right and left sides of the light source instead of down the middle. I couldn't get that to work after a few minutes of trying. It was getting late in the night so I decided to go back to my original set up as I knew I could that to work. Problem was I couldn't reproduce it. No matter how I varied the size of the black felt on the light source or played with the distance the subject was from the black felt, I kept on getting reflections on the glass subject; very frustrating. A few questions I believe will help me get consistent results in the future: what determines the width of the black felt in my white on black setup? How do I know how wide is too wide or too narrow? Also, say I want the subject to be wider. What do I need to do to allow for a wider black felt strip but also give me the same results?

Here's a few pictures of my attempts of shooting glass:
















This picture may be too small for you to see, but at the bottom of this bottle I see very odd reflections. Before shooting even started I tried to rub a label off the bottom but I gave up leaving some glue from the sticker. I can see the glue 3 or 4 different places in this picture. Plus I can see what I believe is 2 or 3 different reflections of my circular diffusor but I'm not entirely certain as it appears rather warped (notice the read egg shaped thing). My guess is this is caused by the many glass surfaces joining together and the end piece is rather thick.

Tags: studio, lighting, glass

On Friday I decided to run to the supermarket and buy a bouquet of flowers and shoot them using light from a north facing window. The light in that window is create because there is never direct sunlight and the light is always very diffuse.

I'm discovering bouquets of flowers are great to shoot because the other flowers and plants help establish far more interesting backgrounds instead of a solid boring black, white, etc. The other stuff in the bouquet not only act as a background but also an interaction between background and subject and as you'll soon notice a blurring of foreground and background into one.

I soon realized that the bouquet isn't enough of a background as I was noticing the color of my carpet, table, windows, and even sky and clouds appearing in the distant background. So I decided to get a white towel to place on top of the table which worked wonderfully. I don't think I have used a white background before and was quite pleased with the results.

Tags: flowers, studio

I have an upcoming group gallery showing of 4 of my photographs in the month of June. The name of the gallery is Infusion Gallery of LA. Visit them at www.infusiongallery.com

Here's the dates:

Show: June 1-25, 2008
Opening Reception: June 12, 2008

I hope to be there the evening of the opening reception. Although not my first gallery show, my first with 4 photographs and my first actually being there seeing them on a wall for all to see (I plan on attending the evening of the 12th).

So when I heard the gallery was interested in my work of course I was pretty excited. A few days ago I suddenly realized that my work isn't finished. Its an accomplishment to get my work in a gallery but I still need to convince people to buy the prints. That then leads to me to figuring out how to advertise and convince people to come to a group show, not a solo show. I don't know many people living in or around LA. How do I convince either complete strangers to show up or people I do know living in the Bay Area to drive several hours just to see 4 photographs? Hopefully the gallery itself will be far more successful.

Tags: gallery, fine art, exhibit

I decided to take a look at Lightroom's preferences using OS 10's defaults command earlier this evening.

Found a few interesting settings (use caution modifying application preferences):
1. useSpeechRecognition = NO;
This one has to be the most interesting. Speech Recognition in a photo app? Seems useful in the library, but I can't imagine adjusting images using my voice as it seems too difficult for the end user. Problem is I don't know what verbal commands, if any, Lightroom responds. Please let me know if you come up with anything.

2. animationSpeed = 1;
-This appears to help make the GUI a bit snapper drawing the interface. I noticed the side panels draw immediately as opposed to drawing gradually.

DEFAULT VALUE: 1
NOTES: I set it to 2 and it appeared slower and I set it to 0 and it appeared faster. I think I'll keep it at zero.

3. "AgLightsOut_screenShade" = 0.5;
-I haven't tried modifying this setting's value but I assume changing its number will affect the amount of shading Lights Out mode has.

4. "AgProgressView_visible" = NO;
-I see "progress", "view", and "visible" and I immediately assume this enables/disables a progress window, sheet, etc. However, whenever I change this to YES, the app seems to reset it to NO on launch. Thus I have yet to see this functioning with its value set to YES.

