Villa Nandes

Digital Lo-Fi

2011-09-11T10:39:00.001-04:00

More Instagram Shots

2011-08-08T17:00:00.000-04:00

Shots taken with my iPhone and Instagram

Previous Instagram Post

My Old Film Cameras Pt. 4 - Spartus Full-Vue

2011-08-03T13:00:00.000-04:00

Yet another camera from the same friend's grandmother.

Spartus produced the Full-Vue in the U.S. between 1948 and 1960. Unlike the bulk of my vintage medium format finds, it's actually designed to take 120.

This one has had the shit kicked out of it, but from what I can tell, no light leaks.

Basic Specs

Aperture: f16
Shutter Speed: T,1/60
Focal Length: 97mm

Camerapedia
Flickr Group
Manual

Nephew

2011-07-28T14:59:00.004-04:00

My nephew Tyler Hunter Paton was born Tuesday morning at 12:49am. 7lbs 13 ounces.

My Old Film Cameras Pt. 3 - Kodak Vigilant Six-20

2011-07-26T08:00:00.001-04:00

This is the camera that got me excited about shooting film again. It came from the same house clearing that produced one of my Brownie Hawkeye's.

The Vigilant Six-20 is a compact folding medium format camera produced by Kodak between 1939 and 1949. It's meant to take 620 film, but I've managed to get 120 to work in it. The image format is 6x9(cm) rather than the usual 6x6.

The bellows are in terrible condition, so I've been painting on layers of black acrylic to kill the light leaks. I wouldn't recommend doing this if you ever want to close the camera again.

Basic Specs

Aperture: f6.3-f22
Shutter Speed: T,B,1/25-1/100
Focal Length: 105mm

Check the links below for more info on this model.

http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Camerapedia
Article on Matt Denton's Site
Article on Mike Connealy's Site
Manual

Instagram Shots

2011-07-24T09:00:00.001-04:00

Shots taken with my iPhone and Instagram

Isla

2011-07-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

Candid portrait of little Isla (pronounced Eye-Lah) Redmond. Her father and I used to be roommates. Shot with a hand-held strobe + shoot-through umbrella.

My Old Film Cameras Pt. 2 - Yashica Auto Focus

2011-07-20T16:10:00.001-04:00

This Yashica Auto Focus is a manual-wind, 35mm point and shoot. The only information I've been able find online is for the 'S' model which appears to be nearly identical to my camera. Most of the links at the bottom of this post are for the 'S' model.

This camera was given to me by a friend who bought a random box of electronics at a garage sale and had been sitting around for over 10 years before I finally ran a test roll through it.

I'll post samples from that test roll eventually.

Basic Specs

Aperture: f2.8 - f19 (Automatic)
Shutter Speed: 1/60 - 1/360 (Automatic)
Focal Length: 38mm
Built in Pop-up Flash

Camerapedia

Someone's Flickr Photo Set

Manual

Yashica Forum

Penny

2011-07-19T16:30:00.000-04:00

This is my 6 month old Shih-poo Penny. I had a table top studio set up to shoot my collection of old cameras and took the opportunity to shoot a quick portrait of her.

My Old Film Cameras Pt. 1 - Brownie Hawkeye

2011-07-17T17:18:00.008-04:00

I've recently acquired a bunch of old film cameras and have begun to clean them up and run test rolls through them. Ideally I'd like to start shooting with 2-3 of them regularly, especially when I can use them during a portrait shoot. The others should make nice decoration.

These Brownie Hawkeye's are both flash models, produced by Kodak between 1950 and 1961. My wife bought one of these at a flea market, and the other was found while a friend was cleaning out his grandparent's house.

They're meant to take 620 roll film, but I've managed to get by using (far more common) 120. As long as you have a 620 takeup spool in the camera, the plastic spool containing the film can be trimmed with scissors to fit.

If you come across one of these and want to use it, be sure to check out all the links at the bottom.

Basic Specs

Aperture: f14.5-16
Shutter Speed: 1/30 or bulb
Focal Length: 75-85mm

Manual
Extensive article on Kurt Munger's Site
Camerapedia entry
Flickr Group

'Paper Dolls' Promotional Shots

2011-07-13T20:00:00.000-04:00

Longtime photographic guinea pig Amberley is dropping a new album this month.

Being the photographic purist I am, Amberley was cloned several times in real life, rather than in Photoshop. Regrettably, Multiplicity style copying errors ensued resulting in a few 'slower' Amberleys. Try to figure out which is which.

Amberley on Facebook

Guest Post - Bus Ride Through Cuba

2011-07-09T21:41:00.006-04:00

Here are some vacation photos from my friend Pete, taken with a point and shoot during a bus ride through a colonial city between Santa Clara and the ocean in north central Cuba.

Rachel North

2011-07-03T14:55:00.004-04:00

Shots from my studio shoot with Ms. Rachel North.

She was a pleasure to work with and can be found here.

Pinhole Testing

2011-02-08T11:10:00.004-05:00

Test shots from the pinhole camera I just built out of foamcore board. It uses 5x7 sheets of black and white paper as the negative that are then scanned and inverted in Photoshop.

The paper was developed in a makeshift darkroom in my bathroom. I've been missing the darkroom for a while, but didn't want to deal with film negs and enlargers.

At least with a pinhole camera I have an excuse for shitty looking prints.

Exposures with paper are way slower than film. The ISO rating falls somewhere between 3 and 6. Based on the size of the pinhole and its distance from the paper, my f-stop is over 250.

After all that, reciprocity failure starts to kick in after 30 seconds.

The very first paper negative that managed to get a workable exposure (not shown)was in a room lit by regular tungsten bulbs and took over 5 hours to expose.

Click to embiggen.

This shot took about an hour

This was a 1 minute exposure in the shade of 'sunny 16' conditions

Now I need to build a camera that's tri-pod mountable and sturdy enough to use outside.

Monica In The Studio

2010-12-30T15:30:00.009-05:00

From my most recent studio shoot:

More From The Studio

2010-08-07T18:26:00.002-04:00

Another shot from the same shoot as my previous post.

Getting Used to the Studio

2010-07-27T23:25:00.011-04:00

It took months to get around to it, but I finally got myself into the studio down the street from my apartment to play around.

