Category Archives: PhotoBlog

Three other photographers and myself got together today for a photo walk downtown, a chance to catch up with each other and take a photo or two in the process. This photo was one of results of the random meandering.

Another shot from some of my work on the Washington Coast – more info in the Ruby Beach Sunset post.

I spent last weekend in a sound room/studio that I designed and put together years ago. I used to do sound work all the time, but not so much anymore — Still love it and get asked for help or answer questions on occasion, but I haven’t spent more than a few minutes behind a mixer in several years. Last Friday and Saturday I did and quickly remembered how much fun it is. During a lunch break though, I had a few minutes to take this shot, one I’ve had on my list for almost a year. This shot is of a Mackie sound mixer, one of my favorite boards. I’m not sure when I fell in love with Mackie products, but at some point I did and since then it’s the only brand I’ll happily recommend. Sure, there are other good brands, but there is just something about these boards I really, really like. I recommend them, cause if I ever end up at your venue or studio to help you, I want to run a Mackie. The brand doesn’t matter so much for this shot, in fact, their logo is in about the worst place (photographically speaking) you could put it.

For Photogs out there
I only had my camera backpack with me which just has a few essentials (7D, XSI, 35mm Body, 70-200mm/f4, 50m/f1.8, 10-24mm, 17-55mm, 430exII) — my lighting kit was a few miles across town and my tripod was out in my truck – I only had five minutes. I took a couple test shots at 50mm/f2.8 to get the angle and at a way to high iso I got a warm area in the shot from the goose-neck lamp. I pulled out the one flash I did have, the 430exII, and held it camera left. This blew away what little ambient & warmth I had so I had chose to gel the flash. Actually I needed warmth on the back of the board where the goose-neck lamp is, while maintaining natural color on the foreground faders. With one flash and zero ambient, I had little options. So I pulled out the gels, turned the flash head vertical and put a red gel on top to cover the background. Wasn’t quite the color mix I was going for so I added a CTB gel on the bottom, with a bit of overlap. With this I was able to get the deep color I was looking for and after a couple shots got the flash in the right spot (everything was handheld btw). I had about three minutes in this from start to finish before the folks started coming back for the afternoon session.

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A sample from a shoot I did last night. According to the owner its a “2007 Subaru Impreza WRX TR, STP Cold Air intake, STI & STP Strut tower braces, and an after market catback system.”

The wind wasn’t helping at all, light stands are hard to keep vertical in 20mph winds, had sandbags on them, but umbrellas have an amazing ability to catch wind. Looking forward to the next time I get a call to shoot a car — I have some a couple location ideas that might be a challenge.