5. useTestUpdateSite = NO;
-Switching this over to YES and then launch Lightroom, you'll immediately notice some sort of debugging window. However I have yet to figure out how to use it. Please let me know if you find a use for this.

Tags: software, Lightroom

I don't have much to report at the moment as I've been rather busy with my day job.

I mailed my print to The Center of Fine Art Photography for the upcoming group exhibit this morning. And I have been invited to participate in another group show (should have 4-5 photos in this one) which will be in the Spring or Summer of this year. I'll have more details of the show hopefully soon.

I just stumbled on an interesting web site earlier today that allows users of Lightroom to modify which metadata fields are shown, how they are displayed, etc. Visit this blog entry on Jeffrey Friedl's Blog for more info.

Tags: software, Lightroom

Ah man. I've been too busy moving into a new apartment, Thanksgiving and now Christmas, and at work I'm going at full steam to take any photographs. I did get a chance a few days around Thanksgiving but nothing too interesting, mostly pictures of the family. But I get the week of Christmas off from work so maybe I can get something going even for just a few hours one day that week.

I just received an email from The Center of Fine Art Photography ( www.c4fap.org ) informing me that the results of one of their entry calls has been posted to their web site. Although I'm busy now and haven't done much promoting and marketing of my work for about a month now, I did enter maybe 5 - 7 gallery entry calls. One in particular I tried to hit fairly hard by entering 9 of my best work. The theme for the call is "Macro World". Exactly up my alley.

I'm happy to announce that I have been selected (along with 47 other people) and will have one of my photographs (shown below) displayed for sale at the center. The center, for those that are interested, is located in Fort Collins, CO. And the gallery show is from February 29, 2008 to March 22, 2008.

Since the exhibit is in March of next year, maybe I should take a trip to Fort Collins, CO.

The Center of Fine Art Photography's "2008 Macro World Exhibition"
Additional information


"Parsec"

Tags: gallery, fine art

FINALLY!!!

exiftool is my answer to my migration to Lightroom troubles. I use the tool quite a bit for reading metadata from image files but for some reason its writing capabilities totally escaped me until someone at work reminded that it will do what I need it to do.

For a month or two I have been on the hunt for a tool that will aid me to move particular metadata (ratings, keywords , and title are most important to me) from my iView Media Pro catalogs to Lightroom. For some reason I thought I needed a XMP merge utility which I couldn't find. iVMP is Applescript scriptable, but Lightroom isn't (thanks Adobe). I tried to script Photoshop CS3 but never found a way to set an image's rating (don't know why this isn't available).

Like I said eventually someone told me that exiftool will write to XMP but without damaging pre-existing XMP files (my image adjustments were too valuable for me to loose). So I wrote up an Applescript that gets particular metadata from iVMP and then sends that data to exiftool as an argument which then writes that data to the associated XMP file.

Anyway, it works pretty good as I've been using it all night. The big drawbacks I've seen thus far is 1. its kinda slow. Takes a minute or two to process 50-100 files and 2. I designed it to process only one container (directory, catalog set, etc) at a time. Has its advantages and disadvantages. I wrote the script in this manner so I could then re-read the XMP for each folder once the script is finished in Lightroom.

Download here.

There is more documentation in the header of the script. The script is provided for free (as *all* scripts should be) and strictly "AS IS". I'm unable to provide any level of technical support. If you want to improve it in anyway, please email me the changes so I can merge them in and allow the general community access.

Tags: software, Lightroom, Applescript

A couple of weeks ago, a large group of about 100 people from work took a day trip to the Napa Valley. Most of us took pictures along the way.

Below are several highlights from the trip. I'd like to go back up their and do it all over again but this time go by myself so I can take my sweet time jumping from one garden to the next. I also included some photos I took during that trip that have a Halloween theme. Enjoy!























