Error Message Haiku
How can I solve your
problem if you can’t tell me
what the message read?
Cat Man Do
It’s like this guy has a video cameras installed in my bedroom. Excepting the baseball bat, this could be classed as a Short Subject Documentary.
BTW, the kitteh’s itching seems to be abating. I’m not sure if it’s the mite-be-gone & amytriptalene or the food she’s been on since the beginning of June.
Another Wedding Cake
Here’s a few more of a new cake I brought home today. There are more wide shots, but the focus is really off. I need to set up another something for a background… I don’t want to have the same curtains in the shot for every cake I shoot.
Having these cakes here without any time constraints or people standing over my shoulder has been great. I’m able to take a bunch of shots and see what works. The one location shoot I did for her was sort of lucky because I hadn’t thought much about what I was going to do. I was really unprepared but managed to make some thing work with what was there. I’m glad I managed, but I want to be more proactive next time around.
Alicia and I were also talking about coming up with some props to include in some of the shots. It’s a great idea, so we’re planning a shopping day sometime soon to hit a few of the discount housewares stores (like Big Lots, Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, etc) to find cheap things to add to the ambiance of the photographs.
Once we’ve accumulated another half dozen or so cakes I’ll put together a bound photo book for her to use as her portfolio when she meets clients and goes to wedding shows.
I really need to finish up her website… another cake or two and I’ll have plenty of images from which I can work up the remaining graphics.
Diffuser Refinement
I’m super pleased with the diffusion panel as it stands right now, but there’s one thing I’d like to improve on.
I really don’t like the couplings as a means of joining two spars into one. It’s bulky and far less refined than I normally like. Sure, it works in this prototype, but I need a better solution, so I drew up a hub to be made from delrin or some other plastic. It’s out for quote right now, and if I can get it made inexpensively enough, I might just have a bunch extra made and sell them to anyone interested in making their own. The design includes a hole through the center face to allow for a post of some sort so that it can be mounted like an umbrella in a clamp like these. It also includes other holes on the face (at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock) to allow for other accessory attachment points. It’s a pretty simple design, but I think it’ll make this project that much nicer.
I’d like to make another diffuser or two as well as a couple of reversible reflectors based on this design.
It’s LOG, LOG, LOG!
I just don’t get it.
Design Milk posted about a new product available from a company called Pfeifer Studio. Here’s the description:
Fun, vibrantly colored earth-friendly line of sophisticated, rough cut, solid Pine log tables inspired by traditional Southwestern architecture, American Colonial-era finishes and techniques, and colors from earth-bound pigments rooted in nature and once seen in interiors of the past. A Pfeifer Exclusive available directly through the design studio, the tables are made in New Mexico from locally-harvested Pine logs historically used in traditional Adobe homes as exposed ceiling beams called Vigas. Dried in a solar kiln, harnessing the energy of tomorrow, they have a 100% natural finish free of toxins. Hand-painted with a VOC-free milk paint
IT’S JUST A F&*$ING LOG! I’m clearly in the wrong business. Who in their right mind would pay upwards of $260 for a painted log? And never mind how ridiculous a proposition this thing is to begin with, consider how much it’ll cost to ship it from New Mexico?
Mr. Emperor, your new suit is ready.
Another Wedding Cake
Last weekend Alicia made this fake wedding cake so I could take some more pictures. I brought it home Monday, but decided to buy a couple more flash guns so pictures had to wait until this weekend.
I’m using the beauty dish behind the diffusion panel in these shots to the right of the camera as the main light along with a snooted flash opposite the main aimed at the flowers on top. I’m still learning lights and mostly just throwing stuff up and seeing what works. So far, I’m getting results, but it’s mostly pure dumb luck at this point.
Something else I’m learning from Dawn is that the shot is only half the battle: post-processing can make or break a photograph. Which isn’t to say that the capture itself doesn’t matter. The thing I have to keep in mind is that the two work together to varying degrees. I’ve known this, for sure, but it’s nice to be reminded of things every now and then.
These were taken in my kitchen with Ginny’s curtains as a backdrop. In the future I’ll wait until it’s dark out to shoot in there so I have to do less work on the background.
DIY Diffusion & Reflector Panel
There are plenty of tutorials online for building diffusion panels and the frames necessary to support them. Most of the frame structures rely on humble, yet extremely versatile, 1″ PVC pipe and fittings. The only problem with PVC is that it’s sort of bulky especially when considered for a portable system.
In a previous life, I was a kite builder of some regard (at least in local circles), so I know my way around a sewing machine and even have half a clue about building light yet sturdy structures. I’ve been working up a plan for a diffusion panel system for a few weeks and over the course of this weekend I finally produced a working model.
The finished panel measures 27″ x 54″. The framing relies on some tricks from my kite building days. I didn’t take pictures as I went along (I know, dumb), but the methods are easy enough to explain. The panel material is just white nylon banner cloth.
Here’s the panel itself.
As I mentioned, a lot of what I did here was taken from my kite building days. Edge Binding was a common method of dealing with the fray that nylon is prone to. Here’s a detail. Notice the multi-step zig zag stitch as well as the two straight stitches on either side. The binding is a strip of 3″ wide ripstop nylon double folded.
The frame is made of 1/4″ sold carbon kite spars joined together with home made delrin couplings. Each stick is 39″ long.
Unless the spars are held together, the panel is really useless. Here I’m using a home made speed strap (see a good tutorial on how to make your own at DIYPhotography.net) to hold everything together.
I used grommets at each corner to attach the panel to the spars. As for the ends of the spars, I cut a 1″ collar from the same delrin to be used as a stopper and to clean up the ends I used a 1″ long vinyl end cap (super glued in place). Since Delrin is difficult to glue, I finally came up with the idea of “pinning” the stopper in place. After positioning the stopper, I drilled a 5/64″ hole through one side of the stopper and into the spar without going all the way through the other side of the stopper. I then cut a short piece of a 12 gauge romex wire and hammered it into place. The wire happened to be the perfect size and was malleable enough to work perfectly. If any pins eventually come lose, I’ll just add glue to the pinning process next time around.
Here I have the diffusion panel setup in front of the DIY Beauty Dish. Notice how the “X” of the frame sits nicely on the umbrella clamp. The other thought I had was to use a spring clamp to the hold the diffuser in place.
And here is a quick self portrait using the above setup. I think the light produced is pretty nice, even if the model leaves a lot to be desired.
There you have it. If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll see if I can help.
Western Spaghetti
YesButNoButYes comes through again with this awesome YouTube find.
You’d think that as fascinated as I am with stop motion, time lapse, and long exposure photography, I’d actually do some of my own.
Old Spice Is Right for Me
Old Spice is really on to something with their most recent line of commercials. I laughed out loud at the “Right For Me?” commercial the first time I saw it.
This morning The Movie Blog linked this new commercial featuring NPH:
“I used to be a doctor… for pretend.” Classic.