Before now I've only ever had to deal with speedlights and umbrellas, but the studio has of gear that I have very little experience with.

My usual guinea pig Amberley was available to help me test the studio out.

Click on the images to view full size.

Obviously I was going to make use of the biggest softbox I could find.

And the result of said softbox.

This was a failed attempt at something right before I switched setups involving gels and such. Monochrome salvage job FTW.

I totally admit this is biting multiple peoples styles, but I had to try out the gigantic boom with the small softbox.

Testing

2010-07-26T17:28:00.003-04:00

Check. Test. 1-2. 1-2.

Just trying out lightbox for displaying images larger without navigating away. I'm only a few years behind.

Check It

2010-07-19T11:51:00.002-04:00

Go check this book out:

Ancestor.

Watch the trailer, download a pdf, read a sample.

Sigler fucking rocks.

*Full discloser - I am trying to win a contest by sending you to that link, but if you look over in my sidebar, you'll see the Link to Sigler's website that's been there for years. If you think online link contests are douchey, then please use the link in the sidebar to go check out Scott's stuff.

Kirby on Tour

2010-06-14T21:32:00.006-04:00

Kirby needed a quick promo shot of him and and another musician he's touring with.

We also had nowhere studio-ish to shoot. And it was raining.

We shot this under CN bridge near the Burlington Go station.

1 speedlight with a shoot-through umbrella from above/front/camera right and 1 bare speedlight from the back/left for rimming.

Ambient is underexposed about 1 stop.

Studio Night

2010-04-05T22:13:00.003-04:00

The local photographer's guild (Latow) has studio nights several nights throughout the year and a few of them feature models.

The entire purpose is to introduce photographers to various studio lighting setups. I've only bothered to do post work on 1 shot from each setup.

I'll post setup links below each photo.

Setup Shot

Setup Shot

Additional Beach Shots

2009-12-21T16:08:00.004-05:00

More shots from our shoot on the beach. Each one is accompanied by a setup shot. With almost no cloud cover and fairly harsh mod-afternoon sun in play, I did my best to keep her in the shade and light her with speedlights.

Ashley at the Beach

2009-12-20T23:00:00.000-05:00

Near the end of the summer Ashley and I went shooting at the beach. It was an unseasonably windy and cold day, but she stuck it out.

No real lighting setup details to share other than the sun coming from behind/right of the subject, with her placed in the shade of the tree and some fill provided by the sand on the beach.

Bad Astronomy's Top 10 Astronomy Pictures of 2009

2009-12-16T09:02:00.004-05:00

Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy has published his Top 10 Astronomy pictures for 2009. Above is #4 and probably my favorite of the bunch.

This is what our sun could look like in another 6 billion years. The colours are representative of various gasses escaping from the dying star. Read the full description.

I'd love this 6 feet wide on my wall.

There's a zoomable version of it here.

Strobox

2009-12-13T20:14:00.003-05:00

Another awesome iPhone app for photographers. Strobox is what I used for my lighting diagram in the Movember post.

You can get it here.

This will really handy for transferring my hand written sketches to digital diagrams without having access to Photoshop (like on my daily train ride).

Kevin Kertz's version is an order of magnitude more versatile, but is a layered PSD and thus useless if I'm not on my home PC.

The only problem I'm having so far is the need to open the diagram in a piece of image editing software afterwards to ad notes (like F-stops, gel information etc).

Movember

2009-12-11T13:25:00.000-05:00

A few friends of mine participated in Movember this year. They grew mustaches and people donated money online to support Prostate Cancer Canada. I chose to donate, rather than allow one of those things on my face.

On the last day of November I recorded their horrendous facial hair for posterity. Once you stop laughing I'll go over the set-up details.

Super simple and quick set-up (we only had about 1/2 an hour before kick-off on Monday Night Football). Main light was a strobe in a white reflective umbrella. I choked up on the umbrella shaft to reduce the size of the light source and harden the shadow edges a bit. This also cut down on the background spill (there were lots of objects in the room that limited our positioning relative to the background, so I couldn't just move further away).

The kicker light was snooted and a 1/4 CTO was added.

I moved the main light around until I metered a full stop difference between the lit side and the shadow side of the face (F8 vs. F5.6) and shot at F7.1 (I like to shoot 1/3 stop brighter than the meter, generally).

The power/position on the kicker was adjusted until it metered 1 stop over main light. This gave me nice bright separation light without massively blowing anything out.

I'll be posting about this photo again soon when I go over the entire photoshop workflow.

Scott Sigler - Title Fight - Free Audio Content

2009-12-09T12:00:00.000-05:00

I listen to a ton of podcasts. They keep me sane during my full day Photoshop sessions (which I've had a lot of lately). Last week I cranked through all 10 episodes of Title Fight, which is a Sci-Fi/MMA novella written by Scott Sigler and Matt Wallace. All 10 episodes are available free at Sigler's site. Definitely worth a listen. Here are the direct download links:

Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Round 4
Round 5
Round 6
Round 7
Round 8
Round 9
Round 10

Hopefully the bastard adds Toronto to his next book tour so I can get all my frick'n books signed.

More on the iPhone

2009-12-09T00:05:00.000-05:00

My last post was about shooting with the iPhone. This one is about using the iPhone to help you shoot.

I downloaded an app called PhotoCalc

After you punch in your camera, lens length, aperture and distance from the subject, it will calculate your approximate depth of field. The DOF calculator was the main selling feature that got me, but the flash exposure calculator looks handy too.

Well worth the couple of bucks it cost me to download.

If only there was an app to turn the phone into a light meter...

iPhone Photography

2009-12-07T13:32:00.006-05:00

I absolutely love the camera on my iPhone.

I shot this while my fiancée and I were scouting the grounds where we're getting married next fall. Before uploading it I ran it through an app created by Chase Jarvis called The Best Camera (the implication being that "the best camera" is the one you have with you). The app has some basic filters (lighten, darken, contrast, cool, warm, vignette) and some preset combinations that I've barely touched. On the above photo I ran the warming filter and the vignette.

I'm guilty of vignetting basically everything I shoot with it.

This is one used the "slate" (desaturate & contrast boost) preset.

