January Calendar

Here's my January Calendar.

January 31st - Metalhead

It's assignment day again. Today's theme is "Backlighting" so I went out to shoot Shannon and Courtney on mountain bikes with the sun behind them and strobe to fill in, but we were kinda late and the sun was too low (not to mention the temperature) and we didn't get real good results. So tonight after dinner I got playing around with the strobe indoors and came up with this one of TJ, which is cool because I wasn't 100% happy with my photo for the "Music" theme 2 weeks ago. This is much more the kind of look I was hoping for then and it fits today's theme. 1/250th sec. f/4.5 iso 400. Strobe with red gel behind TJ, and another behind me bouncing off the wall.

>>> EDIT: Feb. 8th - I reposted this with Flickr account as the source for better color. I don't know why, but the Picasa thing has been doing things to make my images look different. (Had to go back to the original so the crop is a bit different, but I think this looks better - also PS'd out the distracting lights in the background)

January 30th - Food experiment

Wait, can a twinkie even be considered "food"? Well anyway - Shannon came up with this one... shoot a twinkie once a week and see how much it changes. Will it rot? Will it get moldy? Will it not change at all? Only one way to find out. This is science in action! Tune in next Friday, and see how it looks after 7 days out of the wrapper! 1/80th sec. f/22 iso 800

January 29th - Camo Dog

This image is interesting to me because if I stare at it long enough, I begin to see what looks like a dog right in the center of the frame. I thought I would post it and see if anyone else has a similar experience. When I took Chester to the dog park today to let him run for a bit, I noticed the wood shavings on the ground there made some interesting patterns so I shot a few photos and this is one of the better ones. ***OK, all kidding aside - this is Rupert, one of the dogs that was there today. He is a 6 month old "Golden Doodle" - His father is a Poodle about this color and his mother a Golden Retriever.  1/200th sec. f/7.1  iso 800

January 28th - Coinage

I tried a few variations on this shot, at first thinking it would look good as an extreme close-up but backing off a bit seems to work better as it gives the light a chance to go from bright to dark across the image. Then just to give it a little more mood, I messed with the color a bit in Photoshop. 1/320th sec. f/4.5 iso 800

January 27th - Afternoon Tea

Ugh! I've been hit square in the face with a head cold. I could feel it coming for a few days now, but "Wham" today it really nailed me. One thing that helps is a good hot cup of herbal tea. I've downed so many of them today I'm considering an I.V. 1/50th sec. f/4.2 iso 400

January 26th - Where'd They Go?

OK, so this morning when I was getting my first cup of coffee, I saw some birds out the back window. Then when I came back to make some breakfast I saw some birds out the back window. Then when I was poking around looking for what to make for lunch, I saw... well you probably get the idea. Anyway, it wasn't until mid afternoon that I finally thought, "Wow, I should shoot some birds for today's photo!". But now I didn't see any out there. So I put out some Bird Attractant (you can see that sprinkled on top of the stump), and set up my camera and got everything all set and then waited. And waited. And waited some more. (cue the crickets...) I guess they were all early birds today and I was just a bit late. So although you may have thought you saw a bird when you first looked at this photo - look again. There's no bird there. 1/160th sec. f/4.5 iso 200

January 25th - Stoppage

Bicycles are the most efficient way to go there is. And this bike has a very efficient way to stop. Softbox directly above; strobe with blue gel lower right. 1/125th sec. f/8 iso 200.

January 24th - Chester

Today's assignment is "Black and White Portrait". For those of you new to this blog, we don't always have an assignment but we decided it would be fun once a week or so, to all shoot the same theme. Anyway so I think Chester here was getting jealous of Bolo, my friend's dog, so I figured since it was portrait day, I'd try to make up for that. Hmmmm... he still looks pretty sad though with those puppy-dog-brown-eyes. Maybe I was too late!  1/6th sec. f/4.5 iso 200. Home made strobe softbox, camera-right about 24" away. Vivitar strobe camera-left about 4' away, shot through white fabric.

January 23rd - Life is a Beach

Oh I'm havin' fun now and I know what you're thinking... Yes, I shot this TODAY. Yes I shot it here in Friday Harbor... (well OK, the image in the background I shot last January in Hawaii), but the foreground was shot today. After dark. In my living room. Here's the setup I used. One bare strobe on 1/4 power and 80mm zoom about 24" above the plateful of sand and shells. Shot up close and personal with macro lens. Sand and seashells imported from San Felipe, Mexico, rocks from Sucia Island and the Chiton - well I don't know where we got that. Combine all ingredients, layer sand over surfer with Photoshop and bake at 85 tropical degrees. And I have to give credit to my daughter Courtney for coming up with the idea to shoot some rocks from our beach collection jar. 1/6th sec. f/29 iso 200 Lens at 56mm focal length. 

