My Echo

My Echo - isn't she precious?  I adopted my kitty on August 13, 2010 and she is about a year old now.  She's a sweet little cat, but like all cats she has a very mischievous side.  In the past year I have taken dozens of pictures of Echo sleeping or bathing or exploring the corners of the house or, much like this one, sitting for a photo session.  I decided to try something a little different this time - black on black.  As I look at this picture I think there are a hundred things I could have done differently, but I love it anyway.  Just look at the sweet face and chubby little body.  I like the exposure and the rich black of the leather chair and her fur. 

My intent was to feature her soft velvety fur and her green eyes.  I supposed I could have kicked the exposure up just a stop or moved the strobe over to my right instead of setting it up on my left.  I should have also corrected the white balance or increased the warmth of the picture and bumped up the contrast so her eyes would really stand out.  Those eyes are actually much brighter in reality.  The position of the horizontal and vertical seams in the chair are a little distracting so maybe I should have placed Echo a little farther to the left.

I shot this with my Tamron 28-70mm f/2.8, mounted on my Canon Xsi, at 59mm and ISO 200.  My 580EX flash was positioned camera right and bounced off the silver lining of the umbrella.  I need to experiment more.  Maybe next time I should take off the black cover and shoot the flash through the umbrella.

Fourth With Friends

Good friends of mine invited me to their 4th of July party held on the 3rd.  Good times with great friends!  This is my friend Kerry and her two dogs.  China, on the left, was found by one of her friends roaming the streets of Las Vegas like a showgirl in crisis about five years ago.  Cinnamon, on the right, was adopted from a rescue in LA two or three weeks ago.  Both very sweet dogs and extremely lucky to be living with Kerry and her husband.

I brought my strobe kit with me, which consists of a 40" collapsible umbrella with a removable black exterior and silver interior, light stand, bracket, and a 530EX II Speedlite.  Oh...and a Canon ST-E2 Transmitter to trigger the flash.  I used my workhorse, the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8.  It was the perfect occasion to take pictures of my friends and get some photography practice in.

I set up as soon as it got dark.  The Speedlite was mounted on the bracket and lightstand, with the silver interior of the umbrella to bounce the flash, and placed camera left.  I adjusted the height for this shot so that it was aimed at a 45 degree angle to Kerry.  I set the flash on ETTL, automatic metering, because I have not had much practice with the manual setting.  Shooting friends at a party just isn't the right time for that kind of slow experimentation.  The ISO is at 1600 and aperture at 2.8, but I would have loved to use ISO 400 or less and aperture at 4.0 or 5.6, but I'm shooting with a Canon 450D (not exactly a fast camera).  Additionally, the Tamron lens requires slower shutter speed than my kit lens and my Canon 50mm.  I don't know why that is, but it seems to be a common affliction amongst Canon-mounted Tamron users.  In post processing I used Canon's DPP.  I bumped the exposure up by one stop, slightly increased contrast and saturation.  The white balance was set to auto, which turned out great, but I am colorblind so you might see differently.  I should have done a custom balance but I had issues last time I did that - shots came out too warm.

I really love this picture.  Kerry is a great subject, she looks wonderful on camera (and off) and dogs are always good subjects.  I really like the exposure and lighting.  The sharpness is nice, but when viewed large it is a little soft.  I would have liked it sharper, but I was using such a large aperture setting to get the best shutter speed.  The sidewalk lamp on her right shoulder is a little distracting, as is the plant jutting into the frame on the left.  I would have also loved for Cinnamon to be facing the camera to get some light in her eyes like China's, but dogs don't always understand English.  China loves to have her picture taken.  I had a little photo session of her own later that night and she was very cooperative.  In retrospect maybe I should have shot further back so I can get their feet on the ground, instead of cutting half of their legs off.  But that would have presented other issues, like the light stand being in the frame.

"Waiting"

Waiting

I titled this image, "Waiting."  Waiting for the sun, waiting for their people, waiting to sail on the open sea. I took this shot about two weeks ago at Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay.  The lens I used on my Canon 450D is the Tamron SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8.  Of all my lenses this gets the most use because of its versatility.  I like the focal length and the aperture size and it takes pretty sharp pictures.  What I don't like about it is that I have to compensate for exposure.  The lens generally underexposes by a stop or two.  When I first started using it it was frustrating and I thought I had made a mistake in buying it, but I have gotten used to it.  The other point of frustration in the beginning is that it photographs a bit warmer than my Canon kit lens and the nifty-fifty.  The nifty-fifty is probably my favorite lens and the kit lens is rarely used these days.  I set the camera body in AE mode, with the f-stop at 4.0, and I had a circular polarizer on the lens.  I wanted the boats to be sharp and the water and sky a little softer.  The filter was on my lens because I had been a little further south where it was sunny and I just never took it off.

When I was composing the shot I knew immediately I wanted to do a black and white conversion.  I used Canon's DPP for post process and I switched the picture style from faithful to monochrome.  I then added the red filter effect and bumped up the contrast to bring out the variation in the foggy sky.  I like the conversion and the sharpness.  The composition and framing might need a little work.  I tried to use the general rule of thirds, but it looks closer to fourths, so maybe I could have placed the boats a little higher in the framer.  I think the horizon is actually straight, but the pier and the shore I was standing on are not parallel so it looks as if it's higher on the right.

If someone in the blogosphere is reading this let me know what you think and give me some suggestions.

My first post!

See more at My Flickr Photostream

For my first post I thought I would start with my most recent piece of work, a self portrait, which I titled "...and then..." because it almost looks like I'm telling a story, maybe about a bird flying over and taking a crap on my head.  I took this photo with a on old 135mm Rexatar lense, mounted to my Canon Xsi (450D) with an M42 adapter.  I also used a 530EX Speedlite mounted onto the camera and a Gary Fong lightsphere.  The camera was on a tripod and triggered with a wireless remote.

First, why do I like this photo?  I like the black and white post processing and the sharpness.  I wasn't too happy with the exposure straight out of camera so I bumped it up a couple of stops and increased the contrast.  I'm against a wall in by bedroom and I like the shadow created.  I also like how my arm and head frame the negative space.  I was using a wireless remote in my right hand, just firing away and out of 30-something pictures this is the only one that I thought was the most decent (and even this one is crappy).

What do I not like?  What is my hand doing and where are my eyes?  It just looks awkward.  I think I was actually reaching up to fix my hair as my other hand pressed the trigger.  If it was more deliberate and there was tension in my hand and an expression in my eyes there might have been a story on the photo.  Under my arm in the far left is a distracting element - I'm sitting right next to a wall mounted mirror.  I should have cloned that frame out.

I bought this lens about a year ago for $30 in a small photography store.  The Rexatar is a challenge because it has to be focused manually.  And because my camera has a cropped sensor I have to set the camera way back just to get my head and shoulders into the frame.  Also when you view the LCD in live view the exposure is not as bright as the actual photograph.  If you adjust your exposure so it looks right in live view the actual photo you take is extremely overexposed.  Everything about this lens is manual and, because I have only played with this lens a few times and don't know it well, I found myself going back and forth every couple of shots to see how the shots are working out.  In addition to the stupid looks on my face, most of the shots were out of focus and the exposure entirely wrong.

For this particular shot I set the aperture to 8 (manually on the lens).  Larger aperture produced fuzzy pics.  My ISO was at 1600, which is noisy, but I don't mind that so much.