These are streams of water from a fountain found on at a winery (I can't remember the winery's name).










And now for the Halloween photos. The following are of a fairly elaborate Halloween decoration outside someone's house a few of use discovered a few hundred feet from one of the wineries we visited. Although it was rainy, we had to check it out. Happy Halloween.

Tags: Napa Valley, flowers, outdoors

Since the beginning of this month I have two of my photographs exhibited in an online art gallery exhibit, entitled the 9th Annual Abstraction International Art Exhibition. The gallery's name is the Upstream People Gallery.

Sometime during September I came across a call to entry of theirs (which they have many) and decided to enter. I don't think its a huge deal but I am pretty happy about it as it should help me to increase my exposure which is awesome. Unfortunately my name nor my work was mentioned in the juror's statement as I hoped it would. But like I said two of my pieces have been included and that should draw some interest in my flower photography.

One problem I noticed is their posting of my photographs appear rather de-saturated. I just emailed them concerning this and I hope the gallery can help me address the issue soon.

Feel free to let me know what you think of them; good or bad.

I plan on entering part of my portfolio and some other work in two entry calls in November. One call has a theme of "portfolio" (only 8 images and mine is currently at 16) and the other's theme is "macro". I'm very excited about the latter as I think I have the greater chance of being selected. Read more on the web site for The Center For Fine Art Photography. If there are any photographs shown on my web site anyone feels strongly about in which you think I should consider entering, please feel free to contact me. I'm always interested in feedback; positive or negative. Any feedback is so much better than none at all.

Tags: gallery, fine art, exhibit

Like I said I will probably write some more on Still Life With... later and this is it.

Like I said earlier this blog is devoted to food photography. The author is I believe a software developer turned pro food photographer (though at the moment I can't seem to find the page to verify that so I could be incorrect). Anyway, that in and of itself gives me lots of encourage that someone else has switched gigs from computers to photography.

Granted the site is all about food photography she does give some tips on general still life and macro work. Thus even if you're not interested in shooting food, it is still work checking out.

I'm trying to sell my Canon EF 100-400 F/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens. I told a guy at work about it just to see if he was interested. He's not but he thinks maybe someone else he knows might be interested in buying it. Its in very good condition. I believe I have owned it for about year and half but have only used it 2-3 times and it has always had a UV filter on the front. Hopefully I can find a buyer for it soon.

Why am I selling it? In a year and half I have used it 2 times, 3 times max. Obviously I don't have a need for it. So I'd to sell it and buy Canon's 180mm f/3.5L Macro lens. It should give me a different perspective than the 100mm Macro as well as increase my focusing distance which would be nice if I ever get back into shooting splashes. So the guy at work is up for selling his to me and he let me borrow it in order to check it out over the weekend.

This afternoon I decided to give it a quick try with the flowers I shot 2 nights ago. My initial impression is I like it but man is it heavy compared to the other macro lens. Hand holding it isn't much fun. Tomorrow I hope to take it outside to try out the autofocus as well as smaller apertures. I'm already sold on getting it, its just a matter of selling my lens first so I can in turn use the money to buy this lens.

Here's some of the photos I took earlier today:

Tags: gear, flowers, studio

Last night I picked up a bouquet and a few sunflowers on the way home. I decided to shoot in my kitchen using the counter, sink, and cabinets as a backdrop. Check out a few of the shots below; some of them are taken in the studio as well.

While randomly surfing the net, I found this blog - Still Life With... Although it is food photography related its not a bad resource for general still life work, equipment, and technique. Also it has been providing me encouragement as the author is a software developer turned food photographer which is similar to myself (granted I'm not quite there....YET). I'll probably write more about this site later but I have to go to bed now.

Tags: studio, flowers

Today I decided to pick up a flower bouquet to shoot. I too often shoot single or maybe double flowers and some times several but of one kind. So I thought I'd mix it up a bit and try to get one with a early fall look.

