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Showing posts from 2009

Striving for Quality

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Gosh! Time flies, it's been more than 2 months since I updated my blog. Ooopss! So anyways, I was going through my flickr pages to do a self review of where I'm headed in terms of photography. Some big changes.... I have done way too many portraits, my post processing skills have improved, my style has changed from shooting a wide angle frames to a tightly cropped frames and most importantly I'm paying way too much attention towards the quality of the images. I no longer want/create dirty photoshopped looking images. I'd rather do minimalistic processing and work the camera, light and the setup of the shoot. I compare some of my portraits with some of the best in the infiniteness of the internet... to my surprise all those images have a real clean look. Major factors that define these images include minimalistic vignetting, eyes sharpened only around iris, skin retouched but not smoothened out, some sharp details around eyebrows, hair strands, finer shadows etc. I had

Delware Park... almost

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Gosh. I should remember to update my blog often. With the Twitter micro-blogging, all my small ideas drain out(I don't even know if they technically qualify as ideas). So unless I do something that challenges my limit there is no topic to blog. Here is one which makes a pretty good candidate for a blog. I had seen a few pictures of Delaware Park, near Port Sanilac Michigan. I wanted to shoot some similar pictures with rocks in the water and waves splashing against them. Last night I "intuitively" decided to get up early and go shoot there. As it's about 2 hours away and I didn't know exact location of the park, I left at 3.30 AM, morning i.e. first step to push my limits. One of the few 3.30 AMs rises I've seen in my life. You know, intuitions always don't result in your favor. So someone else had decided to disrupt my plans. Weather: Rainy, Foggy and Misty. The park's location couldn't be traced by my GPS. My watch was in rest as it'd run ou

Weekend of Shooting, Driving and Redbulls

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I did 2 photo shoots last weekend. 2 entirely different shoots. First one with Strobist Ann Arbor group on Saturday. This was set in Detroit in a decayed mansion (I think it was a mansion!). No power outlets, no restrooms, no air conditioner and sometimes no floor ..no kidding :). It was a blast though! Along with cameras, lights and models photographer also had to be aware of situation of the location itself. Mark and I setup our White Lightning on Vegabond batteries and started shooting. BTW I'm seriously impressed by performance of Vegabond II. Anyone looking forward to buy that, "Do it now!" It's totally worth what it costs. We also did some outdoor photos and the wind wasn't helping to say the least. Some photos from this shoot: The second shoot was in Lexington, Mich. Originally planned as Olympus shoot, just resulted in Cindy and I shooting, because of Father's day. This was one of those times, where nature is too kind towards you and th

The Tools of the Trade : Photography!

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Recently a few people have asked me what gear I use, especially for the lighting part. Today I was organizing all my gear and I thought why not take pictures of them(okay, I was tempted to take pictures of them :D). So this is a gear post :). Click on the images to view large on flickr. White Lighting Kit - Recently I ordered some stuff from PC Buff. I was happy with my small flash kit. But I wasn't getting enough power at times and I hate to pump up the ISO. So I got the big lights, since I don't have a studio, I ordered a vegabond battery too. May be I need one more battery, so that each flash head gets dedicated battery... although a single battery can support up to 6 heads (WL tech spec :)). I also got Large Octobox and Beauty dish with grid and soft cover. I love the light output by WLs, when mounted on Octobox. Shadow areas are very soft and overall pleasing look. Then I have the 20deg grid which sort of gives a funky look. I am yet to put some color gels on flash he

Happiness

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Some people have complained that I haven't updated my blog in ages. So... :). I have a photo up on flickr, titled "Happiness". It was supposed to be for an assignment, for a group I shoot with. I'm a big Bokeh fan and my creativity doesn't cross established norms of cliche. So I sprayed water on the table, placed a text chit which reads Happiness. Used 2 strobes and threw water drops out of focus. On the left there is the Orange gelled strobe and Blue gelled strobe is placed on the right. So when the camera's shutter is released, the lights are fired and from the same pattern they are placed, they blend in together. The setup: The result: Olympus FL-50R was at 1/16th of power and Nikon SB-28 was at 1/16 - 0.3EV. Minor adjustments in Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop CS4.