Southern Composition

Lightbox Project: My Mini Studio

I have been so busy with everything going on, I haven't posted anything in quite a while. I now have a jewelry and print store on etsy in collaboration with a college friend- www.ScottieDesigns.etsy.com. So if you want prints of anything featured on the blog email me and I can make something happen. If you want jewelry, our prices are pretty decent and we have a variety of bracelets and earrings and offer custom goods and alterations and repairs. Ok, thats it for the advertisement!

So I built myself a lightbox last night to photograph my retail items- I am a firm believer that pictures are one of the biggest selling points of an object. Previously I had taken every item to work and photographed them in an office with a skylight. This method worked well but I really wanted a studio professional look to my items. Enter, the almighty Lightbox!

Disclaimer- this is a temporary lightbox, more of a test run if you will. I plan on making a more permanent version out of PVC in a few weeks.

I took a Costco size Raisin Bran box, cutout the sides- leaving the bottom, back, and edges. Then I taped the edges to tall pitchers to open up the front of the box, and draped a white dress lining around the outside of the box., followed with a bright desk lamp beaming down from the top... Then I found some nice looking scrapbooking paper at Michaels and taped the front to the bottom of the box, and curved it up to the top of the box with no creases. This creates a smooth borderless background- like you would find in a studio. Got out my items and props, setup the camera on the tripod, and started shooting. It took me about an hour to get 10-20 items done, I ended up with 60 pics and had 44 good useable ones- Pretty good ratio I think! Not to mention the lightbox was perfect- I didnt touch up any of the images I took, just cropped and resized. So here is what my finished product looked like:

And here are some of the shots I took- I loved using the props and playing around with the aperture of the camera to keep the props in a small blur and keep focus on my item. I think the lighting worked really well and gave the images a real studio look- I am quite impressed with the ghetto-fabulous lightbox!

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Mad River Beach

I have been so busy and away from the blog for a while.... its time to play a little catch up! I went to Mad River Beach for the first time in January, guided by my bro. (it's his favorite beach). We walked up the beach from the pot-hole ridden parking lot down to where the river meets the ocean and back to the parking lot along the biggest dunes I have ever seen! It was certainly a workout, going up and down and up and down in all that loose sand.... The day started off really cloudy and drizzly but the heavens opened up once we got to the beach, and the photography god decided the keep the clouds and rain at bay until after I had gotten a couple great shots.

This photo is towards the end of our walk, standing on top of the dunes. I love quite a few things about this picture but I guess my favorite would have to be the clouds. I love the way they draw your eye into the image, their scale and threatening, menacing look. The second thing I like is how the clouds lead your eye to the center of the image which is whited/grayed out by the fog and sea spray rolling in (and its right over that dune peak, which lines up nicely), but on either side of the center you can still see pretty far.

This photo was at the beginning of our walk. I am in love with this image, its actually my screensaver at home. From the texture of the driftwood with all the interesting turns, knobs, juts, & holes to the light and fluffy texture of the sea foam coming in so close, to the way the sea seems to disappear into whiteness... Did I mention that I am in love with this image? :)

LOCATION: Mad River Beach, McKinleyville CA
DATE/TIME: 1/30/10 , 1-3pm
SUBJECT: Nature, Landscape, Seascape
NOTES: Pictures taken using a polarizing filter and edited under 5min. mostly saturation and light levels

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Hangin by the Bay

Since my car is out of service I have had alot of free time before work and during my lunch break. I decided to use this time to familiarize myself with the new camera, lenses, and filters. On this particular day I saw these seagulls by the Boardwalk while I was eating lunch. The birds eyes were locked on to the local fishing boats unloading at the dock, probably hoping for a few spilled fish. Anyway, I saw the birds and thought that it would be a good time to practice using repetition in my photo composition. I have never really tried to take photos of birds before so it was also a challenge for me to be patient with the moving, squaking, pooping mass!! I really love the way the pictures came out- they were edited very little in Picasa [mostly saturation, lighting levels, and contrast to make the colors really pop].

SUBJECT: Seagulls, Repetition

DATE/TIME: 12/30/09 @ noon

LOCATION: Humboldt Bay Boardwalk

NOTES: I used a polarizing filter on all the pictures because of the harsh noon light from the sun.

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Reflections

Today I went for a walk down to the PALCO Marsh between Costco and Bayshore Mall. I have been wanting to go down there for a while but didn't really get the chance until my car was out of commission due to Volkswagon sucking ass (BTW- 04 Passat owners- beware the ignition coils/heat shield/ fuel line seal/ seat heater/ and rear taillights). Took the new camera with me and was playing around with it for these water/ reflection shots. All images have been edited with iPhoto and Picasa, with the most work being done on the left and the least on the right top image. Mainly used exposure, temperature, definition, contrast, and saturation =5min. editing time per photo.