Before I get to them, I mailed 12 postcards to various people include past customers, editors of flower or gardening magazines, and a few interior decorators. I think I'll be surprised to hear that the postcard trigger just one of those people to visit this site but who knows. It cost me very little to make and mail them and there is a possibility. I plan on actually making contact either through email or written letter to those editors in hopes to get some of my work published.

And here are some of today's photos...

Tags: studio, flowers

Last night I shot some more roses. Went to the grocery store and the only thing that seemed interesting of their selection were the roses. I wanted to practice shooting and lighting as well as keep my creativity exercised. But in the end I think I ended a Sunday afternoon with some good images.

Before I show them I recently got the idea of mixing water into my flower photography. I won't reveal all my ideas, not until I have the pictures anyway. One idea has to do with the submersion of a bloom in water. When I came up with the idea, I didn't realize that flowers float. Now I realize, due to experience, they do in fact float. The problem with that is...I don't want them to float. Now I need to find a way to keep them submerged without me holding them down constantly.

And yes, I'm still in backup hell. I have all my flower shots backed up, now I'm working on all my personal images and then on to other general images. I expect to have 2 sets of over 100 DVDs when I'm finished. I have no idea how to I'll do incremental backups. Besides the image files themselves I also need to keep the XMP files from Photoshop & Lightroom as they contain the all important adjustments metadata.

Finally, on Sept. 9, 2006 (a year ago) my Canon 5D arrived at my door step. I bought it as at the time I thought the digital instantaneous results and no cost usage would allow me to experiment more than what film allows. Well after 1 year's of use, I still believe that to be true. I estimate I have taken over 19,000 pictures with it. That's a lot of exposures in a year. I'm not sure how many I have kept, but its definitely a small fraction of the total.

And now for the photos...




I intently adjusted this to be dark. I may lighten it but just a bit for the finished product. But this should be pretty close the real deal. I wanted the look of early morning or evening light indoors.


I really dig the edges of the rose petals here; interesting patterns. Unfortunately, at this size its probably too small to notice what I'm talking about. Also, at the bottom the leaves and stems have a nice layering effect that makes them appear like they are vibrating.




Originally this was in the portrait orientation (rotated 90 degrees).




The Container Store sells, among many other things, pieces of plastic that is meant to be used to line shelves so that small things don't fall through. Several months back I bought such a piece for my shelves in my studio. I haven't used it until placing it in front of the rose and here's the result. Very moody as a rose shot probably should be.


In a book I recently read about human vision and the visual arts, there is a section where the author discusses two systems that make up human vision: the where system and the what system. In order to help explain the two systems she discusses the famous Mona Lisa painting. As visual aids she creates versions of the painting that resemble what the where system sees when looking at it and what the what system sees. This image reminds me of those visual aids (look at it as if you are using your peripheral vision and not your center of gaze).


Also, the histogram for this picture is odd. RGB components appear to be almost completely separated (though they don't appear so in the image) and there doesn't appear to be much luminance data.


Above is what the histogram originally looked like. I obviously widen it to add contrast (mostly to add more blacks).


A shadow of a rose in a clear vase on a piece of foamcore.

Tags: studio, flowers

I probably won't be posting many pictures for the next couple of weeks as I am actively involved in backing up 390 GB of photos onto a bunch of DVDs. Oh joy!

I decided to use Toast 8.0 to burn the DVDs as it also comes with a disc cataloging application which I hope will make it easier to find a particular disc contain a particular image on it. And I am making two copies of the backups for double insurance. I plan on storing one copy here in my office at home and in my office at work. The discs I bought are made from Taiyo Yuden as I've been told make very high quality DVD+R disks. Hopefully I can depend on them for the next 20-50 years.

Tags: backup

Coming up with good blog entry titles is tough. As you can see I'm very creative with words ;)

Recently I have acquired a Vivitar 285HV and bought a Canon 430EX speedlight. I want to use more flash in my photography from shooting flowers to people.

