Pimpampelen
Alison and I made a trip to the butterfly garden in Grevenmacher. This time the temperature was a bit more comfortable than the 40°C in the World of Butterflies. We only had one macro lens between the two of us so we took turns in photographing and holding a flash for one another. We started out with the ringlight adapter but moved on to a DIY diffuser to light the butterflies. It’s quite useful to be able to sculpt the light the way you need it to be rather than being at the mercy of the sun shining through a glass roof and foliage. I used the Pocketwizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 to allow the camera and flash to communicate with one another. Setting the flash power manually would have been tricky, since we worked without tripods. At those small distances, a few centimeters change in the distance between flash and subject can make a big difference. (Inverse square law: if the flash is giving me a correct exposure at 1/8 power and 10cm distance, if the flash moves 5cm closer the power needs to change to 1/32. ETTL takes care of this on the fly.)
So my technique here is to get the aperture I need for a decent depth of field, then dialing in a shutter speed and ISO that get me enough ambient light for a photo that’s slightly underexposed, then bring in the flash to get the exposure to where it needs to be.
(For those wondering what the title means: it’s one of the Luxembourgian words for butterfly.)
Zombies at an Airport
The sequel to Snakes on a Plane
A bit of behind the scenes information about my PAD for September 16th 2009. The initial concept for the picture was to have a hand come out of a suitcase, and to add some visual drama by putting a lightsource inside the suitcase too.I placed one of my flashes inside the suitcase. Because I wanted the light to spread as evenly as possible, I placed the flash inside a clear plastic tube (the ones you get when you buy 100 DVD-Rs together… I burn every RAW file I might ever need to get back to on DVD. Twice.) Since the lid would be closed, Canon’s ETTL triggerism functionality wouldn’t work here – it needs line of sight. A perfect opportunity for my new PocketWizard set then. The flash and the FlexTT5 fitted inside the tube easily. A stofen omnibounce-type diffuser spread the light out a bit more. The settings on this flash were 32mm at 1/2 power.
The flash on the Manfrotto Nano 005B lightstand, which provides the light outside the suitcase is still triggered via Canon’s ETTL. It’s zoomed in to 100mm, at 1/2 +0,7 power. A full CTB (Color Temperature Blue) gives the light a blue cast that contrasts with the neutral light from the suitcase. To limit the area lit by this flash to a small surface, I added a DIY straw snoot to it. That way the beam behaves more like a spotlight.
I took one picture with just the suitcase, and another with the same settings (Canon 5DMkII, ISO100, f/9, 1/200) where my sister put her arm in from one side and out at the front again.
In Photoshop I layered the two photos over each other. Now all I had to do was mask Carmen out of the photo so that only her hand would remain visible.
Happy New Year!
Happy 2010 guys, and thanks for stopping by the blog. I’ll post a collection of my favourite photos of 2009 soon.
Joe, Tom, Philippe and Alain on New Year's Eve
A trip to the city
In between revising for my upcoming university exams there remains some time for photography. During my stay in Luxembourg I met up with photographer John Oesch for a shooting with model Kimberley at the Abbaye Neumünster. From there I went on to take the first photograph shown above, which I entered in the Photogen competition ‘Luxembourg City’. A bit later I continued for an exploration of the Kirchberg area.
Photography Society Meeting
Before the Easter holidays the Photography and Modeling society met up for a last shooting session. We started in the Cathedral Cloisters where the basics of flash photography and balancing it with ambient light were covered. I lent my camera to someone else so I have no pictures of that part. After a delicious Sunday lunch in the Dolphin we decided to take some group shots in the nearby park area as well as the pictures of Charlotte in the daffodils. For the eTTL adepts out there I’m happy to report that the 430EXs had no trouble picking up the master signal from the 580EX in broad sunlight from about 15 metres.
World Book and Copyright Day
These are some older pictures from a shooting with Cazz Walker in the University of Kent Library. The shooting was aimed at the DPChallenge.com photo contest ‘Books Smarts’ where the first picture posted here got second place. There’s something in this photo that adds further interest to it for me. The half a dozen black volumes in the upper right hand corner are copies of Bennett and Royle’s Introduction to Critical Theory, a work that has simplified and simultaneously complicated my life as student of English and American Literature for some years now.
For the copyrigth part of this UNESCO organized international day, this may be a good point to explain why all of my new images that ever see the internet, and most others, are watermarked. One reason is that some of my pictures have been taken from this website and different photo communities and have re-appeared on sites with a somewhat dubitable reputation. Other instances include publicity managers ‘forgetting’ about the payment part of non-use agreements, or even big organizations like the ‘Lëtzebuerger Guiden an Scouten’ printing a book with one of my photographs on its cover without asking permission or giving credit.
So, yes, the watermarks are a necessary evil. It doesn’t make the images theft-proof, but makes stealing them more difficult. [Rant over.]