Photoshoot with Drew Rayann Young

While I was out in California, I did a little photoshoot at a cool spot in LA with an up and coming songwriter/musician named Drew. Friend of mine, lovely girl, and we had a lot of fun shooting. I am almost done editing the pics which I will post later but here is one from the camera that made me laugh.

Wow, it's been a while.

I haven't touched this blog in a long time now. I have so many plans for this blog, and need to promote it, but I have been so busy with my first career, which is dirt bikes. I was living in California for 4 months and got home just in time for halloween. Now I am home for the holidays relaxing and learning new tricks. I did show my brother how to use my camera and set it up so I could get some new photos of myself. Here is what I have really been up too.

Hopefully more things coming soon!

I have been so busy lately I haven't had time to write in this blog. Short summary. I am living in California riding my dirt bikes trying to learn some new things, took an awesome 5 day camping trip in the Grand Canyon, and now I am trying to work on a few new photo projects as soon as I am free. It's been so long since I took a photo I might of forgot how!

Strobist Flash Umbrella Mod

If you are shooting with umbrellas you may have noticed one issue or maybe you didn't, but the flash doesn't line up with the umbrella center and doesn't spread evenly, completely ruining what an umbrella should do. The pictures below are a simple mod I have done to my umbrella's to solve this issue. read on.

This is before the umbrella mod, I even had a stofen diffuser on the end. You can see it doesn't fill the entire umbrella well. The bottom is in the dark cause the flash sits so high up. 

I took my umbrella down to my local welder and for about 20 bucks he did 4 of them. Pretty simple, I just cut a spare umbrella into 4 pieces each about 5 inches. and he welded that steel flat piece on. 

Be careful to make sure it still closes

Basically, All I did was stick the umbrella in normally with my flash and I measured from the umbrella to the bottom of my flash head on my smallest flash(sb-600) and I had a about 4.5 inches. So my welder cut the plate 4 inches, lifting the umbrella up almost in line with my flash head.

And in the end you get this. Look how much more it's centered with a bare flash head

Then just flip your flash wide angle diffuser out and like magic, you get a great full spread, even on this 43" umbrella. 

Calibrating Your Monitor

Monitor Calibration is basically making your screen look like it would appear on paper. This is topic that comes up from time to time but it's not something you think about when getting into photography. Honestly it's tough, there are so many monitors out there, it's hard to make an image look great on everything. One monitor it'll be too blue, or colors are off, one it might be bright and one dark. You have to do the best you can and knowing your monitor isn't the one that's off gives you some confidence your images are they best the can be. When you start printing images for yourself or clients or anything else, you really see the difference if your monitor is not calibrated correctly. I see a difference going from my Macbook Pro to my Dell Desktop even though both are LCD's. My desktop was out of service for a while, but since I added some new parts, big ol' monitor, and Windows 7(which is really great), I have started to use it again along with my apple laptop. So I had to find a way to calibrate them.

So what can you do?

There are tons of sites out there that try to give you free general templates to view to calibrate on the fly. They are okay, especially if you are only sharing photos on the web or you aren't worried so much about them having that professional polish. But if you really want to step it up, you gotta get some software.

There are some calibrators out there that are well, expensive. They do there job well, but sometimes it's tough to shell out $200 bucks or more for a calibrator when you still are investing in equipment. The most popular is probably Datacolor's Spyder Series. X-Rite and Colortron is also out there. Basically you attached this device to your screen and with software you adjust your monitor and it reads everything till you have a perfectly calibrated monitor. Great stuff.

Well, here is the cheap but fairly efficient way to calibrate your monitor.

If you have a Windows machine, you are in luck because there is a free piece of software called QuickGamma for calibrating your monitor. Make sure you download the english version.

QUICKGAMMA

If your on a mac there is an excellent program called SuperCal. To enable full features, which you really need, you have to pay $19 bucks. Honestly, I am all for open software and think some programs overprice their software to ridiculous amounts but this is cheap and really worth the 19 bucks.

SUPERCAL

Quickgamma adjust on the fly and sits down in your menu bar, where SuperCal actually makes new profiles you save and choose in your display preferences. This is the best I have found so far, any suggestions would be welcomed.

What's in my Bags?

You know a lot people always question what you shoot with. A lot of times they have a misconception that a great photo has to come from a $5000 dollar camera body with a $2500 dollar lens. This is simply not true. I have slowly built up my equipment, and I still have far to go, you can only do what you can afford.