Every once in a while I'll also check out the Strobist website which if anyone is interested in a cheap way to learn lighting, check it out. The Strobist web site recommended Light: Science and Magic as THE lighting book to read and learn from so I recently bought it and started to read it. After about 30 pages in I realized I need to start taking notes and keeping a lighting notebook. I'm sure it'll help considerably in learning lighting theory.

The reason I want to use these particular strobes versus my two monolights from Alien Bees is because it takes much less time to set up a shot using the speedlights than it does the monolights & much less room.

I also recently bought an umbrella bracket made by Manfrotto which will help me put a speedlight on a light stand that I already own instead of awkwardly hand holding it and allow me to use the flash with an umbrella which is pretty cool. Two complaints about this particular bracket: 1. no usage instructions (also my No. 1 complaint on every photo bag. Great all these cool features, now how do I use them?) and 2. the locking mechanism to keep the flash in a particular position seems weak. I'm sure it'll hold a flash and umbrella, but I'd prefer to have something much tighter and thereby making me a bit more confident in my setup. Also, I bought a screw on flash shoe that screws onto the bracket makes the flash point in a particular direction and not in 360 degrees. If I want the flash to be pointed 90 degrees I have to loosen something and again I don't like that as the flash may not stay exactly where I want it and makes me wary of the setup crashing down on me.

Speaking of no instructions, I also bought a Wein Peanut Slave that I want to use with the Vivitar (thought I could use the Canon as the master). I plug the thing into the Vivitar but I can seem to figure out how to trigger the damn thing. Arghhh!!!

Tags: studio, lighting, gear

For anyone trying to improve their composition skills or in need of a good read, I highly recommend Vision and Art: The Biology of Seeing by Margaret S. Livingstone.

The book attempts to educate the reader on the basics of how the eye and brain works and how then the reader can apply that knowledge in visual artwork which is the reason why I bought and read it. I hope to apply the principles from the book in my photography and thereby make more visually appealing photographs. Besides the whole art side of things, its also a good book to read for those interested in science, medicine, and psychology (although there may be better related books).

Tags: biology, vision, composition

Last night I took some quick shots of a few roses I bought at the grocery store. I wanted to just shoot them normally as I really liked the color of the roses (a few were dual-toned) and to help start the creative juices flowing. I was cut short a bit due to time (was getting too late at night) but I think I was able to make worthy of posting. I re-used my make shift snoot with my Canon flash. The snoot is just a cone made out of regular 8.5x11 printer paper taped to the flash. I have a few new ideas I hope to explore later this week.

Unrelated: I bought a flash shoe adapter for a light stand so I can put my Vivitar or Canon flash on a light stand instead of hand holding them or velcroing them to a stand. And 200 or so DVDs so I can finally backup my scans and digital photos. I have probably 400-500 GB of photos (I want to try to trim that number down a bit) and I've never backed up any of the photos. I plan on doing that very soon (still need to formulate a plan).

And on to the pictures...

Tags: flowers, lighting, studio

I just discovered a seminar for photographers and photo buyers that will be touring through a few cities in the US.

http://www.photoshelter.com/citytour/

It looks to help photographers get in touch with buyers as well as learn from other photographers on selling, promoting, and marketing their work. Since its free, I thought I'd go and one of the cities it be in is San Francisco. Might be worth the effort to attend for any emerging photographers such as myself out there.

I received my note cards and mini cards from Moo in the mail tonight. For the most part I'm pretty happy and a little surprised.

First my grievances...ordering multiple items from Moo seems to be a pain. If you try to order multiples of the same product, that's easy. Try ordering say 1 mini card set and 1 note card set all in one order. I couldn't find a way. Never saw a "continue shopping" button or something similar. So I was forced to make two separate orders and thus may full price for shipping. Its gotta be cheaper to mail things in a larger container than mail several small packages. And I'd like if the mini cards were twice as wide. If I have to pay twice the amount or get half the number of cards, fine. The mini cards are cool, but coming from a photography point of view, its tough trying to get a good portion of an image on one of those cards. Instead I have to really be selective (which can be cool and fun but if you are wanting to use them as advertisement materials, I think its best to include photos that represents your work not just a portion.).