January 22nd - Untitled still life with dry grass, bike and reflections of the lot behind our house shot in late afternoon sunshine

So I was walking round the backyard today, pointing and shooting, pointing and shooting, looking for something to shoot other than darkness and with my macro lens was finding lots of tiny leaves and water droplets and other fun stuff, but when I was lining up this shot I noticed the bike inside the window and the reflection of the trees and sky and I thought it looked pretty cool so this is today's shot. It didn't really have a theme so it was difficult to come up with a catchy title. 1/80th sec. f/4.5 iso 800

January 21st - My Life Behind Bars

We were out running errands again and stopped by the Doctor's Office for a fix when I noticed the light reflecting on the railings and thought I'd shoot a few variations. Funny thing is, usually (I think?) when I do this, I hone it down to a final, best image after several angles and adjustments - Tonight, the first one was the winner. 1/2 sec. f/11 iso 800


***Edit*** It occurs to me that if anyone out there reading this is not familiar with our island, my words "stopped by the Doctor's Office for a fix" might be a bit misleading. So to clear that up, the Doctor's Office is a local espresso shop, and we stopped by for some Lattes.

January 20th - Making the Go Juice

I promise I'll try to not do too many nighttime photos, but once again, today I was working with a client off-island and wasn't able to shoot until after I missed both the 5:05 and the 5:45 ferries - So now I have plenty of time and I've always wondered when driving by the refineries on March Point just outside of Anacortes, what they would look like when photographed at night. Well here's my answer. 20 sec. f/25 iso 800

January 19th - Bolo

This is Bolo - my friend David's dog. 5 yrs old, and a mix of quite a few things. I'm off island working with David for the day and I just realized I needed a photo for today!! Too early in the year to mess up and miss one! So real quick - "CLICK" here's Bolo!  1/2 sec. f/3.5 iso 800

January 18th - Metal is Music Too

I thought I was into hard rock! Today's theme is "Music" and so I thought it would be fun to shoot my kids with their guitars laying down some hardcore riffs, slamming some breakdowns and just basically rocking out. Now my ears are ringing...  1/320th sec. f/4 iso 200

January 17th - Fairhaven Fog

Today we had a wonderful walk from downtown Bellingham to Fairhaven and back. Boy they have a great walking/biking trail! Caught the last ferry home and now just barely have time to look through and pick a photo out of the 106 I shot today. But this one looks good and it's almost midnight so I need to get on it. The fog crept over the point just as we began to head back and it was backlit by the late afternoon sun. 1/2500th sec. f/13 iso 800.

January 16th - Livingston, I Presume?

We caught an afternoon ferry to go visit the Bellingham Dustrudes, and I spotted this guy along the way and couldn't resist. 1/200th sec. f/4.5 iso 800

January 15th - Hang 'em High

I'll probably revisit this theme again before the year is over as it's something I feel very strongly about. We've been drying our laundry outside in the Summer when it's nice out, but we recently made a commitment to dry on a line for a year instead of using the dryer. So that means an indoor clothesline in the Winter (now). Those are our Christmas lights in the background. (yeah we leave them up for a while) 1/2 sec. f/4.5 iso 800

January 14th - Cuisine de Carton

I went out to the bank, the store, etc., this afternoon and thought I might get a photo, but it was pretty overcast and getting dark, so I bagged that idea. I had been down the "Prepared Foods" aisle and over to the frozen section and was looking forward to finishing dinner so I could come up with something to shoot when I thought of the photo on the box of potatoes. I decided I'd try to make our dinner look more uptown than it really was. While the food was in the oven, I set up the shot: CFL Softbox about 18" over the table pointing straight down on the plate, strobe pointing at the wall behind (to give a better highlight on the silverware) on 1/32 power. When the timer went off, I served it up and shot about 8 variations. You're looking at the winner - 1/40 sec. f/4.5 iso 200.

January 13th -eWaste

Today I pay homage to Chris Jordan and his series "Intolerable Beauty". While thinking about what to shoot today, I came across my box of cords and electronic stuffs, old cell phones, computer mice, cables...  and oh, can anyone use a power brick? I'll sell it to you cheap! I got loads of 'em. Pretty sad huh? Got me thinking of Chris Jordan's work and also the Story of Stuff. Gotta make some changes here... 1/60th sec. f/3.8 iso 400

January 12th - Garden Greens

I guess in yesterday's post when I said that the photos I shot earlier were boring, that wasn't exactly what I meant - a few were pretty nice but I was unhappy with the depth of field. So when I saw similar weather outside this morning, I jumped at the chance to go reshoot one of them and here it is. If anyone knows the name of this plant, let me know in the comments below please. This was shot in the landscaping in front of one of the businesses over by the post office. 1/15th sec. f/11 iso 400.

