Photographic Exercise
As far as activities go, photography is pretty benign. Aside from lugging the gear around, there's generally not much physical exertion to be had on a shoot---not on the part of the photographer, anyways---and it's certainly far from perilous. My last shoot at Lewis Park, however, turned out to be the exception to the rule. Admittedly, I never truly feared for my life, and none of my muscles ached the next day, but I definitely did a lot more shoving and clinging and climbing than I've ever done for a photograph before.
Christmas Portrait, Part II
Continued from Christmas Portrait, Part I.
For this year's Christmas portrait, I put my girlfriend inside a snow globe. In the last entry I talked about the hard part: photographing the snow globe. Today's entry covers photographing Danie and actually getting her into the globe, which was really more drudgery than anything.
Christmas Portrait, Part I
Last year I made a Christmas portrait of my girlfriend, and we've decided to make a yearly tradition of it. Last year's was a simple affair, just a standard headshot with a Santa hat and a red-gelled background. This year we've decided to go for something much more involved, and I'm going to be compositing two photos together. I won't reveal my plan until the composition is finished (that should be up in a blog post tomorrow morning), but I'll start out by walking through the creation of one of the photos I needed: a snow globe.
Splash
I haven't gotten a chance to shoot anything recently, and my screencasting plans have fallen by the wayside thanks to technical problems, so today I decided to dig up some photos from an older shoot and write a post about it.
A little over three years ago, I shot my friend David's senior portraits. We were both competitive divers at the time (although the "competitive" part was debatable in my case), and he wanted a set of diving portraits, so I went with him to practice one day to shoot. I had a 300mm f/2.8 lens checked out (one of the perks of editing the school's yearbook), and I planned to put it to good use. I thought we'd get there a good hour before the sun went down, during which time I'd make some nice available light shots with the 300, and then once the sun set I'd play around a little bit with some lights.
Up in Smoke
For well over a year now, I've had "flaming light bulbs" on my to-shoot list, and I've just now gotten around to doing it. Light bulbs come with a gas inside them that won't burn, so the filament can glow really hot without actually catching fire. Break the glass around the filament and the gas all escapes, exposing it to the oxygen in the air. From that point, once you turn on the power, the bulb will burn brightly for a second or two and then go out.
IF YOU'RE THINKING ABOUT TRYING THIS, PLEASE HEED THE SAFETY WARNINGS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.
Plan B
At the back of G.T. Bray park in Bradenton, there's a dry stream bed, and across from that is a beautiful little pond, hidden away from the city, shaded by the trees and just generally gorgeous. I've been wanting to do some portraits back there for months, and earlier this week I finally got a chance: I had a friend who wanted portraits, and the location came to mind, so we decided to go for it. It's a little bit of a trek back to the pond, off the footpaths, so I loaded up my dorky photo vest with all the gear I'd need, threw my camera and a couple light stands over my shoulders, and we set out for the back of the park. We made it back, crossed over the dry stream bed (it's a good seven or eight foot descent to the bottom, and then back up again), and over on to the banks of the pond.
Cheap Glass
No, it's not a post about budget lenses. Glass is one of the trickiest materials to shoot, and it helps if you have a big studio full of lights and backdrops and gobos and whatnot. Unfortunately, I don't have any of that, so I have to get by with some less elegant equipment. Last weekend I finally went through with a crazy idea I've been planning for a while: I made a bowl out of ice, filled it with rubbing alcohol, and lit it on fire. With no further ado, here's how I shot it on a budget.