An epic adventure

Saturday, March 28. The day of the much hyped, entirely underwhelming blizzard. I had been out with a friend, getting sushi and coffee. On the way home, I was listening to the new Decemberists album on my iPod Nano. I parked my pickup on the street in front of the house, consciously thinking to myself, “Hey, self. You should take your iPod inside so it doesn’t get too cold.” Since I often listen to me, I unplugged it from my stereo and headed into the house.

The next morning, I was getting around to go help with Sunday school at my church. I’m not the model of a morning person by any means, so mornings are always tricky for me. On the way out of the door, I looked for my usual travel-with-me-wherever things: my keys, wallet, iPod, and phone. Finding all things except for the iPod quickly, I thought, “Huh. Three out of four is pretty good. Maybe my iPod’s in the car.” So I headed out. Finding no iPod right away, I shrugged it off. NPR is a decent alternative.

So after coming home while listening to Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, and parking in the street as per usual, I thought, “Hmmm, I could have sworn I took my iPod out of my car.” So I looked under my vehicle, hoping not to find it. But there it was. Laying face down in the snow, right behind my front right tire. I picked up the cold, wet iPod, knowing it had spent the night in the snow and I had run it over at least once.  “This is most unfortunate,” I thought. Or something to that effect.

But then, I wiped it dry, and pressed play. It was alive! A good percentage of the screen was shot, but enough was visible to make out what was playing. Pretty good for being ran over by a truck and spending about ten hours in the partially melting snow.

Needless to say (although I never understood this saying, since everyone always says it), I was amazed at the ruggedness of my iPod. Big ups to Apple for their awesome, surprisingly robust product. When I finally get tired of the mostly dead screen, I’ll definitely get another one.

I’ve always been a Mac guy – but this blew me away.  I can’t believe I still have a usable iPod after it sat in the melting snow for 12 hours and getting run over by a pickup.

Here’s the carnage. Click through for lighting details.  Not bad for being hit by a truck:

It’s a fun time to be in photography

I have learned a lot from other photographers. In fact, community with photographers (both local and worldwide) has been one of the driving forces in me furthering my skills as a photographer. The other being personal research and study.  But, I’ve probably learned most through interacting with other photographers, from tagging along with seasoned veterans of the wedding photography business to peer conversation.

One of the first inspiring communities I joined was the Strobist off-camera lighting blog and corresponding discussion/sharing platform on Flickr.  A couple of years ago, there was an assignment to shoot a picture of a basketball. This assignment was fairly open-ended, but contained a few restrictions (including a maximum of 2 flashes and no Photoshop tricks), making for a fun learning experience for me.

Here was my final entry.

See all entries from this exercise.

I seem to photograph shoes…

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, I learn a lot about photography by experimenting.  Last May, I took a picture of my new shoes:

Then, I recently needed another pair of running shoes (since I misplaced one). So, with my new camera, I took a picture of them. Click through to see the lighting setup.

I like the result, and think I’ve grown as a photographer over that time. So that’s good – I’ll have to keep experimenting!

We take pictures of things other than people! Sometimes…

We like doing commercial photography work. Even if it’s not editorial driven, C.J. and I especially enjoy real estate, landscape, or product photography. Such an opportunity came up recently.  John, the owner of a Christmas light installation company, wanted some pictures of a house his company had decorated.

For the first time, I used a flash application for this minisite of the Christmas light images from Airtight Interactive. It’s simple and fast loading, with handy navigation of the images (I’m a sucker for keyboard navigation through image galleries). Fast loading with easy navigation are a couple of the reasons Mosaic Photo went with Zenfolio for our sharing gallery.

See the final edits at this minisite:  http://themosaicphoto.com/xmas_lights/

Hit us with feedback on your favorite pics and the minisite layout in the comments section. I’m still checking the density and exposure on these. Let me know in the comments if you have troubles with them.

Merry Christmas from Mosaic Photo

This is one of my favorite photos that I’ve taken. This was a fixed display at an annual light display at Botanica: The Wichita Gardens. It was a too dark to balance the lights with the sky, but that gave me a little bit more flexibility in my shooting. I had brought along my tripod with a cool ball head. I played with a few different techniques, zooming the lens during the exposure, changing the focus depth, and camera movement.

Quickly, I saw that I could mimic the movement of snow swooping down. This shot was a thirty second exposure, with the camera stationary for the first half of the exposure. Then, I moved the camera with my tripod head’s natural arc for the rest of the exposure. This movement gave a nice motion trail.

Little was done in post processing. A custom white balance let the blacks go to a deep blue and also shift the whites to magenta. This image was used for a Christmas card at Lawrence Photo to send out to its friends and clients.

From your friends at Mosaic Photo, Merry Christmas.

A time-crunch photo assignment at a local youth rally.

September 24 was a nation wide rally, See You at the Pole, where students gather around their school’s flagpoles and pray for their school and nation. Many places, there is a city-wide rally that evening. Our friend over at Campus Ministry Network gave us a call and asked if we could take a few pictures to send out to the rally put on by a church in Asheville, North Carolina. The organizers out in Asheville wanted their upstart group to see what was going on in Wichita. Our assignment: deliver 3 to 5 images to Asheville.

Oh yeah. We had 15 minutes to deliver the pictures. Because of the time difference, the event here in Wichita started half and hour before it was over in North Carolina.  Before the event, I made sure I had wireless access at the church and sent a test email to the tech guy for the east coasters. Once the event started at 7:00, I allotted myself 8 minutes to get the pictures taken so I’d have plenty of time to send them off. I wanted to get at least three different looks. So I started at the front corner of the sanctuary and worked around in a circle. By 7:11 I had sent off 5 images.

The result was a mix of detail and wide shots, with a mix of ambient and flash. 

Whenever I get a chance, I experiment with new photographic techniques. For this experiment, my subject was my new lens, a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8 L.

I had a few goals in mind before starting. First, I wanted to have a reflection of the lens. I also wanted to show the lens’ shape and curves. Lastly, I wanted to add a splash of color to the image.  This pre-production phase is important to my work, be it a product shot or a portrait. 

For the reflection, I decided to use some plexiglas that I picked up at The Yard (an awesome place to find random “photographic” equipment). The plexiglas also allows some light through, which allowed me to throw some color onto the background by putting some gel on the flash. To show the shape, I used an umbrella for a broad source of light, with white foam core on either side. This gave some broad, specular highlights on the edge of the lens.

The setup shot to the right shows how it all came together. Two folding chairs, one tri-fold poster-board, two pieces of plexiglas. The umbrella is over a flash, and the other flash has red gel for the color.

Here are the end results. The second shot has the gelled flash pointing straight through the plexiglas and gave it an edgier look.