Let's not forget about the flowers

Bee, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

In the euphoria that has resulted from all of my new lighting toys, I nearly forgot how great it can be to just walk around and snap shots of things you see. Yesterday I had the opportunity to search around the Matthaei Botanical Gardens for photo opportunities with Kathleen. The flowers there are not in full force yet, of course, but there were some great sights to see. This was my favorite capture of the trip.

In the meantime, I recently did an engagement shoot with my friends Sam and Jenny, and a couple of photos from that session will definitely end up here once I work some more on the set (650 photos, egad!), and tomorrow I'll be doing a shoot with Holly. A proper shoot, not just a shot at a bar like last time, though I really did like that shot.

Until then.

UPDATE: A big shout out to my roommate, David Wizard, for putting together my new banner! Much better than that pile of rubble I had picked out before.

The Painted Buddha

Budha Two, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

I don't have my remote triggers yet, but that's not stopping me from playing with my new gear. To imitate having a flash firing into a flash umbrella off camera, I put one of my new sb-600 flashes on top of my camera (only way I can get it to fire), set up my flash umbrella to the upper left of this shot, and swiveled the head of the flash so that it was firing into the umbrella. I would have liked to have been able to use my second flash to fill the background or create some more contrast on the image, but you work with what you have, right?

This one looks best in the large format, so click on it and then click on "all sizes" at the top of the image on Flickr.

Pinks

Pinks, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

Bokeh: how your lens renders the out of focus portions of your shot.

Bokeh is very important to pleasing photography. The eye wants some things in the picture to be out of focus, to be soft and natural looking, much like we see them in real life. My original lens has so-so bokeh. My new lens, the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D, has much, much better bokeh.

And I just got it in the mail today :) So far I love it. Of course it does have a down side: my camera won't autofocus with it because . . . well, because I need a new camera :P No, but really it just means I'll have to practice for a while until I get better at manually focusing.

Click on either picture to go to my Flickr page and see the other two images that I posted up there.

Pinks on Whites, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

Tulip

Tulip via picasa, originally uploaded by BreatheInDigital.

Here's another shot of some flowers. Tuplips, perhaps? I love the fact that it's Spring, but I love even more the fact that soon I won't be limited to natural light photos.

This week I ordered the following:

Nikkor 50mm F/1.8D lens (better for portraits, and, well, shots like this one)
2 sb-600 flash units, complete with colored gels, some stands, diffusers and an umbrella
Cactus v4 remote flash triggers, so I can command both of my flashes remotely.

This means that shots in the future are going to be more subject oriented (dominant images are a good thing), will involve more portraiture, and will look more (I hope) like professional photos due to the use of creative light placement.

Spring is Here

I'm going to start posting here through Flickr, which will encourage me to use my Flickr account more. Thusly, clicking on photos will now take you to my Flickr account. You can also see all my EXIF data the there.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I looked out my window and saw this Dandelion. I decided I must absolutely take a photo of it. Unfortunately, my ISO level was still set to 800 from some darker shots I had tried the night before, so the background is a little on the "noisy" side.