The life and times of an animator, a photographer, and a geek.
While everyone else was hanging out in front of backdrops and standing still (not counting the breakdancers), Beth decided she wanted to go airborne. So, she approached after she saw I was done with my jumping shots and asked if she could jump as well. I was more than happy to oblige. She was so much fun to shoot!
Remember that video I posted a yesterday that featured me and Trevin hopping around like wackos? Here’s the final freeze frame that ended up being my favorite shot from the set.
Some shooting and lighting specifics:
Mad props to Trevin for holding that headstand for a couple of minutes’ worth of shooting. I would’ve broken my neck if I had tried it.
I’ve always been a huge fan of fisheye lenses, but I’ve never been able to justify buying one for myself. A fisheye lens is extremely fun to use and offers all sorts of creative possibilities, but, to be honest, I can only do so much with one. Luckily for me, several of my photographer friends have fisheye lenses that I can borrow from time to time. :)
Here are a few shots from a recent stint with Nikon’s 10.5mm Fisheye:
That lens is super sharp, extremely compact and light, and opens up all the way to f/2.8 for easy low-light shooting. If I wanted to, I could easily de-fish the images in Capture NX, but, honestly, why bother. It’s a fisheye! The distortion is fun!
I really want one, but the cost just isn’t in my budget right now. Maybe after I get paid for another gig or something.
Huge thanks to Shawn for letting me borrow the fisheye this weekend!
The master bedroom in my apartment is empty at the moment, so I decided to take advantage of the extra space to do more white background lighting practice. My goal for the session was to get a clean white background and capture a full-body shot in the air without using an actual seamless background and large studio space (neither of which I have at the moment).
Here’s the setup I used:
To illuminate the wall, I used 2 Nikon SB-600s cranked up to 1/2 power. I attached a couple of Honl Speed Gobos to prevent the strobes from flaring into the lens (a Sigma 10-20mm ultra wide-angle lens that can pick up *anything*). The main light is a Vivitar 285HV at 1/4 power in a shoot-through umbrella. The big red laundry bin in the middle is where I was standing for the shots.
The exposure on the two jumps featured in this post was 1/250th sec at f/8 at ISO 400. Why ISO 400 when I have so much light and white walls that bounce that light? I forgot that I had shifted the custom studio lighting preset on my D300 from ISO 200 to 400 during a previous session. Oops!
Overall, I’m happy with how the images turned out. I feel like I got a bit too much spill from the background lights, but that’s mostly because I don’t have a whole lot of space to work with. I’m also seriously considering getting a softbox (possibly the Westcott Apollo 50″) for my main light, so I can restrict light even more in such a tight shooting area. Still, I like the final results from my 30 minutes of playing around.
I’ve gotta send out props to Zach Arias and David Hobby for always being so awesome about sharing their photography and lighting knowledge with the world. I’ve learned so much about lighting from reading their blogs and seeing their work. I’ve already attended a Strobist workshop and hung out with David a few times. One of these days I’ll get to a OneLight Workshop with Zack.
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