Putting my best foot forward...

Photographing shoes, how hard could it be, right? Well, theoretically really not that hard. However, you get what you put in, and seeing that I wanted a good grade in the class I put “my best foot forward.” Get prepped, setting up, and shooting took a total of four hours. And the results proved to be fantastic! Bellow are images of the shoes and the setup. I do not show the setup to brag or to show off but rather for the average person to understand all the work that goes in to one image and that photography is just not simply “pushing a button.”

It's only a flesh wound!

I will be transparent with you guys. This semester is exhausting. For eight weeks I have had no life, other than work and school. But we are now drawing to an end, and I could not be happier. Although I could not have made it through without my wife, my parents, and my in-laws helping out so much, from babysitting to mowing the grass. I love them all, and I could not say thank you enough. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! … See I can’t.

Soft as a baby

Photographing fabric proved to be harder than expected. Not only was it harder than expected, I decided to add another level of difficulty to it by choosing to use my one year old son in the first image. To showcase fabric in its true essence you have to show it doing what it was made for. This is why I chose to use my son. This duck towel is a babies towel and it was a soft towel, so what better way to showcase this than to put it on a soft skin baby. I used a soft box on camera right as the main light to give soft shadows and filled in the shadows with a regular Speedotron head, that was on camera left and a Farrel light above.

Why did the chicken cross the road?... To see light stands

Image 1

Image 2

One of my classes I am working on a magazine project and I have chose to photograph a family and their farming legacy. It will consist of images of chickens in chicken houses, tobacco, and portraits of the family. This past week I photographed the chickens. I never knew that these birds were so curious. Walking into the chicken house with my tripod, light stand, and props the chickens understandable fled. But after I set things up I never would have thought about how curious they would be.  Slowly the group or flock of birds would gather around investigating my stand. The I noticed on some frames that my fill/background light didn’t fire but this was due to a chicken trying to figure out what my flash was. All in all a fun and humorous experience.

Image 1:

Shutter: 1/250

Aperture: 5.6

ISO: 400

Light: SB800

Image 2:

Shutter: 1/250

Aperture: 5.6

ISO: 400

Light modifier: SB600 and a Parabolic soft box

Making a splash

This past week we were given an assignment, to show motion in an image. A relatively simple assignment, however, if one ponders the thought of capturing motion in a single frozen frame then one realize the difficulty of the assignment. I chose to shoot an apple falling into a 60-gallon fish tank while I had the apple in one hand and the other on the shutter release button. I timed it so when the apple touched the water my shutter was released. The image you see required about 500 trials and error but I finally got it. Nonetheless, this photograph did not meet the requirements. This image was more of a stop motion rather then a motion image.

Shutter: 1/250

Aperture: 29 (No I’m not kidding)

ISO: 400

Light: SB600 and Water?

The Pitch That Echoed Through Ramseur

     Riley Myers, number nine pitcher for the Ramseur Deep River Muddogs, steps up the mound, confirms the signal from the catcher, rears up and throws, flying through the air like a bullet the ball reaches the catcher’s glove, the force of the ball meeting the glove created a sound, like a gunshot, that echoed through Ramseur. As the dust from the glove dissipated the crowd, so did the crowds voices. After sometime chatter picked back up as people talked about the spectacle that just appeared in front of their eyes. Shortly after Myers sent the batter back to his dugout where he came from. Myers helped carry his team to a win against the Carolina Pirates with a final score of 8-2.







ISO: 640
Shutter Speed: 1/500
Aperture: f/5.6

Copy Cat!

                

Disclaimer: This week we had to find a photographer and copy their work.

Now I chose to go with a very simple lighting setup, not because I wanted the easy way out. On the contrary, I chose the simple one because I wanted to show that even with a one light setup someone could show drama and mood. The particular blog,   “Night n’ Day” caught my eye especially the first photograph of Thomas Rodriguez mopping the floor. Drama is a big part of a photograph, and I loved the drama in this particular image. The light pouring in like a streetlight was brilliant, and the hard shadows created a nice frame around the subject. Though, my favorite part about this image was that the viewer could not tell that there was a strobe/flash unless told otherwise. I like images that utilize lights in a way that it looks natural or in this case a normal streetlight. When I saw Joe McNally had the “sweet” concept of shooting in a doughnut shop I instantly thought of a Doughnut shop that is not far away from where I live, Glaze King is a doughnut shop on highway 49 and they have the best doughnuts. So on Friday evening after closing the storeowner’s wife let me in. Samreth Kem, the store owner, was in the back getting the batter fried, he starts at 9:00 PM after the store closes and cooks all the way through the night till the store opens at 5:00 AM the next morning, a labor of love. Mr. Kem took a break at 10 and let me photograph him and within 2 minutes I had the photograph. But in reality, I had practiced on Jaime and Mr. Kem’s son, Ronnie, for about 30 minutes beforehand. To achieve the image of Mr. Kem I used an SB800 at ¼ power and 105 zoom mounted on a Profoto air-cushioned light stand. I used two Rogue filters on the flash, Full CTO, and Plus Green cc30 to give that street like feeling, however, I can’t figure out why mine looks more neutral or cooler than McNally’s. The camera was a D7000 with an 18-200mm Nikkor lens set at 20mm.

    In closing, this assignment was actually really fun and I would suggest it to any photographer that wants to expand the field of knowledge in the aspect of photography. However, the challenges that I faced helped prepare me and made me really think. The main problem was the color temperature; the image you see is an untouched photograph. As you can see comparing mine to Joe McNally’s image that mine does not seem as warm as his. I think this was due to the interior color of the buildings.

The bonus was that my photo made the photo of the week: RCC Photo of the Week

The final image was:

Shutter Speed: 1/250

Aperture: f/5.6         

ISO: 800

Flash: ¼ power 105 zoom with green and warm filter.

I would like to say thank you to the Kem family for allowing me to photograph at your shop (Glaze King.) Secondly thank you Mr. McNally for you blog Night N’ Day. Also thanks again Jaime for helping me out and being a stand in model for me.