Camera bodies are the least of your worries in my opinion. There are full frame cameras and cropped frame cameras. I shoot with Nikon, so their full frames are the D3's and D700. Their cropped frame cameras are the D7000, D300, D90, D3100 and all the others. I won't go into the difference but generally people say cropped frame cameras are for "amateurs" and full frames are for "pro's". This is true in a way, you gotta know how to use iso, apertures and shutter speeds. But with the introduction of the D7000 they are blurring the lines, and sometimes I really like the extra zoom I get in cropped frames.

Your lens is very important, there are some cheap lenses out there that are amazing. I have a 50mm that was 200 bucks and it's great. But when it comes to zooms you start to see a bigger difference in quality. You want to read reviews and make you buy the best lens you can for your price range. You really get what you pay for when it comes to lenses.

Nikon vs. Canon. Oh boy. The fight continues. haha. It's crazy how people argue over what's better. Well I am here to tell you neither. They are both amazing cameras and offer slightly different things. I shoot Nikon and I like it. I think it depends more on what you start with. I have used Nikon since my first camera so the menus and way it works is familiar, so I may never change. They both offer almost identical lenses and camera bodies. I think it's great to have both because they constantly push to outdo each other, which means we end up with never ending technology gains.

Here is what I am shooting with.

Camera Bag:

Nikon D7000
Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 vr2
Nikon 35-70mm f/2.8
Nikon 10.5mm f2.8 Fisheye
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
Nikon 50mm f/2.8
Hoya HD UV Filters
Hoya HD Circular Polarizers
ColorRight Pro white balancer
Slik 4000x Tripod

Strobist Bag:

Nikon SB900
Nikon SB600 x2
Nikon SU-800 Controller
Orbis Ring flash
Lumodi 14" White Beauty Dish
Ephoto 22" Silver Beauty Dish
43" White Umbrella x2
33" Silver x1 and White x1 Umbrella
Rectangular 4 color reflector

Wish List: It's huge!

Nikon D700
Nikon 14mm or 16mm f/2.8 Fisheye
Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8
Nikon 105mm f/2.8 micro
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
Nikon 24mm or 45mm Tilt Shift Lens
Nikon 14E or 20E Tele Converter
2nd SB900
Boom Stand

Ross Lowell's Matters of Light & Depth Review

Who is Ross Lowell? Ross is a leading pioneer in the art of light. His main talents are still photography and cinematography. With director, teacher, producer, woodworker, writer, and even inventor to add to his list of achievements, the man has had quite a life. If you have ever been to the Lowel Lighting website, you will see his handy-work, he is the founder of it.

Matters of Light & Depth was a book he published in 1992 containing 224 pages. Considering that was almost 20 years ago, it's amazing this book is still relevant today. Some of it is a tad outdated due to the rise of digital photography, but the lessons and theory still applies exactly the same. It's interesting because this book is aimed at not just photographers, but video and film people too, hence the sub-title "creating memorable images for video, film, and stills through lighting." This was the first book on lighting I ever read, and I just started reading it a second time. The wealth of information available in this book is so vast, you can read it over and over for years and still learn something.

What's in the book? Simple. Lighting. Okay, so it's not that simple. The book covers a wide array of subjects. This is one of the most comprehensive books out there on this subject. He starts simple with his idea of lighting planes, hard and soft light, and descriptions of the basic light setups, key light, kicker light, and so on. Then as you move deeper, he gets in too more technique like composing, framing, dollying, and booming followed by things such as multi light set ups, night and day, formula lighting and some light philosophy. The end of this book is filled with lighting exercises to put your new knowledge to work.

Whether you are a student or professional of film, video, or photography, this is a must have book. If you are going to learn something, why not learn from someone who has been there, done that. While some things in the book only pertain to film or photography, most of it applies to all. If you are trying to take that next step in any of those three fields, I honestly think this book will give you guidance in the right direction. Overall I give this book a 5 of 5 stars.

Chapter 1:Light of Passage - Basic Theory & Practice
Chapter 2:Lighting by Numbers - Technique
Chapter 3:In Broad Daylight - Tools & Tactics
Chapter 4:Dynamic Lighting of Static Subjects - Technique
Chapter 5:Shedding Light - Practical Matters
Chapter 6:Hearing the Light - Light Philosophy
Chapter 7:Light On Lessons & Resources - Exercises for the Eye
Chapter 8:Terms of Enlightenment - Glossary