January 11th - Harbor Mist

Today Shannon and I walked to the library and back and I shot a fair amount of photos along the way and thought I had something good for the blog. Then when we were heading home I thought maybe I should run down and see what the harbor looked like in the fog, and good thing I did. The other photos were pretty boring so I'm posting this one instead. 1/15th sec. f/3.8

January 10th - Bokeh Tapes

Looking at Eric's photo today, I noticed something about the focus and almost fired off an email to him to ask why, and then thought "No - I'll do an experiment to answer my question, and that will be my Bokeh photo for today". So here it is, but I think I need a different lens to really do this experiment. I could only stop down to 4.2 - my lens doesn't go very wide open. So someday when I have a lens that does, I'm gonna redo this experiment. What I expected was to see the 12" mark on the center tape measure be in sharp focus and then somewhere around the 10-1/2 and 11-1/2" marks on the outside tapes be in focus because their angular distance from the lens rather than their straight [linear?] distance from the edge of the table. But at f/4.2 it doesn't really look that way does it? Anyway, here's today's photo 1/20 sec. f/4.2 iso 200.

January 9th - The New Do

So today it was my turn to wonder all day what I would shoot. Not much going on, other than I finally got a very long overdue, very much needed haircut. Being that the light outside was kinda warm when I got home I thought I'd try a self-portrait again. But by the time I got things set-up, the clouds killed all the nice light so I had to improvise. I put an orange filter over my Vivitar 285HV, set at 1/4 power, about 4 ft from subject (me) camera-left. About 2 ft away camera right and 2 feet above, I had a softbox with the Canon 430EZ also at 1/4 power. 1/40 sec. f/13, iso 200

Here's my setup, shot from reverse angle:

January 8th - A River Runs Through It

Today was sort of an assignment day with the only clue being "A River Runs Through It", so I went out looking for a river. But this is a small little seaside village on a small little island so the best I could do was the drain pipe at the end of Spring Street (which I think if you check the historical register is where the street got it's name - but I'm not sure on that). Anyway, this is my submission for the river thing today. Shutter Speed: 0.7 sec; f/22 iso 200.

January 7th - The Lonely Business Traveller

All day today I've been thinking of doing this photo and hoping the ferry would be empty - As it turned out, I missed the 5:05 ferry and instead got the 5:45 with priority vehicle loading for Shaw and Orcas (I was #2 on overload for Friday Harbor). Luckily, there was no overload, and there were only a few vehicles loaded for Friday Harbor. I got my wish for an empty ferry! Woot! So after we unloaded at Orcas, I took several self portraits from various angles. Here's the winner. 1/40 sec f/3.5 iso 800.

January 6th - Rainy Window

I drove a little longer and a little farther tonight looking for a good location to show how wet it is. I wanted something like a long curving stretch of I-5 with all of the heavy traffic crawling up Southcenter hill or something like that. Not having any rain gear for my camera though, I would have to shoot from inside the 4Rrunner, but everywhere I went where I could park, I couldn't get a good angle on anything. Contemplating this while sitting in a parking lot near the mall, I noticed the passenger window getting the full brunt of the wind and rain... So here's my 6th photo. 10 seconds at f/25 iso 400

January 5th - Space Age Taco Time

I'm working in the city today and tomorrow. It was already dark when I got off work so I drove around Auburn for 45 minutes trying to find a good location. I finally settled on the Taco Time restaurant next to my hotel. And I got lucky because as I was shooting it, someone drove into the parking lot so I got their headlights streaming across the image. 8 seconds at f/11 iso 200.

January 4th

It's a wild and stormy night. I was supposed to catch a ferry to go to work in Seattle tomorrow morning, but they cancelled one run already and I don't want to get turned back in the middle of the night, so I'll leave in the morning. I was going to shoot something on the ferry for today's post, but since I'm home, I've shot several things here instead... a bowl of oranges, a box of wood screws and I finally settled on my pride and joy... my Fender Strat.

January 3rd on the 4th

Or is it January 1st on the 3rd posted the 4th? Or should it... oh nevermind. OK, so I was presented with this challenge too late to get out there and get a photo on the 3rd, so this one was actually shot on the 1st and posted (like all the previous ones) today, January 4th. This is Shannon and Chester on a hike.

January 2nd

Friday was a work day and I was shooting some photos for a client and here's one after Photoshop got to it...

January 1st

My brother challenged me to a photo a day for 2009 and so here goes. My girlfriend and my folks and I went for a walk at English Camp and I took along the camera and strobe and here's one of the results from that. Shannon held the flash for me while I tried to dial in a correct exposure. By the time I got this close to it, everyone was done indulging me, so this is the best of the portraits from that endeavor...