Here's a demo from Chase's website:

Post work on wedding photos

2009-11-14T13:16:00.001-05:00

Testing and iPhone upload

Engagement

2009-11-07T16:52:00.002-05:00

Congratulations Alana and Doug!

The Bleeding Heart Massacre - Jul 09 - Damien

2009-08-08T20:15:00.005-04:00

Part 4 of 4 posts featuring photos from the same show. See this post for details.

The Bleeding Heart Massacre - Jul 09 - Art

2009-08-08T20:05:00.006-04:00

Part 3 of 4 posts featuring photos from the same show. See this post for details.

The Bleeding Heart Massacre - Jul 09 - Randy

2009-08-08T16:34:00.004-04:00

Part 2 of 4 posts featuring photos from the same show. See this post for details.

The Bleeding Heart Massacre - Jul 09 - Vic

2009-08-06T09:20:00.006-04:00

At the Red Rooster. Again. Didn't get fancy this time, just one hand held speedlight (radio triggered so that I could leave it on the stage and shoot from farther away) and my 24-105 zoom.

A little light retouching

2009-08-04T22:34:00.004-04:00

I went over to Amberley's apartment on a whim to practice shooting portraits in an impossible and unforgiving location.

This was lit with 2 shoot through umbrellas. One from the front and camera left, the other to rear and camera right. I don't think the were quite at 180 degrees from each other. Both were centered just above eye level. The key light was gelled with a 1/4 CTO.

Shot it at F5 with my 28-105 zoomed to 93mm.

My ulterior motive was needing some fresh portraits to practice retouching on after picking up Lee Varis' book 'Skin'. When I first learned about retouching skin I learned all the bad habits (mostly to do with using blur) that make for completely unrealistic portraits. Now I'm trying to pull back from that edge and restrain myself from overdoing it.

Sound of Music Parade

2009-06-28T19:00:00.003-04:00

Shot from the rainy Sound of Music parade in Burlington 2 weeks ago. This kid ran out in front of me and blocked what probably would have been a worse shot.

Shot details
- 100 ISO
- F5 / 125
- 105mm (24-105 zoom)

Lucky Bamboo - Desktop Background

2009-06-14T10:49:00.004-04:00

This is a random shot of some lucky bamboo in my apartment that I thought would make a nice desktop background. The only light source was my large glass door to the balcony and a heavily overcast day.

I've reformatted it into what I assume are the most common desktop resolutions for both both regular and widescreen monitors.

800x600

960x600

1024x768

1280x768

1280x1024

1600x1024

1600x1200

1920x1200

J.C. Hutchins - Part 3

2009-06-06T15:39:00.006-04:00

My copy of Personal Effects: Dark Arts has arrived from Amazon and look at the amount of cool stuff that came with it!

Birth certificates, death certificates, ID cards, a notecard from a funeral home, photographs, etc, all made to look and feel authentic.

I'm very impressed with the entire package. It comes out in stores on June 9th.

"Happy Accident" - Polaroid

2009-06-05T01:00:00.001-04:00

There was a thread recently in the MM forums where people were posting their favorite accidental shots. It reminded me of this failed emulsion transfer I did in high school.

I don't remember the full process for making this, but here are the steps I remember:

- use this weird little enlarger to print a slide onto a regular sheet of Polaroid
- rip apart the Polaroid and dump part of it in water
- get the Polaroid to stick to watercolor paper and carefully peel off backing

Obviously I failed at that last step, but this looks way cooler than my 2nd successful attempt.

I hope I still have the original somewhere. This remains one of my all time favorite pieces of my own work.

J.C. Hutchins - Part 2

2009-06-03T22:48:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I've recently shot some photos for J.C. to use as part of his promotional material. I responded to a tweet of his asking for 'creatives' to help him out with original pieces of artwork.

I was supposed to create photos taken by a patient at J.C.'s fictitious Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital. Basically I needed to produce photos that were technically poor and looked like they could have been shot by a mental patient. Also, the brink has no windows and only tungsten lighting. I decided to focus on items this character could have lying around, rather than trying to source suitable location to shoot. A quick trip to Burlington's Re-Use Center and $10 got me more than enough old crap to make my props with (barbies, toy doll, mason jars, steak knife, bible, etc).

For lighting I used a single, low-wattage, tungsten bulb suspended from a lightstand. It stayed above and to my right most of the time. In post I cranked up the saturation a little, the contrast a lot, and fought the urge to try and make the cropping look any better. I found it somewhat of a struggle to do things badly on purpose.

The writing on the barbi turned out cheesey, but it was a Sharpie

This was probably the longest part of the process. I wasn't sure how I would shot this notebook, and when I "aged" it by beating the piss out of it, the rolled up corners revealed blank page edges. Filling them all out sucked, and then I ended up not even them.

Jarbies. Self explanatory I think. Bri wouldn't let me keep any on display. The wax paper diffused some of the hard light into a cool glow in the jars.

Bible. Even more self explanatory.

A doll I lit on fire out on my balcony. Inhalation of burning plastic is not advisable.

Axe murderer self portrait?

J.C. Hutchins

2009-06-03T20:32:00.006-04:00

In the last few years I've really gotten into a few authors who serialize their fiction via podcast. Amongst a slowly growing list one of my favorites is J.C. Hutchins, who currently has two bits of awesomeness on the horizon. The first is his upcoming novel Personal Effects: Dark Art which I've already pre-ordered:

(from his site)
June 2009 will see the release of J.C. Hutchins’ new supernatural thriller, Personal Effects: Dark Art. A recent starred review by Publisher’s Weekly called the novel a “stellar first.” Library Journal’s review deemed Personal Effects a work that “may herald the future of modern fiction.”

Created by Jordan Weisman and published by St. Martin’s Press, Dark Art combines the experience of a traditional thriller novel with a multimedia-fueled “out of book” narrative. Clues in the novel — and items that come with the novel, such as ID cards and photos — propel readers into an online experience where they become protagonists themselves.

Personal Effects: Dark Art follows the extensive notes of art therapist Zach Taylor’s investigation into the life and madness of Martin Grace, an accused serial killer who claims to have foreseen, but not caused, his victims’ deaths.