LOCATION: PALCO Marsh (Eureka, CA)

DATE/TIME: 12/27/09 @ 3-5pm

SUBJECT: water, plants, sky, reflections

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One Dog-on Good Day

Yippie! I got a new camera for Christmas!! My hunny got me a Nikon D5000 with two lenses and two filters!! So of course, I had to try out the camera as fast as humanly possible! So the first obvious subject was my dog, because she is always laying around and doesn't mind getting flashed repeatedly... It was also her birthday- we adopted her from the pound almost exactly a year ago, poor thing, spending last Christmas in doggie jail! I think she had a much better Christmas this year!

For these images I used the new camera playing around with exposure, flash settings, and shutter speed. Very small amounts of editing has been done to these photos- mainly temperature, exposure, and saturation. Also experimented with the Picasa collage feature and I like it much better than Elements!!

LOCATION: my house

DATE/TIME: 12/26/09 @ 1-9pm

SUBJECT: Scarlett, my rescued pitbull

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Ornamentality

Today I planned on going to the Eureka christmas tree lighting to test out taking pictures at night with the christmas lights. However, it was freezing and dark before it even started and time was not on my side. So I did the next best thing, I set up my tripod at home by my tree and tested out a few shots playing with ISO, movement, lighting, and a few select photoshop tools (burn, dodge, saturation, levels, & layers). I took about 20 shots and picked my favorites, edited them, and then put them together in my first attempt at a photo- journalistic type collage...

-Left Top Pic- Desaturate, a touch of hue, saturation on ornament only
I'm not sure what I think about this one- Scratch that, the more I look at it the more I dislike it but it was a good picture to practice object selection and color/b&w selections...

-Right Top Pic- Saturation, Lighting Levels, Sharpness, Highlighting edges, impressionist brush on ball
I really like the way this pic turned out! It didnt take too long to edit it this way and I love the play of light that the edge highlighting created...

-Left Bottom Pic- Saturation, Lighting Levels, Sharpness, Blur

I really like the glow given off by the lights both on the ball and the tree branches, The reflection of the light on the ball is wonderful. Oopsie- I forgot to turn the ball so that it would be facing the right way!

-Right Bottom Pic- Saturation, Lighting Levels, Hue
I was playing around with movement and lights trying to create those perfect lines you see on pictures of highways at night with a long exposure.. So I varied my movements with the camera as I was pushing the shutter button (I tried moving it in a small circle, short line, long line, shaking side to side, and up and down) and found that the smallest movement is all that is needed- otherwise the ball is so out of focus and doubled that it just ends up looking like a blur... But I really liked the straight lines in this picture- it makes me think of a falling Christmas tree- TIMBER! Would you know what this is a pic of if I didnt tell you?

TERMS:

Burn tool: The Burn tool is used to darken areas of an image

Dodge tool: Used to darken areas of an imag. The Dodge tool’s name comes from the traditional photographer’s method of reducing the amount of light made available when exposing the film.

Saturation: A measure of the strength of colour in an image.

ISO Settings: Industry norm for sensitivity of emulsion based film, with 100 ISO being not so sensitive (and the standard ISO used by most people) to 1600 ISO which is extremely sensitive to light. In a regular non-digital camera the ISO is the type of film used.

LOCATION: My house, by the Christmas Tree

DATE/TIME: Dec. 3, 09 @ 7pm

SUBJECT: Lighting, Movement, Darkness, ISO settings, Dodge & Burn Tools,Saturation, Layers

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Cuisine

Thanksgiving 2009: This year everything was perfect! It took some planning and cooking for 3 days before the big event but everything was timed perfect, wonderfully yummy, and looked the same! I have never really tried to take photos of food before so this was definetly a first. I read a 4 page article (for article click on post title "Cuisine") pre-photos from a cuisine photographer talking about lighting, perspective, camera angles, textures and backgrounds. This was also my first time using the Lighting adjustment tool in Adobe Elements as well as messing with background colors/perceptions. All in all I am quite happy with the photos for their ability to show the texture of the food, especially on the Turkey and Ham!!

LOCATION: My Kitchen

DATE/TIME: Nov. 26, 09 @ 4pm

SUBJECT: Cuisine, Thanksgiving

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Exposure

I went to Patricks Point State Park today for a hike. It was gorgeous! However, this wreaked havoc on my pictures because it was waayy to bright out for my lil'ol' point-&-shoot! So I had to try and mess around with the exposure of the photos as well as the settings in order to capture the waves breaking; and then had to mess with the exposure/light balance in Elements...

LOCATION: Patrick's Point State Park

DATE: Nov. 21, 2009 @ 1-3pm

SUBJECT: Landscape, Seascape

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Couple Self Portrait

For my first experiment photo shoot I decided to get photos for my Christmas cards I have to send out soon. I did some Google-ing and really loved the style of many engagement photos so I began researching the style, composition, and content of engagement photos. So after looking through and reading about engagement photo styles here is my end result: I was really trying to experiment with perspective, reflections, my new tripod, and my sweet doggie- which can be a challenge to photograph well because she's so squirmy!!