365/57 The road to hell begins with ...

"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame."

Oscar Wilde

Another evening of boredom leads to a new self-portrait. Wanted something a bit risque and outrageous this time. What better way to do this than grab a book on bondage and a pile of rope. Imagine the things you could do! The risk! The reward! The ... things you learn while surfing the internet.

This was one of my more complex light setups, mostly stemming from the need to get the book cover well lit. Three lights in total here. One SB-900 into a collapsed silver umbrella to camera left, up high and about 45 degrees off center. One SB-900 to camera right, covered with a short, blackwrap snoot and a red gel. I had it popping through some cabling to create a cookie for the background. Finally, to give enough fill on the book, I had the Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe setup with a third SB-800. This was placed on the floor and behind the camera about 10 feet away.

Why?

When I'm shooting with three lights on CLS, I don't have enough channel spots on the camera's built-in commander mode to handle all three. I ended up putting both the umbrella light and the softbox light on Channel A to share the same power level, but had to pull the softbox back to get the power to drop. It's that whole distance vs. light strength working for me here.

Once I got everything set up the way I liked, I handed the camera over to MJ to actually do the shot because I couldn't easily do the intervalometer this time AND get into the scene with the rope draped appropriately across me before the interval stopped.

As for the face? Like I said, you learn some new and interesting things from the internet. Go figure?

365/56 It's all aces, mate

Nothing much to say. Spending time with friends this evening. That's aces, mate. Go spend some time with your friends and have a beer or two. Just be safe.

365/55 Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.

I was so very tired when I made this. You can see the bags hanging under my eyes.

Playing around with a wash of light across the background from a snooted flash to give a bit of separation here. I used to carry around a foam snoot as part of my gear, but found that I either never used it or that it never stayed in the shape I wanted it. I switched to blackwrap for my snoots recently, mostly because it was easy to fold up and carry, as well as shape onsite. If you haven't seen blackwrap before, you should pick some up. It's heavy duty matt black aluminum. What I like most about it is how easy it is to shape and keep it in that shape. This isn't some cheap kitchen foil here. I picked it up for about $25 at a local film industry supplier.

The second thing I was playing around with in this photo was a collapsed silver umbrella on the key light, with the flash pushed right into the center and half-hidden by the now flapping cloth. I don't remember where I first saw this, but I really like the light coming from it. The hardened shadow line reminds me of beauty dish light, well defined, but softened.

Doing these self portraits has been fun, but I still run into issues where it would be entirely easy if I just had a better tripod or remote trigger for the camera. On the flip side, I'm certainly getting better with making the focus spot on for where I'm shooting. It took under 30 frames to get this photo. I think that's pretty decent. Now, all I need to do is come up with more ideas.

365/54 Snowmageddon

[Note: I'm a little behind on writing up these daily entries. Rest assured, I'll get caught up. Honest. No, really, I mean it.]

Tuesday was met with much cussing and gnashing of teeth whilst I looked for my gloves. The weather wasn't going to be good today. There was mild panic in the air as people scrambled to prepare for the snowmageddon event of the century. Ice! Wind! Snow! Up hill, both ways in the ... well, snow.

We had flurries throughout the day, mixed with the slow, pelting, soul-sucking crush of sleet and slush.

It began to snow as we ambled back from lunch. I stopped a moment to eat the falling flakes before they hit the ground. When we got back to where I stashed the camera, I quickly went outside and took half a dozen photos of it before it fluttered away in the storm. The flakes weren't gigantic by any means, nor did they stick when they slammed into the ground at breakneck speeds.

By the end of the day, it had all melted away as quickly and quietly as it had come.

365/53 Anjou wine and virtuosity.

"Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works."

Alexander Dumas

Fifty two in fifty two. It was an ambitious idea. Reading fifty books in fifty two weeks, that is. As of this very moment, I'm batting one for fifty two. Yes. I suck.