Zach’s investigations start with interviews and art sessions, but then take him far from the hospital grounds — and often very far from the reality that we know. The items among Grace’s personal effects are the keys to understanding his haunted past, and finding the terrifying truth Grace hoped to keep buried…

Call the phone numbers: You’ll get a character’s voicemail.
Google the characters and institutions in the text: You’ll find real websites.
Examine the art and other printed artifacts included inside the cover: If you pay attention, you’ll find more information than the characters themselves discover.

Personal Effects: Dark Art is the ultimate in voyeuristic storytelling, representing a revolutionary step forward in changing the way people interact with novels.

The second bit of awesomeness is the podcast novella that he's releasing to pre-promote/celebrate the launch of Dark Art, Personal Effects: Sword of Blood. Click here to listen to the first episode.

I also suggest checking out the first part of J.C.'s previous podcast release, the 7th Son trilogy. 'Decent' is being released as a paperback in October.

The reason I'm posting all this will make more sense after my next blog entry. I've recently shot some strange photos for J.C. as part of his pre-promotion.

Surfacing I Kill Giants Promo Shot

2009-04-09T09:48:00.004-04:00

Let's just say this wasn't shot under ideal conditions, but I think it worked out decently in the end.

Shot each member separately, jumping off a trampoline in front of a (not so) white wall. The space somewhat somewhat cramped. In an attempt to blow out the off-white wall much lighting chaos ensued.

More Quick Portraits

2009-04-07T23:16:00.004-04:00

I don't even know when I shot these. Sometime shortly after I moved into this apartment with my ladyfriend.

These headshots I took for Rhiannon are a variation on the lighting setup I used for Holly. The difference being that the key light is in front/above vs. on the 45. She was also holding the reflector in her lap, vs. it being off to the side.

The background light was directly behind her, pointed at white muslin for the first photo and seamless black paper for the second. For the second I added a LEE Plum filter to the Sunpak 383 and a gridded snoot to concentrate the beam.

I desperately need to start having a hairstylist around when I shoot, but that's for people who get hired to shoot things by clients and have budgets.

Email from a weirdo

2009-04-03T09:24:00.005-04:00

I haven't shot anything since there was snow on the ground hence nothing being posted since the end of January. I am working on post-processing 2 shoots still and will have those up soon.

In the meantime I got this in my Gmail:

Greetings from The Ancient One

Hello David

I was meandering through wellsprings of creative spirit in cyberspace when the Karmic Winds of Life transported me to the cultivation of authenticity and originality that is your online home. I enjoyed experiencing who you are and what you do. The manifestation of your intention is inspiring as you are a person whose gifts are many. Thank you sharing of yourself for to do so waters the tree of life and plants seeds of lovingkindness. Know that your life and work enrich those blessed to encounter your immense ability and positive energy. I wish you blessings and inspiration all your days.

May you embrace the immortal as you explore divine realms and may you nourish the sacred as you transform the soul and open your heart to gifts of spirit.

Yours in Divine Seership
Micheal Teal
The Ancient One
CyberShaman , Poet and Spiritual Consultant

I looked at his MySpace and encountered a woo-woo factory.

About me:
I am one who Embraces the World with Love. I wander through Portals of Consciousness Uplifting the Human Spirit. Mine is a Journey to Personal Growth. Every Moment is Sacred and should be Cherished. I am a Poet , Psychic , Writer , Paranormal Investigator , Lecturer , Lyricist and more. I have Walked many Paths in my Life. I Love to Explore various cultures and am Inspired by the Beauty of Nature. My Path is neverending , I am in Harmony with the Earth and the Sky and am open to the Greater Possibilities Life has to offer. I have appeared on Tv and Radio , written Columns and Articles for numerous publications , owned a New Age store , lived on the street , lectured on Alien Abduction , worked on a couple of documentaries , written Lyrics for a Musician in Australia , Hosted Spoken Word Events , Investigated Hauntings , Taught Tarot and more. I am on a Voyage of Self Discovery. My goal is the Serve the Betterment of Mankind. I build Castles in the Mind while maintaining a Desire to make a Positive Contribution to the World.

I have a real sympathy for people who have a giant whole in their lives that they need to fill with shit they make up. The observable universe is an incredible place. Scientific and rational inquiry have discovered amazing things about it. There's so much we don't know, but we're increasing our pool of knowledge every day. Knowing that we don't know is not an excuse to just jump to some made-up end point, without doing any of the work in the middle (and ignoring what we do know), and decide that things that make us feel good must be true regardless of where the evidence takes us.

Seems like a very well meaning person, but that doesn't change the fact that the entire new age/paranormal industry is intellectual and philosophical poison.

And what the hell is a "CyberShaman"?

I'll leave you with the wisdom of Tim Minchin.

Holly

2009-01-28T21:31:00.000-05:00

I'm always trying to get more practice shooting portraits on location in an environment that I have really no control over. I'm planning on doing similar shoots with friends in their own homes to keep me busy while the weather still sucks.

Holly was my first volunteer of 2009. I went over with the intention of just safe, evenly lit headshot that I could practice some minimal retouching on.

Here's the setup.

I let the shape of the room guide where I positioned everything and tried to set up a little gear as possible.

This was what I started with. At first I wanted to try the using the window as a main, but it was receiving direct sunlight that was harsh looking. The original plan was to shoot with a super shallow DOF, so I wasn't worried about the background being distracting. I just needed enough light to get some separation. That light was bounced off the ceiling giving me a wider spread at a short distance.

The above shot is not representative of the exposure.

To lessen the shadows on the right side of the face (her left) I added a white&silver reflector.

The difference here seems marginal, but I knew in post and shadows would become more pronounced. If I wanted to kill the shadows completely I could have moved the reflector right up beside her.

We're All Gonna Die - 100 Meters of Existence

2009-01-21T14:52:00.002-05:00

Interesting photography project. Other cool stuff also at simonhoegsberg.com.

Family Portrait

2009-01-17T21:29:00.011-05:00

My Mother's side of the family was getting together for lunch on New Years Day at the Mandarin (my Grandfather has some inexplicable love for that place). I was asked to take a bunch of family portraits before we went out for dinner including

- Grandparents
- Grandparents + my Mother and Uncle
- Above + my Dad and Aunt
- Grandparents + all 5 grandkids
- All of the above
- Grandparents + grandkids + significant others

We decided the easiest thing to do would be to rearrange the family room so that the 2 armchairs where in front of the only solid wall (no fireplace/windows etc) in the room, with enough space behind them to fit 2-10 people.