And now what I like...The note cards are cool. I dig em. I really like how thick the card stock they use and the feel of them. I think the card stock is laminated. The cards themselves and Moo's packaging remind me of Apple's packaging. Granted they don't conform to a 3:2 ratio, they are large enough to place a decent amount of your photo on them (maybe similar to cropping a 3:2 image to an 8x10). But at the same time they are small, but the right kind of small. And I liked the look of the text you can have Moo print on the back. I included a copyright symbol and name on one line in the center of the back of the card and my name and URL at the bottom. Looks good and looks professional. Maybe work not only as advertising but maybe as promotion too. And I dig the small side flap. The extra paper that is small but enough to make the whole piece called a "note card". The flap is great at propping the card up for display on a desk. No frames necessary.

The mini cards seem fun. I think I went the wrong route with them. Instead of using them to show off my work seriously, maybe I should design each card with the idea that I need to heavily crop. That way I go through my library looking for small components to print. Then use them as small business cards and use them to generate intrigue to drive web traffic.

Tags: promotion, printing, cards

Finally I can now say its finished. Granted it'll always be a work in progress, but I can now say its fit for viewing as "my portfolio".

Its theme is flower photography, surprise surprise. 16 pictures, 1 from film, 15 from my 5D. Surprisingly, there are a few taken from the last 6 months or so. Then again maybe I've considerably improved my composition and technique in the last 6 months.

Anyway below is the link. I haven't integrated into the site yet. I want to make some changes and I'll add it in then. Until that happens, the link is below. I've provided an html version and a flash version for those with preferences. Enjoy

html version


flash version

Tags: portfolio

Last week I was sick at home for 2 days and found www.moo.com (based in London). At this moment, they will take your images in make stickers, note cards, and small cards. Could be used to spread my name and work. I want to try them out soon.

On the higher end side, check out www.paperchase.net. They seem to have some good product ideas (I dig their products listed under "Photographer Promos" especially their accordion style cards). The problem I have with them is their price sheet listed on the web. I have no idea why they do it but it doesn't all that comprehensive and thus requires some contact them. I'm not too happy about having a saleman or saleswoman push stuff on me as I normally push them away even if they are selling something so awesome and at a cheap price. Seems to me they are fighting the benefits of being on the web and making it more difficult for the customer than it needs to be. Maybe after I sell more prints I'll contact them. Their cards would be good to help differentiate yourself from others.

Tags: promotion, printing

I showed the images I was considering for inclusion in my flower portfolio to someone at work in order to get some feedback other than my own. I was told one of the roses (the pink one) didn't quite fit and after talking with the person I agreed. So I removed that image as well as one of the purple calla lily shots (I had two). Also I added one of my recent photographs. The grand total so far is 16 images.

At this point this portfolio will be geared toward my work on shooting flowers and intended for a general audience. Once its complete I'll make portfolios that are gear for a particular publication, person, gallery, etc in order to fit their needs / tastes.

I decided to make several methods of viewing the portfolio (still a work in progress, probably always will be but for now its not "finished").

Galleries
portfolio_flash (link removed)

portfolio_html (link removed)


Slideshow PDF (works best in Adobe Reader 8)
1024 x 768 (Desktop/Laptop) (link removed)

320 x 240 (iPhone) (link removed)


**I'm sure at some point the above links will be dead because I'll either rename the directories or I'll eliminate one or more of the choices.

Tags: portfolio

In the past I've steered clear of shooting roses. The first couple of attempts turned out boring. Never was happy with my time with roses as I thought they didn't have much to offer to the macro photographer.