The book I'm reading right now is The Club Dumas. It's one of my favorites. The movie The 9th Gate is based on it. I'm not sure if I like the book because of the movie or the movie because of the book. They both have their quirks and interesting parts.

It's about a book dealer who must authenticate an original copy of the Anjou Wine serial manuscript from Alexander Dumas' The Three Muskateers. I won't go into detail. I certainly won't do it justice. The Wikipedia entry on it is fairly good and picks up on a few nuances that I missed the first time I read it. I think the most interesting part was the sheer number of literary references contained within. Little hints to lead off in other directions and reads once this one is complete.

Although, first things first. I'll have to read The Three Muskateers again, once done. It's only right.

365/52 Alegria ... the aftermath

A baroque ode to the energy, grace, and power of youth.

Home again, home again. Cirque du Soleil's Alegría is in town. It's rare that we get to see a big event like this and take the whole family out, so my wife purchased tickets for us all as a Valentine's Day treat. More importantly, we wanted the kids to see what a modern day performance troupe was like. Not quite a circus, but something more, something to be remembered.

From the Alegría website:

Alegría is a mood, a state of mind. The themes of the show, whose name means "jubilation" in Spanish, are many. Power and the handing down of power over time, the evolution from ancient monarchies to modern democracies, old age, youth—it is against this backdrop that the characters of Alegría play out their lives. Kings' fools, minstrels, beggars, old aristocrats and children make up its universe, along with the clowns, who alone are able to resist the passing of time and the social transformations that accompany it.

To put it succinctly, the performance was outstanding. There were many moments throughout the show where I would have killed for a 300mm lens and my camera. There were so many moments that would have been wonderful to capture and bring home. And the costumes. Oh, I need to find a costumer!

Favorite acts? The Fire Knife Dance and the Flying Man.

Favorite characters? The clowns and the White Singer (who had a hauntingly powerful and rich voice).

Sadly, the performance ended too soon. It wasn't enough, even at over two hours. But that's just my greedy opinion.

We ended up making our way to a local pizza joint for dinner, stuffing ourselves with various meat and cheese delicacies. Snapped a quick photo of my daughter with the iphone because she was being very cute. Later, once the kids were all in bed, and I was alone to find my photo of the day, I looked at that, but it was missing something. A few shots later and I had my Alegría aftermath photographed and ready for the day.

365/51 One burger at a time.

Went on a drive Saturday afternoon, with the intent of doing some outdoor photography out by one of the lakes. Plans didn't work out so well, so we ended up driving out to Inkslake after a few false starts along 71, going towards Burnet and Marble Falls.

Inkslake State Park is smaller than I had envisioned it, but still had some really interesting creek features running through it. We ended up hiking back beyond Devil's Cove (or whatever they called it). Did a few HDR shots of the rock features and spent about half an hour doing some flash work and portraiture. I kick myself for not packing the umbrella and light stand onto the backpack. I didn't expect to actually find a good place to shoot, so I didn't bother hooking it up to carry.

I was wrong. We were too far back into the trail to go back for it and have time to shoot; the light was failing fast and we were dealing with an already overcast and dwindling day.

But, we made the best of it. I set up a single flash and dialed down everything so the background was dark. Maybe too dark, really. I was thinking about that Joe McNally photo where the biker is standing on the edge of the water with the light feathered off so it only fell upon her upper body and face. Needed the umbrella.

When we got back, I played with the photos for a bit and found that they turned out much better when converted to black and white.

Ended up stopping by Mighty Fine Burgers. I had never been before. As burgers go, it was alright. Nothing like a Dirty Martin's burger, though. Waiting for the order, we stood near the meat prep window and watched as some unnamed meat man handler was turning balls of meatdough into some of the hugest patties we'd ever seen. I bet you didn't know that the secret to a good hamburger is to make the center thinner than the rest of the patty. Makes it cook better, more evenly. You don't end up with a round, tiny burger with a big fat middle. Nice and even. Like a burger should be.

Here's a few of the portraits from earlier in the day. I think second is my favorite. What say you?