The camera was set on a tripod at a low angle. I for a few reasons. The first being that a higher angle would have showed other furniture/stuff in the room. The second being that low angle would make it easier to keep the heads of taller members of the family in the frame. The tripod was necessary because I had to be in some of the shots and I expected to do some photo-stitching in post to remove blinks etc.

In terms of lighting, I wanted it as clean and even as possible and the shadows kept to a minimum. I used my 2 sunpak 383's, fired through shoot through umbrellas. The strobes were placed on either side of the camera (at eye level with the people who were standing). The low white ceiling of the room acted as a giant diffuser, bouncing additional light around the room.

Positioning the strobes close to the center of the room (and aimed slightly to the center of the shot) helped to created the soft and subtle highlight on the semi-gloss paint behind the subjects.

Here's the setup:

Note: the 1/15 shutter speed has nothing to do with utilizing ambient. My wireless camera remote interferes with my shitty radio flash triggers and delays them slightly. Shooting at 1/15 game the strobes enough time to catch up while the sensor was still being exposed. I don't have to worry about minor movement from the subjects, because the low power setting on the strobes (1/4 I think) would keep the duration of the flash short enough to freeze that movement.

More Spurbury from Boxing Day 2008

2009-01-14T23:44:00.003-05:00

I've put most of the photos from the same show as my previous post into a video slideshow.

Music is "Change Tonight" by Spurbury.

Usually I cheat when I shoot my friends bands...

2009-01-09T14:21:00.011-05:00

I tend to always sneak an extra flash (or 2) onto the stage somewhere when shooting at shows. I use my super clamp and/or light stands, and then hand-hold another. I can't do this in every venue or with every band (for a myriad of reasons) but when I think a show isn't going to be super packed, giving me room to move around, I take advantage.

On Boxing day I decided to go a little overboard while shooting Spurbury.

This poorly drawn diagram should give you a good idea of the room layout.

Strobe A: Sunpak 383 on a lightstand with a full CTB gel. The stand I was using didn't allow the strobe to get as high up off the stage as I would have liked, making it difficult to keep out of shots from several positions.

Strobe B: My drummer light. A second Sunpack 383, no gel. This strobe was attached to a mic stand by a super clamp, very close to the drummer and at about his eye level. This was the only white light in the bar (as my main lights were gelled with CTO and any stage lights were also gelled). I did this with the hopes that if he was in the background of any other shots, the white light would help separate him out of the predominantly orange scene. Here you can see how it lights him up from the side (and how Strobe A helps to throw some blue accents around)

Strobe C: One of my 2 main lights. This was a Vivitar 285 with a CTO gel. The shape of the stage forced me to put the lightstand on the floor, which put the flash at about shoulder height with the band. I would have preferred to hang it from the ceiling, but I only had 1 clamp and no ladder (and really, not a lot of time in between bands to set up). Having any of the strobes lower than I want them forces me to angle them up higher, and throw more light on the ceiling. Having the ceiling properly lit up gets very distracting in low angle shots because of all metal work and colored wires.

Strobe D: Another Vivitar 285 with a CTO gel, also on a lightstand. The access ramp for the stage made it impossible to place this light even remotely opposite Strobe C. It ended up on top of a speaker box on a light stand. I couldn't get it much higher than eye-level with the singer, thanks to the stage's architecture.

This shot should give you and idea of what things looked like with all 4 strobes firing.

Gels
I really like contrasting CTO with CTB. Not only does it look nice, but in the spots on the subject where they mix in equal proportions, you should get white light. Here's one shot where lighting up the ceiling actually worked for me.

Ambient
I shot with the shutter speed a little slower than I normally would in a situation like this. I wanted to see what would happen with a small amount of the ambient colors (green, red, etc) bleeding into the shadows. This can come in handy if one/several of your lights don't fire (because you're using poverty wizards to remotely fire your strobes). Strobes C & D did not fire for this shot and the ambient gave me just enough to save it in post.

Cheap Radio Triggers
I actually plan on strobes firing less than 100% of the time in live music scenarios. It might force me to take more shots overall, but I also get lots of unexpected surprises. Had all strobe fired in the following pictures, I don't think I would have liked them as much.

I have a bunch of different setups in mind that I like to try out at the Rooster. Unfortunately they all involve purchasing more superclamps and strobes.

Amberley on Black - Part 3

2008-12-30T16:00:00.000-05:00

Amberley on Black - Part 2

2008-12-27T23:00:00.000-05:00

Amberley on Black - Part 1

2008-12-25T23:03:00.002-05:00

Dug out my black seamless paper and took it over to Amberly apartment. I'll be linking basic lighting setups of each chunk of this three part post.

The Grave - Burly Calling 08

2008-12-24T15:30:00.000-05:00

Shots from The Grave's first show @ Clancy's in Burlington. One hand held flash and another off to the side of the stage.

Unfortunately that bar sucks for trying to take pictures as the band was on the floor right in front of me, and I was basically stuck in one place.

How I've always invisioned spaceflight...

2008-12-23T13:06:00.002-05:00

I'm fairly confident that that this is exactly what I would see and hear, were I blasting away from the earth.

The Grave

2008-12-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Promo shot for The Grave. The guys asked me to take some pictures of them jamming (to use online until they had some show photos) and I managed to get them onto the couch together for about 2 minutes.

Davenandes.com Facelift

2008-12-22T08:55:00.002-05:00

My frontpage now looks a little less 1995 and a little more 1998.

Check it.

Rachel - Nov 08

2008-12-20T16:11:00.002-05:00

It had been forever since I took photos of my niece Rachel and my Fiancee was babysitting her for the afternoon. I shot all of these in her apartment with a few Sunpak 383's in umbrellas (and in 2 of the shots, a gridded speedlight to light up the wall behind her).

At this point she was pretty much done with having her picture taken. I think the umbrellas being so close scared her, so I had to be more devious by using the umbrellas randomly around the room. It helped that she sat beside a window to draw.