Last Saturday I attended a family party and walked away with a vase full of flowers. When I got home I decided I would shoot them before going to bed and below are some of the highlights of that shoot.

At the moment, all of my lighting equipment was put away and tucked into the closet. So I decided to use my speedlight. At first I played around more with different lighting positions before I got the idea of making a snoot out of a piece of paper. I took a scrap piece of paper from my printer and rolled it up so I could tape one end to the speedlight and took the other end and rolled it up a bit tighter so as to direct the light in a smaller circle. What turned out to be a snoot also allowed me to use it as a diffused light source by turning the light so that the light coming through the paper is directed at the flower (point the snoot end away from the flowers; maybe towards the ceiling or nearby wall). I really enjoyed using it and I think I'll use it again. I want to find a better way of back lighting flowers so that the flower is completely (or partially) lit from the behind and appears glowing. As for the roses, I think I really enjoyed myself as I tried to focus on the overall shape and textual instead of the components that make up the rose.

Tags: roses

A few minutes ago the count of images I have under consideration for inclusion into my portfolio came down to 19. My target count is 10-20.

Like I said in an earlier post, my mission is for this portfolio to represent my best work in flower photography (I may compile a more generic all encompassing portfolio later).

I've decided to post the images right here. I haven't quite committed to them so the picks may change and even the total image count. Since there are 19 in all, I decided to make the image size quite small. I thought it would be faster to load. If you think they are too small, when I get my selections finalized I'll post the portfolio using a larger image size.

Tags: portfolio

Just before I hopped on a plane to Amsterdam to celebrate my honeymoon with my wife, I read that the Safari Beta released by Apple is the only browser that supports ICC color profiles embedded in images posted to the web. News to me and that totally amazes me. Just now?!?!?!!!!

That explains even why my images appear different in Safari running OS 10 and Firefox running OS 10. This has annoyed me since I first started this web site, nevermind the colors not matching on a different OS. Supposedly Firefox will be following the lead. Hopefully MS do so very soon as well in IE.

Tags: Safari, web browser

DAM software meaning "Digital Assist Management software". Some popular examples are Adobe's Lightroom, Apple's Aperture, Microsoft's Expression Media (formally known as iView Media Pro).

My current number one problem with all of these software titles is not one provides the ability to adopt it well. Say you are currently using iView Media Pro for your DAM software and Photoshop for your image editor. Then Lightroom is just released; the all in one package from Adobe. When you use Photoshop your record all your image adjustments to disk using Adobe's XMP files. Today you want to switch to Lightroom because you like some of the features and think it would be better to use a single software application to handle all your needs. Great. One question? How do you get your metadata out of iVMP and into Lightroom? Well iVMP will export metadata using XMP files. Awesome you say. One problem. Using iVMP to export the metadata to disk will overwrite your image adjustments that currently exist. All your hard work adjusting images will be all down the drain. What to do?

Great question. Who has an answer? I want to switch to Lightroom, please help. Email me here.

What amazes me the most about this problem is not one of the big DAM software companies produce such a mechanism to perform an easy and quick adoption. They seem to expect that photographers will have no problem dropping their current solution and pick there's up at a drop of a hat with no problems. No one has time to figure this out and certainly no one has time to solve this problem manually. XMP helps but without the ability to merge XMP files, it isn't a complete solution.

Tags: DAM Software, Lightroom, iView Media Pro, Aperture, metadata

I'm finally getting around to working on a photography portfolio. Oh and by the way, I'm back from my honeymoon married and all (had a great time). I'll use it to sell my work to galleries, potential print customer, web visitors, etc. As I'm working on it, I am thinking about selling the prints found in the portfolio as a package. I'm still thinking about it because I'm not sure how to sell it. Its possible I'll abandon the idea of selling all together.

