gloda.net

Author: gloda

  • Castaway

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    The second season of the DPChallenge Photography Leage started this week over at DPC and I decided to submit a warm-up entry before the season begins to get back into the game – I haven’t taken part in the site’s competitions for a while. I decided to shoot something for the Out of the Ordinary challenge.
    I’m staying with Alison in Bermuda at the moment. (My flight was meant to leave 4 hours ago but with the airspace around the UK being closed for some foreseeable time I’m not going anywhere soon.) We borrowed some furniture from her house and drove to Warwick Long Bay. We set the things up where I thought we’d get a wave washing over them once in a while. Turns out that for a long time the only wave that would make it that far was the one that got my feet wet when we set up…
    In order to make the lamp light up I placed a Canon Speedlite 580EXII inside the lamp head. I had taken out the bulb earlier. My initial plans to keep it there with a superclamp didn’t work out because there was not enough room inside the lampshade. So I kept the flash and the Pocketwizard FlexTT5 that was attached to it in place with a ball bungee. A Full C.T.O. gel gave the flash the colour temperature of a tungsten lamp. The flash was set to ETTL, I let the camera do the metering for the lamp, which was easier since my aperture, shutter speed and ISO kept changing as it got progressively darker after sunset. The settings for this photo were f/4, ISO400, 1/30. I also asked Alison to point a snooted flash at the plant to give it a bit of extra definition.

  • Wedding: Lynn & Tim


    Such a cute couple. I had a great time at Lynn and Tim’s wedding last summer. Tim used to work with my aunt and that’s how we got in touch. As usual I went to see them and we discussed the details of their wedding well ahead of time, so that everything could go as smoothly as possible on their big day.
    Once again, Olivier Kerschen assisted me throughout the day. It’s great to have an assistant with you who knows the way you work. We started the day at Lynn and Tim’s home with detail photos and some shots of Lynn getting ready. The church in Obercorn in which the ceremony was held wasn’t far from their home, so we could spend a good deal of time with Lynn and still meet Tim at the church, early enough to confirm with the priest the decisions Olivier and I had made when we had scouted the church on an earlier occasion.
    The ceremony was great, with some brilliant solo performances by the choire and lots of emotions.
    The reception and dinner were at the Claimarais in Belgium, a lovely hotel-restaurant with a beautiful parc surrounding it. We stayed with the couple and their guests well into the night: the dinner was followed by catchy music by an Italian trio, and the family and friends had come up with some priceless games for the couple in between the dances.
    We took the couple photos of Lynn and Tim on a separate day, which allowed us to visit a couple of locations. We started in the Grund in Luxembourg city, which looks great in summer; then we moved on to the Schueberfouer, the yearly Luxembourgian funfair for some photos in a more unusual and exciting setting. Finally we drove to an abandoned warehouse to finish the shooting with a modern, gritty edge.

  • Speedlinks March 2010

    • Shoot-out: “What do you get when you challenge David Hobby, Zack Arias and Joey L to make an image of a surprise model(s) in 25mins in a packed auditorium.” A fun video, spiced up with comments by Joe McNally.
    • BBC Wildlife Photography Masterclasses. The BBC has published a series of wildlife photography classes online, filled with a wealth of info.
    • Greg du Toit takes the meaning of endurance to a new level: he spent months in a puddle to get some breathtaking phots of wildlife animals at their water hole.
    • DIY rain cover. diyphotography.net has a how-to on turning a pair of old rain trousers into a protective cover that protects your camera from the elements.
    • LADIG have put together a nice and easy bounce card to use with external flashes. I think I prefer this design to the one by Gardner which I’ve used so far, mainly because this one does away with the need for velcro at the top end.
    • CS5 Sneak Peek: Adobe has posted a YouTube preview of a new feature for Ps CS5: content-aware fill. Looks very useful for photo manipulation.