For this one I took the "backround" light from the first shot and placed it on top of the china hutch behind her.

Hey Davy...

2008-12-03T14:50:00.000-05:00

The immutable John M. A former co-worker and all around hilarious guy.

One speedlight bounced off of a white umbrella. The room had a low ceiling and all white walls, so there was enough contamination off the key light to expose the background.

August 2008 Live Musics, Part 3

2008-11-30T22:51:00.003-05:00

I think this show was during the week following the show from the last two posts.

Kirby was playing on a weeknight, and there wasn't a crazy rock show going on/everyone was sitting down, I had easy access to front/sides of the stage without bumping into people.

I put 2 remotely triggered speedlights (sunpak 383's) on stands and tried a few different set-ups over the course of Kirby's set.

August 2008 Live Musics , Part 2

2008-11-21T11:38:00.003-05:00

2nd verse, same as the first. Except the band is different. Den played later in the night after I had shot the Bleeding Heart Massacre.

August 2008 Live Musics, Part 1

2008-11-11T21:17:00.003-05:00

The Bleeding Heart Massacre at the Red Rooster in Burlington. I clamped one of my flashes to the ceiling and aimed at the drummer, while hand holding another flash. This kept the drummer lit in every shot while adding interesting rim light effects to 3 out of the 4 other guys on stage (clamped flash was positioned at left-center stage, basically over the bass players head).

Calyey at Mt Nemo

2008-11-07T11:44:00.004-05:00

Sometime in August (when the skeeters had apparently hit their blood-sucking peak), Cayley and I lugged all of my gear around Mt. Nemo and shot in a few locations.

First we picked a shady spot on a path (and surprised a few random hikers) who stumbled on us.

Next we hiked down into a rock quarry where it was difficult to combine a decent background with good shade (hence Cayley having trouble keeping her eyes open):

After finishing up in the quarry, running out of water and hiking back up out of the quarry, we decided to call it quits on account of the heat and our exhaustion.

WTF?

2008-08-15T23:09:00.002-04:00

Stupid YouTube.

Ashley Sloggett Promos

2008-08-11T16:45:00.000-04:00

Red and Hayley's Engagement Photos - Video

2008-08-10T21:59:00.004-04:00

For some reason my auto post from YouTube didn't work when I uploaded this on July 31.

Unfortunately the music may have been to loud when I made this and it caused some problems on YouTube.

There's a better version (in terms of audio) on my Facebook Page

Trying out the DIY Muslin

2008-08-10T21:33:00.004-04:00

As per usual, Amberley is always up for helping me test out new equipment or lighting. In this case I was working on putting together a reference guide for myself of all my light modifiers (Umbrella - shoot through and bounce, diy grids and ringlight, reflectors) so that I could compare them when used at similar distances/exposures etc.

I've been too busy/lazy to actually go through the work of making lighting diagrams for each setup and smashing it all into a PDF for easy reference, but since we finished shooting the required setups so quickly, we shot random portraits for another hour and took my new muslin for a swim.

The basement where we shot these was kinda cramped for a background that size. With more space and more control on light spill, that muslin should be able to go all the way from washed out purple, right down to black.

Glamour Shots by Deb

2008-08-05T09:30:00.001-04:00

Taylor here needed a headshot, because she works in the theater industry. The humidity was causing explosive hair frizz making my a rim light futile. The end result "keeper" I won't even post, but I liked this way better, despite her head being on fire.

This looks less like something I would normally shoot and more like "Glamour shots by Deb".

I should open a creepy boudoir photo studio at a shitty mall.

Muslin Background

2008-07-14T15:36:00.003-04:00

The DIY muslin background is done! I only started buying the materials in the middle of winter. This one is 9'x12'.

I basically followed the instructions here but altered the process by untying the twine part way through soak the muslin in the dye to reduce the contrast between the darker lighter areas.

Terrible shot of what it looks like set-up:

I think it'll look fantastic if I can get it far enough back:
It's held up by some metal poles I had lying around (from a clothing rack that fell apart, like a cheaper version of this), attached to 2 light stands and held together with clamps from the Home Depot:

Here's what it looks like with the "subject" 5-6 feet in front and a fairly shallow DOF:

Here's what it looks like when I focused a little further from the backdrop:

And with a quick hue/saturation adjustment in lightroom I can push the background grey instead of purple (exporting in PS twice if necessary and masking out the purple):

I was planning to make more of them this summer, but I'd like to see what kind of usage I actually get out of this one before I buy another $40+ of muslin, and pay to have the 2 strips sewn together.

Animals may nip

2008-07-02T10:17:00.003-04:00

Random photos from my trip to the Metro Zoo on Saturday:

- Depressed Orangutan
- White-Handed Gibbon
- Mandrill
- Elephants
- White Rhino
- Killer Seagull
- Olive Baboons
- Lady Lion
- Man Eating ~~Girlfriend~~ Fiancée
- Long-Necked Fiancée
- Golden-lion Tamarin
- Tree Kangaroo
- Some fucking bird
- Marine Land stock photo
- Two-Hump Camel
- Jellyfish
- Non-tree Kangaro o

Effigiei Spontaneum

2008-06-30T15:32:00.003-04:00

Random spontaneous portraits shot during cocktails on Friday.

Click for larger view:

"George is back baby"

2008-06-27T10:50:00.005-04:00

I've had the camera back from Canon a couple of weeks now and now I've got to get my ass in gear to get some things out of the way that I've been promising various people since there was snow on the ground:

- New Bleeding Heart Promo's (not to mention some live shot without Halloween costumes)
- Engagement photos (for at least one, possibly 3 couples)
- Portraits for a friends sister and a previous co-worker
- Full blown practice shoots with 2 of my favorite girls
- Shit that I've definitely forgotten about

Also,

- Last weekend I shot Amberley modeling some clothes for a band I've never heard called "lo-fi"
- Just bought this fancy thing for keeping my monitor calibrated/setting up printer profiles

Finally I recently shot some random portraits to see what I could get out of a single white umbrella (and speedlight), straight on/above and another flash on the background (purplish-brown apartment wall).

Results (click to enlarge):

Canon!

2008-05-05T11:51:00.002-04:00

You bastards.

I want my camera back.