Putting together a portfolio isn't an easy task. I haven't consultant any books, guides, etc on doing so either. I think it'll be interesting to see what I can do with using the idea that it should sell my work to anyone to sees it (or in other words put forth my best work that helps to illustrate my skills, talent, etc.) guide me in its assemblage. The image count I'm hoping to achieve is 10-20. Something to think about is how to present this portfolio. Which binder should I use? Which size should the prints be (as of now I'm thinking about 8x12")?

Once I am finished I will publish it on this web site for all visitors to view. Be sure to tell me what you think of it.

Tags: portfolio

Below are some more splash photos I just took a few hours ago using the Canon 5D and a Vivitar 285HV flash. Earlier I bought a Canon 430EX flash from a shop down the road. I normally wouldn't have bought such a pricey piece of equipment locally due to the markup and I told myself I wouldn't buy this flash until after my honeymoon, but I went on an impulse buy anyway.

Anyway, on to the splashes. Most of the splashes are of milk and the under side of a glass. I read somewhere recently that milk is better than water because water is too transparent. And I read that the flat surface or shallow liquid gives you larger, more dramatic splashes and after today's shoot I have to agree.


I really enjoy the splash within a splash. No idea how that happened, but I was able to get it occur a few times. My guess is the first splash was so large it launched a drop of milk that just happen to land in the center of the first splash.












Instead of milk I used orange juice (if this picture were larger you can actually see the pulp in the splash itself). I switched to OJ just to see if that made much difference. My conclusion is for me to see differences like that I have to have a better set up that would allow me to get consistent results. As of now I'm hand holding the syringe and I don't have a trigger (other than me). Maybe by the end of the year I'll get a delay and electric trigger. However, I'm still trying to see if I'll continue on with this high speed photography thing or if its just a quick phase of interest for me. We'll see.

Tags: splash, high speed photography

A few times in March I borrowed a flash from a coworker and shot water splashes. Which happens to be alot of fun. Granted I really had no control over the splashes it was exciting waiting to see what the camera captured. After about an hour using a small eye dropper I decided to walk to the local drug store to see what I could find that would give me larger drops. After pacing the isles I found some sort of syringe you normally use to feed medicine to small infants.

I just bought a used flash and I hope to explore more splashes this weekend. Here is some of the pictures I took in March.

Tags: splash, high speed photography

On April 15th and May 6th I shot some roses and calla lilies. In the past I've had trouble shooting roses. At the time I really wasn't sure why, but for some reason something wasn't working for me. Something about the roses themselves. I decided to challenge myself and I picked up a few roses. Before doing so, the idea of shooting flowers on the window sill sounded very cool (seems like a likely place for someone to place them). So I shot the roses and lilies on the sill in my studio/office. I think the outdoor lighting and trees provided some pleasing background for my shots.

In my opinion available sunlight coming from a window is the best light that I've ever come across. It looks natural, obviously, and it "sets" well lighting the flowers. I can't explain it more than that. If sunlight and strobe lighting could get in a shoot out on the ice, sunlight would win every time.

Last Thursday I went to the Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with a few co-workers from work. The greatest thing about the day: it was work related but I wasn't working. How awesome.

I used my Canon 5D and a Canon 100mm Macro and occasionally the Canon 15mm fisheye lens. I need to get outside more and shoot flowers instead of locking myself inside all the time. And speaking of which, I should visit the two centers in SF devoted to plants and flowers (their name has escaped me at the moment) soon. Maybe after I return from my honeymoon in July They will have far more variety of flowers which will help build my inventory of images, not to mention much needed exposure to shooting flowers outdoors.

Anyway, here are a few pics from that day:




Tracking a small moving insect in the wind isn't easy. Due to shallow depth of field and the wind, this little guy is barely in focus.


I found this small blossom on top of a small concrete bridge in the park. I believe this one and the others on the bridge came from a nearby bridge. When I noticed them while walking by I realized the concrete and the flower played well together (life vs. cold concrete, life ON concrete, animation & inanimate object).