My Test Subjects

My Test Subjects, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

The ECA dance was a pretty big success, all things considered. The kids had fun, the staff had fun, and I got a chance to play with my off-camera flash setup.

Ellen and Dave were happy to be my test subjects before I got to all of the students who wanted to be photographed (none of those pictures will appear here as they're all minors). Now, my skills at off-camera flash are pretty weak, and everything that I shot was under exposed and pretty awful looking. That said, this terrible mishandling of my new toys gave me a chance to learn even more about post production. After all, I had to make usable photos for the kids, lest they be heartbroken. So, the above photo is the kind of quality I was able to pull out of these things using my new favorite post tool, Adobe Lightroom.

The last shot here is of Ellen and Dave dancing. This was just taken with on of my sb-600's on top of the camera and required a lot less post production.

ECA STAFF: If you'd like to see photos of the kids, send me an email.

Let's Dance, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

Proof

Proof, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

This is not artistic expression. This isn't even really that interesting to look at. However, this is, in fact, a statement. That statement? I have the power of off-camera flash in my hands!

That's right, my new remote triggers came in the mail. They allow me to take both of my flashes, attach a little device to them (a receiver, if you will) and attach another device to the flash mount of my camera (the transmitter, if you will) and thusly make the flashes go "flash" whenever I snap a shot, even though they are in no way connected to the camera.

You know, just in case you couldn't figure out what the words "remote" and "trigger" were doing together.

Anyway, I took a bunch of other shots tonight, but none of them were any good. It looks like there will be a learning curve for using my new equipment. But fear not, many more interesting photos than this will appear in the weeks, months, and dare I say, years to come.

Candid

Dave, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

So at our work bar gathering on Friday, I got to take a lot of very candid shots of my co-workers. This is Dave, our administrator. I feel like this shot pretty much embodies his story telling style.

Randal, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

We were mostly there, though to appreciate Randal, the man who makes the entire school function. Without Randal, we'd be disembodied teachers hovering around in classrooms, and in a semester's time the school would no longer exist.

There were more shots, but I know better than to load a post down with a bunch of pictures. Please click on either picture to view my Flickr stream and see the rest of the staff that was present! They're all pretty good shots, if I do say so myself.

Alivia, in full color

What do you mean?, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

Do you remember that maternity shoot I did a while back? Well, the baby is out of the oven (did I get that right?), and here she is. Baby Alivia is absolutely adorable, and I'm often quite dubious about the cuteness of babies.

I shot this stuff with one of my new sb-600 flashes on camera. We were outside in the shade, so the ambient light and the flash (with a diffuser and power settings ranging from 1/4 to 1/32, depending on the distance from camera to subject) made for some pretty crisp photos. Also, I'm starting to get good at this whole manual focus thing!

I'll post some other shots of the day later, or you can just head over to my Flickr account and see them now.

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.

A night sky

A night sky, originally uploaded by Breathe in Digital.

I was informed that there would be a beautiful sunset. Where's the beautiful sunset? I demand a beautiful sunset! Apparently my lethargy and the time it took to set up the tripod in the dark equaled a shot that could have been better. Still, it's pretty enough to post.