I've barely touched photoshop or my strobes in the last month.

the pain.

Random Portrait

2008-04-07T14:18:00.005-04:00

I'm in the middle of post-processing an ass-load of photos for a small clothing company.

I finally got to this one last night (which I think I shot so that the MUA could have fro her book - notice it has nothing to do with the clothes)and I really dig it.

~~Hope this post doesn't mess up the sidebar.~~ Nevermind, it got buggered up. You'll have to click the picture to view it full size.

The Good Fight

2008-03-27T14:51:00.003-04:00

Kirby released his solo EP "The Good Fight" last week at the Rooster. The cover art features some photos by your truly. 3 of my favorites from the whole set are below the cover artwork. Click through to see them larger and with lighting details.

Visit Kirby's site to check out some tunes.

Out for Service

2008-03-26T11:19:00.003-04:00

I'm cameraless for the next 3-4 weeks while Canon decides how much to charge me for delaying the planned obsolescence of my DSLR.

Friggin' autofocus.

In the mean time I have make posts soon to update the Kirby shots I just did (EP is out now and it's fantastic), as well as some engagement photos and another shoot with Amberley for an indie clothing company.

The last of those would keep all my spare time busy with post-processing until my camera comes home.

Dear Tim Hortons

2008-03-03T13:59:00.003-05:00

Please stop overfilling my cups of coffee.

I know you put the cream in first.

There's really no excuse.

You're lucky something keeps bringing me back to your "someone just put a cigarette out in me" tasting coffee, rather than drinking the Starbucks "burnt" blends.

Dammit.

John Kirby

2008-02-28T22:28:00.003-05:00

John is the singer of the currently defunked band "First Time Fallen". With the band on break John's working on his solo stuff and wanted some promo shots.

Here's my first effort out of the batch.

I love XKCD.

2008-02-15T09:25:00.003-05:00

I think I have like 2 friends that will get this.

Yes, I am a nerd.

New Davenandes.com is up

2008-01-29T22:16:00.001-05:00

PC is still messed, but working enough to get Lightroom and CS3 running.

Apparently I can make Flash web galleries right in Lightroom so I tossed a new website together tonight.

And yes the index page is so 5 years ago.

davenandes.com

No computer, Fuck YOU!

2008-01-29T09:59:00.000-05:00

So, my PC has been severely injured my a conglomerate on nasty online entities and my shouts of frustration are are becoming ever more hyperbolic.

I am currently spending every spare moment running the following programs in an effort to kill the infection an cauterize the wound:

Norton Anti-Virus
Ad-Aware
Spybot Search and Destroy
Spyware Blaster
CCleaner

It seems that I may have to be craftier than usual and run all off these bloody programs in different sequences until I find just the right combination.

Some of the enemy seem to be entrenched pretty deep. I just want my access to Lightroom and CS3 back so I can get back to my photographyingness.

And now for some Google Bombing -

cult
scientology
tom cruise
will smith
dangerous
hubbard
travolta

Lightswitch

2008-01-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

Just put my 50mm F1.8 back on the camera to shoot some headshots. I haven't used it months.

I ended up with this while dicking around with it wide open, and liked it.

Click for larger view.

Books Books Books

2007-12-31T09:26:00.000-05:00

I decided in November of this year that I was going to try and consume my way through at least 40 books in the next 12 calendar months. "Books" includes novels, non-fiction and audio books. If I'm stuck later on this year, I may count an entire lecture series as a book as well, assuming it has at least 24x45 minute lectures (and I've got at least 50 of those on my hard drive).

As of Dec 31 (2 months) I've finished 8 (2 novels, 2 audio book novels, 3 non-fiction audio books and 1 podcast novel) with 2 podcast novels currently running (I'm up to date with the authors and getting one episode per week) and Quirkology (Pop-Psychology book) by R. Wiseman on the go.

I might raise the bar from 40 to 50, and try to average 1/week with 2 weeks off for the year, but my primary focus is keeping the non-fiction up to 30-50% if not more.

Amberley Part 3

2007-12-28T17:42:00.000-05:00

Finished the post processing way ahead of my normal time frame. I can only assume that's due to a combination of the holidays, the refinement/automation/quickening of some of my "standard" Photoshop techniques.

29 photos total, 10 of which will go up on Flick, and the last 4 of those will be at the end of this post.

I think after this session I've got my lightroom game proper. Still a few kinks in the workflow to work out. All of the issues stem from the fact that I archive everything on my external hard drive and leave only the files I'm still potentially working with on my PC.

I think I need to start keeping a copy of 1 full rez jpeg (for every finished shot) on the PC as well, so I can keep it in my lightroom catalogue for various uses later.

meh.

Anyways - photos

Amberley Part 2

2007-12-26T23:25:00.000-05:00

Well my previous prediction of 25 finished shots wasn't far off. I've cut them down to 28, with only 1-2 "maybes", plus I'm considering bringing a few back from the first cut that catch my eye when I'm scrolling through Lightroom.

I took the time to record a few of my most often used actions in PS and hotkeyed them (marking the hotkeys with masking tape "ala recording studio" of course). Generally stuff that involves doubling a layer/applying a filter/changing blending mode/opacity all at the same time. Makes things a bit less tedious.

And here are some more of the shots:

CAT ATTACK!

That's why I will never own a fucking cat.

Amberley

2007-12-25T18:48:00.000-05:00

For the first time in weeks I've had a clear afternoon on a weekend at the same time as one of my friends that was willing to let me practice on them. Being the type of person to never waste an opportunity, I shot almost enough photos to fill 3 gigs worth of CF card (north of 400) and made her change outfits way too many times.

My first pass at cutting down those shots to a "to be considered for post processing" group left me with around 80 shots. Lots of these will get cut because they are 2 of the same shot I'm trying to decide between, or because once I hit the "3/4 through the pile" point my tolerance for want to fix things in post hits the bell curve and my tolerance rapidly declines.

I'm expecting to walk away with at least 25 finished shots for Amberly, maybe 10 of which I would consider usable for my own purposes. I'll be posting the ones I really like in the coming weeks as they finish running the PP obstacle course.

Here's the first 2:

Z

Promos - The Bleeding Heart Massacre

2007-12-07T21:35:00.001-05:00

TBHM needed a promo shot to put in a press kit for a showcase they were playing.

I set up outside where they practice (and that night quickly trying to record a new demo for the same press kit) with my one umbrella & Vivitar 285 lighting them, and a red-gelled vivitar on the brick wall behind them.

Quick and dirty shoot.

First Dennis helped me balance the lights

This is one of the shots that was up for being selected by the band

And then I did this shitty thing with a blue gel...

Finally, the photo chosen by then band

Casbah - Oct 27th Halloween Show Part 1

2007-10-30T22:55:00.000-04:00

Here's the "singers" batch from the Halloween show at the Casbah. Pictured below are The Bleeding Heart Massacre, First Time Fallen, and The Blood Theory.

Cayley

2007-10-17T11:54:00.000-04:00

This is from my first "real" shoot involving off camera flashes.

I did it waaaaay back in July. Not only was I experimenting with lighting and shooting digital (this was only a few months after I got my digital body and temporarily shelved the SLR) but also learning lots of new Photoshop techniques.

If you click through and look at the other 4 or 5 that I have up on flickr you'll noticed the very over processed look I gave them. I like to learn new things, take them to their extremes and eventually scale back. The shoot I did after this Ashley (which I'll post at some point) turned out very differently in the post-processing department. I switched up most of my retouching techniques for new ones and got better results. The median noise filter is fantastic for a quick skin softener.

Dan

2007-09-19T22:33:00.000-04:00

One of my house-mates wanted some quick portraits for various online endeavors (cough cough facebook).

Shot with one Vivitar 285, bounced off a white umbrella - camera right.

CCBS07

2007-09-10T20:18:00.000-04:00

For the second year running we've made our August trek to Petey Clarke's cottage for the boys weekend. First time I've shot anything without a flash months (thanks to the Strobist).

The Infamous Wet T-Shirt Contest

2007-08-13T10:37:00.000-04:00

As promised, the Wet-T shots. These were taken the same night as the First Time Fallen shots below.

FYI

2007-08-10T14:56:00.000-04:00

First Time Fallen

2007-08-08T23:00:00.000-04:00

These shots are from a show/wet t-shirt contest back in June at Formac. I shot these at a terribly high ISO but smoothed them out in post enough to pass for screen rez.

I attached one flash (Vivitar 285) to a speaker stand on the right side of the stage and had the other one on stand (it wasn't a busy show so I had all the room I needed right in front of the stage to move around/position my main flash). Both were triggered via my cactus radio trigger.

Here are three of my favorite shots from the show:

I'll try to post up some shots from the wet T contest soon...

Cleaning house, err Villa...

2007-08-08T22:40:00.000-04:00

I've cleaned out most of the non-photography content in an attempt to refocus my efforts.

I've been slowly ramping up on the shooting side while simultaneously working on my post-production skills.

This is not an effort to hide away the various aspects of my world view (My agnosticism, atheism, humanism, various political views and fervent skepticism), but on all those topics you can find much more interesting people to read. My leisure time is dominated by creating and manipulating images, while refining my techniques and trying to do everything on a DIY budget, so what I do here will reflect that.

Sheri's Girls

2007-07-04T09:02:00.000-04:00

On the Monday holiday I shot some photos of Sheri and her 2 girls. I'm only posting these up right now to give her a few examples of different looks I can give her in the post processing.

Sheri, these have been cropped to 8 x 10, but there's a ton of different sizes we can look at.

Pre-Drinking, and Shooting with my DIY Ringflash

2007-06-10T23:18:00.000-04:00

Brought my gear with me to my girlfriend's apartment for the Saturday night pre-drink. The light source for all of these is one of my Vivitar 285's, modified with my DIY ringflash.

Clicking on the images will take you to Flickr where you can view at larger sizes.

Another DIY Light Mod

2007-05-31T21:53:00.000-04:00

After seeing this post on the Strobist, I wanted to try making my own cheap "ringflash". The construction took a lot longer than I thought it would but I'm fairly please with the results.

It's not going to win an beauty contests, but it seems to get the job done.

Below is a shot taken with an unmodified vivitar 285 at close range (I could have shot a better exposure but it'll be more dramatic with the "before" picture all blown out like this):

And now the same setting on everything with the "ringflash" mod stuck on top of the flash:

I've been asked to come take "event" pictures at a show this Saturday where a new company that brings "hot chicks" to your event will be doing a test run. I'll probably try both this and my diy diffuser (previous post) out and post the results.

I also plan to rebuild this mod in the future when I have the time/patience, so that it will actually fold flat.

P.S. I've been told that this "event" will probably involve a wet t-shirt contest. I better be careful not to blow out any highlights!

Strut your strap-on...

2007-05-27T19:58:00.000-04:00

The title for this post actually comes from an episode of Sex TV (I love Chum-made programming) wherein they showed some scenes from a lesbians-only "strap-on" party, but remains relevant.

The strap-on I'm talking about it the new diffuser I just built for strobe usage. It's made out of Velcro, bristol board, clear packing tape and white tissue paper. The construction should be pretty obvious below.

What I like about the gratuitous use of Velcro is that I can hang it off the camera if I want to "bracket" my diffusion on a particular shot. This may come in handy when shooting my friends' bands during live shows.

Here's what it looks like "strapped on".

Soon after making it I was upstairs in the kitchen making a cup of tea and spotted a bottle of wine sitting on the counter. I liked the way the light from the window was hitting it and thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the diffuser (on one of my 285's as a second light). Here's the result:

Shot @ 1/15, f5.6, 100 ISO, Fill Flash set to 1/4 power

And here's the setup:

.

On the counter to the right is the flash (beside the yellow Simpsons mug).

First Shoot with Umbrella and Snoot

2007-05-25T09:31:00.000-04:00

Last night I tried out my umbrella to light this boring detergent bottle.

I wanted to use my snoot to fill in from camera right (sorry I didn't save a "before picture")so I cranked the strobe on the umbrella up to full power and the snooted one up to 1/2. I could have shot the same thing at 1/2 and 1/4 just fine but I wanted the extra f-stops for focal insurance.

Here's the setup:

I would have like to try putting my third (shitty) strobe right behind the bottle but it no longer seems to work. Meh, it was free.